Plazas (Other Keyword)

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jennifer Wildt.

For thousands of years, plazas have served as spaces for public gatherings. Modern plazas continue to serve many of the same functions as ancient plazas, providing a foundation for comparative studies. Archaeologists have begun to recognize the importance of incorporating modern studies of public spaces into their work, but in order for archaeology to remain relevant, we must engage with and contribute to studies of the modern world. It is necessary for us to work with scholars in these fields...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Alexandra Norwood.

The lack of large plazas at Teotihuacan has led archaeologists to claim that Teotihuacan was a city with very little public open space. There are, however, many smaller assembly areas distributed around the city. The Teotihuacan Mapping Project identified a large number of "plazas" in the city but the criteria were subjective and the data were never analyzed. I have filtered these data by applying a more formal definition of plaza than the initial field criteria used by the Mapping Project....

DOCUMENT Citation Only Megan Kassabaum.

The mound-and-plaza complex is a hallmark of late prehistoric sites in the Lower Mississippi Valley. While these mounds and the spaces between them have been the focus of much productive research, many mound-and-plaza centers began as circular or oval-shaped middens and only later incorporated mounds. Moreover, sites organized around central "empty" spaces are common starting in the Archaic period. I argue that by examining these earlier and less frequently studied examples of "plazas," we can...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Nezahualcoyotl Xiuhtecutli. Aurelio Lopez Corral.

Excavated lithic material from plazas at the Postclassic site of Tepeticpac, in the central Mexican state of Tlaxcala, suggests that obsidian production took place in these open spaces that may have served as marketplaces in the Late Postclassic polity of Tlaxcallan. Moreover, although green obsidian is present in Late Postclassic contexts, a decline in its presence is evident from earlier periods. In spite of ethnohistoric sources’ claims that Tlaxcallan was cut off from trade by Tenochtitlan,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Michael Mathiowetz.

This is an abstract from the "Humble Houses to Magnificent Monuments: Papers in Honor of Jerry D. Moore" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In his seminal article on Andean plazas, Jerry Moore (1996) characterized plazas as spaces that serve as a setting for diverse public interactions, including as arenas that help to structure verbal and nonverbal ritual communication in the context of ritually infused power dynamics. In the Puebloan and Mogollon...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jennifer Wildt.

Are all open spaces public spaces? What factors influence how ‘public’ a space is? How did the population increase during the Late Classic period impact the use and design of open spaces in the Maya lowlands? To understand how the Maya adapted their built environment in response to high populations, I examine the architectural features of plazas and patios in a ritual-residential group at Xultun. In the Late Classic period, residents erected additional buildings within patios, reducing the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Angela Keller.

Formal plazas constitute the majority of public space in Maya centers and yet, until quite recently, plazas have not received the same investigative attention as the impressive pyramids and palaces that surround them. This neglect is largely due to the difficulty of investigating public plazas, which typically contain few artifactual or structural indications of their ancient use. Although the identification of activity in ancient plazas is technically challenging, a dedicated investigation of...