Mesoamerica (Geographic Keyword)
276-300 (2,459 Records)
Whereas the Epiclassic (AD 600-900) has long been recognized as a period characterized by increased conflict and warfare between the dominant city-states of central Mexico, concrete evidence for actual military actions has been rather limited. Here we discuss epigraphic and iconographic evidence that suggest that two of the major Epiclassic powers, namely Cacaxtla and Xochicalco, were involved in a violent conflict, and that Cacaxtla succeeded in capturing several prominent individuals from...
Bells, Blades and Bodegas: The Pervasive Influences of Payson Sheets (2016)
Payson Sheets has influenced the work of a great number of archaeologists over the years, particularly researchers interested in the nature of households and the quotidian aspects of domestic life, lithic production and use, and in the field of ‘disaster archaeology.’ This paper highlights some of those influences in the work of the Maya Archaeometallurgy Project and, more recently, the Ambergris Caye Archaeological Project II, both of which are in Belize. This paper focuses on the...
Beneath the Blue-Green Trees: Understanding the Built Environment of Yaxox through Lidar Analysis (2017)
The Upper Belize River Valley hosted a high density of ancient Maya settlement from the Early Preclassic Period onward, supported by abundant fertile alluvial floodplains. In addition to the handful of major civic-ceremonial centers spread along the valley, the region also sustained numerous middle-tier administrative, ceremonial, and residential loci. The site of Yaxox, strategically situated at the confluence of the Macal and Mopan rivers, provides an intriguing example of a minor...
Between a Rock and a Hard Spot: Museum Collections and Mesoamerican Archaeology (2023)
This is an abstract from the "A Celebration and Critical Assessment of "The Maya Scribe and His World" on its Fiftieth Anniversary" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The changing relationship of US art and natural history museums and other collections-holding institutions and the field of archaeology as anthropology is examined in this presentation. We assess the past 100+ years’ amassing of archaeological objects as cultural curios, aesthetic...
Between earth and sky: the social and political construction of ancient lowland Maya territories (2015)
This paper introduces the Lowland Maya Territories: Local Dynamics in Regional Landscapes symposium that critiques the current model of territories as stable geo-political entities. We use data from the Actuncan Archaeological Project and other upper Belize River valley projects to suggest that territories were in flux, reacting and changing to social and political relationships. Territorial dynamism is driven by at least two processes: the social construction of place and the political...
Between farming and hunting: animal explotation in the Zacapu Basin, Michoacán, Mexico (100-1450 AD) (2017)
If the questions of herding or management of wild species have been regularly addressed in Mesoamerican zooarchaeology, cultural development is assumed to be essentially directed by agriculture. Indeed, the presence of only two widely recognised domesticated animals, the dog (Canis familiaris) and the turkey (Meleagris gallopavo), would have limited the growth of a more complex agro-pastoralism. However, the importance of non-domesticated animals and their interactions with the agricultural...
Between House and Site: Considering Intermediate Units in Classic Maya Lowlands Settlements (2015)
Traditionally, settlement archeology of the Classic Maya Lowlands recognizes several intermediate residential units between the house and the site. For over 50 years, the concept of neighborhood has been mentioned occasionally, but conclusive case studies are still rare. Yet the concept raises the important issue of the internal social structures of communities and their relationships. After briefly describing the methods that have helped identify intermediate units in the recently studied sites...
Between life and death. The burial systems at the Guadiana valley, Durango. (2015)
During prehispanic times, La Ferrería were the most importat settlement at Guadiana valley, indeed it was a place were both men and nature were linked. In this paper I make a review of burials collected at the Guadiana valley, considering that its incidence reflects certain aspects of cosmology which were shared with coastal dwellers. SAA 2015 abstracts made available in tDAR courtesy of the Society for American Archaeology and Center for Digital Antiquity Collaborative Program to improve...
Beyond Polychrome and Greenstone: FTIR and SEM-XEDS Analysis of Fine-Grained Remains from Two Ancient Maya Royal Tombs at El Perú-Waka’ (2017)
Ample evidence suggests Classic period Maya royal tombs were intentional arrangements of symbolically-charged objects and offerings. Because of this, critical examination of the entire array of a tomb’s contents is vital. Analysis of polychrome vessels, greenstone jewels, and human remains are certainly essential. Relative to these more well-preserved or spectacular components of a mortuary assemblage, small-scale or fine-grained remains have historically tended to be understudied or overlooked,...
Beyond Surrealism: The Anthropological Sources of Leonora Carrington's "El mundo mágico de los mayas" (1964) (2015)
In 1963 Leonora Carrington was invited to create a mural-sized painting for the highland Maya ethnography room at the Museo Nacional de Antropología in Mexico City. El mundo mágico de los mayas (1964) portrays the humans, gods, and spirits that inhabit the sacred space of the modern Maya. Carrington’s debt to surrealism is immediately apparent. Her greater debt to anthropology is less obvious. Carrington made several research trips to Chiapas and read extensively about the Maya before she...
Beyond the Death March: Scott Fedick´s Legacy as a Field School Director (2015)
Beyond his career as a professor and researcher, Dr. Scott Fedick has been a patient and dedicated teacher of archaeological field schools. In this capacity he leaves a legacy of changed lives. This paper looks back on the BRASS and Yalahau field schools and the lasting impression they left on participants. It also discusses field school pedagogy, looking at what has changed and what remains the same since the days of Scott´s famous death marches. SAA 2015 abstracts made available in tDAR...
Beyond the Solstice (2015)
The Great Murals of Sierra de San Francisco, Baja California, Mexico, have been the subject of in-depth study (Guttierez 2013; Hyland 1997; Rubio 2013; religiVinas 2013). The latter include recordation of major sites and reconstruction of age, cultural affiliation, and hypotheses as to meaning and function. Growing evidence supports that these sites display light patterns correlating with winter / summer solstice timings. Arguments have been presented that light manifestations exhibit...
Beyond the Utilitarian: Spindle Whorls from Burials and Caches in the Maya Area (2016)
Technologies for spinning fibers into thread by hand have changed little in Mesoamerica since they were first introduced. Made primarily of perishable materials, however, the wooden spindle and the fibers themselves are generally no longer present in the archaeological record. What does survive, however, are spindle whorls – spherical artifacts used to weigh down the spindle to keep it anchored during the process of spinning. In the Maya area, these artifacts are rarely found in primary...
Big Changes in Little Places: An Examination of the Political Strategies of Leaders at Late Postclassic Xaltocan, Mexico (2017)
During the Late Postclassic the Basin of Mexico underwent dramatic political and cultural shifts, chiefly due to the formation and rapid expansion of the Aztec Triple Alliance. Xaltocan was among the many regional centers to be conquered and incorporated into the Aztec state. Historical documents indicate that prolonged conflict ultimately resulted in Xaltocan’s conquest and partial abandonment, thus local leaders were not integrated into the new political framework and were replaced by Mexica...
Big Trash, Little Trash: A Comparison of a Late Classic Maya Feasting Deposit and a Household Midden (2016)
Feasting is often identified in the archaeological record based on the discovery of high ceramic frequencies and the presence of faunal remains in a concentrated area. While these characteristics can prove useful an initial identification of feasting behavior, further examination of the potential feasting assemblage and comparison with other types of archaeological deposits is necessary to fully support a feasting interpretation. This paper compares two deposits from the Classic Maya site of La...
Bioarchaeological analysis of an ancient Maya ancestral context at Cahal Pech, San Ignacio, Belize (2015)
Interaction of the living with the bones of the deceased is a tradition practiced in various forms throughout ancient and modern Mesoamerica. Among the ancient Maya the manipulation of the deceased body is associated with powerful ancestral rituals likely carried out to reinforce and legitimate sociopolitical power. Structures placed on the eastern perimeter of plaza groups often contain multiple inhumations and are interpreted as ancestral locations. Structure B1 at Cahal Pech, located within...
A Bioarchaeological Analysis of Human Remains on the Summit of Tigre Pyramid, El Mirador, Guatemala (2015)
On the platform between the triadic group on the Tigre pyramid at the site of El Mirador, Guatemala, the Mirador Basin Project discovered human remains scattered over the upper platform of this pyramid associated with hundreds of projectile points, in both local chert and obsidian from Central Mexico. Additional artifacts included shell, bone, and large quantities of Early Classic ceramics. This presentation will focus on the osteological remains from this deposit. Skeletal analyses of the...
A Bioarchaeological Approach to Diversity and Complexity of Ancient Maya Society at Copan: Results from New Strontium and Biodistance Data (2015)
The UNESCO World Heritage Site of Copan is uniquely situated to address the question of migration and culture contact in ancient Mesoamerica. The city is nestled at the southeastern frontier of the Maya region and the western edge of culturally diverse Honduras. Copan was a dynamic urban city populated by peoples of various places of origin, affiliations, and identities. Research focused on the Copan human skeletal collection, the largest yet recovered in Mesoamerica, to explore the lives of...
The Bioarchaeological paradigm of human remains decay in the Zapotec mortuary and funerary rituals (2015)
Archaeological, iconographic and ethnohistorical sources have been used to examine diverse cultural practices of Zapotec society before European contact. Cultural practices related to violence and warfare, such as captive taking for ritual sacrifice and slave labor, played an important role in Zapotec imperial expansion during the Late Formative through the Classic period. In the Valley of Oaxaca research has been done to understand these cultural practices. Whatever, bioarchaeological data to...
Bioarchaeological results of the Suchil River Valley project, Zacatecas and Durango, Mexico (2015)
In this paper we present a synthesis of the osteological analysis of recovered individuals in this project, considering that social change can be studied on the basis of the biology of individuals in their social environment and lifestyle. Prehispanic social groups inhabited this region in northwest Mexico between 200 AD and 900 AD. The analyzed sample originates from funerary contexts excavated in two sites of a second order and one first order site. The samples are dissimilar, but correspond...
The Bioarchaeology of Colonization and Missionization at San Bernabé, Lake Petén Itzá (2016)
The Spanish established the San Bernabé Mission in the heartland of the Itzá Maya area at Tayasal in the Petén Lakes region around 1710. Census data suggest that the mission was at the center of a multi-cultural community of 126 individuals in 1712, yet within three decades the population size had reduced by 70% potentially due to epidemics and flight. Excavations by the Tayasal Archaeological Project have recovered 46 individuals from 33 graves in the mission’s cemetery that shed light on what...
The Bioarchaeology of the Cerro de la Cruz Cemetery (2015)
This paper discusses preliminary bioarchaeological findings from the Late Formative cemetery at Cerro de la Cruz in the lower Río Verde Valley on the Pacific coast of Oaxaca. The Cerro de la Cruz cemetery has figured prominently in a long-running debate over the hypothesized conquest of the region by Monte Albán. We discuss the results of detailed bioarchaeological analyses of four individuals from the cemetery in the context of an ongoing regional study. Although taphonomic processes...
Biological Basis for Some Features of Mayan Portraiture
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Biological distance among Huastec, Veracruz, and Maya groups (2015)
The people of the Huasteca region have a shared language history with the Maya region. This connection has long been of interest to Mesoamerican archaeologists and linguists. They also traded with other populations along the Gulf Coast, such as those in Veracruz. To date, biological evidence for these connections remains limited. We compared Huastec (n= 62), Veracruz (n= 47), highland (n= 29) and lowland Maya (n= 63) groups to evaluate the effects of shared language and economic exchange on...
Biomolecular Approaches to Documenting Ancient Maya Turkey Husbandry and Use (2016)
The turkey (Meleagris gallopavo) is the only domesticated vertebrate to originate from North America. Accurate reconstructions of turkey husbandry and use are thus critical for understanding the domestication process in the ancient Americas. Isotopic and genetic (aDNA) research has yielded substantial insights into the history of turkey use and domestication in the American Southwest, but such methods have not been widely used in Mesoamerica to date, despite the fact that all modern domestic...