Mesoamerica (Geographic Keyword)

DOCUMENT Citation Only William Rust.

In the past, abundant ceremonial evidence found at La Venta and other Gulf Coast Olmec sites has spawned widely ranging views on the emergence of complex society in Mesoamerica. Evidence of dense local riverine settlement was gained from my survey at La Venta and surrounding sites in 1986-7, revealing household sites both on La Venta and surrounding villages on abandoned river courses. The chronological sequence has been guided by over 50 radiocarbon dates recovered from a series of domestic...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Torin Power. David M. Hyde.

Excavations associated with Structure A-7, a 9 x 4 m isolated mound near Group A of the Medicinal Trail Community in northwestern Belize, have revealed evidence for the extraction of stone blocks from the limestone bedrock. The evidence for quarrying consists of rectangular scars outlining stone blocks that appear to have been in the process of being harvested. Additionally, there was an artificially created bowl-shaped depression, 2 m in diameter and approximately 1 m deep. A problematic...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Guy Hepp.

The emergence of sociopolitical complexity, and its connections to other developments such as changing subsistence and domestic mobility, has been a central theme of archaeology for over a century. Mesoamerica has been no exception to this trend, and scholars of pre-Columbian Mexico and Central America have scrutinized socioeconomic correlates of changing political integration and centralization. One concept central to this research has been that of hereditary hierarchical inequality. In fact,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only James Kinsman. David Asher.

No firm evidence has existed that the ancient Maya civilization recorded specific occurrences of meteor showers or oubursts in the corpus of Maya hieroglyphic inscriptions. In fact, there has been no evidence of any pre-hispanic civilization in the Western Hemisphere recording any observations of any meteor showers on any specific dates. The authors numerically integrated meteoroid-sized particles released by Comet Halley as early as 1404 BC to identify years within the Maya Classic Period, AD...

DOCUMENT Citation Only María Bertilla Beltrán Malagón.

El Centro de Veracruz, localizado dentro del territorio que comprende el área geográfico-cultural de la Costa del Golfo, es una zona que presentó un marcado dinamismo dentro del desarrollo prehispánico mesoamericano. En este espacio se localiza la región de Córdoba, la cual posee una extensión de aproximadamente 935.51 km2 y cuyo estudio es analizado a través de la lógica del asentamiento a lo largo de un valle por donde transitan los ríos Blanco y Seco-Atoyac. Hasta el momento se tienen...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Charles Spencer. Elsa Redmond.

Between 1995 and 2014, we directed 11 seasons of horizontal excavation in and around the main plazas of two Formative Period sites, El Mogote and El Palenque, near San Martín Tilcajete in the Oaxaca Valley. Our results indicate that major changes occurred in public architecture and elite residence between the Early Monte Albán I phase (500-300 B.C.) occupation at El Mogote and the Late Monte Albán I phase (300-100 B.C.) site of El Palenque. In view of the evidence of fundamental cultural...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Susan Toby Evans.

Sahagún called the Aztec palace a place of wisdom, and in the mature Aztec empire, sages of all kinds gathered in the tecpans and were members of elite families. The power of ruling families was based, in part, on their more sophisticated education, including divination and curing, and palaces as centers of knowledge served their communities. We know this from descriptions of contact-era imperial palaces, and we also know that these impressive places were the products of the evolution of the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Teresa Palomares.

This is an abstract from the "Checking the Pulse II: Current Research in Oaxaca Part 2" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The study of the Zapotec temple, its origins and evolution, has significant implications to understanding the social complexity in early societies. This paper follows the proposal of the one-room temple as the origin of the two-room temple, also called Zapotec temple, and exposes its evolution showing the characteristics of those...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Mariana Sanders. Gerardo Gutiérrez. James Córdova.

Rock art is now recognized as a key component of cultural expression in prehistory and a variety of new techniques have been developed to offer more insight into this area of archaeological expression. Here, we present our findings from the use of portable x-ray fluorescence (pXRF) analysis at cave sites in the state of Guerrero, Mexico. The authors offer a scientific basis for deriving inference regarding the process of rock art creation in several caves located in eastern Guerrero through the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Clayton Meredith. Willa Trask. Keith Prufer.

Recent excavations at Tzib’te Yux, a small rockshelter in Southern Belize, have revealed evidence of human occupation in the area spanning the Paleoindian and Archaic periods. Strata dating to the Late Pliestocene contain abundant faunal remains, lithic debitage, and highly fragmentary human remains. Preliminary indicators suggest that a broad spectrum of food resources was exploited including considerable input of lotic protein sources as early as the Late Pliestocene with continued...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Betsy Kohut. George J. Bey III. Tomas Gallareta Negron. William Ringle. Evan Parker.

In the last decade, major strides have been made in the study of early ceramics in the northern Maya lowlands. Long considered to lack ceramic occupations dating before the late Middle Preclassic (600-300 B.C.) it is now recognized that communities were founded throughout much of the northern Maya lowlands, particularly in the Puuc and northwestern Yucatan peninsula, by 900-800 B.C. This paper examines similarities and differences among these early pottery complexes at various occupations in the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kirby Farah.

The Postclassic site of Xaltocan has been the focus of archaeological investigation for nearly 30 years. Over this period a solid ceramic chronology for the site has been established thanks in large part to the pioneering efforts of Elizabeth Brumfiel and her students. While the vast majority of archaeological research at Xaltocan has focused predominately on commoner contexts, recent archaeological excavations of elite domestic spaces at Xaltocan inform and expand upon the current ceramic...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Pascale Meehan.

Recent archaeological research at the site of Monte El Santo, Oaxaca, Mexico examines how the rural community of Monte El Santo responded to the political collapse of the Río Viejo polity during the Early Postclassic Period (800-1100 CE). The collapse ushered in important changes for the coastal inhabitants of the Lower Río Verde Valley- the site of Río Viejo experienced a sharp decline in population, and a newly formed population center at San Marquitos grew to rival Río Viejo in size. While...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Destiny Crider.

Chemical characterization of ceramics using Neutron Activation Analysis (NAA) in Central Mexico has proven to be an important analytical approach for assessing exchange, especially between sub-regions within the Basin of Mexico and neighboring areas. Recent efforts based upon Epiclassic and Early Postclassic Period decorated ceramics have extended the sampling to the ceremonial centers and settlements of Tula Chico and Tula Grande, the resulting chemical analysis defined a more robust...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Sara Dalton.

During the 2014 and 2015 field season excavations were carried out on a chultun at the ancient Maya site of El Mirador, Petén, Guatemala. This chultun was situated near the Grán Acrópolis, with a 10-meter pyramid located directly to the north and a large L-shaped structure directly to the east, in an elite district. Over the course of excavations the site was found to contain both Middle and Late Preclassic ceramics, including fragments of an elaborate incensario in the shape of an...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Juan Sereno-Uribe.

Archaeology is the way to understand our most ancient past. Trough the study of material remains, we can understand how people from one civilization or another lived. Materials are the object of study for the archaeologist; in the working places of archaeologists, it is common to find a lot of pottery shreds, litchis objects, clay figurines, and more artefacts that speak about the past. In this poster, we are going to talk about an objet, one that it is so important that no other objects would...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jacqueline Fox. Skyler Claunch. David M. Hyde.

Previous excavations at Group A of the Medicinal Trail Community indicated a long occupation of the area, possibly dating back to the Middle Preclassic. In an effort to identify the earliest occupational phase at the group, we excavated the Middle Courtyard plaza platform of Group A to a depth of just over two meters below surface. Results of the 2016 field season brought greater understanding of the extensive amount of energy expended in building from the original foundation of the structures...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Evan Parker. George J. Bey III. Tomás Gallareta Negrón. Betsy Kohut.

Paso del Macho is a Middle Preclassic village settlement located in the eastern Puuc region of the Yucatán Peninsula. Excavations of mounded architecture, the main plaza, and ballcourt of the site have established a chronological range beginning in the early Middle Preclassic and ending by the Late Preclassic. The earliest architecture at the settlement includes at least three small raised platforms associated with Ek ceramics, the earliest pottery complex in Northern Yucatán. Following this,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Alfred M. Tozzer.

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 Valerie Feathers. Heather McKillop. E. Cory Sills.

The mangrove peat comprising the sea floor at the ancient Maya saltworks in Paynes Creek National Park, Belize, provides an ideal matrix for the preservation of wooden architecture. The acidic peat has preserved wood, charcoal, and botanicals at other inundated saltwork sites in the area. The unexpected discovery and subsequent excavation of an underwater shell midden at the Eleanor Betty Site in 2013 allowed for a greater comparison between the two matrices and their preservational properties....

DOCUMENT Citation Only Zachary Stanyard. Torin Power. Nathan Hayman. Griffin Larson. David M. Hyde.

Excavations of a circular depression and adjacent mounds at Group F have revealed functional data to support the hypothesis that this area was used as a processing center for agricultural material. The evidence stems from excavation of the depression itself, as well as two chich mounds on the northwest and northeast sides. The limestone bedrock of the depression appears to have been manually shaped for use, as indicated by cobble fill found roughly a meter down in an excavation trench bisecting...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Alfred V. Kidder. Jesse D. Jennings. Edwin M. Shook.

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 Philip Drucker. Robert F. Heizer. Robert J. Squier.

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 Full-Text Thomas Guderjan.

1992 Field Report - Interim

DOCUMENT Citation Only George C. Vaillant.

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.