Mesoamerica (Geographic Keyword)
1,901-1,925 (2,459 Records)
The ancient city of Tamtoc developed in the Huastec región between 400 B.C and the early XVIth century A.C. A great amount of shell objects have been found here, some of them made of freshwater mussels that live in the nearby rivers, while other are made of marine species from the relatively close Gulf of Mexico. Some pieces, nevertheless were made of species from the far way Pacific coast, one of which is the bivalve Spondylus prínceps. In this paper, the results of the analyses made to the...
Reduction of Maya Long County Dates and Calendar Round Position To Their Gregorian Equivalents (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.
Reevaluating Understudied Sources: A Comparison of Early Colonial Period Domestic Life in Mexico’s North-Central Yucatán (2016)
The domestic archaeology of Early Colonial period Yucatán, Mexico is well regarded as a melting pot of imported and local technologies, goods, and systems of belief. Evaluating domestic access to goods during the Early Colonial period is usually done by comparing the frequency between locally produced and imported wares. This type of comparison allows for preliminary insight into cultural breaks, and or, cultural continuity during the first few generations after European Contact. Although much...
Reevaluation of the Placencia Salt Works in the Classic Maya Economy (2016)
The Placencia Salt Works in southern Belize are re-evaluated based on 2015 field work, building on previous research by J. Jefferson MacKinnon. Comparisons are made with the Paynes Creek Salt Works based on a similar salt-water lagoon environment, salt-production artifacts (briquetage), the presence of earthen mounds, and the absence of preserved wooden architecture at the Placencia Salt Works. Study of the briquetage indicates a similar process of evaporating brine in pots over fires to make...
A Reexamination of the Distribution of Jade Artifacts at the Maya Site of Blue Creek in Northwestern Belize (2023)
This is an abstract from the "An Exchange of Ideas: Recent Research on Maya Commodities" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Excavations at Blue Creek from 1992 to 2000 yielded a large collection of jade artifacts with approximately 900 artifacts being found in a single cache in Structure 4 and a total of nearly 1,500 artifacts recovered from throughout the site. In this paper, we revisit our interpretation of the social context of the Structure 4...
Reexamining the Identity of Reverential Termination Rituals in the Maya Lowlands (2017)
In the pursuit to understand ancient Maya ritual, researchers have commonly relied upon the analysis of termination rituals and caches. In the early 2000’s, Jonathan B. Pagliaro, James F. Garber, and Travis W. Stanton introduced a clarification of the terminology, differentiating between reverential and desecratory termination rituals. Following this publication, a surge of studies conceptualizing desecratory termination rituals emerged, while the literature on reverential termination rituals...
Refinement of the La Quemada Chronology and its Implications for Inter-polity Interaction along the Northern Frontier of Mesoamerica (2015)
During the Epiclassic period (A.D. 500-900), the northern frontier of Mesoamerica consisted of a regional network of polities focused on large, hilltop centers including the site of La Quemada in the Malpaso Valley of Zacatecas, Mexico. While extensive archaeological research has been conducted at the site, a seriation of the La Quemada-Malpaso Valley Archaeological Project ceramic assemblage remains to be finalized. Establishing the chronology of La Quemada is essential for two reasons: (1) to...
Reframing Heritage: Indigenous Views in the Forefront (2024)
This is an abstract from the "Politics of Heritage Values: How Archaeologists Deal with Place, Social Memories, Identities, and Socioeconomics" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In many parts of the world, it is assumed that the most important heritage are the ancient sites that are visible on the landscape. This is certainly true within the Maya region of Central America. Projects often start out with the assumption that contemporary Maya...
Regional distribution of mortuary domestic rituals in the upper Usumacinta Basin: a burial practice comparison from the Palenque region and its neighboring areas during the Late Classic (2015)
From a macro regional perspective, ancient Maya mortuary practices seem to be highly variable in many features, like skeletal position, head orientation, type of grave, offerings and successive reentering events. But, from a closer view, micro-regional similarities can be found suggesting the use of common burial rituals, practices and believes. The Palenque region is an interesting example of this. The available burial data from Palenque, El Lacandón and Chinikihá are discussed to show the...
Regional Food Paths of Ancient Tropical Agriculturists: A Multi-isotope Approach (2024)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Understanding dietary patterns in past societies is critical for interpreting economic and social transformations. The analysis of dietarily derived isotopes is a reliable source of categorical information about the types of foods consumed by an individual. Furthermore, multisystem-isotope analyses can clarify inferences about food sources and relative...
Regional Maya Politics in the Late and Terminal Classic Northern Lowlands (2015)
Linda Schele and David Freidel devoted a chapter of Forest of Kings to understanding the political relationships among Chichen Itza, Coba, and the Puuc cities during the Late and Terminal Classic periods. Much of their discussion was based on the iconography of Chichen Itza, although some was focused on the preliminary research that Freidel had initiated at Yaxuna by the time the book was published. In this paper I discuss more recent archaeological data from all three sites with a focus on...
Regional Patterns in Lithic Procurement and Production in the Middle Usumacinta (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Dynamic Frontiers in the Archaeology of Chiapas" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Middle Usumacinta River was a politically fragmented and contested region during the Classic Maya period, with neighboring polities vying for territory, prestige, and wealth. Recent archaeological and epigraphic work is continuing to delineate the shifting borders and alliances of this time period, with the goal of understanding the...
REGISTRATION OF MOVABLE HISTORICAL NATURE IN THE PUBLIC REGISTRY OF MONUMENTS. ADVANCES AND CHALLENGES (2017)
As a result from the restructuring and updating of the Public Registry of Monuments and Archaeological Areas, attention that was traditionally given to the broad nature of mobile, prehispanic or archaeological goods, is incorporated formally to the Public Registry as well as the complex universe of historical assets, which from a legal scope covers - practically - from the sixteenth to nineteenth centuries. This paper summarizes the progress achieved to date and the challenges we might face in...
Registro y Documentación 3D de la colección de Piedras Grabadas de Monte Albán, una experiencia participativa entre la sociedad civil e instituciones (2018)
Las estelas grabadas de Monte Albán, que forman parte del sistema de escritura más antiguo de América, se han enfrentado a serios peligros de deterioros a lo largo de su historia pasada y reciente. Elaboradas desde 500 a.C., se encuentran entre las más importantes de la escritura prehispánica de las culturas mesoamericanas. En 1994, se tomó la decisión de reunir la mayoría de estelas sueltas de los contextos no originales en una bodega provisional que causó resultados adversos. A partir de 2006...
Registros gráfico-rupestres en Yagul, pintura rupestre en contextos urbanos (2015)
El sitio arqueológico zapoteco de Yagul, Oaxaca, es conocido por su carácter de ciudad-fortaleza, contando con una gran cantidad de edificios monumentales, una traza urbana definida, y un área habitacional que se extiende más allá del macizo rocoso donde se enclavan los edificios más importantes. Empero poca información se ha referido en cuanto a un elemento que ante su pequeño tamaño, palidece frente a estos contextos mencionados, nos referimos a las pinturas rupestres y petrograbados que se...
THE REGISTRY SYSTEM IMPLEMENTATION FOR THE HERITAGE CULTURAL PROTECTION IN LATIN AMERICA. The case of Mexico (2017)
Archaeological research, such as other areas of knowledge, has used technology as a worthy work instrument. Therefore, in this paper, I do a review of the different instruments that have been developed, implemented and refined over the years to confront the need to know and appreciate cultural material with the final objective to control and preserve the national properties. Also, an objective is to present how the rules, agreements and other development normatives have been accomplished...
Reinterpreting a Sacrificial Ossuary at Chichen Itza (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Studies in Mesoamerican Subterranean Archaeology" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. During the widening of the air strip at Chichen Itza in 1967, a small subterranean chamber, located some 300 m north of the Cenote of Sacrifice, was discovered. The feature, variably called a cave or a chultun, contained two small chambers, the larger of which was only 4 x 5 m. These chambers contained human skeletal material, a portion...
Relevance to the Registry of Archaeological Sites for their Protection. Proyect: Milpa Alta´s Cultural Landscape. (2017)
In the search for alternative ways for the protection of archaeological heritage, especially in Mexico, which has a vast heritage wealth; there is now an urgent need to raise specific protective tangibles in the immediate short term due to different factors that are contributing to their total loss, or the gradual deterioration of the archaeological wealth of our country. The main causes for this; population growth, limited budget, archaeological looting as well as many other factors. In this...
Religion and the Rise of Mesoamerican States. In: the Transition To Statehood in the New World (1981)
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.
Religion, Ritual, and Ideology in Epiclassic Highland Mexico (2015)
Studies of the visual systems of the major sites of Epiclassic Highland Mexico have tended to focus on their common writing system and similarity in art styles. There is much to be gained from these lines of inquiry, but relatively few works have investigated the shared religious content conveyed in Epiclassic artwork. This paper evaluates preexisting theories concerning Epiclassic pan-Mesoamerican cults and argues that religious and ideological beliefs concerning Flower World, a solar paradise...
RELIGIOUS RITES OF THE LACANDON (2015)
According to Lacandon worldview till the last century, the ruined buildings of Classic Maya culture, and the funerary caves found near small archaeological sites on the shores of lakes in the forest, were respectively the "houses" of celestial and terrestrial deities (who once lived on earth). From these shrines the ancestors of the Lacandon collected stone relics which they deposited at the bottom of their incense burners. A Lacandon censer is a clay pot with an anthropomorphic head modeled on...
Remembrances of Things Past: Peter D. Harrison and Maya Archaeology (2015)
After Peter Harrison’s forays at Tikal, Guatemala and in Quintana Roo, Mexico he turned his attentions to archaeological research in Belize in the late 1970’s. Thus began his multi-year project at Pulltrouser Swamp, with his colleague Billie Lee Turner, which resulted in a series of foundational publications on Prehispanic Maya agriculture. In this paper we reflect on Peter’s contributions to Belize archaeology and to the discipline as a whole, as we celebrate his many interests in Maya...
Remote Sensing of Anthropogenic Vegetation in Sierra Sur, Oaxaca, Mexico (2017)
Geospatial technologies, such as remote sensing and LIDAR, have enabled archaeologists to capture high-resolution information about landscapes and settlement patterns thus contextualizing sites through a wider landscape perspective. These tools have also facilitated the detection of otherwise "invisible" archaeological sites through image or spectral analyses and other visualization techniques. This paper examines the performance of vegetation indices for the detection of anthropogenic...
Replication Experiments: The Devil is in the Details (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Ceremonial Lithics of Mesoamerica: New Understandings of Technology, Distribution, and Symbolism of Eccentrics and Ritual Caches in the Maya World and Beyond" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The manufacture of Mesoamerican flaked stone "profiles" involved a multi-step sequence from large percussion blank to detailed finishing using pressure-flaking. This paper explores issues involved with this last stage. Included is...
Representaciones de la Muerte y del Sacrificio en las Figurillas del Centro de Veracruz (2016)
Con base a la cerámica que resguarda el Museo de Antropología de Xalapa, correspondiente a las culturas del Golfo en el Clásico Tardío, se propone una lectura iconográfica sobre la representación de la muerte asociada al sacrificio. La muestra de piezas se caracteriza por estar constituida por cuerpos completos y fragmentados, además de cabezas que son una unidad en sí, y tuvieron probablemente la función de cabeza trofeo. Se reconocen dos complejos iconográficos que configuran una narrativa...