Mesoamerica (Geographic Keyword)

DOCUMENT Citation Only Christopher T. Fisher.

This is an abstract from the "Advancing Public Perceptions of Sustainability through Archaeology" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The societal impact of climate change in Central Mexico during the Postclassic Period is an important question in Mesoamerican archaeology. Here, using archaeological evidence from the ancient city of Angamuco, including LiDAR analysis, I argue that an engineered environment buffered the environment from reduced rainfall...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Julie Hoggarth. Laurent Cases.

Increasing literature has focused on the role of climate change in the collapse of complex societies. These studies suggest that abrupt shifts in climate can exacerbate existing political, social, and economic issues by affecting the basic subsistence systems on which populations depend. Here we compare archaeological, historic, and climate proxy data from two state-level societies: the Classic Maya and the Roman Empire. A strong focus on the impact of multi-decadal droughts from the ninth to...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Dante Garcia. Guillermo De Anda.

According to the ceramic evidence that came out of the Chichen Itzá sinkholes or "cenotes" it seems the ancient Maya offered into these wells important quantities of pots and very unique ceramic vessels within a very specific period of time, and under very specific situations. The evidence indicates that most of the ritual activity occurred approximately between AD 900-1100, a time that coincides chronologically with the end of the Terminal Classic Period, the rise and subsequent abandonment of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jeremy Coltman. Jesper Nielsen.

According to Henry B. Nicholson, the rain deity Tlaloc enjoyed the most active and widespread cult in ancient Mexico. This assertion is surely correct, and is further evidenced from later ethnohistoric and ethnographic sources. Closely related to Tlaloc - and his earlier manifestations - were the Tepictoton, little directional mountain deities venerated during the veintenas of Tepeilhuitl and Atemoztli. In this paper we review Nicholson's original observations seen in the light of new...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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 raster 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 raster opens...

DOCUMENT Citation Only James Meierhoff. Joel W. Palka.

In the second half of the nineteenth century, the ancient Maya city of Tikal, Guatemala, was briefly re occupied by Yucatec refugees fleeing the Caste War of Yucatan. The Tikal village was poised on the confluence of the frontiers of Mexico, Guatemala and British Honduras, as well as the belligerent Santa Cruz Maya from Yucatan. Despite the limited presence of settled European diasporas in the northern Petén, colonial institutions were still able to reach indigenous communities seeking refuge...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Marilyn Masson. Carlos Peraza Lope. Wilberth Cruz Alvarado. Pedro Delgado Ku. Timothy Hare.

The ceremonious destruction and abandonment of the Itzmal Ch’en group at Mayapán is symptomatic of ritual violence that marked this city’s near collapse at least 50 years before its final abandonment around 1448 A.D. This new evidence revises Contact Period accounts about the demise of this city, the last regional capital of the Maya realm prior to European arrival, and it also reveals the city’s resilient (if brief) recovery. In the tradition of the interdisciplinary approach of the Forest of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Maria De Lourdes Gallardo.

El presente trabajo aborda el estudio integral de los restos de prendas rituales elaboradas con textiles y elementos laminares de conchas nacaradas, que se depositaron en cuatro ofrendas del sitio arqueológico del Templo Mayor. A pesar del mal estado de conservación que actualmente se observa en la mayor parte de estos objetos, fue posible identificar cuatro prendas rituales, a través de una investigación que observa varios aspectos relevantes y complementarios. Así, el estudio comprende: la...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Stephanie Miller.

This paper presents new spatial and cultural data on the Maya archaeological site of Coba. As part of the Political Interaction Project of Central Yucatán, we have piloted a new investigation on the political, social, and economic relationship between the two Maya cities Yaxuna and Coba. These two cities are connected by the longest sacbe in the Maya region, Sacbe 1, stretching 100 km across the peninsula. Understanding the relationship between these two cities will require a multi year and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Danny Zborover. John Pohl.

This is an abstract from the "Bringing the Past to Life, Part 2: Papers in Honor of John M. D. Pohl" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Trailblazer, dirt archaeologist, influencer, historian, disrupter, curator, socialite, ethnographer, polyglot. Most of us are familiar with Zelia Nuttall mostly through her brilliant research on the Mixtec codex that, until recently, carried her name on the catalogue of the British Museum where it is currently kept....

DOCUMENT Citation Only Patricia Ochoa Castillo. Patricia Ochoa.

La presencia de colecciones mesoamericanas en museos extranjeros forman parte de la historia de la arqueología de México. El coleccionismo entre anticuarios, arqueólogos incipientes, principalmente durante el siglo XIX y las primeras décadas del siglo XX fue una actividad común y legal y muchas de estas colecciones fueron dispersas en distintos museos de Europa y de Estados Unidos. El recuperar estos materiales, en este caso del Preclásico del centro de México, por medio de su registro es una...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Maia Dedrick. Iván Batún Alpuche. Priya Blair. Gabriela Echeverria Dzib. Brooke Laskowsky. Rebeca Tun Tuz.

This is an abstract from the session entitled "Oral History, Coloniality, and Community Collaboration in Latin America" , at the 2021 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. During the summer of 2020 we developed a project to consider the opinions of Tahcabo residents about a new exhibit for their community museum. We worked as a binational team to invite participation in the process through digital networks, by means of a survey and asynchronous discussion groups. We...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Roberto Lopez Bravo. Elizabeth H. Paris.

Despite the sociopolitical instability and depopulation observed at numerous sites in the Southern Maya Lowlands during the 9th century A.D., often referred to as the "Maya Collapse," numerous politically and geographically peripheral sites do not show evidence of these characteristics. Many of the small cities and towns of the Central Highlands of Chiapas maintained their roles as political centers throughout the Late Classic-Early Postclassic period transition, and also experienced demographic...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Adam Kaeding.

The frontier location of the Spanish colonial province of Beneficios Altos, Yucatan provides a unique case study for investigation into the lives and strategies of colonial Maya individuals and communities. Given their proximity to a notoriously porous southern border and the documented record of significant numbers of people who escaped colonial authority by crossing that border, those communities and individuals living within the boundaries of Beneficios Altos can largely be considered to have...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Davide Domenici.

Non-invasive scientific analyses recently performed by the ‘MOLAB’ mobile laboratory on a number of pre-Hispanic and early colonial pictorial manuscripts provided a host of new data that deepen our knowledge of Mesoamerican coloring materials and painting practices. The huge corpus of available analytical data – obtained from codices Madrid, Cospi, Borgia, Vatican B, Laud, Fejérváry-Mayer, Nuttall, Bodley, Selden, Selden Roll, Tudela, Vatican A, and Mendoza – allows the first cultural-historical...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Ludo Snijders. Tim Zaman.

In this session the most recent advances are presented of an ongoing interdisciplinary project aimed at better understanding the materials of which, and with which, the Mesoamerican Precolonial codices were made. These materials are as varied as ranging from turquoise from the southern United States to cochineal from Oaxaca, jaguar skins from the tropical areas and Maya Blue from the Yucatan peninsula. As such, this understanding allows for a reconstruction of the whole complex practice of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Davide Domenici.

This is an abstract from the "The Flower World: Religion, Aesthetics, and Ideology in Mesoamerica and the American Southwest" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The performance of non-destructive chemical analyses on Mesoamerican codices has provided an unprecedented understanding of the technological diversity of pre-Hispanic codex-painting traditions, as well as of their patterns of change in early colonial times. One of the most striking results...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Nicolas Delsol.

At the end of the 15th and the beginning of the 16th century, the massive introduction of new animal species in the Americas put an unprecedented stress on both the environment and Native American societies. Although archaeological animal remains are often used to inform discussions on American-European transculturation in other areas, few such studies have been done in southern Mesoamerica. This talk will use historical sources and published zooarchaeological data to provide a first overview of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kaylee Spencer. Maline Werness-Rude.

Ancient Maya builders working in the Northern Lowlands often introduced and distributed columns throughout the architectural volumes they created in a way that distinguished them from their southern neighbors. While northern column usage served pragmatic needs by being load-bearing and facilitating entrance and egress, we explore the possibility that selection and placement of structural supports also seems to have functioned in a highly ideological fashion. We will use case studies from sites...

DOCUMENT Citation Only David Rogoff.

There is extensive evidence that people are self-serving in the interpretation of data and are very likely to reach their desired conclusions. Archaeologists have grappled with this issue as it pertains to the construction of meaningful analogs, but there has been little effort to follow through with an evaluation of archaeological analogies. I propose a methodology for combating researcher bias in archaeological analysis and apply it at El Coyote, a Classic Period center in western...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Aviva Cormier.

The northeastern Petén of Guatemala is an ideal area for applying stable isotope analysis to reconstruct past population histories and to explore the interplay of migration and social complexity throughout the rise of the Maya. The strontium and oxygen isotope analysis of dental enamel is a productive alternative when bone collagen is not available or is severely altered by taphonomic processes or conditions of preservation. These isotopic analyses of dental enamel can be combined with...