Chiapas (State / Territory) (Geographic Keyword)

DOCUMENT Citation Only Dolores Piperno.

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...

DOCUMENT Full-Text Michael E. Smith. Alanna Ossa. Alexandra Norwood.

Metadata to accompany the excel file containing information on plaza area and population for Mesoamerican cities

DATASET Alanna Ossa. Michael E. Smith.

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.

DOCUMENT Citation Only David Milley. Armando Anaya-Hernández. Nicholas P. Dunning. Kathryn Reese-Taylor. Debra S. Walker.

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...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Arthur Joyce.

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...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Christopher Jazwa. Amira Ainis. Ryan Anderson. Karim Bulhusen Muñoz. Harumi Fujita.

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,...

DOCUMENT Full-Text Caitlin A. Clark. Linda Scott Cummings.

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.

DOCUMENT Citation Only Pedro Ramon Celis.

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...

DOCUMENT Citation Only James Daniels. Hector Neff. Heather Thakar.

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...

DOCUMENT Citation Only David Rafael McCormick Alcorta.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Networks of long-distance exchange in quotidian commodities are essential aspects of prehistoric economies. On the Pacific Slope of Guatemala, there was no more important commodity than obsidian, which accounts for almost all cutting edges found in archaeological contexts. Obsidian sourcing studies on the Pacific Slope have been limited, relied on very...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Roberto López Bravo.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Five years of survey and excavations are providing data regarding Postclassic and Contact-period Central Chiapas, allowing new proposals regarding the functioning of the Chiapanec polity. This study presents an analysis of the distribution of the population near ancient Chiapan, the capital of the Chiapanec polity at the time of the arrival of the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Whittaker Schroder.

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...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Rebecca Mendelsohn.

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...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Joel Palka. Fabiola Sánchez.

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...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Hector Neff.

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...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Laura Brodie.

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...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Shayna Lindquist.

This is an abstract from the "El principio del fin, el inicio del principio: Arqueología de la transición del Formativo al Clásico en Los Tuxtlas, Veracruz, México" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. By the Formative period, prehispanic societies in southern Veracruz primarily relied on obsidian for numerous daily activities. However, as the geological sources of obsidian that were exploited occur in central Mexico and the Guatemalan and Honduran...

PROJECT Uploaded by: Scott Ortman

Datasets from various publications of the Social Reactors Project

DOCUMENT Citation Only David Rafael McCormick Alcorta.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Lithic artisans were critical to society throughout the Americas prior to the introduction of iron by Europeans. On the Pacific Coast of Guatemala, where no local sources of chipped-stone imported obsidian was available, obsidian was used to meet social demand for cutting edges. Throughout time this demand was met by a mixture of importing finished tools...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Mauricio Díaz García. Cameron L. McNeil. Agapito Carballo. Samuel Pinto. Reina Hernández.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The site of Río Amarillo, on the far eastern side of the Copan Valley, was integrated into the economy of the Copan polity during the Classic period. However, the groups surrounding the core of Río Amarillo long outlasted both Copan’s center and the secondary center of Río Amarillo. This paper will explore the ceramic evidence from the hinterlands to...

DOCUMENT Citation Only R. Scott Baxter.

This is an abstract from the "Heritage Sites at the Intersection of Landscape, Memory, and Place: Archaeology, Heritage Commemoration, and Practice" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Summit Camp was occupied by Chinese railroad workers from 1864 to 1869. It was the longest occupied camp associated with the building of the transcontinental railroad. Workers from the camp excavated a series of tunnels through the granite bedrock of the Sierra Nevada...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Juan Sereno-Uribe.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Recent surveying and excavation works on the coast of the state of Guerrero and Oaxaca has shown that this is a region with ample archaeological potential. Dr. Román Piña Chan who made several visits during the sixties in that area, already indicated that the systematic study of the coast, would allow us to understand the development of various groups located...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Mikael Fauvelle.

Fracción Mujular is a modest residential site located on the Pacific Coast of Chiapas, Mexico. Long known for the Central Mexican iconography found on its carved stelae, investigations conducted during the winter of 2017 represent the first excavations of the site. This paper presents the results of these excavations, as well as subsequent laboratory analysis. We now know that Fracción Mujular has a history that covers over one thousand years of occupation, from the Early Classic to the Late...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Caitlin Buck. James Zeidler.

This is an abstract from the "Constructing Chronologies II: The Big Picture with Bayes and Beyond" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The radiocarbon record from sustained archaeological field research in the Jama Valley of coastal Ecuador has provided a robust dataset for Bayesian chronological modeling using multiple archaeological sites from a valley-wide landscape. This paper delves into greater detail on the development of the model’s prior...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Patricia Urban. Edward Schortman.

This is an abstract from the "Centralizing Central America: New Evidence, Fresh Perspectives, and Working on New Paradigms" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Archaeologists have long speculated that western Honduras was one source of the copper artifacts found in southern Mesoamerica from the tenth century onward. Until now, there has been little field evidence to back up this claim. Work conducted at the major political center of El Coyote in 2002,...