Mesoamerica (Geographic Keyword)

DOCUMENT Citation Only Cameron L. McNeil.

Pollen analysis of Classic-period temple and tomb spaces in Copan’s Acropolis revealed a range of plants important to ancient Maya ritual practice. Some of these species were not represented in macroremains in ritual or household contexts. Scholars have described temple spaces as thick with the odor of burned offerings and copal, but added to this would also have been the fresh and heady fragrance of blooming buds and greenery, adding a fecund perfume to the areas of ritual supplication. These...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jean Larmon. Lisa Lucero.

Cara Blanca, in central Belize, consists of 25 pools that run east to west along the base of a limestone cliff. The Pre-Colombian significance of the pools has been studied by the Valley of Peace Archaeology Project, yet little attention has been paid to their Post-Contact influence on the local and regional landscape. This paper explores the role that Pool 6, a shallow lake centrally located in the line of lakes and cenotes, played in colonial logging operations around Cara Blanca. The 2014...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Anthony F. Aveni. S. L. Gibbs. H. Hartung.

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.

DOCUMENT Citation Only Gustavo Jaimes Vences. Sugiura Yoko. Xim Bokhimi.

En el sitio arqueológico de Santa Cruz Atizapán (con ocupación desde el Clásico tardío ca. 500-650 dc hasta el Epiclásico ca. 650-900 dc), han sido detectadas macroscópicamente una serie de pastas, que por sus atributos de textura, compacidad e inclusiones, fueron agrupadas en nueve conjuntos (Inclusiones café, blancas, naranjas, de varios colores, pseudo anaranjado delgado, fina, intermedia, burda y con mica). Lo anterior refleja una diversidad en los posibles centros de producción cerámica que...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Julie Wesp.

During the early 16th century, the recent appearance of institutions specializing in care in Europe spread to the Americas. Unlike our modern perceptions of these healthcare institutions where you can seek help for illnesses that affect the body, the colonial period institutions were primarily run by religious groups and may have been more preoccupied with providing spiritual care for the indigenous populations. While this divergence of caring for bodies to caring for the souls may seem...

DOCUMENT Full-Text John M. Weeks.

The third in a series of volumes intended to republish the primary data and interpretive studies produced by archaeologists and anthropologists in the Maya region under the umbrella of the Carnegie Institute of Washington's Division of Historical Research, The Carnegie Maya III makes available the series Notes on Middle American Archaeology and Ethnology. The series began in 1940 as an outlet for information that may have been considered too unimportant, brief, or restricted to be submitted for...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jennifer Loughmiller-Cardinal.

Various systems of vessel classification have evolved through the need to address specific research questions from disparate sub-fields within Mayan studies. Recent work, however, has shown that these classificatory categories may be inadvertently biasing the interpretation of Mayan ceramics by presupposing aspects of use, function, and social context. Instead, these aspects should be matters of empirical study and validation derived from the vessels and their contexts rather than imposition by...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Ann Scott. Melanie Saldana.

During the 2013 season, a team from California State University, Los Angeles worked with the Rio Bravo Archaeological Survey directed by Stanley Walling to conduct a preliminary assessment of Cave 1 (RB-47-142-X) at the site of Chawak But’o’ob. Located within the heart of the site’s public architecture, Cave 1 is surrounded by a ballcourt, a sweatbath and a sinkhole. Though our survey and excavation revealed utilization of the cave that differed from other areas of the Maya lowlands, its...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Claudia Garcia-Des Lauriers.

In the municipality of Tonalá, Chiapas, Cerro Bernal represents a unique feature on the Pacific coastal plain—one that is both strategic and of economic importance as well as representing a deeply potent sacred landscape. Among the important features of this landscape that have become the focus of cotemporary folklore are a series of caves, or more specifically rock shelters, that have entered the imagination of local residents as important elements of a living and enchanted landscape. ...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Luis A. Barba. Linda Manzanilla. R. Chavez. Luis Flores. A. J. Arzate.

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.

DOCUMENT Citation Only Sue Scott.

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.

DOCUMENT Citation Only Angélica María Medrano.

When the Spanish entered northwest Mexico in1529 they confronted a bellicose people, the Caxcans, occupying numerous settlements in the southeastern drainages of the Sierra Madre Occidental, los Altos of Jalisco and Zacatecas. The Caxcans—ethnically and culturally related to Nahuatl-speaking groups of Central Mexico, including the Mexica—were one of the northernmost Mesoamerican cultures in sixteenth-century New Spain. Data from recent investigations are presented, clarifying the position of the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Taylor Benoit. Guillermo de Anda. James Brady.

This is an abstract from the "The Subterranean in Mesoamerican Cultural Landscapes" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Gran Acuífero Maya discovered an important archaeological feature constructed within a cenote in Hoctún, Yucatán, Mexico. Cenote Xbis contains a well-built sacbe 3.5 m wide and more than 60 m long that leads to a large pool of water at the back of the cave. Two speleothem columns appear to have been significant in the layout of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Cristina Verdugo. Jeremy Coltman. James Brady. Guillermo De Anda Alaniz.

A truism was established very early in Maya studies that the Cenote of Sacrifice at Chichen Itza had a religious function while the nearby Cenote Xtoloc was the source for domestic drinking water. Part of the attraction of this idea was no doubt its close paralleling of the popular Western dichotomy, sacred vs. profane. The problem with truisms, statements so obviously true that they say nothing new or interesting, is that they direct attention elsewhere. This is probably why the Temple of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kevin Schwarz.

Fragmentation theory is premised on the notion that actors purposefully broke valued goods, deposited fragments of them in meaningful places, and enchained other social beings in relationships with gifts and exchange of them. They also accumulated whole objects in caches. This presentation examines the fragmentation premise for censers and non-slipped utilitarian ceramics in and around architectural spaces at the Quexil Islands, Guatemala. The site is a Terminal Classic-Late Postclassic Maya...

GEOSPATIAL Karen Holberg.

The aim of the LEAP projects was to publish multi-layered e-publications and develop and link them to associated digital archives. The original LEAP project was funded by the AHRC while the LEAP II, A Trans-Atlantic LEAP, was supported by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. This shapefile is part of a 2011 LEAP II project "Placing immateriality: situating the material of highland Chiriquí" by Karen Holberg. All files associated with this record must be downloaded to ensure that the shapefile...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Aaron Ott.

This poster displays the relationship between the Great Temple of Tenochtitlán and four smaller pyramids, of similar architecture, concurrently in operation during the period of Aztec dominance in central Mexico. I will demonstrate how the satellite pyramids worked in conjunction with Templo Mayor to form a cohesive religious network, reflecting shared ideology through common ritual use . Using the ethnographic analogy of medieval Catholicism, I will show how Mexica-Aztec religion utilized this...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Lorraine Williams-Beck.

The center, as the Maya universe’s fifth direction, is a little understood component of Colonial period Maya cosmos. This paper will explore a diachronic notion of function and form for center as umbilicus, placing particular emphasis on pre-Hispanic Canpech and Chakanputun provinces, and Early Colonial contexts at Dzaptun/Ceiba Cabecera, Campeche. Pre-Hispanic Dzaptun, renamed "la Zeiba" and Ceiba Cabecera in later Colonial sources, had served as central cog in a hypothesized regional ritual...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Marie Annereau-Fulbert.

Compared to its Guatemala counterpart, the region of the Chiapas highlands is known to have a marginal history in the Postclassic period. This misrepresentation is due to limited investigations since the 1960´s and to inexistent ethnohistoric sources, which could provide clues for the interpretation of ethnic and settlement patterns on the eve of the Conquest. However, Spanish documents described "cacicazgos" as Chamula and Zinacantan near Jobel Valley, which is the focal point of our study....

DOCUMENT Citation Only Glenna Nielsen-Grimm. Greg Farley. Edgar Ortega. Richard D. Hansen.

The Great Central Plaza of the West Complex at El Mirador lies on an early and important alignment for the entire city. Excavations of two small altar platforms, and test units of structures on the boundaries of the plaza and the Leon Plaza suggest that this was probably among the earliest areas of the city, and continued to have symbolic and ritual importance throughout the Middle and Late Preclassic periods at El Mirador. The Central Acropolis creates the southern boundary, the east and west...

GEOSPATIAL Karen Holberg.

The aim of the LEAP projects was to publish multi-layered e-publications and develop and link them to associated digital archives. The original LEAP project was funded by the AHRC while the LEAP II, A Trans-Atlantic LEAP, was supported by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. This shapefile is part of a 2011 LEAP II project "Placing immateriality: situating the material of highland Chiriquí" by Karen Holberg. All files associated with this record must be downloaded to ensure that the shapefile...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Matt O'Mansky. Arthur Demarest.

Recent popular interpretations have proposed that the "Terminal Classic" in the southern lowlands was a gradual transition or slow multi-stage process or that many ninth and tenth century centers continued to prosper; or even have proposed a "What collapse?" scenario. Yet systematic site by site review of ceramic chronologies and evidence reveals that these characterizations and, indeed, the whole debate are poorly informed due to errors in ceramic typologies and limited understandings of the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jason Paling. Hannah Dutton. Justin Lowry.

This paper discusses patterns of production and distribution of pottery recovered from the site of Chiquilistagua through the use of X-ray Powder Diffraction (XRD) and Instrumental Neutron Activation Analysis (INAA) compositional data. Dominant types found in the Chiquilistagua assemblage include Usulatan, Espinoza, Segovia, Chavez Astorga, and Nejapa Roja. Occupational episodes at Chiquilistagua extend across the Tempisque and Bagaces ceramic spheres, which have been associated with widespread...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Barbara Stark.

A systematic evaluation of emulation of powerful capitals using ceramic comparisons requires consideration of (1) degrees of similarity, (2) legacy traditions, and (3) depositional contexts and sample sizes. This analysis uses ceramics from the Mesoamerican Gulf lowlands on the west side of the Lower Papaloapan River to compare with ceramics from Teotihuacan during the Early Classic Period and from the Aztec Triple Alliance during the Late Postclassic Period. Replication, imitation, and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only T. Patrick. Culbert.

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.