Mesoamerica (Geographic Keyword)
1,726-1,750 (2,459 Records)
A critical issue for understanding the relationships between Maya political geography and long-distance economic exchange is that many trade goods are archaeologically invisible. Iconographic depictions of feathers, cacao, and textiles—along with evidence for production and the sheer biological necessity of salt—indicate that these goods were widely traded alongside more durable items such as obsidian, jadeite, marine products, and ceramics. This paper explores the possibility of using political...
Political Themes On Mesoamerican Monuments: a Case Study (1975)
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.
Politicized Use of the Spaces outside of Caves during the Terminal Classic Maya Collapse (2017)
This paper investigates the use of caves as performance spaces for water and agriculturally focused rituals during the Maya Late Classic period (~ A.D. 750-900) and the events of the 'collapse'. Although the ‘collapse’ of the social, economic, and political systems during this period has been the subject of much study, the majority of research has focused on the environmental factors with little consensus as to how rulers attempted to maintain order, social solidarity, and political power...
Politicizing Heritage: How Government Protections Use Heritage Assets to Control the Maya Past (2021)
This is an abstract from the "The Conceptual and Ethical Limits of Heritage in Archaeology" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Political involvement in the protection of historic resources often places a façade on historic narratives that creates a distance between communities and their heritage. Often, this control reflects leftover colonial legacies, creating structures of power that do not allow communities to advance economically, socially, or...
Politicizing Post-Humanism: Elite and Commoner Household Excavations at the Ancient Maya City of Aventura, Belize (2021)
This is an abstract from the "Materializing Political Ecology: Landscape, Power, and Inequality" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Post-humanism importantly considers active roles of nonhuman entities in society. However, it is crucial that power relationships between people do not fall by the wayside when studying past societies. In this paper, I approach geological features at the ancient Maya city of Aventura, Belize, from a perspective that...
The Politics in Places: An Ethnographic Picture of Highland Maya use of Caves and other Landscape Voids in Guatemala (2017)
Caves and other sacred landscape features such as clefts in rocks and mountain voids embody special powers controlled by earthen, spiritual entities. To the Highland Maya that power personified by the earth owner needs to be maintained, appeased, and managed, even on a daily basis. This maintenance comes in the form of elaborate ceremonies utilizing a number of special items deemed suitable for pleasing the ancient entities. Mayan ritual specialists or daykeepers, who perform the ceremonies, are...
The Politics of Commerce: Aztec Pottery Production and Exchange in the Basin of Mexico, A.D. 1200-1650 (2006)
The relationships between market and political institutions have varied in different times and places, but no market system was (or is) devoid of political involvement. The contrasting approaches of the Aztec empire and Spanish colonial regime to the Basin of Mexico market system are instructive about the ways that commercial agents (producers, traders) respond to “top-down” pressures from state elites to steer and direct the commercial economy to their political advantage. The results of this...
Politics of the Borderlands: An Epigraphic History (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Making and Breaking Boundaries in the Maya Lowlands: Alliance and Conflict across the Guatemala–Belize Border" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The region now divided by the national boundaries of Belize and Guatemala was once home to a broad range of political entities. Noticeably, large centers with monumental inscriptions in the western and southern portions contrast with smaller and far less textually verbose sites...
Polychrome Ceramics in the Valle de Naco and Their External Relationships (1977)
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.
A Polychrome Modeled Narrative of Late to Terminal Classic Power at Lamanai, Belize (2001)
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 polychromy of the Great Temple of Tenochtitlan "Standard Bearers" (2015)
During the 1979 Templo Mayor Project excavations in the ruins of Tenochtitlan’s main pyramid, eleven basalt sculptures, ritually buried in a hitherto unseen manner, were exhumed from the fill covering Construction Stage III (1427–1440 CE). Their complex forms and iconographic elements have made ascertaining their function within the sacred precinct of the Mexica capital difficult. After their discovery, it was surmised that they represented Huitzilopochtli’s siblings, the centzonhuitznahuah, and...
Polyvalent Monumentality: Analyzing Geospatially the Interplay of Fortification and Hydrology at the Maya site of Muralla de León (2017)
Dissertation fieldwork since 2014 at Muralla de León has documented, mapped, and partially excavated an integrated system of earthworks that appears to have served both large-scale defensive and hydrological functions. Located on the shores of Lake Macanché, the site sits atop a steep-sided natural rise, artificially augmented in height by an encircling stone rampart wall, or enceinte. A defensive function for the enceinte is hypothesized, though it also appears to serve as a means of water...
Pondering Prehistory, Texts, and Roads in Yucatan (2016)
Roads in Yucatan, Mexico, were aesthetic, territorial, and communicative systems that both united and divided the landscape. I employ network theory, placemaking, and urban planning and landscape models to analyze Maya road systems at Yaxuna, Coba, Ek Balam, and Chichen Itza as site extensions, markers of identity, and ritual and commercial corridors. It may seem heretical for an art historian to abandon historical documents available for one’s arsenal for analysis. However, Gil Stein and others...
Population Estimation in Ancient Mesoamerica: Retrospective and Prospective (2021)
This is an abstract from the "Ancient Mesoamerican Population History: Demography, Social Complexity, and Change" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The determination of accurate population numbers for ancient Mesoamerican societies is key for making interpretations about past levels of complexity. This is not only necessary for understanding how societies changed over time but also for how they were organized over space. The techniques that...
Population Movements, Trading, and Identity along the East Coast of Postclassic Yucatan. Dental morphology, isotopic provenience analyses and body modifications in human series from El Meco, El Rey, and Tulum, Quintana Roo, Mexico (2015)
Different hypotheses exist for explaining population development and replacement on the east coast of the Yucatan peninsula after the so-called Maya collapse, one involving the presence of the Putun-Chontal folk fringing the Gulf Coast of Mexico. Here we examine these proposals through the lenses of conventional paleodemography, dental morphology, body modifications (dental decorations and head shaping) of human skeletal series from the Postclassic coastal trader settlements of El Meco, El Rey...
Population, Climate Change, and Agriculture in the Late First Millennium C.E. Maya Lowlands (2015)
Over the last 20 years, a number of studies have provided evidence for a "drought" in the Maya Lowlands between the 8th and 10th centuries. Researchers have argued that a higher water table in the northern lowlands allowed agricultural practices to continue in the north, while sites in the south suffered from the drought. This paper will examine the relationship between population changes and climatic changes in the Maya Lowlands. The nature of the water table and the agricultural practices of...
Possible causes for mayor cultural change between Classic and Postclassic occupations in western Mexico (2015)
Preclassic and Classic occupation on the West Mexico has been dominated by the shaft-tomb culture . In Nayarit there is evidence for shaft-tomb occupation from 300 BC to about 900 AD. Recent archaeological rescue projects related to the construction of the highway from Guadalajara to Puerto Vallarta have documented archaeology covered by extensive volcanic deposits belonging to a cataclysmic (VEI 6) Plinian eruption from nearby Ceboruco volcano. Postclassic Aztatlán culture buildings are...
Possible Functions of a Late Prehistoric Coarseware from the Estuary Zone of Eastern Soconusco (2015)
Recent surveys in the mangrove zone of far-southern Pacific coastal Chiapas, Mexico, identified a coarse pottery, called "sewer-pipe ware," that was initially thought to have been used in sal cocida salt production during historic times. Distributional and excavation data along with functional considerations, however, point to a potentially more interesting hypothesis, namely that "sewer-pipe ware" vessels may be portable kilns or saggars used in the production of Plumbate pottery, a famous and...
Possible Maya Analogs and Antecedents for the Pyramid B Atlantid Columns, Tula (2018)
Classic Maya stelae have been proposed as precursors for the Early Postclassic stelae at Tula and the relief pillars of Pyramid B at the site in previous scholarship. While suggested Maya connections for the Tula stelae are often overstated, and local central Mexican stela traditions as well as ideas from Oaxaca and Guerrero also probably contributed to the genesis of these monuments, the role of Maya contacts remains plausible. Here I explore possible Maya analogs, including stelae, for the...
Post-Conquest Aztec Ceramics: Implications for Archaeological Interpretation (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.
Postclassic Chen Mul Fragments from the Cochuah Region, Quintana Roo, Mexico (2015)
Postclassic Chen Muls are known as effigy censers, or incensarios. It is suggested that these effigy censers were placed at the foot of an altar and were used in ceremonial shrines during rituals of renewal (Thompson 1957). The 2014 Cochuah Regional Archaeological Survey recovered a collection of Postclassic Chen Mul fragments from excavations at four sites in the project area: San Felipe, San Francisco, Venadito, and the Fortín de Yo’okop. Excavations at these four sites did not recover whole...
Postclassic City Size Metadata (2017)
Metadata for the associated excel file containing settled area, epicenter area, and population estimates for Postclassic Mesoamerican cities.
A Postclassic City with No Blade Workshops: How did the Calixtlahuacan’s get their Stone Tools? (2017)
Analysis of the obsidian artifacts recovered from households in the city of Calixtlahuaca (AD 1130–1530) indicates that prismatic blade production was not a domestic affair. Furthermore, intensive survey did not reveal evidence of onsite blade workshops anywhere in the city. This finding is at odds with what has been reported for many other Postclassic urban centers. This paper discusses why the blade-core data are not consistent with onsite blade production. It then evaluates three models for...
Postclassic Culture in Central Peten and Adjacent British Honduras. In: the Classic Maya Collapse (1973)
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.
Postclassic Murals of Mayapan as a Mirror of Cultural Transformation (2015)
The changing pictorial imagery in the murals of Mayapan offers a rich picture of cultural transformation in Postclassic Yucatan. The archaeological chronology of Mayapan and comparisons with murals elsewhere in Mesoamerica provide an anchor for the mural chronology. Between 1350 and 1400, Mayapan’s murals represent imagery that apparently was inspired by different sources. One mural program can be compared with the hybrid Maya painting style of the Madrid Codex, which also uses the same pigments...