Mesoamerica (Geographic Keyword)

DOCUMENT Citation Only Ann Scott.

This is an abstract from the "Studies in Mesoamerican Subterranean Archaeology" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. A major reformulation of the history of Maya cave archaeology has recently been proposed for the second half of the twentieth century. Jon Spenard, in his dissertation, has suggested that modern cave archaeology began to emerge during the Post War Period (1950 – 1980) based on work carried out in Belize. This paper takes a closer look at...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Martin Berger.

In 1932, Alfonso Caso and his team found a human skull decorated with turquoise mosaic tesserae during their well-known excavation of Monte Albán’s Tumba 7. To this day, this is the only artifact of this type to have been found in a documented excavation. Nevertheless, at least twenty turquoise mosaic-decorated human skulls are currently held in museums and private collections. Many of these have been considered forgeries, others are considered authentic. Within this group, there are clear...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Phil C. Weigand. Garman Harbottle. Edward V. Sayre.

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 Jennifer Mathews. John Gust. Scott Fedick.

Since the mid-1990s, members of the Yalahau and Costa Escondida projects have focused on historical archaeology in northern Quintana Roo. Our research has examined the remnants of the chicle (chewing gum), sugar cane and small-batch rum industries from the late 1800s. Although these sites are relatively recent, the production equipment and other artifacts have been picked through by later occupants, making it challenging to be able to reconstruct the historic record. In an attempt to overcome...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Danny Zborover.

In this talk I will present a contextual and iconographic analysis of two unusual, yet almost identical, figurines of lavishly dressed warriors, reported from different sites in the Chontal Highlands of Oaxaca. While variations on mold-made solid figurines of armed individuals were common in Late Classic Oaxaca, the particular attributes of these figurines are more analogous to militaristic iconography emerging from Postclassic Central Mexico. Taking the figurines’ iconography and regional...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Linda Brown.

For contemporary Tz’utujil Maya ritual practitioners living in the highlands of Guatemala, the night is a particularly potent time and one to which they are inherently linked. Individuals often learn of their destiny to become ritual practitioners when they are first contacted by ancestral beings, known collectively as nawales, at night during dreams. Thereafter ancestral nawales and ritual practitioners enter into mutually beneficial social relationships that are mediated through sacred objects...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Mitchell Grothaus. Zebulon Hart. Timothy Hare.

During our 2015 and 2016 field seasons, we mapped and created 3D models of numerous excavation sites in the region surrounding Mayapán in the Northern Yucatán. Complete horizontal excavations of several rural house groups were conducted. We used unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs/drones) to carry photographic equipment to collect both vertical and oblique photos as well as videos. The resulting images were processed in photogrammetric software to generate orthorectified airphoto mosaics and 3D...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Zebulon Hart. Mitchell Grothaus. Timothy Hare.

During our 2015 and 2016 field seasons, we mapped and created 3D models of numerous excavation sites in the Northern Yucatán. Several of these sites are located in Mayapan’s periphery and many were scheduled for destruction due to highway expansion. We used unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs/drones) to carry photographic equipment to collect both vertical and oblique photos as well as videos. In several areas we used both visible light and a near-infrared (NIR) cameras. The resulting images were...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jotka Verlee. Cornelis Stal. Britt Lonneville. Cameron McNeil. Alain De Wulf.

The use of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV) has seen a tremendous development over the last decade. The department of Geography of Ghent University has deployed these platforms to perform high-level research on the modelling of cultural heritage. The selection of a suitable system was mainly based on compactness and flexibility in terms of transportation and deployment, as well as cost-efficiency. The platform was deployed in various international field campaigns. The first campaign’s objective...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Karina Jiménez. Jorge Luis Ríos Allier.

La presente investigación tiene como objetivo mostrar el trabajo realizado en el cerro Danush localizado en la comunidad de San Mateo Macuilxóchitl de Artigas Carranza, Oaxaca; el cual tuvo como eje principal conocer las características que comparten los paneles de pintura rupestre de acuerdo a su ubicación en el cerro Danush, tomando en consideración las singularidades del paisaje. La importancia del estudio de las pinturas rupestres radica en que estas son una de las primeras...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Pablo Fernando De Jesús Pérez.

El presente estudio trata sobre trabajos realizados en la Sierra Sur de Oaxaca, localizado en los márgenes del río Tehuantepec, región en donde se establecieron grupos humanos dedicados a la caza, pesca, recolección de frutos y agricultura, con recursos naturales que fueron explotados, haciendo posible su establecimiento permanente, dejando plasmada su historia a través de elementos arquitectónicos, que para el año de 2015 fueron explorados arqueológicamente. El desarrollo de esta investigación...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Angel Rivera.

Los huesos humanos grabados, encontrados como ofrenda en depósitos funerarios, representan un marcador especial del gremio sacerdotal de la sociedad del Oaxaca antiguo. Por un lado, al ser huesos humanos, establecen un lazo con los ancestros del grupo; por otro, la imaginería que muestran permiten establecer el tipo de rituales y oblaciones a los que estaban dedicados. Más aún, estos objetos eran considerados como reliquias y en algunos casos se les ilustra en la imaginería de los códices...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jonathan Rosas.

El presente trabajo versa sobre la pintura de la tapa de bóveda 1 del yacimiento arqueológico de Sacnicté, Yucatán. En ella aparecen representados un par de personajes, uno ha sido interpretado como un enano jorobado en actitud amenazante. Al respecto pongo en duda este planteamiento, ya que analizando diferentes aspectos de la imagen como la posición, la postura, el gesto y las características de cada individuo, propongo que se trata únicamente de un individuo jorobado, que señala al otro...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Erik Chiquito Cortés.

Con el hallazgo fortuito de una cámara mortuoria en Ixcaquixtla, Puebla (dentro de la mixteca). se pudieron registrar un conjunto de pinturas murales que hasta la fecha son únicas en la región. A pesar de contar ya con once años de haber sido descubiertas, los trabajos entorno a la pintura mural son escasos y los existentes se centran en determinan su contenido iconográfico. Con base en la anterior, nuestra presentación reflexiona y busca dar una propuesta estilística sobre la pintura mural,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jeremy Coltman.

For the ancient Maya, the landscape was wild, untamed, and dotted with caves, which were the darkest of spaces. On an empirical level, caves can reveal the ancient Maya experience of intimate darkness and nullified senses. Such experience belonged to the night, which was fraught with danger, temporally distant, and inhabited by a cast of anti-social beings. These beings belonged to the wilderness and dark forests that lacked internal order and spatial division. Much like the concept of chaos in...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Guido Pezzarossi.

The colonial Maya community of San Pedro Aguacatepeque, located in Pacific piedmont Guatemala, sits on the eastern flank of the Volcan de Fuego, a long-active stratovolcano. The interventions of new materialist approaches, in particular Bennett’s notion of the "vibrancy" and influence of nonhumans in the unfolding of history, are brought into relief when considering the abundant historical entanglements between the Volcan de Fuego and Aguacatepeque. The regular flows and bursts emanating from...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Walter Burgos Morakawa. Brent Woodfill.

The Candelaria Caves System, with its approximately 18 km of passageways, forms the second largest underground karstic complex in the Maya Area. As result of their location at the highland-lowland transition and close to Great Western Trade Route, it was an important pilgrimage center for people of different cultural and geographical regions. The Early Classic period (A.D. 250-500) marked the introduction of polychrome ceramics, mainly Dos Arroyos-group ceramics, which played an important role...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jacob Welch. Barry Kidder. Céline Lamb. Shannon Plank. David Medina-Arona.

Soil chemistry in the Northern Maya Lowlands has been an effective method at a variety of sites and in a range of contexts such as households, ballcourts, causeways, and ceremonial plazas. Recent chemical analyses of the Ucí-Cansahcab Regional integration Project (UCRIP) also revealed that the soils of the Yucatán, México, are testable using the in-field Olsen bicarbonate method to measure levels of extractable inorganic phosphate. When supplemented with distributional analyses of artifacts on...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Flavio Silva De La Mora. Rodrigo Liendo.

The region known as the Northwestern Maya Lowlands encloses a large geographic and cultural area that included and was part of a large system of exchange of goods, people and ideas. Archaeological evidence recovered in the region serve as evidence of the complex system of communication routes and local settlements that were part of local communities and practices. The communication routes and archaeological sites localized between the Usumacinta River and Tulija River serve as a case study of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Joanne Baron. Frauke Sachse. Daniel Boomhower.

This is an abstract from the "A Celebration and Critical Assessment of "The Maya Scribe and His World" on its Fiftieth Anniversary" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The majority of photographs in “The Maya Scribe and His World” were taken by Justin Kerr. Kerr’s development of rollout photography transformed the field, allowing Maya ceramics to be documented and studied more easily. With the creation of the searchable online database Mayavase.com,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Scott Hutson.

This paper explores data on consumption of durable goods in Classic period domestic contexts both in cities (Chunchucmil, Tikal) and rural areas (Ceren, hinterlands of Izamal and Copan). The goal is to document variation in distribution systems across the lowlands. Though some of this variation may be due to the intensity of market systems, other variation may be due to the wealth and resourcefulness of individual households and some due to long-term trends in economic prosperity throughout the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Lauren E. Schwartz.

Interpretations of Mesoamerican households tend to focus on activities that might rightly be associated with daylight hours and mostly informed by material culture that is moveable and multipurpose. However, intensive examinations of the non-movable or architectural composition of household settings have recently revealed even more about these diverse and socially complex domestic spaces. This examination initiates an analysis of the interaction between humans and their built-environment as it...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jason Paling. Marx Navarro Castillo. Justin Lowry.

The intrinsic relationship between human beings and bodies of water is unquestionable. Among the ancient Maya it has been observed that many of their agricultural cults were linked to existing bodies of water where they settled. In the Maya Northern Lowlands, multiple underwater archaeological studies of cenotes record this behavior as offerings of luxury items and human sacrifice are often recovered and noted. The Rancho Ojo de Agua archaeological project focuses on the basin of the Lacanhá...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Heather McKillop. Harry Roberts. Karen McKee. Terrance Winemiller. John Jones.

Following the discovery and mapping of over 100 salt works in a shallow, salt-water lagoon system, a collaborative, interdisciplinary research project was initiated with funding from NSF to examine the ancient landscape, sea-level rise, use of the wooden buildings for salt production and as residences, and reconstruct the underwater sites using 3D GIS. Sediment coring across the lagoon system identified red mangrove peat, an indicator of actual sea-level rise, as well as a plethora of pollen...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Mark Irish.

Monochrome red jars and bowls featuring unique unit-stamped designs have been excavated from Late Classic contexts throughout the southern Petén and the areas surrounding the Maya Mountains. Adorning apparently utilitarian vessels, these unit-stamps show both a consistency in size and application across their spatial range, as well as a great diversity in the preferred motifs depicted. Combining a new ceramic chronology developed at Lubaantun and data from across southern Belize and the southern...