Mesoamerica: Gulf Coast (Geographic Keyword)
26-50 (104 Records)
El corredor costero al este de Los Tuxtlas, delimitado por los Volcanes de Santa Marta y San Martín Pajapan, el mar del Golfo de México y las Lagunas de Sontecomapan y del Ostión, es una zona que se caracterizó por la multiculturalidad y la variedad de patrones debido a la presencia de un sistema portuario que estuvo activo desde el periodo Formativo medio hasta el Clásico tardío (1200 aC-1000 dC). Así mismo, la presencia de estos elementos naturales que lo delimitan fue y sigue siendo el...
Dioses y gobernantes en El Tajin del Epiclásico (ca. 800–1000 d.C.) (2018)
Los gobernantes de El Tajin, aquellos pertenecientes al linaje de 13 Conejo, convirtieron al Conjunto Arquitectónico de el Edificio de las Columnas en la sede del poder político y religioso de la ciudad. Su autoridad se dejó sentir en buena parte de la llanura costera y en las montañas de Puebla y Veracruz. Tláloc se había convertido en númen de la clase política local y el culto al gobernante giraba en torno a esta deidad inmemorial. La ponencia explora el papel que tuvieron las divinidades...
Domestic vs. Elite Religious Cults: Revisiting the Huastec Tlazolteotl-Ixcuina Deity Complex (2018)
Pre-Columbian Huastec stone sculptures and clay figurines for the most part have been interpreted as deities and assumed to belong to the same religious cult. They also have typically been interpreted through a central Mexican lens and been identified as and associated with Late Postclassic central Mexican deities. Female figures in particular have been interpreted as Tlazolteotl, the central Mexican goddess of parturition, sexuality, and purification—a deity thought to be closely related to the...
"El arroyo suena raro": Las otras esculturas Olmecas de Antonio Plaza, Veracruz (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Antonio Plaza, Veracruz, ubicado en una isla al margen del río Uxpanapa –en medio de las capitales olmecas de San Lorenzo, Veracruz y La Venta, Tabasco- es conocido y señalado como el lugar de origen de uno de los hallazgos más polémicos de la arqueología de la costa del Golfo. Hacemos referencia a la extraordinaria escultura conocida como "El Luchador". No...
El contexto arqueológico del Complejo Escultórico de La Victoria-Matacanela, Los Tuxtlas, Veracruz. (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Olmec Manifestations and Ongoing Societal Transformations in the Tuxtlas Uplands: A View from Matacanela" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. En 1907 Eduard y Caecilie Seler, visitaron la Finca de Matacanela, ubicada en la porción sureste de la orilla del Lago de Catemaco en Los Tuxtlas, Veracruz. En los terrenos de esta finca, la pareja de alemanes recuperó una serie de monumentos que fueron trasladados a la entrada de la...
El diseño de la actividad. La relación de los petrograbados y los talleres de lítica en la Costa este de Los Tuxtlas (2018)
La Zona Costera del volcán de Santa Marta, al este de Los Tuxtlas, cuenta con la presencia de afloramientos basálticos que fueron aprovechados de diferentes maneras desde el Formativo medio hasta el Clásico tardío. En esta zona, han sido identificado contextos arqueológicos de explotación que corresponden a talleres dedicados a la producción de artefactos de lítica tallada y pulida. Una característica de algunos de estos talleres, es la presencia de petrograbados, algunos con diseños sencillos,...
El Tajín en tiempos de 13 Conejo: Expresiones de un nuevo estatuto simbólico (ca. 800-1100 dC) (2021)
This is an abstract from the "Sculpture of the Ancient Mexican Gulf Coast, Part 2" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Si bien el culto al soberano no podría expresar de mejor manera el carácter sagrado que se le confería de antiguo y el extraordinario poder que se concentraba en su persona, es en El Tajín cuando evoluciona sobre las bases de una ideología de reciente introducción hacia una liturgia ligada a una tradición cultural que en el Epiclásico...
El universo de los guerreros: Tumbas y gobernantes en El Tajín del período Epiclásico (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. El período Epiclásico en El Tajín, Veracruz, como en buena parte del litoral norte del Golfo de México, se encuentra marcado por una profunda transformación ideológica y por el surgimiento de una clase gobernante que habrá de exaltar los atributos propios de los guerreros. El Complejo Arquitectónico del Edificio de las Columnas, construido en el punto más alto...
Entre tres ríos y dos capitales: La región de Capoacan y el sitio olmeca de Antonio Plaza, Veracruz (2021)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Antonio Plaza, ubicado al margen del río Uxpanapa, es conocido y señalado como el lugar de origen de uno de los hallazgos más polémicos de la arqueología de la costa del Golfo de México, hacemos referencia a la escultura conocida como El Luchador. A pesar de que esta extraordinaria pieza ha provocado la discusión sobre su autenticidad prehispánica, no se había...
Envisioning the Iconographic and Epigraphic Corpus of Cerro de las Mesas (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Coffee, Clever T-Shirts, and Papers in Honor of John S. Justeson" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In this paper, we honor John Justeson’s contributions to the study of Mesoamerican writing and symbolic systems by revisiting the Epi-Olmec corpus of Classic period Cerro de las Mesas (300–900 CE). Four of the stelae from this site contain examples of the Epi-Olmec script, and their accompanying iconographic programs make...
Esculturas monumentales como herramientas políticas en la sociedad olmeca: Una perspectiva desde el sitio Estero Rabón (2021)
This is an abstract from the "Sculpture of the Ancient Mexican Gulf Coast, Part 1" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Las esculturas olmecas muestran un alto desarrollo estético desde su aparición. Sin embargo, estas esculturas no fueron sólo obras del arte sino también tenían una gran importancia socio-económica en la sociedad olmeca. Por ello, se piensa que estas esculturas monumentales fueron distribuidas por las elites olmecas. El sitio...
Estudio arqueológico preliminar de un posible sitio olmeca: Antonio Plaza, Veracruz (2018)
El objetivo de la ponencia es presentar los resultados preliminares del programa de mapeo intensivo en Antonio Plaza, Veracruz –un posible sitio olmeca ubicado en la cuenca alta del río Uxpanapa en la costa del Golfo de México-. Dicha etapa de análisis revela información proveniente de la superficie terrestre y es portadora de numerosas ventajas para el futuro planteamiento de un programa de reconocimiento de superficie. El estudio empleó el análisis de la información a través de Sistemas de...
An Evaluation of Food during Sociopolitical Transitions at Formative Tres Zapotes (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Tres Zapotes is an important site in the broader discussion of Olmec cultural continuity and Formative period political economy with an archaeological record that spans the two millennia between 1000 BC and AD 1000. It is a key site for understanding the emergence of Classic period civilization from ancient Olmec roots in Mexico’s southern Gulf Coast...
An Examination of Middle Formative through Early Classic Ceramic Attributes from Stratified Contexts at Matacanela, Veracruz (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Olmec Manifestations and Ongoing Societal Transformations in the Tuxtlas Uplands: A View from Matacanela" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This study compares Middle Formative through Early Classic period ceramic attributes, including temper size, type, and abundance, from stratified deposits at Matacanela Site in Veracruz, Mexico to other contemporaneous sites located in the Tuxtla Mountains and riverine bottomlands in...
The Eyes of God (2018)
The deities of El Tajin seem to share a characteristic scroll eyebrow in bas reliefs as well as in mural paintings. I will follow the representation of such an icon, trying to recognize posible origins, the outreach of the element and the symbolic associations in Mesoamerican time and space.
A Fabric-Impressed Potsherd from San Andrés, Tabasco, Mexico (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Despite over a century of intense research, little has been published on the non-durable technology of the Olmecs. This is due to the "tyranny" of preservation, which strongly biases the archaeological record in most areas toward durable artifacts. Recent analysis of a probably accidentally impressed potsherd from San Andrés, within the urban polity of La...
The Female Terracotta Sculpture at the North Carolina Museum of Art: Pastiche or Fake? (2021)
This is an abstract from the "Sculpture of the Ancient Mexican Gulf Coast, Part 2" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Large-scale female terracotta sculptures were extensively produced in the Mixtequilla region of Veracruz during the Late Classic period. It is likely that numbers of these sculptures were looted and smuggled into the United States prior to the 1970 UNESCO Convention on Cultural Property. This paper focuses the female terracotta...
A Fettered Serpent? Quetzalcoatl and Classic Veracruz (2018)
Great is the conflation of Ehecatl Quetzalcoatl and Topiltzin Quetzalcoatl: a mythical player in the world creation of Mesoamerican groups vs. a semi-historical personage who presaged the arrival of Hernán Cortés. Veracruz, a region implicated via the activities of both avatars, is particularly enmeshed in this duality. The Postclassic narrative whereby Quetzalcoatl journeyed to the Gulf lowlands appears to be foreshadowed in the desacralization of Teotihuacan’s Feathered Serpent Pyramid at the...
Flayer and Flayed Figures in Central Veracruz, Mexico: Is It Xipe? (2021)
This is an abstract from the "Sculpture of the Ancient Mexican Gulf Coast, Part 2" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The god Xipe Totec has been mostly analyzed from Postclassic evidence (Toltec and Aztec). He is recognized by the representations of a person wearing the skin of a flayed victim or the victim himself. While both types of figures appear in several regions of Mesoamerica, their contexts vary. In this paper I will review Classic and...
Flowers in the Religious Ideology of Contemporary Nahua of the Southern Huasteca (2019)
This is an abstract from the "The Flower World: Religion, Aesthetics, and Ideology in Mesoamerica and the American Southwest" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Flowers are a central feature of religious rituals among today's Nahua of the southern Huasteca. They are associated with the sun, growing corn, life-giving water, the bounty of the living cosmos, and ancestors who visit their relatives during Day of the Dead. For the Nahua, flowers are far...
Formative Communities of Practice and Disjunctures in Southern Gulf Lowland Interaction with Central Mexico (2018)
Recently Stoner and Pool called for an "Archaeology of Disjuncture" to refocus attention on variation in intra- and interregional interaction, illustrating the approach with the case of the Classic period of the Tuxtla Mountains in southern Veracruz. In this paper I extend application of the disjunctive approach into the Formative Period of the southern Gulf lowlands, focusing primarily on interactions with Central Mexico, and incorporating a Communities of Practice perspective on the formation...
Function Follows Form, Part II: Experimental Archaeology with Formative Period Mesoamerican Greenstone Tagelus Shell Facsimiles as Textile Tools (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Cordage, Yarn, and Associated Paraphernalia" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Many Formative period Mesoamerican greenstone artifacts are readily identifiable as ornaments, as they have clear counterparts in both form and function in later cultures. Other such artifacts, however, have proven puzzling to scholars, who initially categorized them as “miscellaneous objects,” “objects of unknown use,” or “implements for...
The Grid Patterns in the Vestments and Headdresses of Female Statuary from the Classic Period Cultures of Central Veracruz (2021)
This is an abstract from the "The Precolumbian Dotted-Diamond-Grid Pattern: References and Techniques" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Various researches report that the diamond, rhomboid, and square-gridded patterns and their stepped variants designate the surface of the earth as the fecund female progenitor, manifested in flowers, corn cobs, and sweet, nurturing waters. These patterns also designate the zoomorphic aspects of the shell or skin of...
Habitar en los bordes, ocupación Clásica en lomeríos y crestas montañosas al oriente de los volcanes de Los Tuxtlas (2018)
Los sitios localizados sobre la planicie costera y en el pie de monte de los volcanes de Santa Marta y San Martín Pajapan, en el sur de Veracruz, se caracterizan por la presencia de arquitectura monumental, grandes áreas domésticas, sitios acondicionados como estaciones portuarias, talleres de artefactos de basalto en formato pequeño y posiblemente áreas de cultivo. En el periodo de mayor ocupación (650-1000 dC.) los terrenos bajos estaban totalmente ocupados, por lo que el asentamiento comenzó...
Identifying the Archaeological Signatures of Inequality: An Analysis of Inequality at Late Formative La Joya and Bezuapan (2021)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This poster presents an analysis of artifact assemblage data from La Joya and Bezuapan, two late Formative Period (ca. 400 BC-AD 100) sites in southern Veracruz, Mexico. The study focuses on the ways in which wealth inequality is manifested in the archaeological record; wealth is defined here as the total of desirable factors consisting of two main categories...