Mesoamerica: Central Mexico (Geographic Keyword)
26-50 (250 Records)
In written sources, the Mexica provide stereotyped descriptions of other groups, many of whom had been conquered and incorporated into the Aztec Empire. I use data from the site of Calixtlahuaca to evaluate the archaeological validity of such stereotypical practices for one group, the Matlatzinca. In particular, I focus on the heavy reliance on maguey, and locally distinctive foodways relating to maize. I then consider whether these practices became more or less pronounced once the area came...
Between Two Empires: Conflict and Community during the Epiclassic Period in the Northern Basin of Mexico (2019)
This is an abstract from the "The Legacies of The Basin of Mexico: The Ecological Processes in the Evolution of a Civilization, Part 2" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Epiclassic period (ca. 650-900 CE) in the Basin of Mexico is considered a time of social, cultural, political, and economic transformation and re-organization. Most perspectives stress that, after the collapse of the major state system centered at Teotihuacan, regional population...
The Bioarchaeology of El Japón (San Gregorio Atlapulco, Mexico), 1550–1650 CE
Ongoing bioarchaeological research focused on El Japón (San Gregorio Atlapulco, Mexico).
Biomolecular Preservation in Dental Calculus from the Teotihuacan Ritual Landscape (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Ancient DNA in Service of Archaeology" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. During the Classic Period (AD 1-550), thousands of people migrated to the ancient city of Teotihuacan. This population growth forged Teotihuacan into a center for economic, political, and religious activities for the Mesoamerican region. While archaeological evidence has provided a wealth of information about the state, little is known about its...
Blood on the Stones: Heart Sacrifice and Sacrificial Altars in the Northern Maya Lowlands and Mexico-Tenochtitlan (2021)
This is an abstract from the "New Perspectives on Ritual Violence and Related Human Body Treatments in Ancient Mesoamerica" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Heart sacrifice constituted one of the most basic yet fundamental tenets of Mesoamerican ritual practice. At Early Postclassic Chichen Itza, as with the later Aztec of Tenochtitlan, hearts and blood were offered to the bellicose solar deity whose daily journey through the sky not only depended...
Bright Light in the Big City: The Aztec New Fire Ceremony and the Drama of Darkness (2019)
This is an abstract from the "After Dark: The Nocturnal Urban Landscape & Lightscape of Ancient Cities" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Populated by as many as 200,000 people, the Aztec capital of Tenochtitlan—like most cities—was buzzing with activity through the night. Given the dynamism of the city, and especially weighed against our modern understanding of the sounds and lights that keep cities alive during the night, it is significant that one...
Building Community Ties Using Archaeology in Tlajinga, Teotihuacan (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Teotihuacan is an ancient city located in Mexico that was designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1987. It was the largest city in the Americas during its peak between 100-550 CE and its significance as an early, cosmopolitan center has been demonstrated over decades of continuous study. The Proyecto Arqueológico Tlajinga Teotihuacan (PATT) began in 2012...
The Burial Artifacts of Epiclassic Los Mogotes, Basin of Mexico (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The hilltop, Epiclassic period (ca. 600-900 CE) site of Los Mogotes (ZU-ET-12) sits on the boundary between the northern Basin of Mexico and the southern Mezquital valley. Hence, it is well-placed to understand local and regional transformations between the fall of Teotihuacan (ca. 650 CE) and the rise of Tula (ca. 900 CE). In this paper, we examine burial...
Burials and Society at Teotihuacan: Examining Inequality Through Burial Offerings in Residential Contexts (2021)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Many archaeologists think that Teotihuacan was a relatively equalitarian society. Prior research on economic inequity has focused on factors such as the size of houses and the remains of murals in residential complexes. The Burials and Society project approaches the question of inequality at Teotihuacan from a new angle, that of burial data. The project has...
Captive management and sacrificial power: Using ancient genomics to study animal sacrifice in Teotihuacán (2021)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Excavations of the Moon and Sun Pyramids (1998-2004) at Teotihuacan have yielded both human and animal sacrifices, interred as part of state rituals. These rituals demonstrated the power of the state, and the species chosen reflected that power. Isotopic and zooarchaeological analyses of the sacrificed animals show that some of them were held for extended...
Ceramic Chronology in the Absence of a Horizon (2021)
This is an abstract from the "Central Mexico after Teotihuacan: Everyday Life and the (Re)Making of Epiclassic Communities" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In this paper, I present an initial ceramic seriation for the Epiclassic site of Chicoloapan Viejo, in the southern Basin of Mexico, with a discussion of issues particular to periods of political fragmentation. I demonstrate that two phases can be distinguished at Chicoloapan Viejo, based on...
Ceramic Evidence for Immigration among Households at Calixtlahuaca in the Toluca Valley (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Calixtlahuaca is a Middle-to-Late Postclassic (A.D. 1130-1530) Mesoamerican site located in the Toluca Valley of Central Mexico. While originally a Matlazinca settlement, the site was conquered by the Aztec Empire, and documentary evidence suggests subsequent Mexica immigration to the region. I use the site to examine immigration patterns based on the...
Ceramic Production in Epiclassic Central Mexico: Strategies for Assessing Regional Variation with INAA, Paste Recipes, and Stylistic Choices (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Ceramics and Archaeological Sciences" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Epiclassic Central Mexico (ca. AD 550–850) is characterized by competing city-states in which ceramic distribution aligns with a series of neighboring solar market economies. INAA compositional study provides key evidence for assessing multiscalar patterns of production of diagnostic and decorated ceramic wares in the Basin of Mexico and Tula...
Ceramics, Ground Stone and Miscellanea at the Zaragoza-Oyameles Obsidian Quarry in Puebla, Mexico (2018)
One result of the intensive, 5-m interval surface survey of the Zaragoza-Oyameles obsidian source area in Puebla, Mexico was the recovery of several artifact classes suggestive of prolonged habitation. Ceramic and ground stone artifacts recovered indicate that domestic activities were an important component of the obsidian procurement and production economy. Ceramics tended to concentrate in areas that also contained higher quantities of ground stone, but did not correlate with any one stage of...
The Chalcatzingo Reliefs Seen from a Critical Perspective (2021)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This paper is dedicated to carrying out a detailed study of some of the reliefs that were carved on the slopes of Cerro Chalcatzingo, during the Middle Formative period, as well as to present some critical reflections about the interpretations that have been made by other authors. All descriptions imply interpretation, in consequence, every process of...
Changing Representations of Gender in Ceramic Figurines During the Emergence of the Teotihuacan State (2018)
This paper investigates transformations in the construction and expression of gender in the Basin of Mexico from the late Middle Formative through Classic periods (approx. 600 BC- AD 600). Ceramic figurines from the sites of Teotihuacan, Axotlan, Cerro Portezuelo, and Huixtoco are used to explore how elements of gender were constructed and communicated in the region over the course of a millennium, and how these practices underwent a radical transformation during the emergence and expansion of...
Changing Urban Networks in Formative Central Mexico: A View from Tlalancaleca, Puebla (2018)
It is likely that Formative urban centers and their interactions with one another provided cultural and historical settings for the creation of Central Mexican urban traditions during later periods. Yet their urbanization process remains poorly understood. Our research over the last six field seasons indicates that some residential groups were settled at Tlalancaleca towards 800 BC and the settlement was urbanized with a significant population growth during the later Middle Formative period (ca....
Chemical Residue Analysis, Foodways, and Ceramic Consumption in Tlajinga, Teotihuacan (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Tlajinga is the southernmost district of Teotihuacan, a cosmopolitan city that thrived in Central Mexico during the Classic Period. Previous research done in Tlajinga includes surface collection associated with the Teotihuacan Mapping Project and the excavation of one apartment compound, during the 70’s. Recent investigations carried out by the Proyecto...
"Closed by Refurbishment": A General Overview of Teotihuacan from Classic to Epiclassic Times (2021)
This is an abstract from the "Central Mexico after Teotihuacan: Everyday Life and the (Re)Making of Epiclassic Communities" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The aim of this paper is to do a general overview of the different archaeological processes identified in Teotihuacan in the last years of the Classic to Epiclassic period. In a space between the crisis of the Teotihuacan political and ideological power until the reorganization of new players in...
Coins and Empire in Sixteenth-Century Mexico (2018)
Scholars have asked how empires solidify power when colonizers, the agents of empire-building, often have diverse goals and backgrounds and their actions do not necessarily support the goals of the empire. Two answers to this question have received much attention: that empires promote ideologies that support cohesion among colonizers, and that coercion and violence can promote the expansion of empires. I propose a third answer, in which colonizers create varied material forms that may challenge...
Collective Action, Households, Neighborhoods, and Urban Landscapes: A Multiscalar Perspective on Late Postclassic Urbanism at Tlaxcallan (2021)
This is an abstract from the "The Urban Question: Interdisciplinary Approaches to Investigating the Ancient Mesoamerican City" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Systematic cross-cultural research on premodern cities at the global scale has begun to shed light on the relationships among political-economic strategies at various scales, the sociospatial organization of cities, and the daily lived experience of urban residents and visitors. Drawing on...
Colonial Glass Production in Mexico City: A Study on Technology Transfer and Adaptation (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The technology to make glass was brought to Mexico by Spanish glass artisans shortly after the Conquest in the sixteenth century. In the process of transferring their technological knowledge to the New World, these glass artisans encountered several challenges as they established workshops in Mexico City and Puebla, but were able to adapt the technology to the...
Columbian Mammoth Remains (Proboscidea, *Mammuthus columbi) from Unit UE1, Tocuila Archaeo-Paleontological Site, Mexico (2021)
This is an abstract from the "Current Zooarchaeology: New and Ongoing Approaches" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. From a small excavation unit 5 × 6 m named UE1 in Tocuila, Texcoco Municipality, State of Mexico, Mexico, around 1,300 bone elements were recorded, of which we have analyzed about 80%, being outstanding the remains of Columbian mammoth (*Mammuthus columbi), constituting about 90% of the total. According to the stratigraphic distribution...
Commercialization, Consumption, and Political-Economic Strategies in Late Postclassic Mesoamerica: A Comparative Study of Access to Projectile Points at Tlaxcallan and Santa Rita Corozal (2018)
Over the course of the Postclassic Period (A.D. 950 – 1521), commercialization was on the rise in ancient Mesoamerica, reaching its apex at the time of contact with Europeans. Extant information indicates that both interregional trade and regional market integration increased during this time, especially during the Late Postclassic (A.D. 1250/1300 – 1521). Yet, researchers have little comparative published information on household consumption from well-excavated residential contexts for this...
Comparative Stylistic Analysis of Calixtlahuaca Projectile Points (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 discusses a comparative stylistic analysis of projectile points from the Postclassic (1130 – 1530 AD) Aztec city of Calixtlahuaca, located in the Toluca Valley of Central Mexico. Chemical sourcing of Calixtlahuacan obsidian has illustrated that the site was primarily supplied with obsidian from both West and Central Mexico. However, evidence...