Cortes (State / Territory) (Geographic Keyword)
26-50 (65 Records)
This is an abstract from the "Mountains, Rain, and Techniques of Governance in Mesoamerica" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Copan Valley, located in western Honduras, has been inhabited by permanent communities since the Early Formative period (ca. 1400 BC). These early communities developed a lifestyle based on milpa agriculture, which continues today with the Ch'ortí Maya, the linguistic group that is the descendants of the ancient Copanecos....
Ixtepeque Obsidian and the Polity: a Network and Boundary Approach in Southeastern Mesoamerica (2019)
This is an abstract from the "I Love Sherds and Parasites: A Festschrift in Honor of Pat Urban and Ed Schortman" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Edward Schortman and Patricia Urban (2012) borrow theoretical approaches from Bruno Latour (1996), Giddens (1984), and Bourdieu (1977) to highlight networks of shared inter-elite interaction in southeastern Mesoamerica that interpenetrate ethnic and political boundaries. The following paper builds upon...
Landfalls, Sunbursts, and the Capacha Problem: The Case for a Pacific Coastal Interaction Community in Early Formative Period Mesoamerica (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Coastal Connections: Pacific Coastal Links from Mexico to Ecuador" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In the 1960s, Ford argued that the first Pacific coastal Mexican pottery should more closely resemble that of northern South America than of early highland Mexican wares of the Tehuacán tradition. In the 1970s and 1980s, Kelly argued that Colima’s Capacha phase represented one of several "landfalls" of technological and...
Landscape and settlements in Cuscatlán, El Salvador (2024)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Several explorations were carried out in Cuscatlán (Amaroli 1986; Amaroli 1992; Velázquez & Hermes 1995; Barrera 2018; Arevalo 2018), where the Metropolitan Area of San Salvador (AMSS), El Salvador, now stands, including explorations resulting from archaeological rescues and projects based on the model of preventive archaeology (Bozoki-Ernyey 2007) along...
"Les Niveaux Céramiques au Honduras" Revisited: The Gulf of Fonseca in Regional Context (2018)
In 1966, Claude Baudez published a first attempt to compare ceramic typologies between different archeological areas of Honduras, published as Les niveaux céramiques au Honduras: une reconsidération de l'évolution culturelle (Baudez 1966). This article encompassed his research in the Gulf of Fonseca, where he spent a field season surveying and excavating sites in 1964-65. Fifty-three years later, this article still constitutes one of the most extensive descriptions of the ceramic assemblage of...
Long-Distance Interaction in Central Nicaragua: An Archaeological View on Local Practices and Globalizing Postclassic Trends (2021)
This is an abstract from the "Postclassic Mesoamerica: The View from the Southern Frontier" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Archaeological work on Greater Nicoya modeled perceived Postclassic changes in material culture by invoking foreign incursions and population displacement. At the eastern edges of Greater Nicoya, however, small-scale communities navigated the increasing flow of Mesoamerican cultural features through a social dynamic of active...
Lunar Power in Ancient Maya Cities (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. As the sun set on the horizon, ancient city dwellers would have felt the cooler air, heard cicadas’ songs, and perhaps tasted a late-night snack. Their vision, however, would have suffered the most as dusk turned to night and some form of illumination was necessary to see others, carry on activities, or get to bed....
Male Court Dress on Late Classic Maya Vases (2018)
Dress is an object made up of other objects. I combine a practice approach with the chaîne opératoire and behavior chains methods to analyze technical and social acts involving dress objects. The analysis starts with one segment of the actions involving dress—the actual act of dressing. The study includes only court scenes that appear to memorialize historic events, although some of the observations and conclusions can be applied to other kinds of scenes and other media. After identifying the...
Monumentality by Communities: Case Study of the Caribbean Coast of Nicaragua (2024)
This is an abstract from the "The Problem of the Monument: Widening Perspectives on Monumentality in the Archaeology of the Isthmo-Colombian Area" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Large stone and earth mounds of Cascal de Flor de Pino in the Caribbean of Nicaragua, which were built between 4 BC and AD 9, are unique in the region and have been suggested as a sign of social stratification and inequality. Indeed, reaching more than 30 m in diameter and...
Multimodal Digital Documentation of Actun Tunichil Muknal, Belize (2024)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Actun Tunichil Muknal (ATM), located in Western Belize, is among the most touristed archaeological caves in the Maya area and is well known for its striking physical characteristics and intact cultural deposits. Though well surveyed and studied, the cave and its many fragile and at-risk offerings had not been digitally documented. A collaborative program...
Nahua Diaspora and Cacao (2021)
This is an abstract from the "Postclassic Mesoamerica: The View from the Southern Frontier" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. A significant amount of archaeological evidence demonstrates that Late Postclassic Mesoamericans exchanged cacao intensively and over long distances. A reason for high-volume cacao commerce in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries was the expansion of its use from a ritual offering and the ingredient in socially important...
Networks of Power: Political Relations in the Late Postclassic Naco Valley, Honduras (2011)
Little is known about how Late Postclassic populations in southeast Mesoamerica organized their political relations. Networks of Power fills gaps in the knowledge of this little-studied area, reconstructing the course of political history in the Naco Valley from the fourteenth through early sixteenth centuries. Describing the material and behavioral patterns pertaining to the Late Postclassic period using components of three settlements in the Naco Valley of northwestern Honduras, the book...
New Evidence on the Early Occupation of the Lakes Basin of Pacific Nicaragua (2024)
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. Evidence for early sedentary villagers is perplexingly difficult to identify in Pacific Nicaragua. Wolfgang Haberland thought he found Early Formative remains, which he named the Dinarte phase, on Ometepe Island, but our own efforts to resample those putative early deposits did not meet with...
A New Locus for Avocado Domestication in Mesoamerica: Evidence for 8,000 Years of Human Selection and Tree Management at El Gigante, Honduras (2024)
This is an abstract from the "Beyond Maize and Cacao: Reflections on Visual and Textual Representation and Archaeological Evidence of Other Plants in Precolumbian Mesoamerica" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Recent research demonstrates that ancient Mesoamericans engaged in forest management long before they domesticated maize. Our research from El Gigante provides additional evidence for the antiquity of tree management practices in several...
New Views on the Ancient City of Cihuatán (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Reconstructing the Political Organization of Pre-Columbian Nicaragua" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Since half a century ago, it has been recognized that the Early Postclassic in the territory of western El Salvador represents a sweeping departure from its Classic period antecedents, as seen in the type site of Cihuatán. Its nature has been variously described as generically Mexican, or central Mexican and Gulf...
Nonlinear and Multiscalar Dynamics of Migration (2018)
The quantitative model of diffusion traditionally studied in archaeology uses Gaussian statistics and Brownian motion to envisage a slow wave of advance. It originates from Fisher’s model for the diffusion of advantageous alleles across the landscape, but was then applied in archaeology to the diffusion of agriculture from the Near East into Europe. More recently, Lévy flights, which are random walks with step lengths derived from power-law distributions, have been proposed as models for human...
Nueva hipótesis en torno a la organización política olmeca de San Lorenzo (2021)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Hay cierto acuerdo entre los arqueólogos que los olmecas integraron verdaderos estados. Aunque se sostiene que eran sistemas centralizados, la naturaleza política de esta organización permanece todavía poco clara, así como sus mecanismos de funcionamiento. Por ahora, los significativos avances en el conocimiento de la más antigua capital olmeca, San...
O'na Tok: A Preclassic Zoque Center in Western Chiapas, Mexico (2021)
This is an abstract from the "The Archaeology of Trade and Exchange" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Preliminary explorations at the previously unknown Zoque site of O’na Tök reveals within a mid-montane wet forest, a multifaceted archaeological landscape containing an early ceremonial center, an expansive area of long architectural platforms, and nearby caves used for ritual purposes. Artifacts recovered on the surface suggest occupation during...
O'na Tök: A Zoque Center in Western Chiapas, México (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In June of 2016, the archaeological site designated O'na Tök was recorded as a primary center in the western portion of the Central Depression of Chiapas, Mexico. Preliminary studies of cultural material recovered on the surface and test pits suggest the Zoque of O'na Tök participated in an exchange network with contemporary centers during the Early...
The Obsidian Artifacts of Uaxactun. (2024)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The results of the typological analysis of the sample of the collection of obsidian artifacts from the Uaxactún site for the 2010 to 2019 seasons are presented, highlighting the importance of this imported material to the inhabitants of the site, the variety of artifacts, and their possible uses.
The Past (and Future?) of Our Crop Plants in Changing Global Environments (2018)
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...
Post-Classic Canal Excavations at Yaxnohcah, Mexico (2019)
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...
The Power of Monuments in Ruin in Prehispanic 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. 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...
Proyecto Cerro del Gallo, Monte Albán, Oaxaca, participación comunitaria dentro de un proyecto de investigación arqueológica (2018)
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...
Recent research about the Chiapanec and the Central Depression of Chiapas, Mexico, during the Postclassic period (2024)
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...