Mesoamerica: Gulf Coast (Geographic Keyword)

DOCUMENT Citation Only Billie Follensbee.

Recent research has re-identified certain enigmatic Gulf Coast Olmec greenstone artifacts as elite versions of textile-making tools. These artifacts, which include Middle Formative picks, figural celts, clamshell and plaque pendants, and objects designated as "spoons," were likely used by elites as both functional objects and high-status adornment, as illustrated in the contemporary sculpture. Most examples of these artifacts are found in caches and graves of distant and/or later civilizations,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Brendan Stanley. Tara D. Smith.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Formerly identified cosmograms for the Olmec culture include the Dallas Plaque and the Las Limas figure. Politically, this vision is centered by Olmec rulers which is visible through the iconographic interpretations of works including La Venta Altar 4, Oxtotlitlan Mural 1, among others. These interpretations build on the work of previous scholars and are...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Magdalena Aguilar. Hirokazu Kotegawa.

El empleo de la lítica fue una constante desde los primeros grupos humanos, solucionando sus problemas cotidianos. Por ello, estos artefactos nos aportan información importante para la comprensión de actividades domésticas, sociales, rituales y económicas de una sociedad. El sitio arqueológico Estero Rabón está ubicado en el Sur de Veracruz. A través de las excavaciones en dicho sitio se recuperaron materiales arqueológicos de la fase Villa Alta correspondiente al Clásico Tardío/Terminal. En...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Yamile Lira-Lopez.

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. La Piedra del Gigante y el Monolito de Maltrata, pertenecen a lo que se llama escultura monumental en piedra, y se encuentran ubicadas en la región de los valles intermontanos de las Grandes Montañas, al centro y oeste de estado de Veracruz. Son importantes representaciones en bloque amorfo de piedra que relatan un evento...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Juan De La Peña Paredes. Yamile Lira López.

El valle de Maltrata, al oeste del estado de Veracruz, presenta un desarrollo poblacional que inicia desde el periodo Preclásico, continúa en el Clásico, Posclásico y Colonia, durante esos periodos de tiempo la población se fue asentando en distintas partes del valle, aprovechando los espacios naturales que se disponían. Desde el inicio de la ocupación se utilizó la posición estratégica del valle como una ruta de comunicación, comercio e intercambio, que fue usada por diversas culturas para la...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Bradley Ensor.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Archaeological studies on cultural landscapes are promising avenues for interpreting the embodiment of meaning to ancient peoples. Within Mesoamerica, most are restricted to elite contexts and centers with monumental architecture. In contrast, this presentation considers residential landscapes across social classes using settlement data and house mound...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Timothy Beach. Leila Donn. Cody Shank. Takeshi Inomata. Thomas Garrison.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This project entails creating machine learning models to predict the locations of caves and archaeological features using airborne Lidar (laser scanning) data. The goal of this work is to bridge the gap between machine learning pursued by computer scientists and the types of on-the-ground projects of interest to scientists who seek to improve management and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Annick J. E. Daneels.

Dioses Narigudos are a series of ceramic figurines that are extremely frequent during the Classic period in a very restricted area of South Central Veracruz. They occur generally in ritual deposits under floors of major and minor buildings, combining female and male representations of different hierarchy. Current interpretations relate them to a solar deity or a water deity, none of which identifications apply to all three main figurine types. Their attributes and the contexts in which they are...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Marcie Venter.

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. In this presentation I synthesize recent studies that the Matacanela Archaeological Project has produced as a way of situating the presentations in this session within their broader temporal and spatial contexts, both with the Tuxtlas and the broader Gulf lowlands. One notable aspect...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Alfredo Saucedo.

Tradicionalmente en la arqueología de la costa del golfo y en específico, dentro de la zona nuclear olmeca se había propuesto que uno de los principales productos que se consumieron durante el preclásico por la sociedad olmeca fue el maíz. Aunado a esto las contantes representaciones de esta planta dentro del sistema de registro olmeca, sugerían una tendencia muy marcada y una preferencia inminente a la producción de este alimento, ya sea con fines ceremoniales o para consumo. Sin embargo,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Alberto Ortiz Brito.

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. This presentation addresses the relation between archaeological patrimony and collective memory using the San Martín Pajapan (SMP) monument as a case study. The SMP monument is an Olmec monument found on the top of the San Martín Pajapan volcano of Los Tuxtlas region. According to ethnographic research done in the 1960s, the local...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Carolyn Tate.

This is an abstract from the "The Role of Women in Mesoamerican Ritual" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. One of the most elaborate tomblike deposits at La Venta may commemorate a female ritualist, possibly a midwife. This paper explores the contents and surroundings of Tomb C and relates them to the widespread imagery of women and pre-birth humans at this Middle Formative ritual and pilgrimage site. It uses analogies with Mixe ritual as evidence for...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Erin Sears.

The long-term exploration of Formative fluorescence within the Veracruz region of Mexico has been supported through mid-20th century archaeological excavations and collection management protocols of the Smithsonian Institution’s Natural History Museum Department of Anthropology. The Olmec site of Tres Zapotes has been a focus of archaeological investigation since 1938 by Smithsonian’s Bureau of American Ethnology Director, Matthew Stirling. Research at the site continues to explore the regional...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Billie Follensbee.

This is an abstract from the "Textile Tools and Technologies as Evidence for the Fiber Arts in Precolumbian Societies" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. While considerable research has been conducted on the importance of textiles in Classic and Postclassic Mesoamerica, little study has been done on textiles among Early or Middle Formative period cultures, mainly due to scanty preservation. As noted in previous research, however, depictions of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Michael D. Glascock. Kylie Gannan. Thomas R. Hester.

This is an abstract from the "2019 Fryxell Award Symposium: Papers in Honor of M. Steven Shackley" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In the late 1960s, Heizer and colleagues at UC-Berkeley began to use X-ray fluorescence to measure chemical fingerprints for obsidian artifacts from a number of sites in Mesoamerica. In their study of obsidian artifacts from the Olmec site of La Venta, they found that 93% of the artifacts were explained by five distinct...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Gabriela Montero. Nathan Wilson. Lourdes Budar.

In this paper, we present the results of technological and visual sourcing analyses of over 1000 obsidian artifacts collected by the Proyecto Arqueológico Piedra Labrada (PiLab), directed by Dr. Lourdes Budar. The PiLab area of study, the eastern Sierra de los Tuxtlas, Veracruz, Mexico, includes the eastern flanks of the Sierra de Santa Marta and the adjacent coastal plain along the Gulf of Mexico, and has a long sequence of Prehispanic occupation. Despite this, and almost a decade of regional...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Nathan Wilson.

In this paper, I present new data on lithic production, consumption, and importation from the site of Teotepec, a large pre-Hispanic settlement located in the Sierra de los Tuxtlas region of Veracruz, Mexico. Like much of the Mexican Gulf Coast, the Prehispanic inhabitants of the Sierra de los Tuxtlas relied on non-local obsidian for most of their lithic needs. Using the results of recently completed technological and visual source analyses, I identify differences in production and consumption...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Alejandro Pastrana. Annick Daneels. Silvia Domínguez.

During the Classic period (1st mill. CE), South Central Veracruz was a mosaic of microstates in which obsidian was scarce but available to everyone. Semi-intensive systematic survey in 400 km2 of the lower Cotaxtla basin showed occasional concentrations that led to propose two alternatives: state-controlled workshops obtaining and redistributing artifacts to resident population, or independent workshops servicing clients across borders, implying the existence of a market-based economy. Chaîne...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Shayna Lindquist.

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. Matacanela’s chipped stone assemblage overwhelmingly is dominated by nonlocal obsidian, including both products and by-products of multiple reductive technologies. Overarching temporal trends and classification of Matacanela’s obsidian assemblage have previously been discussed within...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Karl Taube.

This is an abstract from the "Decipherment, Digs, and Discourse: Honoring Stephen Houston's Contributions to Maya Archaeology" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Among the most striking signs of Olmec iconography is the "double-merlon," this being a horizontal form supporting two parallel, upwardly projecting tabs. This presentation examines and discusses where it appears in Olmec imagery during the Middle Formative period (1000-400 b.c.), stressing...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Carl Wendt. Kenneth Peters.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Within the Olmec region, resources such as basalt, asphalt, cacao, kaolin clay, and hematite pigment are available in discreet areas. This uneven distribution of raw materials has led some scholars to suggest that Olmec leaders controlled the sources of raw materials and regional trade, from which they derived their economic and political power. The...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Alanna Ossa.

I analyze residential inventories from the center of Sauce and its hinterland in combination with regional settlement data from Barbara Stark’s Proyecto Arqueológico La Mixtequilla (PALM I, II) to describe the structure of exchange, production, and consumption of obsidian chipped stone during the Middle Postclassic period (AD 1200-1350) in south-central Veracruz, Mexico. Previous research on obsidian production found a spatial association with Sauce, which could support political administration...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jillian Mollenhauer.

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. Gulf Olmec sculpture is renowned for the cultural, political, and aesthetic precedents it helped to establish in preconquest Mesoamerica. Often its legacy is discussed in relation to the artistic traditions of succeeding civilizations that emerged to the south and west of Olman. However, there has been little recognition of the impact...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Marimar Becerra Alvarez.

En la zona este de Los Tuxtlas se ha identificado un complejo sistema de intercomunicación fluvial y marítima, construido a partir del aprovechamiento y acondicionamiento de corrientes acuáticas. Una gran parte de estas vías de comunicación confluyen en el sistema portuario de la costa este de Los Tuxtlas. La región se caracteriza por estar en un abanico aluvial, por lo que presenta un gran dinamismo fluvial, es decir los causes no son estáticos en el tiempo. En los estudios arqueológicos debe...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Xochitl Leon Estrada.

Síntesis de una investigación arqueológica que se enfocó en analizar y comparar la morfología del paisaje cultural de antiguos asentamientos prehispánicos en la sierra de Los Tuxtlas, Veracruz, México. Combinando aspectos de la geografía cultural, procesualismo, y unidades de paisaje geomorfológico se pudieron describir y analizar sitios arqueológicos en Los Tuxtlas, así como discernir las posibles dinámicas de agencia y adaptación del medio ambiente, uso del espacio y aprovechamiento de los...