Mesoamerica: Oaxaca or Southern Highlands (Geographic Keyword)
76-100 (126 Records)
Ongoing scholarly debate concerning the function, meaning, and history of Monte Albán’s Main Plaza have important ramifications for our understanding of sociopolitical, economic, and religious life at the Zapotec capital. Although previous investigations have targeted many of the buildings that surround the plaza, none have focused explicitly on the plaza itself. This paper presents the preliminary results of the Proyecto Geofísico de Monte Albán (PGMA), a non-invasive study of the entire Main...
A Mortuary Analysis of Adult and Child Burials of Río Viejo, Oaxaca, Mexico (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Mortuary practices are symbolically charged activities that vary depending on wealth, religion, manner of death, and even age. Recent excavations of the site of Río Viejo, Oaxaca, Mexico, suggest similar burial practices between adults and children during the Early Postclassic (AD 800–1100) and Late Classic (AD 500–800). The current understanding of burial...
Multisensor Geophysical Survey of Monte Albán’s Main Plaza (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Monumental Surveys: New Insights from Landscape-Scale Geophysics" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. During the summer of 2017, we conducted a landscape-scale geophysical survey of the Main Plaza at Monte Albán, Oaxaca, Mexico. We obtained full coverage of the plaza with gradiometry, electrical resistance, and ground-penetrating radar and also generated a centimeter-level accuracy map using a drone and a robotic total...
Narratives in Clay and Pigment: Cultural Knowledge and Social Practices in the Sierra Mixe, Oaxaca (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The artistic expressions of the Ayuujk (Mixe) peoples are little known in Mexican archaeological research. In this presentation I discuss the possible narratives behind the presence of plastic art and rock art, unprecedent in Mesoamérica, located in the context of a subterranean landscape in the Sierra Mixe of Oaxaca. In particular I will focus on the...
Neighborhood Organization in Early States: Exploring Spatial Variability at El Palenque (2018)
The late Formative polity centered at the El Palenque site, near San Martín Tilcajete, Oaxaca, Mexico was a densely populated settlement. The site was founded in the late Monte Albán I phase (300-100) during a period of hostility and violent conflict. The settlement at El Palenque consists of a 1.6 ha civic ceremonial plaza, a 28 ha core area of residential occupation, and an additional 43.5 ha with more dispersed evidence for residential occupation. There may be a number of factors influencing...
Nourishing the Ancestors among the Zapotecs, Valley of Oaxaca (2019)
This is an abstract from the "The Archaeology of Oaxacan Cuisine" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. From 500 BCE onwards, religion in the Valley of Oaxaca was organized in part as an ancestor cult as materialized by the appearance of household tombs in the archaeological record. Heads of households were laid to rest for a number of generations with offerings consisting most often of ceramic vessels, which in domestic contexts were used to serve food...
The Oaxacan Cuisine at Achiutla during the Early Colonial Period: A Story of Resilience (2019)
This is an abstract from the "The Archaeology of Oaxacan Cuisine" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Using paleoethnobotany, this paper examines the Mixtecs’ reaction to the arrival of Spanish at Achiutla, located in the Mixteca Alta. Faced with many challenges during the Early Colonial Period (1521–1600 AD), we examine how Mixtecs’ inhabitants of Achiutla negotiated the arrival of new, introduced foods in the region. To do so, we compare the plant...
Occupational Stress on Oaxaca’s Pacific Coast: Bioarchaeological Evidence for Specialized Task Activity at Rio Viejo (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This paper provides a micro-scale consideration of the broader social processes under way during the Early Classic to the Postclassic periods in the Río Verde drainage basin of Oaxaca, Mexico. Through a detailed bioarchaeological analysis, we examine individuals from Río Viejo for evidence of occupational stress, with an emphasis on select individuals who...
The Offerings of Cerro de la Virgen, Oaxaca, Mexico: Ontological Perspectives on a Unique Assemblage of Ritual Deposits (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The recent ontological turn in archaeological research has resulted in a proliferation of theoretical approaches inspired by non-representational and non-anthropocentric scholarship. In relational ontologies such as those of Pre-Columbian Mesoamerica, objects could possess a life force that allowed them to engage with other animate beings, to animate other...
Perception and Interpretation of the Landscape in the Lienzo of Coixtlahuaca/Seler II (2018)
The Lienzo of Coixtlahuaca II, also named Seler II, was brought by the German mesoamericanist Eduard Seler to Berlin, Germany in 1897. The 375 x 425 cm document, made in the first half of the XVI century in the city of Coixtlahuaca located in the modern state of Oaxaca, Mexico, is made of eight cotton cloths sewn together to form an enormous Lienzo. The history of Coixtlahuaca's cacicazgo, its territory and lineages, is depicted alongside their mythical origins and migrations. The document...
Persistence in Ruins: Animation, Remembrance, and Rupture at Etlatongo, 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. Rather than static vestiges of the past, we view ruins and material objects from the past as important generative components of communities and human projects. Informed by a relational ontology that views some objects and matter as charged and animate, we situate our research at Etlatongo in broader Mixtec and Mesoamerican...
Persistence in the Nochixtlán Valley during the Classic to Postclassic Transition: Preliminary Notes from Etlatongo (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Checking the Pulse: Current Research in Oaxaca Part I" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. As in many other parts of Mesoamerica, the transition from the Classic to Postclassic periods in the Nochixtlán valley is a debated topic given the paucity of research in the Ñuu Savi area. Recently, archaeologists have aimed to elucidate the social transformations that took place during this liminal time by conducting excavations at...
Preceramic Occupations in the Valley of Oaxaca and the Southern Isthmus (2018)
Surveys and excavations during the past 12 years in the Valley of Oaxaca and the southern Isthmus of Tehuantepec provide new data on lithic assemblages and settlement distributions in these Oaxaca regions and facilitate comparison with contemporaneous sites in central and southern Mexico.
Prehispanic and Colonial Technology Transition in Metallurgy Gold Work in Oaxaca: A Comparative Study (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. In the northern Sierra of Oaxaca, it has been demonstrated that gold-copper-silver alloys were widely used between different prehispanic groups (Zapotecs and Chinantec). Nevertheless, with the conquest of the Sierra,...
A Preliminary Analysis of Early Ramos Phase Ceramics from the Mixteca Alta, Oaxaca, Mexico (2018)
During the Late Formative period, social relations were transformed due to increasing political centralization and urbanization in regions throughout Oaxaca. In the Nochixtlán Valley of the Mixteca Alta, Early Ramos phase (300-100 B.C.) ceramics from urban centers in the region reflect significant stylistic change from the preceding Yucuita phase (500-300 B.C.) ceramics. This presents an opportunity to explore how social change may be reflected in stylistic changes of material culture from this...
Preserving Oaxacan Foodways in the Face of Conquest: The Seed Bank at Cerro del Convento (2019)
This is an abstract from the "The Archaeology of Oaxacan Cuisine" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The rich culinary traditions of Oaxaca were both enhanced through and catastrophically disrupted by Spanish incursions during the Colonial Period. However, in spite of many radical transformations in cooking techniques and ingredients, indigenous people of Oaxaca persisted in their use of certain foods and practices. This persistence sometimes required...
Producing Community and Communal Production: Examining Evidence for Collective Practices at Complex B, Cerro de la Virgen, Oaxaca, Mexico (2018)
Recent research in the lower Río Verde Valley of Pacific coastal Oaxaca, Mexico has indicated that, during the Terminal Formative Period (150 BC - AD 250), public buildings were loci of communal practices such as feasting, collective labor, cemetery burial, and object caching. Idiosyncrasies in these practices among Terminal Formative sites in the valley suggest that political authority and community identity was constituted on the local level. While the best evidence for these practices comes...
Proyecto Arqueológico Cuenca del Río el Maíz: investigación científica y trabajo comunitario en Santos Reyes Nopala, Juquila, Oaxaca (2018)
Se muestra el trabajo realizado por el Proyecto Arqueológico Cuenca del Río el Maíz en coparticipación con las autoridades municipales y la comunidad de Santos Reyes Nopala, la Fundación Mexicana para la Educación Ambiental y el Departamento de Mecatrónica de la Universidad Tecnológica de los Valles Centrales de Oaxaca, como una contribución al estudio científico de la arqueología de la región, cuyo objetivo principal consistió en la investigación, salvaguarda, rescate y difusión consciente...
Public Space, Sacred Place: Early Monumental Architecture and Corporate Identity in the Mixteca Alta, Oaxaca (2018)
The Early Formative evinces the emergence of public space, and more complex communities, in Mesoamerica. Previous archaeological research at the site of Etlatongo, Oaxaca, Mexico, identified a large village during the late Early Formative/Cruz B phase (1200/1150 – 850 BC), including an area tentatively identified as early public space. The Formative Etlatongo Project has concluded three seasons, from 2015 – 2017, of large-scale excavations, confirming the identification of public space in the...
Quiechapa: A Window into the History of the Sierra Sur (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Approaches to Cultural and Biological Complexity in Mexico at the Time of Spanish Conquest" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Southern Mexico has been the site of many large-scale regional settlement pattern projects that have been instrumental in developing the regional histories that contribute to our understandings of the sociopolitical and economic climate that was encountered by the Spanish upon their arrival nearly...
Quotidian and Ritual Use of Maize at Early Formative Etlatongo, Oaxaca, Mexico (2021)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Recent research on subsistence systems in Early Formative (1600–900 BCE) Mesoamerican communities contest longstanding concepts linking the growth of early sociopolitical complexity with full-time agriculture. Lowland-focused studies have introduced mixed nonagricultural models in coastal regions that were able to support both sedentary groups and much larger...
Raising Dogs for Meat and Sacrifice: A Comparative Study of Classic Period Sites in Oaxaca, Mexico (2018)
The domestic dog (Canis familiaris) became a staple in the meat diet of Zapotec peoples during the Formative period (1500 BC – AD 200) in the Valley of Oaxaca, Mexico, and continued to be increasingly important in subsistence and ritual into the Classic and Postclassic periods. Recent zooarchaeological research has identified low-intensity household management/production of animals and animal by-products at sites throughout the valley, with each settlement marked by its own unique signature of...
Reconsidering Time, Matter, and Community in the Monumental Architecture of Coastal Oaxaca, Mexico (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Checking the Pulse: Current Research in Oaxaca Part II" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Archaeologists are keenly aware that the past, present, and future are always being reworked, always in motion: a composite weave of multiple temporalities. One of the enduring challenges of our discipline is to tease out of the seemingly static archaeological record how people in the past conceptualized, materialized, and...
Reconstrucción arquitectónica del Edificio P de Monte Albán, una visualización del pasado desde las herramientas digitales (2021)
This is an abstract from the "Avances en los estudios de la arquitectura de Monte Albán" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Las exploraciones arqueológicas del Edificio P de Monte Albán, enmarcadas en el Proyecto de Conservación de los Edificios dañados por los Sismos del 2017 en Monte Albán-Atzompa, han permitido identificar evidencias arqueológicas que muestran las etapas y sistemas constructivos que se realizaron en el mismo entre el Clásico...
Revisiting the Early Oaxacan Village: New Perspectives on Some of Mesoamerica’s First Settled Communities (2021)
This is an abstract from the "A Construir Puentes / Building Bridges: Diálogos en Oaxaca Archaeology a través de las Fronteras" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Since its publication in 1976, *The Early Mesoamerican Village has been a landmark for the systematic study of early settled communities. Based on research in the Valley of Oaxaca, *EMV has helped many students of archaeology to better understand household and community organization and...