Mesoamerica (Geographic Keyword)
1,601-1,625 (2,459 Records)
In this poster we present the results of archaeological research at three currently submerged Classic period Maya saltworks in Paynes Creek National Park, Southern Belize. Through the study of marine sediment columns, we document environmental and anthropogenic changes over time at these locations. By conducting macroscopic analysis, loss-on ignition, and microscopic characterization of marine sediment samples, we were able to identify the effects of human activities as well as sea level rise on...
Of Cenotes and Serpents: Modern and Ancient Cave Ritual at Mayapán, Yucatán, Mexico (2015)
The pairing of ritual architecture with sacred underground spaces is common throughout Mesoamerica and makes clear the importance that ancient inhabitants of the culture area placed on caves and cenotes. These spaces were home to powerful forces. The Late Postclassic Maya center of Mayapán (1150-1450AD) is known for its clear spatial associations between temples and cenotes. These temple/cenote complexes have been found both within and outside of the large defensive city wall. Cenote Sac Uayum,...
Of Mud and Magnets: Archaeometric Prospection at the Site of Altica (2017)
The Formative Period site of Altica in the Patlachique range poses many problems when designing an excavation strategy. Three millennia of erosion, and centuries of chisel plowing have eviscerated the site, removing any traces of architecture and in situ remains above the tepetate (local bedrock). As such, in the early stages of the Altica Project, the primary concern was the detection and identification of sub-surface remains inside intact bedrock-incised pits. In most archaeological sites, the...
Of Water and Ancestors: Landscapes of Resilience Throughout Aventura’s Long History (2024)
This is an abstract from the session entitled "Paper / Report Submission (General Sessions)", at the 2024 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. This paper explores how water contributed to community resilience throughout centuries of occupation at the Maya site of Aventura, Belize. While human-landscape relations changed with shifting sociopolitical and ecological contexts, water and ancestors remained consistently important. During Classic Period occupation, households...
Of Watery Rocks and Slumbering Crocs: A reappraisal of the Middle Preclassic at Altun Ha and Lamanai (2015)
A half-century of targeted excavations in northern Belize has generated one of the most detailed databases of Middle Preclassic (900 – 350 B.C.) settlement in the Maya Lowlands. Information from sites such as Cuello, K’axob, and Colha has provided the basis for economic and political models of Preclassic development in northern Belize and the eastern Maya Lowlands in general. The comparatively modest Classic-period architecture at these sites permitted extensive exposures of early occupations,...
Old Dogs, New Tricks: Tracking Dog Management in the Ancient Maya World (2017)
This study examines the management of dogs as a resource and status symbol in ancient Mesoamerican society. One of the few New World domesticated animals, dogs provided communities with a steady source of meat. Artistic and ethnohistorical accounts suggest that dogs may also have been selectively bred to emphasize particular body shapes and hair types, including even absence of hair. These different breeds are described as playing different roles, as participants in specific ceremonies, as...
Old World View of New World Prehistory (1961)
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.
Olmec Archaeology in the Arroyo Pesquero Region (2015)
Studies on the Olmec frequently focus on the ostentatious nature of the society such as large centers and monumental works of art, often ignoring the important role of smaller sites in regional hierarchies. In order to remedy this bias, we initiated the Proyecto Arqueológico Arroyo Pesquero, which is investigating sites in the Eastern Olmec Heartland. This project is unique in Olmec studies in that it takes a bottom-up approach to the study of the Middle Formative Olmec by collecting...
An Olmec Cylinder Seal from Los Soldados (2015)
In 2010, a young man from the Ejido Diaz Ordáz found a Prehispanic clay cylinder eroding out of a road cut in the Olmec site of Los Soldados. Although the exact archaeological provenience is not secure, we consider the object belonging to the Olmec culture through other data obtained by the Proyecto Arqueológico Arroyo Pesquero-Los Soldados. The artifact is of particular importance because of the unique images presented on this artifact, which appears to constitute a domestic scene. We know of...
Olmec Households in the Context of Sociopolitical Transformation (2017)
The Olmec are among Mesoamerica’s earliest civilizations and as such they provide a good opportunity to investigate household change in the context of developing social inequalities. Over the past few decades archaeologists have gathered household data that show the ways they transformed and remain unchanged during periods of social evolutionary change. Artifact assemblages and subsistence patterns are examined and together provide valuable insights ...
Olmec Iron-Ore Mirrors from San Lorenzo, Veracruz / Los Espejos Olmecas de Mineral de Hierro de San Lorenzo, Veracruz (2024)
This is an abstract from the "And They Look into the Mirror for Answers: Mirror Analysis to Understand Its Holder" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. During the heyday of the Olmec capital of San Lorenzo (1400–1000 cal BC), iron-ore mirrors from nonlocal sources were traded from distant regions. The Central Valleys of Oaxaca have been hypothesized as one of the possible sources, if not the main one. Iron ore was then used by the Olmec to create drill...
Olmec of the Periphery: The Dawning of Creation in the Central Mexican Highlands During the Middle Formative (2017)
By 900 BCE, a middle formative Olmec influence projected into the central highlands of Mexico. This became apparent with the 1930’s discovery of the regional center of Chalcatzingo and its monumental architecture created in the Olmec style. Additionally, Olmec style symbolism appeared in the modern Mexican state of Guerrero with outstanding examples like the monumental architecture of Teopanticaunitlan and the cave paintings of Oxtotitlan and Juxtlajuaca. This paper will iconographically analyze...
Olmecs masks in the region of Arroyo Pesquero (2017)
In a detailed analysis of some figurines of the offering 4 of La Venta, we observed that some of them were carved wearing a mask. This is hardly visible because the representation of the mask is a realistic human face. It seems to have a close relationship with the stone masks found a few kilometers from La Venta, in the site of Arroyo Pesquero, Veracruz, a site of Olmec offering reported in 1969 by the archaeologist Manuel Torres where a lot of lithic material was discovered. Among these there...
The Ometochtli Complex and its Presence in the Offerings of the Great Temple of Tenochtitlan (2017)
In 1971, H.B. Nicholson classified the Mesoamerican pantheon of god’s by their symbolic elements and functions. One of the most important groups of this classification is the "Ometochtli Complex", which is exclusively constituted of gods related to the most significant alcoholic beverage in pre-Hispanic México, the octli or pulque. This drink is created through the fermentation of the agave juice. Thus, pulque gods are easily identifiable due to key elements present in their attire. At the...
Omichicahuaztli: production, use, and transformation over space and time in Mesoamerica (2016)
How can changes in production and use of a single class of ancient artifact allow us to understand changes in their meaning through time and space? We address the reasons behind the cultural practice of making the Omichicahuaztli, or notched human bones, in Mesoamerica, studying the unique histories of each object in correlation with the geographic area in which they were found and the social group that produced them. We studied over 100 Omichicahuaztlis from Central, Southern, and Western...
On Data, Methods, Results, and Reviews: a Reply To Michael Smith (1979)
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.
On Olmec niche figures, altars and thrones (2015)
The Olmec site of La Venta in southeaster Mexico has a wide repertoire of sculptures known as "altars". These will be reviewed in terms of form and compared to similar kinds of sculptures in the Gulf Coast lowlands and other regions, in order to thematically and functionally differentiate between them. SAA 2015 abstracts made available in tDAR courtesy of the Society for American Archaeology and Center for Digital Antiquity Collaborative Program to improve digital data in archaeology. If you...
On the Back of the Crocodile: Extent, Energetics, and Productivity in Wetland Agricultural Systems, Northern Belize (2016)
Wetland agricultural techniques have been successfully employed in a variety of environmentally and climatically diverse landscapes throughout prehistory. Within the larger Maya region, these features figure prominently in the region comprised of Northern Belize and Southern Quintana Roo. Along the banks of the Hondo and New Rivers, the ancient Maya effectively utilized wetland agricultural practices from the Middle Preclassic to the Terminal Classic periods. A number of past archaeological...
On the Fall of Copan, Teotihuacan, and the Origins of the Fate of 8 Ahau (2015)
"A Forest of Kings" was groundbreaking for its integration of epigraphy, archaeology, and ethnohistory. In their book, Schele and Freidel discussed the Early Classic Teotihuacan-Maya cultural and political interaction as well as the fall of Copan, and the larger issue of the collapse of Classic Maya cities, and even the fall of Postclassic Mayapan. In this presentation I wish to expand on and integrate these disparate themes in an effort to answer the question of why the Colonial era Maya...
On The Frontier: Raxruha Viejo, a Late Classic Highland Exchange Center (2017)
In the Verapaz valleys, there were sites of the major exchange route used to transport jade and obsidian from the Maya highlands to the lowlands during the Classic period. The Late Classic site of Raxruha Viejo, located on the highland side of the boundary between the Classic Maya kingdoms and their Verapaz highland trading partners, has a unique architecture and material culture of highland Verapaz style but with significant lowland elements. Overall, its assemblage and architecture appear to...
On the Identification of Pre-Hispanic Obsidian Mines in Southern Hidalgo (1969)
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.
On the Orientation of Precolumbian Buildings in Central Mexico (1976)
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.
On the Question of Olmec Architecture and Sculpture Beyond the Gulf Coast (2016)
For over half a century, the ancient city located in La Venta, Tabasco has served as a standard in defining what is commonly referred to as Olmec in the time period between ca. 1000-400 BC. This paper will examine the architectural and sculptural vestiges in sites that have been defined as Olmec outside the Gulf Coast heartland, in order to define the component(s) that define it as “Olmec”, as well as to explain the differences observed.
On Urban Development and Cultural Heritage: A Perspective from Cholula, Puebla (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Advances in Puebla/Tlaxcala Archaeology" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The city of Cholula has been occupied for thousands of years. However, the Spanish conquest signified one of the most significant moments of social, political, and cultural change—in part due to the development of the colonial city of Puebla, which was created for Spaniards. Cholula, however, specifically San Andrés, was perceived as an indigenous...
One Tamale, Four Digestions (2021)
This is an abstract from the "Thinking about Eating: Theorizing Foodways in Archaeology" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Drawing from long-established fields in anthropology (structuralist, semiotic, identity-oriented, subsistence-focused, human ecological, and many others), food scholars have actively developed hybrid perspectives and novel pursuits. Here, I focus on four: modeling foodways linguistically, theorizing gastropolitik, situating the...