Mesoamerica (Geographic Keyword)

DOCUMENT Citation Only Natalia Moragas.

This is an abstract from the "What Happened after the Fall of Teotihuacan?" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Life in the ancient city of Teotihuacan did not end with the collapse of Classic period society, but rather, until the constitution of the current zone of archaeological monuments, the area was a place of residence, rituals, and somewhat later, pastures and crops. We must remember that the period from AD 600 until 1521 occupies a broader...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jeffrey Brzezinski.

This paper presents the preliminary results of recent excavations carried out at Cerro de la Virgen, a 92-ha hilltop site located in the lower Río Verde Valley of coastal Oaxaca, Mexico. The lower Verde’s first complex polity emerged during the Terminal Formative period (150 BCE – CE 250), during which Cerro de la Virgen was one of several secondary political centers distributed around the region’s political seat, Río Viejo. Current research at Cerro de la Virgen is designed to study the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Karen Pierce. Claude Belanger. Elizabeth Graham.

Individual structures of the ‘Ottawa’ Plaza N10[3] Palace Group at Lamanai have been the focus of excavation at various times since Pendergast’s first investigations there in 1981. The time of inception of construction remains unknown, but the group is notable in that its structures were altered, added to, and occupied into the Early Postclassic period. Recent excavations of Str. N10-15 have yielded information on a flurry of activity in the Late and Terminal Classic. Results will be discussed...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Sarah Wolff. Tracie Mayfield.

Very few studies have focused on eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Northwestern Belize and to this end, the relationships between people, space, and objects operating within this region during the late colonial period are poorly understood. Previous archaeological investigations at Lamanai recovered data that clearly indicated the presence of materials associated with day-to-day behaviors generally linked to late-colonial industrial and residential activities; such as cooking and eating,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Verna Gentil. Elijah J. Hermitt. Jeffery B. Glover. Dominique Rissolo.

The site of Conil is located in the modern community of Chiquilá on the north coast of Quintana Roo, Mexico. In 1528 Francisco de Montejo, a Spanish conquistador, reported that Conil was a large town consisting of 5,000 houses. Conil was abandoned in the middle of the 17th century and was not reoccupied again until the 19th century, when it was named Chiquilá. William Sanders was the first archaeologist to work at the site in 1954, but the site core was not mapped until 2005 by Glover. Further...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Melanie Saldana. James Brady.

This is an abstract from the "Studies in Mesoamerican Subterranean Archaeology" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In the archaeological literature, the Osario at Chichén Itzá has been defined by the 998 A.D. long-count date inscribed on a pillar at the top of the pyramid. Although the pillar could have been added long after the construction of the pyramid, the complex is, nevertheless, consistently treated as a late construction. From the outset,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Mikael Voltaire. Timothy Pugh.

This is an abstract from the "Hydro-Ecological System of the Maya in Petén, Guatemala" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. E-Groups in the Maya world are believed to have had ritual purposes, serving as meeting centers where political meetings or markets may have taken place. They are also believed to have celebrated solar cycles. At Nixtun-Ch’ich’ three or four E-Groups are aligned on the site’s east-west axis. Our excavation in one of the E-Groups...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Anabel Ford. Linda Howie. Josh Inga. Cristina Gonzalez Esteban.

Daub is characterized as a mixture of a plastic substance, like natural clay or plaster, and an organic, fibrous binder, which is applied and smoothed against a stick or wood structure to construct a wall. This building strategy is used extensively throughout the world, past and present, yet studies have tended to focus exclusively on identification of component ingredients, rather than compositional and provenance characteristics that offer insights related to resource procurement patterns,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Laura Diego Luna.

La Sierra Juárez es una región montañosa ubicada al noreste de los Valles Centrales de Oaxaca. Pese a ser adyacente a ésta, hasta el momento, las investigaciones arqueológicas se habían enfocado en pocos sitios. En esta ponencia se expone el diseño de la investigación regional actualmente en curso: las preguntas; el método, el cual puede emplearse en otras zonas montañosas con características topográficas similares, y que integra la interpretación de la geoforma y de ortofotos digitales, al...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Lourdes Gonzalez.

El conocimiento arqueológico actual sobre la arqueología de la subprovincia de las sierras neovolcánicas nayaritas es bastante limitado, por lo que el proyecto de salvamento con motivo de la construcción de la carretera Jala-Vallarta planteó la posibilidad de efectuar estudios de tipo regional para caracterizar esferas de interacción socio-cultural. Se presenta la clasificación y organización jerárquica de los asentamientos localizados tomando en cuenta criterios como la extensión, número,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jeffrey Vadala.

Caches have been recovered in the Maya area dating to every period since the Middle Preclassic (c. 700 BC) and are among the most common assemblage type recovered from Maya architecture. In the past, most scholars have treated caches as a normative Maya custom, failing to identify significant spatial and temporal variation within cache assemblages. Additionally, many studies have isolated cache contents from their larger contexts, especially the context of the rituals of which they were a...

DOCUMENT Citation Only James Brady. Yoav Me-Bar. Fred ValdeZ.

Dos Hombres, a Maya site in the Programme for Belize (PfB) conservation area of northern Belize, consists of three large architectural groups aligned in a north-south direction along a series of knolls. Where the southern end of Group C meets the surrounding bajo, a depression in small knoll protruding from the bajo yielded evidence of Maya utilization from the Late Preclassic through the Late Classic. The underlying bedrock was modified to create an amphitheater shape focused on a small cave at...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jillian Mollenhauer.

This is an abstract from the "Tales of the Feathered Serpent: Refining Our Understanding of an Enigmatic Mesoamerican Being" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Studies of feathered serpent imagery during Mesoamerica's Formative Period range widely in their conclusions, with little agreement about the parameters of inquiry, associated iconographic conventions, or even what constitutes a "feathered" serpent. Images of serpentine creatures have been...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Mariana Favila Vázquez.

This is an abstract from the "Underwater and Coastal Archaeology in Latin America" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. En esta ponencia se presentará la metodología refinada del análisis geográfico de textos que permite relacionar nociones espaciales concretas con expresiones lingüísticas con distintos niveles de precisión. En particular, me concentraré en el problema de las rutas acuáticas que aparecen dispersas en numerosas fuentes escritas del...

DOCUMENT Full-Text Samantha Nadel.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The interdisciplinary study of cochineal production in Mesoamerica has overwhelmingly focused on the written record. These documents, written by Spanish colonizers, European scientists, and modern-day ethnographers, yield insightful information into the material culture of cochineal production, from the cactus farm to the dye vat. Yet thus far, this...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Samantha Krause. Timothy Beach. Sheryl Luzzadder-Beach. Thomas Guderjan.

This is an abstract from the "Ancient Maya Landscapes in Northwestern Belize, Part II" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Birds of Paradise wetlands have been a subject of recent intensive study within Northwestern Belize. We now recognize this fluviokarst wetland has undergone extensive modification of field building and channelization during the Maya Classic (1650-1050 BP) with use possibly extending into the early Maya Postclassic (1050-700...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Lori Wright. Ethan Grossman.

We examine the ancient Maya nursing practices and children’s diets at the archaeological metropolis of Tikal, Guatemala, through stable isotopic analysis of permanent teeth in adult skeletons. Stable carbon isotope analysis of tooth enamel permits a measure of the relative amount of carbon from maize foods in the diet, and helps track the introduction of solid foods into the children’s diet. Stable oxygen isotopes in tooth enamel reflect the sources of water that children consumed, and shed...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Clarissa Cagnato. Nawa Sugiyama. Laura Longo. Elena Longo. Matteo Parisatto.

This is an abstract from the "Archaeogastronomy: Grocery Lists as Seen from a Multidimensional Perspective" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Archaeobotanists (paleoethnobotanists) often come across small, amorphous carbonized objects (ACO) in their flotation samples. However, identifying ACO’s is often difficult, and as such, they mostly remain unidentified. New ways are therefore necessary to study these objects, which, we hypothesize are in some...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Shawn Collins. Eduard Reinhardt. Dominique Rissolo.

"Hoyo Negro" was discovered in the Sac Actun Cave system in the Yucatan Peninsula; Mexico which contained abundant fossil remains of Pleistocene animals including the remains of a young PaleoIndian woman. There are several cenotes of varying size and age which may have been used by Paleoamericans to access Hoyo Negro. The two closest cenotes are "Ich Balam" and "Oasis". To determine if these cenotes provided access to Hoyo Negro during occupation of the area, the paleoenvironmental evolution of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Isabel Casar. Pedro Morales. Ernesto Velasco. Abigail Meza.

Bone and teeth were analyzed from multiple burials from a mortuary cave in the North of Mexico, dated around 1400 and 400 BC. Samples from 14 jawbones were analyzed to obtain the δ13C and δ15N of the bone collagen as well as δ13C and δ18O in bone bioapatite; M2 or M3 from the jawbones were cut into a series of layers to obtain multiple isotopic signatures from enamel, structural carbonate and collagen from the dentine of each tooth, representing different periods in the life of the individual....

DOCUMENT Citation Only XinWei Li. Jorge Ramos.

8N-11 is a sub-royal elite residential compound located at the end of the eastern causeway (sac be) in the densely settled Las Sepulturas zone about 850 m from the Copan Main Group. Monumental architecture, carving style and representations of figures with royal attributes demonstrate the high status that residents of the 8N-11 enjoyed in Copan society. In collaboration with the Honduran Institute of Anthropology and History and the Anthropology Department of Harvard University, Project IACASS...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jon Lohse. Derek Hamilton. Victoria Smith. Mark Brenner. Jason Curtis.

A record of late Holocene volcanic activity in highland Guatemala was inferred from sediment and tephra stratigraphy in two cores from Lake Amatitlan. Electron microprobe analysis of glass from the tephra samples suggests most eruption deposits are of local origin, coming from nearby Volcanoes Pacaya and Fuego. The 6th-century Ilopango ash is clearly visible, and a few tephra samples have not been correlated to particular volcanoes or eruption events. Using dates from this sequence with others...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jaime Vera. Nelly M. Robles.

Esta presentación es respecto a los recientes recorridos de superficie en sitios arqueológicos de la región de la cañada oaxaqueña. La dinámica de esta región de Oaxaca muestra una constante ocupación. Desde épocas prehistóricas grupos nómadas ocuparon abrigos en una región tan rico y variado en ecosistemas que permitió el establecimiento de sociedades prehispánicas complejas las cuales se asentaron a lo largo de las zonas de playas de los ríos Grande, salado o el río las vueltas como algunos...

DOCUMENT Citation Only T. Manahan. Emily O'Brien.

Human trophy skulls have a long history in Mesoamerica. Excavation of Structure 9M-136, an elite household in the center of the ancient Maya center of Xuenkal revealed a trophy skull in situ from funerary context, where it was found placed on the chest of an elite individual within a complex burial deposit. The primary individual was interred with a bifacial flint lance, a carved bone pendant, and the trophy skull resting on his chest. The skull had been extensively modified in preparation for...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Chloé Pomedio. Agapi Filini.

The history of the negative or resist technique decoration on Prehispanic ceramics is very long and complex. It begins at the El Opeño site and appears in many Mesoamerican western regions through time, to the Purepecha culture. Because of the beauty, iconography and complex technology of these ceramics, it is important to understand the diverse decoration processes. This paper presents research results about the rediscovering experimentation of the negative technique at the Hernández Cano...