Mesoamerica (Geographic Keyword)

DOCUMENT Citation Only Aurelio López Corral. Ramón Santacruz.

This is an abstract from the "Archaeology and Material Culture of the Spanish Invasion of Mesoamerica and Forging of New Spain" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. El contacto entre tlaxcaltecas y españoles en 1519 inicio un periodo de cambios fundamentales en las relaciones de poder entre los altepemeh del altiplano central mesoamericano. Para Tlaxcallan, la alianza representó una oportunidad para sortear los problemas políticos, bélicos y económicos...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Rosemary Joyce.

Knowledge of Formative Period Mesoamerican archaeological sites often comes from narrow windows into buried sites. One feature has been a partial exception to this rule: burials. Groups of Formative Period burials, often accompanied by objects, have been recovered in many parts of Mesoamerica. Using models of mortuary treatment that saw burials as reflecting individual identity, burials provided one of the first ways researchers could examine the emergence of stratification within these...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Guy Hepp. José Aguilar. Paul Sandberg.

The initial Early Formative period site of La Consentida was occupied between 1950 and 1550 calBC. This early village community on the western Oaxaca coast has produced evidence of some of Mesoamerica’s oldest known ceramics, mounded earthen architecture, and musical instruments but the site’s human remains have received little attention thus far. The people of La Consentida lived and died during a period of social and economic transformations, including the establishment of sedentary villages,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Agapi Filini. Ramiro Aguayo Haro.

The Cuitzeo Basin in Northern Michoacán was a key area at the local and supralocal levels for its rich lacustrine resources, and its geographic position that facilitated interaction between the Central Highlands and West Mexico. Mortuary rites were fundamental for the social reproduction of regional elites. The continuous occupation of some sites for more than a thousand years underscores the ritual and religious significance for the lacustrine societies. The comparative study of both biological...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Joshua Kwoka. Alyce de Carteret.

El Zotz is an ancient Maya site located in the contemporary Department of El Petén, Guatemala. Its influence on Classic Lowland geopolitics and the political fortunes of its elites are attested by inscriptions at home and abroad. Dwarfed by funerary temples and palace complexes, multiple small household groups dot the site’s periphery. This paper shifts the focus of analysis to populations located toward the opposite end of the sociopolitical spectrum through an analysis of lithic data recovered...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Charles Golden. Andrew Scherer. Whittaker Schroder. Clive Vella.

Many reconstructions of Precolumbian Maya economies are based on a centralized model of exchange, in which major capitals acted as import and export hubs and centers of production, while royal courts provided some form of management for long-distance trade networks. Research in the Western Maya Lowlands, and particularly the Usumacinta River Valley, suggests that although during the Classic period (AD 250 – 810) powerful dynastic centers like Piedras Negras, Yaxchilan and their neighbors...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Claire Novotny.

In the Maya region, sometimes communities are not consulted about access to archaeological sites, research programs, or the management of local heritage once research is completed. Consequently, one source of inequality between archaeologists and local communities is access to decision-making as a form of cultural capital. By positioning ourselves as primary decision-makers, archaeologists can inhibit access to knowledge about the past. The Aguacate Community Archaeology Project, conducted in...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Lane Fargher. Robert Cook.

This is an abstract from the "Ancient Mesoamerican and Andean Cities: Old Debates, New Perspectives" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The colonialist academic project has long obliterated complexity in the precontact Americas. From the nineteenth to the mid-twentieth century, the complexity of Mesoamerican societies was erased; for example, the massive cities encountered by Cortés were deconstructed as simple villages/towns inhabited by tribes. Not...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Eunice Villasenor Iribe.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Terraced landscapes are the geomorphic remains of dynamic cultural processes. Terraces were constructed in a range of environmental conditions to serve a variety of ecological and social functions. In Mesoamerica, terrace use spans thousands of years and is often associated with agricultural production. This study investigates the utilization of terraced...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Robert Rosenswig.

This paper reports the results of the first systematically collected Formative-period settlement data from the area around Izapa. Three environmental zones (coastal plain, low hills and piedmont) were documented by the Izapa Regional Settlement Project combining lidar and pedestrian survey methods. Results indicate population was highest on the coastal plain from 1700-850BC as a series of four sequential political centers rose and fell, each lasting for a century or two. After 850BC collapse of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Elliot Lopez-Finn.

While many collections today exhibit Red Background vessels for their vibrant colors, supernatural content, and elegant hieroglyphic texts, recent scholarship has embedded these works in the greater social culture of the Late Classic Period. As highly mobile art objects, the vases appeared alongside works with other distinct painting styles in feasts throughout the Guatemalan Lowlands, where the vases would display the prestigious affiliations of the owners. The diverse narrative content on...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Melissa Burham. Danielle Phelps.

While residential zones in many Mesoamerican cities were perceptibly defined by physical boundaries, the spatial division of Maya urban centers is not very clear. Following empirical urban theories outlined by Michael Smith (2010; 2011), we employ generative planning theory as a framework for defining residential zones in the peripheries of Ceibal, Guatemala. We believe that physical zones likewise represent social boundaries, in this case local communities that comprised the larger Ceibal...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Karime Castillo. Patricia Fournier. Roberto Junco.

In the viceregal society of New Spain, Chinese porcelain objects were expensive objects consumed primarily by people of high status. The white porcelain objects produced in Dehua, located in the Fujian province of China, were incorporated into the household items of palaces and mansions, as indicated by archaeological evidence from Mexico City, Acapulco, Sinaloa, and some rural sites in the Otumba Valley. The production of this fine porcelain, also known as Blanc de Chine, involved complex...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Agustin Andrade.

Una de las regiones que ha sufrido grandes transformaciones a lo largo del tiempo es la del Istmo de Tehuantepec, en particular, la zona de La Ventosa, donde el paisaje de la región va desde que se convierte en un paisaje ocupado por grupos humanos, hace 10,000 a. C., pasando por la época prehispánica, donde se construyeron asentamientos tanto monumentales, como pequeñas áreas habitacionales. No menos importante han sido las transformaciones del mismo paisaje con la instauración de haciendas,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Richard Paine.

Since John Bongaarts introduced it in 1978, demographers have used the concept of proximate and ultimate causality to understand fertility, mortality, and other demographic events. Bongaarts distinguished between proximate causes of fertility, like contraceptive use or age at marriage, and ultimate causes like socioeconomic class or education, which affect fertility through those proximate causes. The proximate-ultimate framework could provide Mayanists with a more sophisticated, and ultimately...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Andrés Mejía Ramón.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The recent availability of small multispectral sensors small enough to equip on unmanned aerial systems (UASs0 now allows archaeologists to survey the landscape at increasingly finer resolutions (10-20 cm) with topographic and compositional data. While at present the number of published archaeological studies using UAS-equipped multispectral cameras is small,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Paulo Medina.

This investigation’s working hypothesis is that chultunes, manmade subterranean features, served as ritual spaces in the southern Maya lowlands. The hypothesis is an outgrowth of my grounding in cave archaeology. Ethnographically, even subterranean features used for utilitarian activities, such as mining, come to have sacred meaning and this phenomenon can be documented in ethnohistoric sources. However, my hypothesis has not been tested. Dennis Puleston argued for a utilitarian function of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Allan Cobb. James Brady. Guillermo De Anda Alaniz.

One of the most enigmatic publications in Maya cave archaeology has been Edward H. Thompson investigation of the High Priest’s Grave at Chichen Itza in 1896. Thompson discovered a masonry shaft running down the center of the pyramid that gave access to a cave/cenote beneath the structure. This was the first account of a cave with a pyramid built over it and Thompson suggested that the cave contained seven chambers, hinting at the possibility of a Chicomoztoc. J. Eric Thompson in editing and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Paula Turkon. Sturt Manning. Carol Griggs. Alexandra Jigetts-O'Neill.

This paper reports on the progress of the Dendro-14C wiggle-matching project begun in 2013. Initial work established the feasibility of the methods and availability of the data. This paper will report on the ways in which the data can aid in cultural interpretation in northwestern Mesoamerican regions. A focus will be on dating the construction of high status areas at the sites of La Quemada and Los Pilarillos in the Malpaso Valley, Zacatecas, and their chronological relationship to...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Virginia Arieta Baizabal. Ann Cyphers.

En los últimos años, los análisis de densidad poblacional y distribución espacial conforman un tema medular en torno al desarrollo de las sociedades, ya que la forma en que se distribuye una población humana en el espacio conlleva determinantes efectos en la estructura interna de la sociedad y, viceversa, la interrelación de los factores económicos, administrativos, políticos y culturales en la sociedad son el reflejo de la organización espacial. El presente cartel muestra los resultados de un...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Erin Blankenship-Sefczek. Joseph Ball.

Classic Maya social status is more complex than an elite verses non-elite dichotomy. Research suggests that a "middle" status group exists. However, the social segment from which they arise is unknown. This study focuses on individuals from the urban center of Buenavista del Cayo who are below the ruling elites in the "middle" rungs of social status, and those from the neighboring farming community of Guerra who are recognized as nonelites. Previous research suggested that no biological affinity...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Yoko Sugiura.

En Santa Cruz Atizapan, donde nace el río Lerma en la antigua ciénaga de Chgnahuapan, Estado de México, se inician las construcciones de montículos habitacionales hace 1500 años aproximadamente, al tiempo que se estaba desarrollando el centro regional en la margen oriental de la antigua zona lacustre, denominado La Campana-Tepozoco. La distribución de dichos montículos sugiere que la antigua población de dicho sitio ya tenía una noción clara acerca de la obra hidráulica que se emprendería hacia...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Eric Heller. Anastasia Kotsoglou.

Located in northwestern Belize, the ancient Maya site of Tzak Naab lay at the intersection of an urban polity and vital agricultural space during the Terminal Classic, a period of considerable ecological and economic stress. The monumental architecture of the site strays from regional grammars with an atypical spatial syntax that emphasizes a connection to an adjacent bajo, a seasonally inundated wetland significant to the regional political economy. Attention to site planning and experiential...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Maxime Lamoureux St-Hilaire. Marcello A. Canuto. Tomás Barrientos. Clarissa Cagnato.

Classic Maya regal palaces were political institutions with many functions, ranging from domestic and ceremonial to administrative. This paper presents the results of the multi-facetted study of three adjoining patios of the palace at the Classic Maya Center of La Corona, Guatemala. Research suggests that these patios, dating to final phases of occupation in the Late Classic (8th and 9th centuries AD), were open spaces dedicated to activities relating to the preparation of food, the manufacture...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Keith Prufer.

The original goals of Uxbenká Archaeological Project were to understand the geopolitical history of the polity in the context of wider regional developments during the Classic Period. Long suspected to be the earliest complex polity in southern Belize had intrigued archaeologists for decades based on its prominent locations between the Petén and the Caribbean Sea as well as its long history of descendant communities farming lands around the archaeological ruins. From 2008-2015 the Human Social...