Mesoamerica (Geographic Keyword)
1,701-1,725 (2,459 Records)
Copan's longest-lived ruler dramatically expanded his realm, reach, and resources. The valley population nearly doubled, and the historical record indicates he was active in the ritual and political lives of other centers both near to home and farther afield. Ruler 12 contextualized his defensive perimeter within the sacred geography of the valley by erecting six stelae in 652 C.E. His successor enshrined that achievement and his memory in the most elaborately decorated temple outside the royal...
Pigment Composition and Color Structure and Usage in the Lienzos De Chiepetlan, Guerrero, Mexico: A Non-destructive Analysis (2019)
This is an abstract from the "From Materials to Materiality: Analysis and Interpretation of Archaeological and Historical Artifacts Using Non-destructive and Micro/Nano-sampling Scientific Methods" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The community of Chiepetlan, Guerrero possesses six colonial lienzos. One manufactured during the 16th century, and four manufactured during the 18th century and used as legal documents in colonial land disputes. The...
Pigments in Peril: Degradation of pre-Columbian Mesoamerican Murals (2016)
Pre-Columbian Mesoamerican murals are cultural representations of numerous civilizations, often mirroring the lifestyles, beliefs, rituals, and traditions of various peoples such as the Olmec, Maya, Toltec, and Aztecs. The pigments used to create these murals are highly susceptible to degradation. Degradation not only affects the appearance of the murals, but can result in the breakdown of the chemical structure of pigments causing flaking, powdering, and foundation issues. This project aims to...
PIN7, a diachronic study of a specialized production in Eastern Soconusco (2017)
Soconusco, a rich ecological environment in far-southern Chiapas, Mexico, has been occupied throughout Mesoamerican history. The Proyecto Arqueológico Costa del Soconusco (PACS) focused on settlements in the mangrove zone of Eastern Soconusco. A LiDAR survey identified a total of 203 features thought to be associated with human activities. This paper focuses on site Pin7, which is located in the mangrove zone about 1.5 km west of the Rio Cahuacan. Magnetometer and ground-penetrating radar...
‘The pivotal house: individual, community, and environment context at Cancuen, Verapaz, Guatemala’ (2015)
An obvious foundation of archaeology is that of the often mundane-seeming house. Insights into any culture are most recognizable at the intimate house level. Simultaneously, this focused view is simply a snapshot into the multi-scalar chain that links the individual with an activity, an activity with a house, the house as an integral component of an architectural compound, etc., etc. These linkages continue into the neighborhood, community, regional and global scales. Other concepts become...
A Place for the Living, A Place for the Dead: Social Memory at the Ancient Maya Hinterland Community of San Lorenzo, Belize (2017)
Public structures across the Maya lowlands functioned as materializations of ideology, memory, and identity. However, documentation of public ritual structures is typically limited to formal ceremonial centers. Little is known about public spaces within hinterland communities. Excavations at the site of San Lorenzo offer insight into the use and transformation of ritual space within a hinterland community. Recent excavations of a public structure group have uncovered multiple construction phases...
Place Making and Remaking: Early Classic Mortuary Rites at the Ancient Maya Site of Chan Chich, Northwest Belize (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Funerary customs and monumental architecture in the Maya Region are viewed by archaeologists as markers of social status and complexity. The intersection of mortuary rituals and the built environment gives us a window through which to understand the development of social complexity. Excavations at Chan Chich, a medium-sized city located in northwest...
Place Making, Authority, and Ancestors: New Evidence of Developing Middle Formative Socio-Political Complexity from Ka’Kabish, Northern Belize (2015)
Northern Belize during the Middle Formative Period (1000-300 B.C.E.) has increasing become recognized as a critical locus in the development of Lowland Maya socio-political complexity. This period witnessed the founding of numerous ceremonial centers, substantial material cultural innovation, and the advent of mortuary practices indicating developing social differentiation in Northern Belize. Recent excavations at the site of Ka’Kabish in Northern Belize have uncovered evidence significantly...
Placing Cahal Pech on the map: Implications of Burial Goods Recovered in the Site’s Eastern Triadic Shrine (2015)
Between 2011 and 2014, the BVAR Project focused considerable attention on the excavation and preservation of the site’s Eastern Triadic Shrine (a.k.a E-Group). In addition to revealing important information on the evolution of the architectural complex, our investigations also uncovered a series of burials that span from the Preclassic to the Terminal Classic periods. The burials, particularly those discovered in Structure B1, the central structure of the eastern triadic complex, reflect...
Plan Drawings Terrace S19 (2010)
This pdf file contains the plan drawings from the excavations of Terrace S19 on Cerro Danush.
Plan Drawings Terrace S25, Cerro Danush (2015)
This .pdf contains the plan drawings for the excavation units on Terrace S25, Cerro Danush, Oaxaca, Mexico. Please consult the project report for 2015 for more information.
Plant Material from a Cave On the Rio Zape, Durange, Mexico (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.
Playing for Power: Ballcourts, Political Negotiation and Community Organization in Postclassic Nejapa, Oaxaca, Mexico (2016)
In the politically dynamic Postclassic period (AD 1000-1521), multiple ballcourts were built in different communities throughout the Nejapa region of Oaxaca during a time of significant settlement shifts and pressure from expanding Zapotec and Aztec empires. As a specially marked category of public architecture, ballcourts would have distinguished communities from each other while also serving as socially-integrative locations through hosting games and other important ritual activities. Given...
Plaza of the Columns at Teotihuacan: Scope, Goals and Expectations of a New International Project (2016)
Summer 2015, the Plaza of the Columns Project began a multi-year collaborative investigation of two large residential/ceremonial complexes that remained unexplored at Teotihuacan’s ceremonial core: Plaza of the Columns and its symmetric counterpart called Plaza North of the Sun Pyramid. The former comprises the largest three-temple complex with the fourth highest pyramid, a main plaza (11,408 m2) larger than the Sun Pyramid plaza, and deep occupational layers that could provide information about...
Plaza Size Dataset: Metadata. Supplemental Material for Ossa et al. (2017)
Metadata to accompany the excel file containing information on plaza area and population for Mesoamerican cities
Plaza sizes for Mesoamerican cities (2017)
Plaza area and population for Postclassic Mesoamerican cities analyzed in: Ossa, Alanna, Michael E. Smith, and José Lobo (2017). The Size of Plazas in Mesoamerican Cities: A Quantitative Analysis and Social Interpretation. Latin American Antiquity 28(4): 457-475.
Plaza, Trade, and Politics in Postclassic Tlaxcallan (2016)
Excavated lithic material from plazas at the Postclassic site of Tepeticpac, in the central Mexican state of Tlaxcala, suggests that obsidian production took place in these open spaces that may have served as marketplaces in the Late Postclassic polity of Tlaxcallan. Moreover, although green obsidian is present in Late Postclassic contexts, a decline in its presence is evident from earlier periods. In spite of ethnohistoric sources’ claims that Tlaxcallan was cut off from trade by Tenochtitlan,...
PLC dataset from San Andrés, Tabasco, México
To be added
Pleistocene Carved Bone from Tequixquic, Mexico: a Reappraisal (1965)
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.
Plumbate and Imitations (2017)
Plumbate is a lustrous hard-paste ware characterized by small effigy vessels, some of which bear Central Mexican ideological influences. It was widely traded during the Terminal Classic/Early Postclassic across ethnic, political, and linguistic boundaries. Its widespread distribution and luster mark plumbate as unique among contemporaneous wares. It is sometimes found alongside locally produced wares that bear superficial resemblances, leading to the belief that they are imitations of plumbate....
Poder, autoridad y paisaje político en la zona costera de la sierra de Santa Marta, Los Tuxtlas, Ver. (2016)
En este trabajo se intenta reconocer los fundamentos, las condiciones y los posibles componentes del poder político vigentes en el último periodo de ocupación prehispánica (Clásico Tardío, 600-1000 DC) de la zona costera de la sierra de Santa Marta, Los Tuxtlas, Veracruz. Con base en el análisis del espacio, la arquitectura y la variabilidad de los restos materiales de las actividades humanas se evalúan dos asentamientos prehispánicos: Piedra Labrada y La Perla del Golfo, con el objetivo de dar...
Political and Economic Change on the Eve of the Classic Maya Collapse: Building on a "Ceramic Foundation" (2018)
Joe Ball’s research, his ceramic studies, his insistence on material culture as basis for work, and his honesty in critique of poorly grounded interpretation together provide a standard of building culture-history on solid ceramic studies, chronology, and material culture analyses. Many recent interpretations of Classic Maya society have not met that standard. Here we aspire to his bottom-up, material culture approach to interpretation in recent collaborative research in the western Peten and...
Political Dynamics and the Organization of Chert Production in the Copán Valley (2017)
This study focuses on the social aspects of craft production among outlying populations of the greater Copán Valley of Honduras during the Late Classic to Early Postclassic transition (A.D. 800-1200). Lithic data from four valley sites including Rastrojón, Río Amarillo, Quebrada Piedras Negras, and Site 29 are compared to elucidate raw material procurement strategies and methods of chert reduction by local producers. Interesting differences emerge among the sites concerning changes in raw...
Political Dynamics in the Northwestern Petén from the Preclassic to the Classic: The View from La Cariba, Guatemala (2016)
La Cariba was a relatively small minor center in the northwestern Petén, but was situated in an area of important political dynamics with far-reaching consequences in the Maya world. During the Late Preclassic, the region may have been heavily influenced by El Mirador. Eventually, during the Late Classic, the nearby center of La Corona became a strong ally and vassal of the Kaan dynasty at Dzibanche and later Calakmul. Formal investigations at La Cariba since 2012 have revealed that La Cariba...
Political Ecology of Postclassic Maya Plant Use at Lake Mensabak, Chiapas, México. (2016)
This presentation examines a case study of changes in Maya plant use at several closely located sites during the middle-to-late Postclassic Period (~1300-1525 CE) at Lake Mensabak, Chiapas, Mexico. These sites were inhabited contemporaneously and exhibit substantive differences in size and political/economic importance, making the archaeobotanical assemblages recovered from them uniquely suited for a study focusing on how they were created by social processes. It specifically examines whether...