Mesoamerica (Geographic Keyword)
976-1,000 (2,459 Records)
In south-central and southern Veracruz settlement pattern data document a collapse of previous settlement systems and many cultural traditions. Some regions reorganized and some likely were re-populated in part by migrants from highland regions. The timings of collapse in these lowland regions are poorly defined, but variation seems likely. Causes have received little attention because the extent of changes has not been recognized. Likewise, possible consequences are still to be investigated....
Génesis del Museo Yucateco durante el Segundo Imperio (1863-1867) (2017)
El presbítero Crescencio Carrillo y Ancona fue un destacado intelectual yucateco y precursor del estudio científico de la arqueología maya, que culminó sus esfuerzos con la inauguración del Museo Yucateco en 1871 en base a sus propias colecciones. El análisis de diversos documentos de archivo ha hecho posible conocer los antecedentes de tal institución durante el Segundo Imperio mexicano. El emperador Maximiliano mostró un notable interés por la historia y las culturas indígenas, al igual que la...
Haciendo público lo privado: La arquitectura de las élites de Cahal Pech durante el Preclásico Medio (2015)
Cahal Pech es una antigua comunidad Maya localizada en el Valle de Belice que mantuvo una ocupación continua por más de 2000 años (1200 a.C.-1100 d.C.). Múltiples exploraciones en la acrópolis y en la periferia del asentamiento han revelado que los grupos fundadores edificaron sus primeras residencias en el área de la Plaza B de la acrópolis. Para el Clásico Tardío, esta plaza llegó a funcionar como el principal espacio cívico del sitio. En años recientes, como parte del proyecto "Belize Valley...
Hallazgo de la Tumba de Miguel de Palomares (2017)
En el año 2016 el Programa de Arqueología Urbana (PAU) del Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia (INAH), llevó a cabo excavaciones frente a la Catedral Metropolitana de la Ciudad de México. Además de encontrarse vestigios arquitectónicos de inicios del periodo virreinal, se descubrió una lápida mortuoria con un epitafio alusivo al canónigo Miguel de Palomares. Al continuar con la excavación, se localizó un entierro secundario que debe corresponder al personaje mencionado en la lápida....
Hallowed (under)Ground – Ancient Maya Dark Zone Use Patterns in the Subterranean Realm of Yaxcaba, Central Yucatan, Mexico (2015)
Cave explorers and scholars classify the different light zones of underground spaces into three categories – light, twilight, and dark. Despite the practical challenges ancient people faced while traveling into and through dark zones (those entirely devoid of light), it is common across the Maya region to find rich evidence that demonstrates that these spaces were heavily utilized during Precolumbian times. Research conducted during the 2009 - 2011 field seasons of the Central Yucatan...
Hand modeled Preclassic figurines and early expression of concepts of replication (2017)
This paper concentrates on the vast corpus of hand modeled ceramic figurines from Preclassic Pacific slope of Mesoamerica, in particular those from Middle Preclassic La Blanca, Guatemala. We argue that, within this collection of figurines and related ones from elsewhere in Middle Preclassic Mesoamerica, one can find evidence for the concept of replication – or an emphasis on a recurring "type" or "character" – that pre-dates the invention of the mold. Although Preclassic figurine assemblages are...
Handmade or mass-produced: ritual objects and the making of identity in the Teotihuacan region (2017)
A hallmark of the material culture of Teotihuacan, the largest city of its time in Mesoamerica (ca. 1-600 CE), is the wide circulation of a variety of mass-produced goods, including objects used in household ritual. Items made from molds included masks, figurines, ceramic vessels, and decorative attachments to large incense burners, which are often found in domestic refuse and in ritual contexts such as burials. Although such artifacts appear alike, they were not uniformly distributed across the...
The “Hands of God” as Instruments of Death and Creation: Physicality, Embodiment, and Symbolism of Sacrificial Knives in Mesoamerica (2024)
This is an abstract from the "Sacrificial and Autosacrifice Instruments in Mesoamerica: Symbolism and Technology" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In this talk, we shall analyze sacrificial knives in Mesoamerica’s (bio) archaeological record, among written sources, and iconography. Our survey emphasizes the diversity of cutting weaponry through time and cultural spheres. By combining forensic evidence with the material study of sacrificial knives,...
Harrison's View: The Importance of Small Scale Analyses in Maya Archaeology (2015)
Peter Harrison's work in Maya archaeology was important in many ways. One of the most important, and perhaps overlooked, was the scale of focus at which he often worked. Single features, single rooms, single buildings, and single plazas: all of these are commonly uncovered when digging in Maya site centers. However, due to a lack of artifacts, analyses at these scales are not often conducted. Harrison's work exemplifies that much can be learned from small-scale architectural analyses and in that...
The Harvest of Souls: Mimesis, Materiality, and Ritual Human Sacrifice in Mesoamerica (2016)
The art and science of ritual human sacrifice is a fundamental axiom of Mesoamerican social violence. Accordingly, interpretive constructs for human heart excision and ritualized dismemberment remain keyed to synchronic ethnohistorical and iconographic frames of reference or practice. Though ritual dismemberment, decapitation, and cannibalism have been traced to remote antiquity in highland Mesoamerica, the cosmological underpinnings of human heart excision, and its corollary technologies of...
Has anyone heard from Scott Fedick? (2015)
Scott Fedick co-founded the Yalahau Regional Human Ecology Project in 1993, and his cross disciplinary approach continues to influence both his colleagues and students. This paper provides an overview of how Fedick’s mentorship and scholarship shaped and guided the research of two former students at various sites in the Yalahau region, and how this research has led to a deeper understanding of the settlement patterns during the Preclassic/Classic transition and into the recent historic...
HB Nicholson and the Gulf Coast (2017)
While known primarily as an Aztec specialist, HB Nicholson was instrumental in beginning a dialog on regional iconographies. A key example of this dialog was his work on deity complexes. Building on his mastery of the ethnohistorical data, Nicholson’s work on deity complexes attempted to locate particular deity groups with certain regions. This essay looks at Nicholson’s hypotheses on Gulf Coast iconography and how those hypotheses have helped shape the regional iconographies now being...
"He Entered the Water" … Maya Wetlands and Their Caretakers (2015)
An epitaph for the death of Classic Maya rulers, "he entered the water" is an apt descriptor for a Maya archaeologist whose career spanned the royal and the watery. Peter D. Harrison—whose email address contained the word ahau (ruler, using a Colonial orthography)—was a master of scalar contrast. He attended to the small-scale details of a dynastic headquarters within the Tikal Central Acropolis and also theorized grandly about the role of wetlands in Classic Maya society. He became an advocate...
Health Care in the Marketplace: Exploring Medicinal Plants and Practices at Piedras Negras (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Medicine and Healing in the Americas: Archaeological and Ethnohistorical Perspectives" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Botanical residues recovered from the proposed marketplace area of Piedras Negras have revealed rich information about healing and medicinal activities of Classic Period inhabitants. Excavations in this sector yielded a high quantity of identifiable plant remains in the same contexts as human dental...
Health, Mobility, and Burial Practices: Lifeways and Deathways at Aventura, Belize (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Households at Aventura: Life and Community Longevity at an Ancient Maya City" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Human remains are found in a variety of contexts at Aventura: as primary burials below the floors of houses, as secondary burials or caches also below the floors, and even in middens. The preservation of the bone is very poor and therefore the recovery of individuals is often less than 25%. This sometimes makes...
Heritage Making with a Side of Archaeology: A Community-Led Project and Practice in Tihosuco, Mexico (2024)
This is an abstract from the "Democratizing Heritage Creation: How-To and When" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The process of heritage preservation and the production of knowledge in indigenous communities regularly seem at odds in terms of their overarching goals and outcomes. Relationships to the study and use of heritage are often fraught, and can become political quickly. This paper outlines the practical and methodological aspects of...
Heritage Preservation, Community Development and Sustainability: Tihosuco, Mexico and the Caste War of the Yucatan (2015)
International tourism is a powerful economic force in Mexico today but usually provides little help to indigenous communities except through a long process of economic trickle-down. In addition, many of the ancient sites, the focus of this tourism, are controlled by the nation-state with indigenous peoples often having little say about development or use of the economic benefits. Our recent project in Tihosuco, Quintana Roo is a collaboration between the town of Tihosuco, the Tihosuco Ejido, the...
Heritage That Gives Back: Community Development and Heritage Preservation in Tihosuco, Mexico (2016)
The Heritage Preservation and Community Development Project in Tihosuco, Quintana Roo is a community based anthropological program that seeks to combat the visible economic and social inequality in the region. Such inequalities exist both between the tourists and laborers as well as between the larger economic centers and peripheral indigenous communities. While the project seeks to bridge some gaps by creating jobs and a small-scale tourism market, we also explore ways to have an impact upon...
Heterarchical Entanglement: The Complexity of Maya Water Management (2016)
Many large cities of the ancient Maya, occupied in the Classic Period from 300 to 900 CE, had limited or no access to permanent bodies of water. Instead, these low-density urban centers focused on harnessing the full extent of the seasonal rainfall their tropical environment provided. Previous research has highlighted the complex water management practices of the ancient Maya through their built environment and the sequestration of water into reservoirs (constructed feature sealed with clay or...
High-Precision Chemical Characterization of Major Obsidian Sources in Guatemala (1978)
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High-Resolution Landscape-Level Mapping in the Western Lagoon of Belize (2021)
This is an abstract from the "Archaeology and the History of Human-Environment Interaction in the Lower Belize River Watershed" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. During the summer of 2016, large-scale unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) mapping was conducted in the Western Lagoon near Crooked Tree, the largest inland perennial wetland in all of Belize. Our aim was to record a series of linear features in the wetlands that may represent ancient Maya canals...
The Highland Maya Conquests of the Northern Transversal Strip from the Early Postclassic through the 21st Century (2017)
Salinas de los Nueve Cerros was a massive city in west-central Guatemala that was built around the only non-coastal salt source in the Maya lowlands. In spite of this lowland location, highlanders were drawn to it for its agricultural potential and the rich concentration of salt. In this paper, we will look at the three major colonization attempts of the saltworks and the surrounding region by Maya highlanders—the Early Postclassic, the conquest period, and the late 20th century. After the city...
Highland Mexican Souls as Essences and Symbols (2015)
The ancient Aztecs believed in multiple souls, including Tonalli, Ihiyotl, Yolia, and Nahualli. These souls overlap and extend beyond animated bodies. For example, the Tonalli is not only the heat of life and centered in the head but also an essence shared by animals and humans, similar to the Nahualli. Yolia refers to the physical heart and animates living beings. At death, it takes the form of a bird and flies away. These examples mix description and symbol: Is Tonalli literally heat or...
Hilar y tejer en el Palacio y la periferia. Coincidencias y particularidades de dos espacios domésticos del Clásico Tardío en Comalcalco, Tabasco (2015)
La variedad de atuendos que portan los individuos representados en las figurillas y los ladrillos decorados de Comalcalco, evidencian una actividad textil especializada que daba lugar a la indumentaria que caracterizaba los diferentes niveles de la sociedad local. No se observa en la iconografía existente la presencia de cuerpos desnudos. Por tanto, el hilado y tejido debieron constituir algunas de las actividades femeninas más frecuentes realizadas al interior de los grupos domésticos de esta...
The Hills are Filled with Water; the Caves Breathe Rain: An Ideational Landscape Approach to Settlement Distribution at Classic Period Pacbitun, Belize. (2018)
On an isolated, steep-sided hill in the otherwise undifferentiated foothills of the northern Maya Mountains is the site of Sak Pol Pak, a secondary center of the pre-Hispanic (900 BC – AD 900/1000) Maya site, Pacbitun. Sak Pol Pak is a small site encompassing the entire hilltop, with no room for agriculture and is difficult to access, yet it contains the largest pyramid-temple outside of Pacbitun’s epicenter. At the foot of the hill is the deepest, and most complex cave system in the Pacbitun...