Chiapas (State / Territory) (Geographic Keyword)
51-75 (92 Records)
This is an abstract from the "Palaeoeconomic and Environmental Reconstructions in Island and Coastal Archaeology" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Changes to coastal environments from natural and anthropogenic factors have influenced human subsistence and settlement patterns throughout the Baja California peninsula. These changes are visible both in the archaeological record and present-day human settlements. We discuss long-term human-environment...
Natural Corridor or Challenging Route? Rethinking Pre-Hispanic Communications across the Pacific Coast of Guatemala (2018)
The Pacific coast of Guatemala has long been regarded as a natural corridor that facilitated travel and trade, and served as a route of migration and invasion, connecting eastern Mexico, the Guatemalan highlands, and El Salvador, with further regions of Mexico and Central America. At first glance, the natural configuration of the coast seems to provide unobstructed passage, especially when compared with the rugged terrain of the adjacent highlands. The maps in many publications feature vague...
New Views on the Ancient City of Cihuatán (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Reconstructing the Political Organization of Pre-Columbian Nicaragua" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Since half a century ago, it has been recognized that the Early Postclassic in the territory of western El Salvador represents a sweeping departure from its Classic period antecedents, as seen in the type site of Cihuatán. Its nature has been variously described as generically Mexican, or central Mexican and Gulf...
Nonlinear and Multiscalar Dynamics of Migration (2018)
The quantitative model of diffusion traditionally studied in archaeology uses Gaussian statistics and Brownian motion to envisage a slow wave of advance. It originates from Fisher’s model for the diffusion of advantageous alleles across the landscape, but was then applied in archaeology to the diffusion of agriculture from the Near East into Europe. More recently, Lévy flights, which are random walks with step lengths derived from power-law distributions, have been proposed as models for human...
Nueva hipótesis en torno a la organización política olmeca de San Lorenzo (2021)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Hay cierto acuerdo entre los arqueólogos que los olmecas integraron verdaderos estados. Aunque se sostiene que eran sistemas centralizados, la naturaleza política de esta organización permanece todavía poco clara, así como sus mecanismos de funcionamiento. Por ahora, los significativos avances en el conocimiento de la más antigua capital olmeca, San...
O'na Tok: A Preclassic Zoque Center in Western Chiapas, Mexico (2021)
This is an abstract from the "The Archaeology of Trade and Exchange" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Preliminary explorations at the previously unknown Zoque site of O’na Tök reveals within a mid-montane wet forest, a multifaceted archaeological landscape containing an early ceremonial center, an expansive area of long architectural platforms, and nearby caves used for ritual purposes. Artifacts recovered on the surface suggest occupation during...
O'na Tök: A Zoque Center in Western Chiapas, México (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In June of 2016, the archaeological site designated O'na Tök was recorded as a primary center in the western portion of the Central Depression of Chiapas, Mexico. Preliminary studies of cultural material recovered on the surface and test pits suggest the Zoque of O'na Tök participated in an exchange network with contemporary centers during the Early...
Obsidian Exchange and Political Change: Shifting Patterns of Obsidian Use Across the Late Classic and Postclassic at Fracción Mujular (2021)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Fracción Mujular is a small domestic settlement located on the slopes of Cerro Bernal near the Pacific Coast of Chiapas, Mexico. Founded under the auspices of the Early Classic center of Los Horcones, Fracción Mujular was occupied for nearly one thousand years, persisting through the Collapse of Los Horcones and entering into a period of rapid expansion during...
Pacific Coastal Exchange in Postclassic Mexico: Wealth, Rituals, Feasts, and Marriages (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Coastal Connections: Pacific Coastal Links from Mexico to Ecuador" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The pioneering fieldwork of Seler, Lumholtz, Saville, Sauer, Vaillant and Elkholm, the Sociedad Mexicana de Antropología to officially recognize "Mixteca-Puebla" as the fourth and last major cultural horizon of the ancient Mexican World in 1945. By 1960 however, H.B. Nicholson had reduced Mixteca-Puebla to a provincial...
Palenque
Photos 10343-10355, 11305-11306, 11459-11471, 11481
The Past (and Future?) of Our Crop Plants in Changing Global Environments (2018)
The development of agricultural societies, one of the most transformative events in human and ecological history, began independently in a number of world regions including the American tropics during a period of profound environmental change at the Pleistocene-Holocene transition. Plant domestication is at its core an evolutionary process involving both natural and human selection for traits favorable for harvesting and consumption. Scientists from a number of disciplines have long sought to...
Plaza Size Dataset: Metadata. Supplemental Material for Ossa et al. (2017)
Metadata to accompany the excel file containing information on plaza area and population for Mesoamerican cities
Plaza sizes for Mesoamerican cities (2017)
Plaza area and population for Postclassic Mesoamerican cities analyzed in: Ossa, Alanna, Michael E. Smith, and José Lobo (2017). The Size of Plazas in Mesoamerican Cities: A Quantitative Analysis and Social Interpretation. Latin American Antiquity 28(4): 457-475.
Post-Classic Canal Excavations at Yaxnohcah, Mexico (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Yaxnohcah is a large site in Campeche, Mexico with evidence of continual occupation from the early Middle Preclassic into the Postclassic. In 2014, the Yaxnohcah Archaeological Project commissioned a high resolution lidar scan of the region, which has allowed for accurate modeling of surface hydrology and significantly contributed to our understanding of...
The Power of Monuments in Ruin in Prehispanic Oaxaca (2023)
This is an abstract from the "The Vibrancy of Ruins: Ruination Studies in Ancient Mesoamerica" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This paper examines the materiality of two ruined monumental architectural complexes in prehispanic Oaxaca: the Main Plaza of the mountaintop city of Monte Albán in the Oaxaca Valley and the acropolis of Río Viejo located on the Río Verde’s coastal floodplain. Both of these impressive complexes were important political and...
A Preliminary Chronology of Settlement and Subsistence Patterns in Cabo Pulmo National Park, Baja California Sur, Mexico (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. We present the results of our preliminary analysis of the archaeological resources in Cabo Pulmo National Park (CPNP), Baja California Sur, Mexico. Since 1995, CPNP has yielded evidence for ecological recovery of marine resources, although long-term prospects are still in question. As important are the cultural resources in the park and surrounding area,...
PROTEIN ANALYSIS OF SAMPLES FROM SITE LACANJÁ TZELTAL, CHIAPAS, MEXICO (2019)
Lacanjá Tzeltal is a Classic Period Maya site located in Ocosingo, Chiapas, Mexico. A cache containing artifacts was recovered beneath a large limestone altar, situated in the center of a ballcourt (Andrew Scherer, personal communication, November 29, 2019). One chert spear point and two obsidian blades from the cache were submitted for protein residue (CIEP) analysis to determine if the tools were used on plants or animals prior to being deposited in the cache.
Proyecto Cerro del Gallo, Monte Albán, Oaxaca, participación comunitaria dentro de un proyecto de investigación arqueológica (2018)
El proyecto arqueológico "Cerro del Gallo", se desprende de los trabajos de investigación realizados en el Conjunto Monumental de Atzompa, dentro del sitio arqueológico de Monte Albán. La participación de diversos actores de la población civil, gubernamentales y de la iniciativa privada ha podido concatenarse de tal forma que, se ha podido construir de manera satisfactoria un ambicioso proyecto de investigación, que involucra además de un objetivo académico como lo es el discernir los procesos...
Reaping the Rewards of Incipient Agriculture from the Land to the Sea and the Mangroves In Between (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. During the Archaic to Early Formative transition, the Soconusco populations began adopting more sedentary subsistence strategies and investing more in their local environments. Evidence from sediment cores demonstrates that during the Archaic, populations were burning inland landscapes and starting to grow maize. The environmental effects of incipient...
Risk and Resilience in the Dynamic Lower Lacantun River Landscape (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Dynamic Frontiers in the Archaeology of Chiapas" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Maya have inhabited diverse environments in southern Mesoamerica, typified by marked seasonal contrasts between wet and dry periods. Access to water as a resource for agriculture and transportation varied spatially and seasonally for Maya communities, with scholarly and public attention often focusing on the challenges posed by...
Ritual and Domestic Plant Use on the Southern Pacific Coast of Mexico: A Starch Grain Study of the Formative to Classic Period Transition at Izapa (2018)
In southern Mesoamerica, the transition from the Formative period to Classic period (100 B.C.- A.D. 400) was a time of population decline, cessation of monumental construction, and the abandonment of many sites. Environmental explanations such as drought and volcanic activity have been proposed as potential trigger factors for the widespread collapse at the close of the Formative period. Current evidence suggests that residents of the early capital of Izapa, located on a piedmont environmental...
A Rural Travel Stopover at the Late Postclassic Maya Site of Mensabak, Chiapas, Mexico: Overland Trade, Cross-Cultural Interaction, and Social Cohesion in the Chiapas Frontier (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Dynamic Frontiers in the Archaeology of Chiapas" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. A small rural stopover site in the frontier along overland Late Postclassic (ca. 1300–1500 CE) Maya and Aztec trade and travel routes was identified at Mensabak, Chiapas, Mexico. This site is similar in function to rural Old World and Andean caravan stop overs, such as caravanserai and way stations, where travelers and traders obtained...
Salt and Plumbate: Late Classic Multi-crafting in Eastern Soconusco, Chiapas, Mexico (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Ceramics and Archaeological Sciences" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Archaeological mounds within the mangrove zone west of the Rio Cahuacan, in far-southern Chiapas, Mexico, have dense surface remains of broken Plumbate pottery, solid ceramic cylinders, and various other kinds of pyro-technological evidence. Clays from the region match Tohil Plumbate chemical composition, thus solidifying the inference that the...
Settlement Locations and Soil Fertility in the Volcán Barú Region of Panama (2018)
Analyses of settlement locations (such as hamlets and farmsteads) within the Volcán Barú region of Panama and their associated periods of occupation suggest that during certain times, such as the Chiriquí Period, soil fertility was an important factor in determining the location. However, during other periods, it does not seem to have been significant. There also is a centralization of the population during the late formative, or Late Bugaga Phase, which correlates with previous findings of...
Social Reactors Project datasets
Datasets from various publications of the Social Reactors Project