Mesoamerica (Geographic Keyword)
1,401-1,425 (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.
Middle Formative Origins of the Early Classic Period Stela Cult (2015)
Stela are standing stones, incised or carved with iconographic or hieroglyphic information. Stelae vary in size from the portable to monumental stones. Some of the earliest examples of stelae were erected at the middle formative period site of La Venta. Undoubtedly, these La Venta stela, like their Maya counterparts, are linked to concepts of rulership and sacred cycles of time. A close iconographic analysis supports an interpretation that finds the origin of these early stela firmly rooted in...
The Middle Preclassic Site of Pajonal and Its Interactions with La Venta and Aguada Fénix (2024)
This is an abstract from the "Aguada Fénix and the Middle Usumacinta Region: Interregional Interactions and Social Transformations in the Middle Preclassic Period" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Pajonal is a Middle Preclassic site situated between La Venta and Aguada Fénix in Tabasco, Mexico. The site has a spatial layout similar to La Venta, formed by an elongated plaza with an E Group at its center, several structures to the east and west edges,...
The Middle to Late Formative Olmec Chipped-Stone Assemblage from Los Soldados, Veracruz, Mexico (2015)
The use of chipped-stone in domestic Olmec contexts has only recently become a focus of archaeological investigation. With the publication of data on the chipped-stone assemblages from the Olmec centers of San Lorenzo and Tres Zapotes in the last few years, a picture emerges of great diversity in materials consumed and technologies used by commoners and non-commoners alike. The Middle to Late Formative household chipped-stone assemblage from the 2010 excavations at Los Soldados, in the...
Midnight Madness in Mesoamerica: Dark Doings in the Ancient World (2016)
After the sun went down, the world of ancient Mesoamerica was transformed into a dark landscape. Some sought sleep while others came alive for nocturnal naughtiness. Ancient Mesoamericans simultaneously embraced and respected the dark. Are nightly practices destined to remain obscured from our view, or can we illuminate such dark doings by expanding our focus from daily practices to include those of the night? A fundamental question explored in this paper is the extent to which there is material...
Migration and Interaction in the Epiclassic of the Tula Region: Preliminary Data as Evidenced by Dental Non-Metric Analysis (2017)
Dental non-metric data provide a means for the analysis of genetic affinities and relationships of individuals, and can therefore be used to reconstruct past migration and interaction patterns, both within and between sites. The dental traits of sixteen individuals, along with 21 individual teeth, from Cerro Magoni, an Epiclassic site in the Tula region, were collected in this preliminary analysis. Additionally, 13 individuals from two Xajay sites, El Zethe and Huesamenta, were also assessed....
Mimesis and Alterity in Classic Veracruz Ceramic Art (2017)
The relief-carved fine paste wares, figurines, and ceramic sculptures of south-central Veracruz exhibit stylistic similarities often attributed to mass production. Yet, there are few molds in the archaeological record, suggesting that replication hinges on the artist’s understanding of materials, techniques and canons of representation. Looking beyond the southern Gulf lowlands we see certain affinities between Classic Veracruz ceramic art and that of its Mesoamerican neighbors. Barbara Stark...
The Mirador Basin: A Synthesis of Research and Conservation Programs in northern Guatemala (2015)
Major research programs in the Mirador Basin of northern Guatemala and southern Campeche, Mexico, have provided new data relevant to the origins, dynamics, and collapse of complex societies in the Maya Lowlands. Data suggests that the origins of sedentary societies began earlier than previously thought, and that the dynamics of complexity included complex agricultural sophistication, elaborate communication and trade systems, logistics development, and vast political, economic, and social...
"A Mischief that is Past and Gone": Situating Ka’Kabish in the Larger Ancient Maya Political (2015)
Discussions of ancient socio-political interactions are most productive when site-specific archaeological data is incorporated into a multi-scalar analysis that includes centres of different distinction. The ability to integrate centres into a nuanced landscape is a luxury derived from a long legacy of archaeological work by different researchers. This work draws upon the increasing large corpus of data created for north-central Belize over the last 50 years. In this paper, we present a...
Mixed metaphors and mixed media: using commodity chains and commodity circuits to better understand Aztec textile production (2017)
Archaeological and ethnohistoric investigations of Aztec textile production have shown how women’s labor and domestic economies were interwoven with the imperial political economy. However, remarkably little attention has been paid to the people involved in affiliated industries—like cotton growers, dyers, and spindle-whorl-makers. Material evidence of these people is often ephemeral or isolated, but it is available. In this paper, we draw on theories of commodity chains and commodity circuits...
Mixtec Goldworking: New Evidence for Lost-Wax Casting from Late Postclassic Tututepec, Oaxaca. (2017)
Gold jewelry and ornaments produced in Late Postclassic Oaxaca were among the finest ever made in Mesoamerica. Yet the paucity of archaeological evidence for metallurgical production in Oaxaca has frustrated efforts to better understand these spectacular objects and their role in Postclassic society. This paper presents the results of an analysis of 42 ceramic molds from the Late Postclassic (1100-1522 CE) Mixtec Capital of Tututepec. I argue that the molds were utilized to cast internal cores,...
Mobility in the Central Maya Lowlands: Strontium, Oxygen, and Carbon Isotope Values from La Corona and El Perú-Waka’ (2016)
The movement of Classic Maya people has been recorded in numerous epigraphic texts. These references, along with migration studies at Tikal, Copán, and other smaller communities, suggest that there was a considerable amount of migration among Maya centers. We present the results of strontium, oxygen, and carbon stable isotope analysis of 71 individuals buried at the sites of La Corona and El Perú-Waka’ in the northwest Petén, Guatemala. The sample includes single and multiple burials, non-burial...
Moctezuma, King David, and a Gentile Meet on a Mountain: Religious Factionalism and Indigenous Perceptions of Archaeological Sites, Archaeology, and Archaeologists (2015)
The state of Oaxaca in southern Mexico has long been famous for its archaeological tourism, aimed mostly towards urban-based national and international publics. But while this is also the state with the largest indigenous population in Mexico, the contemporary descendents of those archaeological and historical cultures present an important yet mostly unrecognized public whose perceptions of their own past remain poorly studied. Concomitantly, the complex relationships between cultural heritage...
A Model for Interpreting the Royal Court Puuc Tradition (2016)
Throughout sixteen years of research at the archaeological site of Kiuic, located in the Puuc zone of the Yucatán Peninsula, explorations have yielded the complete construction sequence of its Late Classic Period royal court and central architectural group, Yaxché. Deep and detailed excavations at the group’s central building, Str. N1065E1025, have produced a unique picture of the evolution of architecture, modification of the landscape, and its role in the consolidation of royal power through...
A Model for Urbanism from the Neotropics? (2016)
Drawing from our own research on food, water, and waste management, we describe the development and characteristics of settled life in the humid neotropics with a view to isolating features or patterns that reflect sustainable trajectories. Because mainstream concepts of “the city” tend to be structured by urban experiences that lie outside the tropics and are recentist in outlook, we suggest that there are urban (and peri-urban) phenomena in the deep past of the neotropics that tend to be...
A model of the Universe at the foot of the Templo Mayor of Tenochtitlan. An approach to its meaning. (2015)
In this paper I will present the study of five offering containers found during the seventh field season of Templo Mayor Project in Downtown Mexico City. The shape of these stone boxes buried in foundation of the main plaza of Tenochtitlan (around 1486 CE), is one of the most important aspects of this ritual complex. They were deposited in the shape of a cross: one was placed in the center, while the others were buried in the cardinal points, representing a Quincunx, a model of the universe. The...
Modeling Hands: Photogrammetric Analysis of Hand Imprints in Ceramic Vessels from Copán, Honduras (2017)
In A.D. 756, Ruler 15 of Copán, Honduras—a Classic Maya settlement—erected Stela M in front of the Hieroglyphic Staircase as a permanent marker of a calendrical event – the 9.16.5.0.0 Period Ending. As part of the ritual ceremony conducted at the time of the stela’s dedication, offerings were placed under the stela to activate or ensoul the monument. In a recent study of the ceramics from this offering conducted at the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology at Harvard University, the...
Modeling Maya markets (2016)
A profusion of data now supports the existence—long doubted—of markets in the Maya area prior to the Postclassic (C.E. 900-1500). Using a range of approaches from examining the effects of market exchange on artifact distributions to identifying marketplaces within sites, researchers have established that markets were important building blocks for Classic Maya (C.E. 250-900) economies. To date, however, models of prehispanic Maya markets remain nebulous. Scholars continue to rely on frameworks...
Modeling Preceramic Occupation around the Wetlands of the Low-Lying Coastal Zone (2021)
This is an abstract from the "Archaeology and the History of Human-Environment Interaction in the Lower Belize River Watershed" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. While the Late Archaic (3400–900 BCE) has received comparably less research attention than the subsequent Maya period, there has been a surge of interest in this important period in the past two decades. In Belize, the majority of Late Archaic or Preceramic finds occur on the surface and...
Molded Meaning (2017)
Since the time of Walter Benjamin, scholarship has posed important questions about replication and meaning: what is an "original," what does this imply for "aura"--the particular resonance of unique productions--and are such concepts and concerns solely applicable to industrial production in capitalist society? This session converses with Benjamin, long after his death, by addressing the meaning of replication in pre-capitalist societies, indeed, outside a Marxian framework altogether. The...
Molding and Stamping Hieroglyphs on Maya Ceramics (2017)
This paper examines the implications of mold-made ceramic texts for understanding Maya scribal practice and script ideology. Most studies of hieroglyphs on ancient Maya ceramics have focused on painted and incised vessels whose glyphic and iconographic contents were made by hand on an individual basis and often with a particular consumer in mind. In contrast, the molded texts addressed here consist of pre-formed hieroglyphs that were integrated into the vessel body itself, either by shaping all...
Monkeys and the Maya: Zooarchaeological Analysis at Isla Civlituk, Campeche, Mexico (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Stability and Resilience in Zooarchaeology" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In my thesis, I examined the primate remains, Ateles geoffroyi and Allouata pigra, found at Isla Cilvituk, Campeche, Mexico, to understand the agricultural and sustainability practices of the Postclassic period (AD 1200–1525) in this area. I weigh evidence of contemporary human-primate relationships in the Maya region to understand continuity...
Monte Alban and the Zapotecs (1958)
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.
Monte Alban arqueologico y Monte Alban social (2016)
El estatus de Monte Alban como sitio de Patrimonio Mundial implica su manejo adecuado en la vida contemporánea. Aunque la tendencia general sería esperar que el sitio sea reconocido en su imagen histórica-social por los sectores académicos, económicos y los medios como un ejemplo de buenas prácticas, la realidad nos mueve a considerar como prioridad un esquema de gestión que tienda hacia una imagen de inclusion de las comunidades alrededor del sitio. Esta ponencia contrasta la imagen...
Monte Alban's Hinterland, Part I: the Prehispanic Settlement Patterns of the Central and Southern Parts of the Valley of Oazaca, Mexico (1982)
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.