Mesoamerica (Geographic Keyword)
2,076-2,100 (2,387 Records)
In this paper, I show how thin section microscopy enhances our understanding of the social relations and technological sequences of production in the Late Postclassic (1350-1520 AD) salt industry of the northern Basin of Mexico. Aztec salt-making sites have dense concentrations of "fabric-marked" pottery, which is a light, friable ware distinguished by impressions of textiles on its exterior surface. Fabric-marked pottery was probably used to mold blocks of salt for sale in the market. Because...
The Social Dynamics of Ceren's Household Gardens (2018)
The Late Classic Maya village of Joya de Ceren’s extraordinary preservation by the Loma Caldera eruption allows for a unique opportunity to not only understand what plant species the ancient inhabitants utilized in their daily lives but also how the cultivation of these plants shaped the social and economic environment. While Cerén has spectacular preservation of extensive outfields of maize, manioc, and numerous weedy species, this paper will focus on the cultivated spaces surrounding the...
The Social Function of the Title "K’uhul Chatahn Winik" (2016)
Dozens of Maya ceramics from the Late Classic period feature the epithet "k’uhul chatahn winik", ‘divine person of Chatahn’. Most of these are codex-style vessels of unknown provenance, but some specimens have been recovered during archaeological explorations at Calakmul, Nakbe, and Tintal. Moreover, the same title appears in monumental inscriptions, most prominently at Calakmul, where there are at least four examples. Despite a recent increase in research on this specific title, the different...
Social Memory in Maya Hinterland Communities: Recent Excavations at San Lorenzo, Belize (2016)
During the Preclassic period in the Maya lowlands, public structures became the materializations of ideology and memory, functioning to add permanence and significance to the growing ritual landscape. Most Preclassic public ritual structures, however, are documented within formal ceremonial centers. Little is known about Preclassic public spaces within hinterland communities. Recent excavations at the Xunantunich hinterland site of San Lorenzo have uncovered a Preclassic round platform buried...
Social Reactors Project datasets
Datasets from various publications of the Social Reactors Project
Social, Economic, and Political Changes: An integration of ceramic and lithic data from the Three Rivers Region (2017)
Archaeological research in northwestern Belize indicates a long history of occupation beginning in the Middle Preclassic and ending with abandonment in the Terminal Classic. The collection and analysis of ceramic and lithic data on a broad regional scale and across the entire range of settlement hierarchy allow for a comprehensive examination of social and political changes that occurred across the region. Stylistic changes in the ceramics, the continuity of lithic forms, and depositional...
The socio-economic landscape of the Postclassic site La Libertad, Soconusco, Mexico (2016)
This study explores the case of La Libertad, a secondary site located on the southern section of the Soconusco’s coastal plain, probably belonging to the Ayutla polity. The ceramic fragments collected systematically across the entire site are used here as a material correlate to explore expressions of hierarchy. The characteristics of the ceramic collection and the methodology used to recover the materials provide an ideal setting to study spatial patterns of distribution and the concentration...
Socio-Spatial Isomorphism and Ancient Farming Systems: Nominal versus Practical Tenure in the Basin of Mexico (2015)
The recognition that similarities exist between the form of agricultural systems and the form of society is a fundamental archaeological contribution to the social sciences. This view of socio-spatial isomorphism is especially notable in research on irrigation. The spatial and temporal properties of water require particular forms of cooperation. Organizational configurations are contingent upon scale, integration, and number of users. In the Basin of Mexico during the Postclassic period, the...
Socioeconomics of Craft Production in the Copán Hinterland: The Chert Industry of Río Amarillo, Honduras (2016)
This study presents new data from the site of Río Amarillo, Honduras focusing on the social aspects of craft production in the political sphere of Copán, Honduras (A.D. 400 – 900). Between 2011 and 2014, excavations led by the Proyecto Arqueológico Río Amarillo Copán (PARAC) have recovered large quantities of microcrystalline silicate artifacts, including nodules, debitage, and finished tools. Such data are important as they shed light onto the procurement strategies, methods of local...
Soil Chemical Analysis of the Floors of Walled Enclosures within the Mirador Basin (2021)
This is an abstract from the "Recent Multidisciplinary Investigations in the Mirador Basin, Guatemala" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Geochemical analyses of soils and floors have proven useful in the interpretation of ancient human activities. Lidar images of the Mirador basin have brought to light Preclassic walled enclosures in the Mirador basin. Soil chemical analysis in combination with lidar and excavation data helped determine the ancient...
Soil, landsurfaces and settlements under lava: the case of Cuicuilco, Mexico (2015)
First societies based on agriculture settled Mexico Basin around 3000 years ago (from BC 1500 to AD 100), during Formative period, according to Mesoamerican chronology. Cuicuilco is one and probably the first of these Formative sites in Mexico Basin and is located in the southern part of Mexico City, in an area covered by lava flows from the Xitle volcano, named as El Pedregal. The age of the eruption has been established around 1,670+/- 35 years B.P. It is considered that Cuicuilco was probably...
Soils, Sedimentary Rocks, and Scale: Recent Geoarchaeological Investigations at Colha, Northern Belize (2018)
The Maya site of Colha is located on a karstic doline that is dominated by Tertiary and Pleistocene limestone and marls. This low-lying area, known locally as the Cobweb depression, encompasses a complex wetland system that is affected by Holocene sea level rise, human-induced vegetation changes, and both natural and anthropogenic erosional sequences. The dynamic landscape, coupled with a long history of human occupation, places this site in a complex geographic and cultural position within the...
Solid Foundations: Practical and Symbolic Significance of Bedrock at El Castillo Acropolis of Xunantunich, Belize in the Maya Central Lowlands (2017)
Not all excavations reach to bedrock. In the Maya Central Lowlands, exposing bedrock can be difficult due to the longevity of occupational sequences and the sometimes confounding presence of thick, seemingly endless Preclassic marl floors. In some cases, our ability to reach and examine bedrock helps us to consider early living and ceremonial spaces, masonry and structural techniques, as well as potential emic connections of natural limestone mountains and cultural manifestations of limestone...
Some Comments On Manihot Subsistence and the Ancient Maya (1971)
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.
Some Comments on Present and Future Contributions of Paleoethnobotany in the Neotropics (2015)
Paleoethnobotanical research the past two decades from around the world makes it clear that multi-proxy data including from genetic and paleoecological approaches are necessary for understanding plant exploitation, domestication, and spread of agriculture. Recently, bio-archaeologists using such kinds of multidisciplinary endeavors have come to understand that addressing prehistory is also relevant to understanding species adaptation and survival in future environments. This paper discusses...
Some More Thoughts on the Study of Prehispanic Soundmakers (2021)
This is an abstract from the "Music Archaeology's Paradox: Contextual Dependency and Contextual Expressivity" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The study of prehispanic musical instruments or soundmakers stored in museum collections was certainly foundational to the history of music archaeology. Due to the fact that they were most often decontextualized, those studies used to concentrate on one of two aspects of many of these artifacts; namely, their...
Some Recent Publications About Oaxaca (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.
Sounds in context. Musical instruments from Teotihuacan. (2017)
In this paper we present the advances in the organological, acoustic and contextual analysis of musical instruments excavated by Dr. Linda Manzanilla in the sectors of Teopancazco, Oztoyahualco, Tunnels and Xalla, all of them located in the archaeological site of Teotihuacan. These instruments were part of a complex system of sound communication that often accompanied the rituals and daily activities. We propose some interpretations on the use of certain instruments and their relationship with...
Soundscapes and Visionscapes: Investigating Ancient Maya Cities with GIS and 3D Modeling (2018)
Researchers have been applying Geographic Information Systems (GIS) to examine the roles of visibility and movement in archaeological landscapes around the world. However, few studies have investigated the role sound potentially played in structuring experience in ancient cities. To begin to fill this gap, this paper builds on our initial investigations to develop new geospatial and virtual reality (VR) methods to examine ancient acoustics. For the ancient Maya, sight and sound worked in...
Source Variability and Technological Variation of Domestic Lithic Production at Santa Rita Corozal, Belize, during the Late Postclassic Period (2016)
Lithic raw material acquisition and household flaked stone crafting continues to enable a better understanding of ancient Maya domestic economies. One such example at Santa Rita Corozal, Belize, seeks to determine how local households provisioned themselves and how Santa Rita Corozal articulated with other Chetumal Bay sites during the Late Postclassic Period (A.D. 1200-1530). Data presented in this paper challenge previous models of resource exploitation and exchange by suggesting that a...
Sourcing Preceramic obsidian from Las Estacas, Morelos, and Yuzanu 36, Oaxaca (2018)
Understanding of long-distance exchange during the Mesoamerican Preceramic suffers from a limited range of materials whose source locations can be determined relative to later periods. Obsidian is one of the few materials that can provide evidence for long-distance exchange through geochemical analysis, although relatively few sourcing studies have been carried out on Preceramic obsidian. In this paper, we report recent pXRF results from obsidian recovered at two Preceramic sites: Las Estacas,...
Sourcing the Clay: LA-ICP-MS Analysis of Ceramics from the Programme for Belize Archaeological Project, Northwestern Belize (2015)
This poster presents results of recent provenance research of Lemonal Cream ceramics from the Programme for Belize Archaeological Project (PfBAP) region located within the Rio Bravo Conservation Management Area in Northwestern Belize. We used laser ablation inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry (LA-ICP-MS) on Lemonal Cream wares from four different sites within the PfBAP region to determine the elemental signatures and compared them to the elemental signature of clay deposits uncovered...
Space, Ritual and Production at Wari Camp (2015)
This paper examines the construction of residential and ritual space at the prehispanic Maya site of Wari Camp, located in northwestern Belize in the Rio Bravo Conservation and Management Area. We explore the productive activities of temple and pair groups at the site through examination of lithic and ceramic material recovered from excavations conducted at the northern satellite of the site in 2012. In addition, environmental and soil data from the site provides insight into the relationships...
Spanish Empire Dynamics, Early Globalization, and Copper Production in Early Colonial Mexico (1522–1648) (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Technological Transitions in Prehispanic and Colonial Metallurgy: Recent and Ongoing Research at the Archaeological Site of Jicalán Viejo, in Central Michoacán, West Mexico" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. When the Spanish conquistadors arrived in Mesoamerica, they found a well-developed metallurgical tradition based on copper and copper-based alloys. With an increasing demand for copper and an almost complete lack of...
A Spatial Analysis of Proposed Egalitarian Site Organization in Postclassic Tlaxcallan (2015)
The Tlaxcaltecas are known as one of the few groups to maintain autonomy from the Late Postclassic expansion of the Aztec Triple Alliance in Central Mexico. This is particularly interesting given their location, surrounded by Aztec allies and tributaries. In their 2010 paper, Fargher et al. proposed that the success of the Tlaxcallan state was attributed to a political ideology that emphasized egalitarianism rather than imperialism. In a 2011 paper, Fargher et al. expanded upon this hypothesis...