Mesoamerica (Geographic Keyword)
1,376-1,400 (2,459 Records)
This resource is a citation record only, the Center for Digital Antiquity does not have a copy of this document. The information in this record has been migrated into tDAR from the National Archaeological Database Reports Module (NADB-R) and updated. Most NADB-R records consist of a document citation and other metadata but do not have the documents themselves uploaded. If you have a digital copy of the document and would like to have it curated in tDAR, please contact us at comments@tdar.org.
Mesoamerican Blade Workshops and Craft Specialization (1983)
This resource is a citation record only, the Center for Digital Antiquity does not have a copy of this document. The information in this record has been migrated into tDAR from the National Archaeological Database Reports Module (NADB-R) and updated. Most NADB-R records consist of a document citation and other metadata but do not have the documents themselves uploaded. If you have a digital copy of the document and would like to have it curated in tDAR, please contact us at comments@tdar.org.
The Mesoamerican Ceramic Neutron Activation Analysis (NAA) Database at MURR: History, Current Status, and Future Directions (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Ceramics and Archaeological Sciences" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In the nearly 35 years since the Archaeometry Laboratory at the University of Missouri Research Reactor (MURR) was founded, the Mesoamerican Ceramic NAA database has grown to almost 30,000 entries spanning Mexico, Guatemala, Belize, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, and beyond. This paper presents the history of how the database came together,...
Mesoamerican Cowboys: Exploring the History of Cattle Ranching in Colonial Mexico and Guatemala through Zooarchaeology (2021)
This is an abstract from the "Animal Bones to Human Behavior" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The introduction of cattle soon after the Spanish invasion had numerous and dramatic consequences over the society in New Spain. The historical scholarship on this topic emphasizes the prominent role of cattle ranching, which found its most iconic development in the great central Mexican haciendas that emerged over the sixteenth century and that...
Mesoamerican Figurative Plaques: Elites’ Legitimization Strategies during the Epiclassic Period (600 to 900 a.C). (2017)
Few authors have analyzed figurative plaques from Late Classic and Epiclassic contexts even though they are considered as prestigious artefacts and exhibited as prominent pieces in Museum collections all around the world. Several examples from Epiclassic city states of Cacaxtla-Xochitecatl (Tlaxcala) and Xochicalco (Morelos) will be analyzed. Contexts, morphologies and iconographies reveal continuities of socio-political and religious practices with contemporaneous Maya sites. We will propose...
Mesoamerican Grooved Curved Sticks: Short Swords, Fending Sticks, or Other Purpose? (2016)
Curved sticks with longitudinal facial grooves were dredged from the Sacred Cenote at Chichén Itzá at the start of the 1900s. They are also depicted in art there and at other sites such as Tula. These artifacts are similar to specimens recovered from various sites throughout the North American Southwest, where one suggested function was for defense against atlatl darts. Accepting this speculative account, Mesoamerican archaeologists have identified these artifacts as fending sticks. Starting in...
Mesoamerican Gulf and Caribbean Coastal Adaptations. In: Coasts, Plains and Deserts: Essays in Honor of Reynold J. Ruppe (1987)
This resource is a citation record only, the Center for Digital Antiquity does not have a copy of this document. The information in this record has been migrated into tDAR from the National Archaeological Database Reports Module (NADB-R) and updated. Most NADB-R records consist of a document citation and other metadata but do not have the documents themselves uploaded. If you have a digital copy of the document and would like to have it curated in tDAR, please contact us at comments@tdar.org.
The Mesoamerican Laboratory Ceramic Type Collections Project at Harvard University’s Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Mesoamerican ceramic collections at the Peabody Museum represent the work of an array of influential scholars who collected and analyzed them, many of whom were pioneers in ceramic analysis, including Alfred Kidder, Eric Thompson, Anne Shepard, and Gordon Willey. Archaeologists in many cases still use the methods established by these scholars, and we often...
Mesoamerican Plants of the Night: A Paleoethnobotanical Perspective (2017)
The ancient Mesoamerican landscape has been extensively researched archaeologically, with the field of paleoethnobotany allowing for a better understanding of what plants the ancient people valued agriculturally and in their economic, ritual, medicinal and other daily practices. Typically, archaeologists interpret the archaeological record in terms of how the ancient peoples interacted with the artifacts and navigated through the landscape during the daytime. What about nightly practices? How...
Mesoamerican Polyhedral Cores and Prismatic Blades (1968)
This resource is a citation record only, the Center for Digital Antiquity does not have a copy of this document. The information in this record has been migrated into tDAR from the National Archaeological Database Reports Module (NADB-R) and updated. Most NADB-R records consist of a document citation and other metadata but do not have the documents themselves uploaded. If you have a digital copy of the document and would like to have it curated in tDAR, please contact us at comments@tdar.org.
Mesoamerican Queens, Revisited (2024)
This is an abstract from the "Gender in Archaeology over the Last 30+ Years" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This paper builds on the author’s earlier research that documents previously unrecognized female rulers among the Aztec. Over the last 50 years, interest in elite women in other areas of Mesoamerica has grown, and the author presents the outcome of some of that research. Woman rulers from not only the Aztec area but also from the Valley of...
Mesoamerican Radiocarbon Database (MesoRad)
The Mesoamerican Radiocarbon (MesoRAD) database compiles published radiocarbon dates and isotopic data from archaeological sites in across Mesoamerica. Mesoamerica as a culture region is defined by shared cultural traits that span the areas of northern, central, and southern Mexico, Belize, Guatemala, Honduras, and parts of El Salvador and Nicaragua. In its final form, we hope that the database can be used as an open-access repository that will facilitate collaborative studies in the...
Mesoamerican Silver Bells: New Data on Proto-Tarascan Archeometallurgy (2016)
Silver is fairly uncommon in Mesoamerican archaeology, if compared with copper and gold, both of them materials that have been widely studied particularly in relation to the development of Western Mexican Pre-columbian cultures. Henceforth, material and technological aspects regarded Mesoamerican silver metal-work are still widely unknown. This paper presents the initial results on a interdisciplinary research based on state of the art analytical techniques (XRD, SEM-EDX-XRF) on a couple of...
Mesoamerican Spindle Whorls from a Technological and Ideological Perspective (2017)
An important aspect of textile production involves the preparation of fibers, an activity that is represented in the archaeological record from Mesoamerica primarily through the presence of spindle whorls made from a variety of materials, most commonly pottery, but also stone, wood, shell, and gourds. Although occasionally recovered from primary contexts, spindle whorls are more often found in secondary depositions such as burials and caches, or in middens. This paper focuses on spindle whorls...
Mesoamerican Transitions: Social, Psychological, and Symbolic (2024)
This is an abstract from the "Bringing the Past to Life, Part 2: Papers in Honor of John M. D. Pohl" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. We use metaphors for the human mind just as we do for religious, mythic and symbolic systems. These metaphoric systems reproduce the same social phenomena in ritual process and social organization. It should thus be clear that we find reintegration of social, symbolic, and metaphoric systems as a society is...
MesoRAD v.1.2 (2020)
The Mesoamerican Radiocarbon (MesoRAD) database compiles radiocarbon dates and isotopic data from archaeological sites in across Mesoamerica. The initial dataset from MesoRAD is a compilation of 14C dates from the Maya lowlands. We will be expanding the database to other parts of Mesoamerica soon. If you would like to submit your data to MesoRAD, please visit our website for more information: http://www.mesorad.com
MesoRAD v.1.4 (2021)
The Mesoamerican Radiocarbon (MesoRAD) database compiles radiocarbon dates and isotopic data from archaeological sites in across Mesoamerica. The initial dataset from MesoRAD is a compilation of 14C dates from the Maya lowlands. We will be expanding the database to other parts of Mesoamerica soon. If you would like to submit your data to MesoRAD, please visit our website for more information: http://www.mesorad.com
Metal Trade and Interregional Dynamics of the Mesoamerican Late Postclassic Period (2015)
The way people were placed in relation to each other was fundamental to the distinctive character of Mesoamerica, as a historically linked series of socially stratified, economically differentiated, complex societies. Long-distance exchange, one of the practices through which intensive interaction between different peoples was fostered, was centrally concerned with obtaining materials used for marking distinctions between commoners and nobles. Costume was a major means of marking distinctions...
Metallurgical Production at Mayapan, Yucatan, Mexico: New Discoveries from the R-183 Group (2017)
The Postclassic period urban center of Mayapan housed numerous household craft production industries, including metallurgical production. The recovery of metal artifacts, production debris, and metallurgical ceramics from contexts throughout the city suggests a number of independent production sites. One of the most significant archaeological contexts associated with metallurgical production is the R-183 group, an elite residential group in the southeast mid-city sector. Salvage excavations in...
Metaphor in Precolumbian Mesoamerica: In Honor of John Justeson (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Coffee, Clever T-Shirts, and Papers in Honor of John S. Justeson" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. John Justeson is well-known for contributions to the documentation of Mesoamerican indigenous languages and writing systems. Justeson’s work on metaphor has received less attention, given that work on metaphor in precolumbian Mesoamerica is just now gaining traction. Justeson’s work stands out as being the first to adopt a...
A Method for Identifying Surface Scatters in the Jungles of Belize: A Case Study from the Medicinal Trail Community (2017)
The implementation of systematic surface collection on a grid within Operation 17 at the Medicinal Trail Community in Northwestern Belize, highlights the importance of surface collection to the fuller understanding of ancient Maya socio-economics. Surface survey and collection at archaeological sites can lead to more precise interpretation of a site. However, jungle debris is often cleared from Maya sites with rakes, disrupting any surface collection before excavations begin. At Operation 17,...
Methods for the Application of Structure from Motion (SfM) 3D models for the Recording and Consolidation of Archaeological Architecture. (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Towards a Standardization of Photogrammetric Methods in Archaeology: A Conversation about 'Best Practices' in An Emerging Methodology" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Photogrammetry is the process of generating 3-Dimensional digital models from still photographs. The process is applied in a variety of field and lab settings for documenting the archaeological record. Currently, there is a need for focus on individual...
Mexico (1962)
This resource is a citation record only, the Center for Digital Antiquity does not have a copy of this document. The information in this record has been migrated into tDAR from the National Archaeological Database Reports Module (NADB-R) and updated. Most NADB-R records consist of a document citation and other metadata but do not have the documents themselves uploaded. If you have a digital copy of the document and would like to have it curated in tDAR, please contact us at comments@tdar.org.
Mexico’s Heritage through Pixar’s Film *Coco (2021)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The archaeology of media frames the analysis of the film *Coco, a 3D, animated, fictional movie inspired by Day of the Dead, or Día de Muertos, in Mexico, released by Pixar Animation Studios in 2017, a subsidiary of Walt Disney Studios. This paper analyzes the tensions and contradictions within Pixar’s most successful movie at the box office in taking a stand...
Michael D. Coe and the Códice Maya de México (Grolier) Controversy (2023)
This is an abstract from the "A Celebration and Critical Assessment of "The Maya Scribe and His World" on its Fiftieth Anniversary" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The controversial display of “Códice Maya de México” at the Grolier Club in 1971 and its subsequent publication by Coe in “The Maya Scribe and His World” opens debate regarding archaeologists’ involvement with unprovenienced objects. The sudden appearance of the previously unknown...