Mesoamerica (Geographic Keyword)
851-875 (2,459 Records)
Up until the tourist market and piped water forever changed the practice of making pottery in Ticul, potters’ raw materials came from sources in a unique socially-perceived and spatially-restricted landscape that served them well for at least a thousand years. Revealed by ethnographic research, potters’ traditional knowledge and utilization of these sources indicated that the unique sources of potters’ clay, palygorskite, and pottery temper were ancient and dated to the Terminal Classic Period....
Finding the Right Niche: Altar, Throne, Stela, Sarcophagus? Overlap and Ambiguity in Olmec Large Stone Sculpture (2021)
This is an abstract from the "Sculpture of the Ancient Mexican Gulf Coast, Part 1" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Among the most diagnostic sculptures made by the Gulf Coast Olmec is the tabletop altar/throne. This sculpture is best known for its most common features: a wide, heavy cornice; a generally rectangular structure; and often, a niche in the front. Given the tabletop form, scholars originally interpreted these sculptures as altars, but...
Fine Dining and Social Position among the Classic period Maya and their Neighbors in Honduras (2017)
Drawing on the substantial body of information that has accumulated over decades of research on the kingdom of Copan and its southern and eastern neighbors, I address the question, What were the key components of Maya meals that turned dining into an important, flexible, and subtle way to embody status? This paper draws together information from a range of methods and bodies of data including ethnobotanical and archaeozoological studies, chemical analyses, research on human skeletal remains,...
Fire and Ash: Formative Period Environmental Chronologies in Eastern Mesoamerica (2017)
Recent dating work has led to revision of regional political chronologies in the Guatemala Highlands. In particular, key Middle and Late Formative phases now date as much as 300 years later than previously believed. This reanalysis brings these phases in line with significant environmental conditions stemming from volcanism and drought. In this paper, we present new high-precision chronologies for these environmental records, and compare these records against regional political chronologies in...
Fire and smoke in Postclassic Petén: human remains, deity effigies, and codices (2015)
Fire and smoke were fundamental ritual forces in Mesoamerican religious worldview. Found in varied contexts (funerary processing, animation ceremonies, and desecratory rituals), fire and smoke were applied to multiple media (human bodies, architecture, and ceramics). In the Postclassic (AD 950–1524) Maya lowlands, burning both processed honored ancestors’ remains and violated enemies’ remains. Ceramic incense burners with deity effigies were used to burn resins to communicate with supernaturals....
Fire, transformation and bone relics: elite funerals at the Great Temple of Tenochtitlan (2015)
As described in historical sources, the Great Temple of Tenochtitlan was the final resting place for some elite individuals: their bodies were exposed to the fire and cremated bones were deposited in funerary urns. However, archaeological findings suggest that funerary rituals were more complex, depending on the identity, social status and cause of death of the deceased as well as body symbolism. Seven urns containing cremated bones from five individuals along with numerous burial goods were...
Firing Pots in Durango: Craft manufacture of glazed wares and the origins of consumption and production inequality in northern Mexico (2015)
The historiography of nineteenth century industrial development in the northern Mexican state of Durango has tended to focus on the biography of a few successful business men, rather than on the local production and consumption of daily material culture. Specifically, the inhabitants of this northern territory, experienced greater socioeconomic inequality as only the minority that belonged to the entrepreneurial class reaped the benefits of industrialist projects. Thus only a small number of...
First report of a dung beetle (Canthon cyanellus LeConte) found in an offering of the Great Temple of Tenochtitlan (2017)
We report for the first time, the presence of a species of dung beetle recovered from an offering found at the foot of the staircase of the Great Temple of Tenochtitlan. The dung beetle specimen was found on a copal (aromatic resin) ball and was identified as female of Canthon cyanellus, a copro-necrophagous scarab (Coleoptera: Scarabaeinae) by the presence of 4 clipeal teeth (exclusive characteristic of this species) and because its last abdominal sternite is continuous (characteristic of...
First Steps and Finishing Touches: Imaging Techniques and Ancient Maya Bone Craft Production (2017)
Although archaeology focuses on the things that endure, the means by which we study those things is constantly changing. Recent technological developments have revolutionized how we assess chronology, our abilities to identify smaller and smaller traces of organic and inorganic residues, and the ways we share our data among ourselves and with the public. This presentation details a series of imaging techniques, used alone and in combination, that reveal details of ancient bone crafting methods,...
Flake Deposits and the Missing Workshops of the Maya Lowlands: the Complexity of Classic Maya Lithic Economy (2016)
Technological and distributional analysis of the lithic collections from Cancuen, La Corona, Rio Bec and Naachtun show that the same goods were produced under different production contexts, some specific debitage being deposited in elite cache, whereas the same flakes were also gathered in domestic refuse. This suggests that some aspects of production were carried out in independent workshops, but a part of some knapping actions were given as tribute with particular stages of debitage held in...
Flames, Ash, and Charcoal: Paleoethnobotanical Approaches to Understanding the Role of Fire in Postclassic Tarascan Ritual Practices (2017)
Although ethnohistoric sources provide many interesting clues regarding the importance of fire in Postclassic Tarascan rituals, these practices are still not well characterized by archaeologists. We know that fire was omnipresent in Tarascan society, not just for ordinary, daily needs (heating, cooking, light, etc.), but also in a seemingly diverse variety of ritual practice that ranged from the public cremation ceremonies of deceased rulers to more humble household rituals carried out on a...
Floors, an Archaeological Material: The Case of the Plaza de la Piramide del Sol, Teotihuacan, Mexico (2018)
Human beings have modified surfaces to make them habitable, with time they made other floors to give it a better finish. The process was recorded in the floors interiors; we can observe the materials used in its elaboration and how they changed through time. Additionally, we can conduct other studies which help us understand the time-frame between structures. Floors are a complex material and their study helps us identify social aspects seen in past studies of other materials such as ceramics,...
Flora, Ethnoecology, and Foodways in the Land of the Sky (2017)
Analysis of botanical residues recovered from the Río Verde Valley has yielded a wealth of information about activities of ancient inhabitants. Data from this paper were derived from large-scale excavations at the Terminal Formative urban center of Río Viejo, and the Terminal Formative outlying sites of Cerro de la Virgen and Loma Don Genaro. Evidence of agricultural practices as well as the collection of wild and fallow-dwelling plants have been revealed through charred seeds and other...
Florida's Relationship To the Antilles and Mesoamerica; a Synthesis (1959)
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.
A Flow of Ideas: Water Management from an Aguada and into Wetlands (2016)
The approach taken by Vernon Scarborough to the study of water management in the Maya area has been a thorough investigation of the role of water in the formation of both the relationships of people with their environment, and also the impact of water in the organization of people among themselves. While I was a student of Vern Scarborough's from 2003 through 2005, he emphasized three key points in my thinking. The first is an openness to seek is a cross cultural analogy. Secondly, he stressed...
The Flow of Knowledge: Ancient Water Systems and Mentorscapes (2016)
From his initial doctoral work at Cerros in the late 1970s to his most recent investigations in Tikal, Vernon Scarborough’s research goals have consistently used water control as an instrument to better understand social complexity. His research has spanned a period of our own history when more sustainable approaches to growth are desperately needed as access to water is of an ever increasing concern. As his student, now colleague, this paper will highlight how Vernon Scarborough and his work...
Flower & Song: Exploring Literacy in Postclassic Mesoamerica (2017)
The Postclassic codices of the Maya, Mixtec, and Nahua peoples have often been separated based on preconceived notions of literacy and language, with the Maya codices receiving an epigraphic approach while the Nahua and Mixtec receive an art historical approach. This division is largely arbitrary and based on Western assumptions of the nature of writing and its form, privileging scripts which lean towards the alphabetic as more advanced. Within these codices, the linguistic practice of...
Flowers and Floral Imagery in New Spain's Visual Production and Religious Spaces (2019)
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. Colonial Mexican portraits of priests, nuns, and children donning elaborate floral trappings indicate their subjects’ holiness and connect Euro-Christian and Mesoamerican ideas of sacredness, nobility, and a propitious afterlife. Their rich visual display explicitly highlights the virtuousness...
The Flowery Places of the Copan Maya and the Species They Used to Create Them (2019)
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. Clues to the creation of flower-laden spaces in ancient Maya temples, tombs, and palaces lie on the floors of the best-preserved of these structures. The Copan Acropolis has proved to be a particularly good site for the recovery of well-preserved pollen grains from flowers that adorned ritual...
The Fluidity of Ideology: A Late Classic Architectural Transformation in Plaza A at the Ancient Maya Site of Pacbitun, Belize (2016)
The ceremonial heart of the ancient Maya site of Pacbitun, thriving for the site’s entire 2000 year existence, must have held an enormous amount of cosmological significance to its inhabitants. However, while the sacredness of this location remained constant, the ideology within this space was incessantly in flux. Over the past 30 years, Plaza A excavations have revealed numerous architectural transformations signifying sociopolitical unrest. One such transformation is archaeologically...
Fluted Points in Mesoamerica and the Isthmus: a Reply To Rovner (1980)
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.
Flying on the West: the Butterfly Imagery in the Aztatlán Iconography: Meaning and Worldview. (2017)
The Aztatlán Tradition is a widespread cultural and economical system in West and Northwest Mexico from AD 850 to 1300. The Aztatlán iconography is remarkable, not only because it is rich in the variety of images and icons related to the codices, but also because it reflects a concept related to the worldview of the Aztatlán groups (and others in Central Mexico and the Mixteca-Puebla region). Butterfly imagery seems to be part of it. Some of the ceremonial vessels used in rituals or found as...
Folk Culture of Yucatan (1941)
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.
Following Human-Cattle Assemblage Itineraries: A Non-anthropocentric Perspective on Past Human-Animal Interactions (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Multispecies Frameworks in Archaeological Interpretation: Human-Nonhuman Interactions in the Past, Part I" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Conventional zooarchaeological approaches to the human-animal relationship often offer an anthropocentric perspective where animals mainly serve to fulfill human needs, whether material or symbolic. To address this issue, I propose a decentered model that I applied to the study of...
Food and Foodways at Sihó, Yucatán: Understanding Socioeconomic Diversity (2017)
In the past as in the present, foodways and cuisine have been expressions of identity and status. Different social strata had different access to natural resources and offer a variety of material expressions related to food, preparation and service, from grinding stones to exquisite art works. In Classic Maya society, some foodstuffs such as cacao, were mentioned and painted in beautiful elite wares, as well as in murals and carvings. At Sihó, Yucatán, archaeological projects developed by the...