Mesoamerica (Geographic Keyword)
1,751-1,775 (2,459 Records)
In 1996, Fredy Baldizon (a CUDEP student) brought a box of 87 Postclassic tripod plate supports that he collected from a single location on the Tayasal peninsula to the Proyecto Maya Colonial’s laboratory. It was not until 2014 that I discovered that another large set (n=66) of tripod supports was associated with a single structure (2034) at Ixlú. Statistical analyses (based on height, form, and paste characteristics) indicate statistically-significant differences between the supports at the two...
Postclassic Petén Maya Bow-and-Arrow Use as Revealed by Immunological Analysis (2015)
The bow-and-arrow has long been recognized as a key component of weaponry in the Postclassic and Contact period (A.D. 1400–1697) Maya Lowlands. Although fragmentary accounts from Spanish sources exist to complement the archaeological record, no current research has reconstructed use patterns of the bow-and-arrow from artifact data. This paper provides the first immunologically-based study of protein residues on small projectile points in the Maya region. A large sample of 108 small points from...
Postclassic to Contact period Economic Patterns in the Central Peten- The View from Zacpeten (2015)
The purpose of this paper is to examine how Zacpetén, an important center for the Kowoj, functioned to meet its economic needs while creating and sustaining a communal identity between the Late Postclassic (A.D. 1200 to 1525) and Early Contact (A.D. 1525 to 1700) periods. At this time, a complex political economy existed across the Central Petén. However, these connections varied across the Central Petén according to the degree of political integration. In this paper, it is argued that the...
Postconquest Figurines from Central Mexico: Aspects of Phenotype and Artifice (2015)
This analysis focuses on figurines made after the Spanish conquest (1521 CE) of Mexico, based on the collections from three museums: the Hearst Museum, the American Museum of Natural History, and the Field Museum. The central questions address figurines as media that could potentially negotiate issues of racial (or casta) categorization, phenotype, and artifice. The figurines were collected and accessioned in the early 20th century, before the development of archaeological methodologies that pay...
Pot Luck: Building Community and Feasting amongst the Middle Preclassic Maya (2017)
Ritual feasting as a practice by which sponsors create uneven social relations with other participants has been suggested to play an important role in establishing social hierarchies in many ancient societies including the ancient Maya. Feasting activities may have also been an important part of Preclassic communal building projects in the Maya lowlands. In this paper, we present data from Middle Preclassic special deposits associated with a series of early public platforms at the site of...
"Pots, Potters, …and Polities": Classic Period Ceramic Spheres and Systems at Aventura, Northern Belize, and the Legacy of Joe Ball (2018)
Early work in the 1970’s by Joe Ball on Northern Belize ceramics from the site of Aventura highlighted its geopolitical location between multiple spheres of interaction. These spheres, reflected in the ceramics of the Classic Period, demonstrate that Aventura’s intermediary position between the cities of the Petén to the west, and the Yucatan to the north no doubt contributed to its success and long occupation. My own research on the Aventura ceramics, begun in 2015 as part of the Aventura...
Potters' signatures and changes in the maiolica craft from colonial Mexico as an expression of the doctrine of blood purity (2015)
The aim of this paper is to explore the potential that the potters’ signatures on maiolica vessels have to gain insights to the shifts in the craft industry from the mid-seventeenth century and onwards. It will be argued that the modifications that are observable on the personal imprints of the potters may have been related with changing attitudes towards their cultural identities. The analysis of archaeological samples from different sites in Mexico City enabled the identification of a variety...
Pottery assemblage data from Roman Britain (2023)
Data analyzed in: Ortman, Scott, Olivia Bulik, Rob Wiseman, José Lobo, Luis Bettencourt and Lisa Lodwick (2023) Transport Costs and Economic Change in Roman Britain. European Journal of Archaeology:1-24 AND Wiseman, Rob, Olivia Bulik, José Lobo, Lisa Lodwick and Scott G. Ortman (2023) The Impact of Transportation on Pottery Industries in Roman Britain. Open Archaeology 9(1).
Pottery of the Department of Chinandega, Nicaragua: Sequence, External Connections, Ethnicity, and Migration. (2016)
I summarize the archaeological ceramics recovered from our excavations in the Department of Chinandega, in northwest Nicaragua. Our analysis is still in an early stage, and we have studied mainly collections from sites on the coastal plain, in the southern half of the Department. We have found Late Preclassic ceramic assemblages intimately linked to those described for Quelepa, Chalchuapa, and Santa Leticia in El Salvador. We have also found Terminal Classic to Early Postclassic assemblages with...
Pottery on the Periphery: Postclassic Ceramics from La Laguna, Tlaxcala, Mexico (2015)
This poster examines life at the periphery of the Postclassic Mesoamerican World System, discussing the access that rural or peripheral people may have to the larger economic, political, and informational networks of their region. It addresses these questions by presenting an analysis of the Epiclassic and Postclassic period ceramic assemblages from the site of La Laguna, Tlaxcala, Mexico. Almost all of the sherds come from Feature 185, a sheet midden context deposited during the late...
Pottery type images for the western Tabasco Coastal Plain (2008)
This set of images documents common ceramics types found at La Venta, Tabasco. The examples here were recovered from San Andrés (Barí 1), a subsidiary elite community in the Lower La Venta area of the flood plain. The ceramics at San Andrés demonstrate a range of states from refired and eroded to well-preserved. The type images presented here are of generally well-preserved examples. These types are defined in my dissertation (von Nagy 2003), and will receive full treatment in a forth coming...
The Power and Narrative of Liminality: The Quadripartite Badge in Maya Iconography (2015)
Ancient Maya iconography primarily depicted elite individuals in idealized states of being and rationalized their power and authority through ideological concepts. This study reexamines previous assumptions made concerning the Quadripartite Badge. This motif is examined based on iconographic associations and contexts, as well as temporal and spatial distributions. The spread of this motif is demonstrated through time and its spatial dispersals are noted for their political consequences. It is...
Power and Polity in the Motul de San José Zone: Recent Research at Kantet’u’ul and Chachaklu’um (2016)
Motul de San José dominated a swath of the northern shore of Lake Peten Itza in central Peten, Guatemala, during the Late Classic. Recent excavations at two small sites in the periphery of Motul de San José, Kante’t’u’ul (approx. 3km northwest) and Chachacklu’um (approx. 5km east) investigated the relations between these secondary centers and their political overlords at Motul de San José. The divergent cultural histories, settlement patterns, architecture, and material culture of these two...
Power and Settlement in Prehispanic and Early Spanish Colonial Yucundaa-Pueblo Viejo de Teposcolula, Oaxaca (2017)
Yucundaa-Pueblo Viejo de Teposcolula, Oaxaca, Mexico, is the urban capital and power center of a Prehispanic and Early Colonial Mixtec state, occupying four square kilometers from AD 1000 to 1550. This research utilizes a convergent archaeological, ethnohistoric, and biological methodology, and focuses on the evolution and transformation of the city and its surroundings until the time of its relocation to the adjacent lowlands in 1550. Of particular concern was identification and analysis of...
Power from the Periphery: 40 Years of Insight on the Maya Lowlands from Southeast Mesoamerica (2019)
This is an abstract from the "I Love Sherds and Parasites: A Festschrift in Honor of Pat Urban and Ed Schortman" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. For more than 40 years, Pat Urban, Ed Schortman, and their student-colleagues have toiled long and hard in the blazing heat of Northwestern Honduras to understand the "non-Maya" populations resident in Southeast Mesoamerica. Their work stretches from the beginnings of complexity in the Middle Preclassic...
Power, Space, and Place in the Heart of La Milpa (2017)
La Milpa was one of the largest ancient Maya urban centers in the eastern Maya Lowlands during the second half of the Late Classic to the Terminal Classic periods, its influence extending over communities throughout the Three Rivers Region of northwestern Belize. La Milpa’s rise to regional prominence is associated with a series of upheavals during this period, including increased political dynamism following the decline of Tikal at the end of the Early Classic period, and a dramatic rise in the...
The Practice of Play in the Sport of Life and Death: Exploring Regional Variation in Ballgame Material Culture and Ideology (2015)
There is little argument that the Mesoamerican ballgame was a ritualized and politicized communal sport with great geographical breadth and incredible time-depth. It is also commonly accepted that the ballgame, as a cultural institution, was intimately linked to a political, elite-centered ideology based on cosmology, sacrifice, and agriculture, related to sociocultural themes of conflict, competition, and the resolution or negotiation of both. This interpretation of the ballgame as ritual...
Pre-Columbian Huastec Metallurgy (2017)
Although the Huasteca may have had an important role in the emergence and development of metallurgy in Pre-Columbian Mesoamerica, little has been published, apart from Dorothy Hosler and Guy Stresser-Péan’s short study on Huastec metallurgy (1992). They proposed that the Huasteca was second earliest region in Mesoamerica after West Mexico to produce bronze alloys artifacts during the Postclassic period. Their research positions the Huasteca as an early adopter and innovator of this technology....
Pre-Columbian Obsidian Industry of El Chayal, Guatemala (1964)
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.
Pre-Columbian Pottery Mushrooms from Mesoamerica (1963)
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 pre-Columbian sculptures after the Conquest: reutilization and re-significance in Amecameca, México (2017)
The town of Amecameca is located in the southwest of Mexico City, near the volcanoes Popocatepetl and Iztcaccíhuatl. Its origin dates back to pre-Columbian times. The city was part of Chalco empire, which was known for its artisans who made extraordinary sculptures. Over time, many of these sculptures have disappeared, mainly by of the destruction of the Spaniards during the conquest. Currently, there are few examples of sculptures from Amecameca in the museums. Despite this, some inhabitants...
Preceramic Mesoamerica: Chronology, Culture, and Climate (2016)
Recent and ongoing investigations in Mesoamerica are showing how different regions followed different developmental trajectories leading up to the adoption of ceramic technologies and sedentary lifestyles. This threshold, which typically defines the end of the Archaic period, was reached at different points in time anywhere between about 1800 and 900 BC. These multiple preceramic adaptations seemingly imply that Mesoamerican cultural diversity that marks Formative and later periods had its basis...
Preclassic Causeways of the Mirador Basin, Guatemala (2015)
A vast system of inter-site highways (sacbes or sacbeob) traversed an inhabited countryside between the major urban centers of the Kan kingdom in the Mirador Basin. Development of this system began during the Middle Preclassic period and continued throughout the Late Preclassic period (ca. 600 B.C.– A.D. 150). Over time, these transportation routes branched and transformed within densely populated centers to become a network of elevated causeways, processional boulevards with ritual and...
Preclassic Complexity in the Central Karstic Uplands: Yaxnohcah and its Neighbors (2017)
The Preclassic (900 BCE – 150 CE) was the period during which the earliest sedentary communities in the Maya lowlands were founded. Acts that initiated these early civic charters, such as the construction of E-groups and communal platforms, were followed quickly by rapid expansion of communities throughout the landscape, involving population growth, monumental architecture, massive waterworks, and a high degree of sociopolitical complexity. It was also during this period when ideologies and...
Preclassic Faunal Utilization at Pacbitun, Belize. (2018)
Archaeological excavations within the Belize River Valley region have produced robust faunal assemblages that have increased our understanding of the Maya use of animals during the Preclassic. At Pacbitun, located on the southern periphery of the Valley, large scale horizontal excavations are providing insights into animal utilization during the Preclassic period at the site (1000 BC – AD 300). These investigations have probed into plaza floors, residential and ceremonial platforms, as well as...