Mesoamerica (Geographic Keyword)

DOCUMENT Citation Only Antonia Foias. Kitty Emery.

Motul de San José dominated a swath of the northern shore of Lake Peten Itza in central Peten, Guatemala, during the Late Classic. Its Ik’ Emblem Glyph has now been translated as "Windy Water," an apt name for this zone. Excavations at two small sites in the periphery of Motul de San José, Kante’t’u’ul (approx. 3km northwest) and Chachacklu’um (approx. 5km east) aimed to investigate the relations between these secondary centers and their political overlords at Motul de San José. Settlement...

GEOSPATIAL Karen Holberg.

The aim of the LEAP projects was to publish multi-layered e-publications and develop and link them to associated digital archives. The original LEAP project was funded by the AHRC while the LEAP II, A Trans-Atlantic LEAP, was supported by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. This raster is part of a 2011 LEAP II project "Placing immateriality: situating the material of highland Chiriquí" by Karen Holberg. All files associated with this record must be downloaded to ensure that the raster file opens...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Arthur Joyce. Sarah Barber. Guy Hepp. Paul Sandberg. Michelle Butler.

This paper presents the results of an isotopic study of human dietary change during the Formative period (2000 BCE-300 CE) in the lower Río Verde Valley of Oaxaca. Approximately 60 individuals were sampled for δ13C and δ15N using both teeth and long bones. The study examines trends in the consumption of maize and marine/estuarine resources relative to regional environmental change. Interdisciplinary research along the drainage system indicates that environmental change in the lower Verde was...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Chelsea Fisher.

A population boom during the Late Formative period (ca. 250 BCE-250 CE) corresponded with the expansion of permanent, aggregated settlements across Mesoamerica. In central Yucatán, Yaxuná was a centralizing focus during the Formative, yet it was not the only place that attracted settlers – so did the nearby, smaller site of Tzacauil. In this dynamic time, what was the relationship between a large center like Yaxuná and its humbler neighbors like Tzacauil? Was Tzacauil an autonomous hamlet, or is...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Aileen Balasalle. Judith Zeitlin.

During the late colonial period, the political economy of the Oaxaca Isthmus of Tehuantepec, like many areas of rural New Spain, witnessed dramatic changes in response to Bourbon political reforms and as a consequence of increased engagement with global capitalism. These changes are particularly apparent in the sheltered piedmont zone of the Rio de los Perros, where Zapotec elites had managed to control productive agricultural lands into the early 18th century. New creole landowners emerge in...

DOCUMENT Citation Only James Brady. Lili Taleghani-Nia.

Michael Smith and Katharina Schreiber note that, "For the Classic Maya, studies of sacred landscapes are dominated by research on caves." Unfortunately, northern Belize lacks large caves that have attracted archaeological interest and no large cave survey has been conducted in the region. Lacking such studies, archaeologists appear to be at a loss on how to engage sacred landscapes. An underappreciated aspect of the Petexbatun Regional Cave Project was its articulation of an explicit model of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Loni Kantor.

This is an abstract from the "Journeying to the South, from Mimbres (New Mexico) to Malpaso (Zacatecas) and Beyond: Papers in Honor of Ben A. Nelson" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Landscapes are more than just where people subsist: landscapes are inherently social entities. People create landscapes in their interactions with the environment and with each other; they conceptualize landscapes in various ways; they mediate their relationships with...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Julio Amador.

Abstract In this paper we present a systematic comparative analysis of the most characteristic cultural traits of sites, apparently distant in time and space, that share fundamental aspects, concerning basic geomorphological and landscape features, settlement patterns, and rain and fertility symbolism depicted in rock art. The direct association between political power and religious authority, social prestige and the privilege of presiding ritual performances appears to be evident. While in...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Elizabeth Newman.

During the last quarter of the 19th century, Mexico experienced a period of rapid social and economic modernization under the leadership of dictator Porfirio Diaz. Central to this was the dismantling of community-held lands, a practice that was intended to undermine the social aspects of the agrarian/indigenous lifestyle. The nineteenth century architects of Mexico’s progress believed that by dismantling communal villages lands and thus communal indigenous communities, they were moving Mexico’s...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jose Luis Punzo.

In 2012 INAH-Michoacan, started an archeological project in the south central portion of the state based on ample surveys in the region looking for the presence of sites associated to the Tarascan period, especially in relation to mining, transport, manufacture and consumption of metallic items. In that sense, with this new survey we been able to identify the existence of important archeological sites with presence of rectangular stone structures with circular extensions (yácatas) similar to...

DOCUMENT Citation Only John Justeson.

Research on contact linguistics has shown that, and to a great extent how, the nature of the linguistic influence of speakers of different languages on one another relates systematically to the nature of the interactions among speakers of these languages. This paper will survey some of the evidence and inferences that historical linguistics can contribute to some of the culture-historical situations addressed by other papers in this symposium, from varying time frames, and will address some of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Randolph Widmer.

Fine screened (1 mm mesh) samples obtained from the heavy fractions of flotation samples at the recent excavations in the Tlajinga barrio of Teotihuacan have revealed evidence of extensive lapidary crafting of slate and greenstone. Sorting of the sediments from these samples results in the recovery of minute fragments of lapidary debitage as well as more typical domestic refuse. Evidence will be presented on the types of artifacts being produced, the materials being crafted, and the intensity of...

IMAGE Thomas Guderjan.

This information resource is comprised of large format feature planview and profile maps and selected artifact illustrations from the Blue Creek Central Precinct, Ditched Fields, Chan Cahal, and Kin Tan

DOCUMENT Citation Only Brent Woodfill.

Salinas de los Nueve Cerros is a major Precolumbian Maya city that grew around the only non-coastal salt source in the Maya lowlands. Residents of the city were able to transform the neighborhoods adjacent to and atop the salt dome into a large-scale production operation with the capacity to produce over 10,000 metric tons of salt a year, which were then distributed throughout the western lowlands via the Chixoy, Pasión, and Usumacinta river networks. By the Late Classic period, the city had...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Mitsuru Kurosaki.

En el sitio arqueológico La Joya, en el Centro- Sur de Veracruz se han encontrado ofrendas. En la Plataforma Este se encontraron los depósitos de terminación del período clásico medio-tardío 500-1,000 d.C. Basado en los datos de excavación, en este trabajo proponemos que hay dos tipos de ofrendas de terminación: 1) Ofrendas masivas de los materiales, en especial, vasijas y figurillas y 2) Ofrendas con presencia cerámica en pares. En primero, se asocia con los entierros sacrificados y...

DOCUMENT Citation Only María Higueras.

En el sitio arqueológico Los Soldados en el estado de Veracruz, México se recolectaron 450 fragmentos de figurillas de barro, fruto de 4 temporadas de investigación del Proyecto Arqueológico Arroyo Pesquero. El sitio Los Soldados pertenece al periodo Formativo Medio (900-500 a.C.), es un sitio Olmeca situado a 11km al suroeste de La Venta y a 5km al norte de la localización del sitio Arroyo Pesquero. Las figurillas de barro como material arqueológico han aportado información para poder observar...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Marisa Vázquez De Ágredos Pascual. Cristina Vidal Lorenzo. Patricia Horcajada Campos. Christa Schieber de Lavarreda.

La arqueología, la iconografía y la epigrafía maya han identificado desde hace décadas la importancia que tuvo el aroma entre los antiguos mayas, en especial como parte de la escenografía simbólica que envolvió distintos acontecimientos políticos y religiosos de profunda significancia en la cosmovisión de esta antigua cultura prehispánica. Más recientemente, la arqueometría ha empezado a caracterizar algunas de estas antiguas y simbólicas fragancias, lo que nos permite entender con mayor...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Gibránn Becerra.

El ejercicio del poder en Mesoamérica puede ser medido y estudiado de diferentes formas. Una de estas formas tiene que ver con los despliegues políticos ligados a los programas arquitectónicos y las estrategias políticas implementados a partir de estos elementos. En este trabajo se pretende mostrar de forma visual los resultados de un estudio que evaluó la centralización del trabajo de la arquitectura pública como un índice de poder político.

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jorge Rios. Juan Carlos Diaz Vazquez.

El arte rupestre, dentro de los contexto arqueológicos, es una herramienta capaz de proveernos información privilegiada acerca de fauna, flora y de comportamiento humano, en el caso de las Cuevas Prehistóricas de Yagul y Mitla en los Valles Centrales de Oaxaca, es uno de los atributos por los cuales, ademas de la evidencia de domesticación temprana de plantas, se ha documentado en una diversidad de motivos que denotan un paso constante humano y su conocimiento del medio que le rodeaba. Las...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Martha Lorenza Lopez Mestas Camberos.

Los objetos trabajados en una extensa variedad de piedras verdes fueron altamente apreciados por las culturas mesoamericanas desde tiempos tempranos. Lo anterior aplica para el Occidente de México, en donde su uso se encuentra ligado a las actividades económicas, rituales y políticas realizadas por las elites, desde el Formativo medio, documentado en sitios de los complejos Capacha, El Opeño y Pantano, y generalizado a partir del Formativo tardío entre los grupos pertenecientes a la tradición de...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Ma Alejandra Espinosa.

Los vestigios de las primeras aldeas agrícolas muestran una sociedad que se caracteriza por la fabricación de un tipo de cerámica elaborada, la presencia de productos de intercambio y un modo de vida sedentario. De manera general, se ha considerado que la diferenciación de estatus social de estos grupos domésticos es poco perceptible o incluso inexistente. Sin embargo, el inicio del Preclásico se caracteriza por el surgimiento de innovaciones de importancia fundamental y el establecimiento de...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Thania Pérez Chávez.

De acuerdo con las investigaciones arqueozoológicas, se tiene registro de tres especies de cánidos que convivieron con el hombre prehispánico en Mesoamérica: el lobo (Canis lupus baileyi), el coyote (Canis latrans) y el perro (Canis lupus familiaris); la importancia de su convivencia se ve reflejada en diversas representaciones arqueológicas de cánidos. En la región de la costa del Golfo, particularmente en el actual estado de Veracruz, se ha registrado la presencia de representaciones de...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Natalia Moragas. Maria Torras. Alessandra Pecci.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Much of the knowledge on Teotihuacan and its surroundings has been produced almost exclusively through archaeology as the main discipline. These archaeological studies have focused mainly on Teotihuacan during the Classic period. However, it must be considered that the population of the Teotihuacan Valley did not begin and end with the classical city of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Andrew Turner. Rex Koontz.

The proliferation of ballcourts at major sites such as El Tajín and Xochicalco during the Late Classic period suggests that the Mesoamerican ballgame and its associated architectural features played a crucial role in the expression of power and identity in the tumultuous centuries that followed the collapse of Teotihuacan. This paper investigates the role of Late Classic ballcourts in fostering, shaping, and manifesting cross-cultural interaction through focus on sites from three different...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jillian Jordan.

Archaeological approaches to ancient Maya communities often assume that spatially distinct architectural groups are tantamount to social groups, but proximity is likely not the only salient organizing principle. Members of prehistoric communities, like modern ones, defined the community in which they belong based on who they choose to interact with, which often lies at the intersection of kin, status, gender, ethic, economic, and spatial affiliations. Employing a communities of practice...