Highland Mesoamerica: Postclassic (Other Keyword)

DOCUMENT Citation Only Luis Velázquez-Maldonado. Berenice Pedroza. David Larreina-García. Mario A. Retiz-García. Blanca Maldonado.

This is an abstract from the "Technological Transitions in Prehispanic and Colonial Metallurgy: Recent and Ongoing Research at the Archaeological Site of Jicalán Viejo, in Central Michoacán, West Mexico" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. El sitio arqueológico de Jicalán Viejo (posclásico tardío - colonial temprano) presenta una elevada concentración en superficie de escorias de metalurgia, relacionadas con los procesos de beneficio del cobre. El...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Destiny Crider.

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 Basin of Mexico survey and related archaeological projects in the region provided not only a ceramic chronology, but also a legacy of archaeological materials available for continued research. Two key goals of the Basin of Mexico survey focused on relations among settlement...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Rudolf Cesaretti. Carlos Cordova. Charles Frederick.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Basin of Mexico (BOM) regional surveys have been a cornerstone of archaeological inferences about Prehispanic demography, political and economic organization over the long-term. However, recent geoarchaeological fieldwork in the BOM has indicated patterned geomorphological biases in the regional surveys, notably the repeated phases of Holocene alluvial...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Stephen Whittington. Robert Tykot. Karyn Olsen. Fred Longstaffe.

This is an abstract from the "Innovations and Transformations in Mesoamerican Research: Recent and Revised Insights of Ancestral Lifeways" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Analysis of human skeletal remains from the Postclassic Kaqchikel Maya capital of Iximché, Guatemala, supports the interpretation that many of the partial skeletal remains were trophies taken in war or were from war captives sacrificed at the site. Other, more complete, remains...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Paris Franklin. Mitchell E. McElwain. Bradford W. Andrews. Amanda K. Taylor. Dennis Lewarch.

This poster presents a technological analysis of obsidian artifacts from two Aztec-period surface collections in the Coatlan del Rio Valley, located in what is now the modern state of Morelos, Mexico. The deposits are from residential terraces collected in 4 x 4 m units. Designs on ceramics collected with the lithics indicate primary occupation after 1400 CE. This study has two primary objectives: first, we technologically classify the artifacts in the collections; second, we evaluate whether...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Stacie King. Elizabeth Konwest. Marijke Stoll.

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. There are numerous examples across the Nejapa region of Oaxaca that demonstrate the ways archaeological ruins retain meaning and power through time. This paper highlights ruins in the sites of Majaltepec, Los Picachos, Cerro del Convento, Hacienda San José, and the modern town of Santa Ana Tavela to show how ruined,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Patricio Gutiérrez Ruano. Ava Godhart. Meradeth Snow. Michael Mathiowetz.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. While mounting evidence suggests that the Aztatlán tradition in west Mexico was a major cosmopolitan region during the Postclassic period (AD 900-1521), archaeologists have characterized items and beliefs as being culturally distinct from the rest of Mesoamerica. Recently, endogenous and exogenous material culture distribution has been interpreted as the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Stacie King.

This is an abstract from the "A Construir Puentes / Building Bridges: Diálogos en Oaxaca Archaeology a través de las Fronteras" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. I contend that the major gulf in Oaxaca archaeology is between Zapotec and Mixtec archaeology on the one hand and the archaeology of other regions and other language speakers on the other. The early focus on Zapotec and Mixtec archaeology stems from having codices written in these languages...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Johannes Krause.

This is an abstract from the "Ancient DNA in Service of Archaeology" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Genome wide data from ancient microbes may help to understand mechanisms of pathogen evolution and adaptation for emerging and re-emerging infectious disease. Ancient pathogen genomes provide furthermore the possibility to identify causative agents of past pandemics and therefore elucidate mortality crisis such as the early contact period in the New...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Susan Milbrath.

This is an abstract from the "Animal Symbolism in Postclassic Mesoamerica: Papers in Honor of Cecelia Klein" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Animals are prominent in annual rituals performed at the end of the year, as seen on page 49-52 of the Codex Borgia. Animals attacking each other and scenes of struggle involving animals and anthropomorphic gods are related to sequences in the yearbearer cycle that define the Calendar Round. Yearbearer...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Thomas Babcock.

This is an abstract from the "Art, Archaeology, and Science: Investigations in the Guatemala Highlands" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The K’iche’an ethnohistoric documents posit movement of Chontal-Nahuan groups into, and conquest of, the central Guatemalan highlands. A list of K’iche’ rulers was used to establish a timeline for occupation of the archaeological sites of Chujuyub, Jakawitz, and Q’umarkaj. Accordingly coinciding with the fall of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Rosa Alcántara. Sandra Santiago.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. One of the fundamental tasks of archaeology in Mexico is to investigate, conserve, restore, and recover the archaeological monuments; likewise, it is interested in disseminating its studies, for this reason, the results of the analysis of the prehispanic materials found during an archaeological rescue that took place in the historical center of Xochimilco, in...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Fernando Aguilar.

This is an abstract from the "Regional and Intensive Site Survey: Case Studies from Mesoamerica" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Archaeological surveys at a regional scale have faced the dilemma of concordance between the archaeological sampling units, normally defined by physiographic elements of the landscape, and the use of significant components of the studied societies, for example, political units or symbolic landscapes. Research undertaken...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Cinthya Vidal Aldana. Emmanuel Gómez. Hugo Sánchez. Alfonso Grave. Jorge Blancas.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Culiacán valley is located in central Sinaloa. It is well known in archaeological literature because of the excellent quality of its pottery. Nevertheless, archaeological knowledge is limited due to the lack of continuity in research during last seventy years. This work presents a new perspective on the region through integral research carried out by the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Antonieta Rivera.

There exists a vast literature examining every aspect of Aztec culture. Despite this, few studies focus specifically on Aztec architecture and its implications for understanding broader aspects of Aztec cosmology. This paper contributes to our knowledge of Aztec society through an exploration of architectural and urban design principles that guided the building of their cities and ceremonial precincts. By examining ethnohistoric and archaeological sources, and drawing on evidence from several...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Allison Caplan.

This is an abstract from the "Polychromy, Multimediality, and Visual Complexity in Mesoamerican Art" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The working of precious materials—greenstones, shells, turquoise, gold, and feathers—represented an arena of artistic specialization and tailored, technological expertise among the Late Postclassic Nahuas. Such specialized productions were almost exclusively destined to serve as components of multimedia costumes,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Fernando Castillo Flores. Francisco Javier García Ugalde. José Luis Punzo Díaz. Alfonso Gastelum-Strozzi. Dante Bernardo Martinez Vazquez.

Currently there exist several databases composed of hundreds or thousands of digital images of arrowheads made by different ancient ethnic groups around the world. Extracting information or comparing and classifying the elements of these databases in an efficient and automated way, even without the need of arrowhead’s metadata, would be of great help in carrying out a comprehensive study on this archaeological subject. This work deals with this problem by developing an image processing...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Susan Evans.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Aztec empire existed for only ninety years, yet its structure was derived from earlier political constructs and endured after the fall of Tenochtitlan in 1521. It was a dendritic system, each node of power manifested in a palace -- Nahuatl tecpan (lord-place) -- that functioned as a locus of sociopolitical and sacred authority. Lord-places are as old as...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Aaron Ott.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Twin-temple pyramids of the Late Postclassic in Central Mexico became a distinct symbol of Aztec ideology. Nowhere is this demonstrated more than with Templo Mayor, the Great Temple of Tenochtitlán, the capital city of the Aztec empire. The deities worshiped and rituals conducted at Templo Mayor made it a beacon of ideological identity for the Mexica-Aztec,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Joanne Pillsbury.

With the return of peace after the dislocations of the US Civil War, The Metropolitan Museum of Art was founded in 1870 by businessmen, civic leaders, and artists in New York. Unlike its European counterparts, the institution had no royal collections on which to build. Its ancient American holdings grew through gifts and purchases from diplomats, philanthropists, and collectors. By 1900, with the acquisition of the Petich Collection of some 1500 "Aztec," and "Toltec" works, The American...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Alba Tellez-Nieto. Joshua Englehardt.

This is an abstract from the "Regional and Intensive Site Survey: Case Studies from Mesoamerica" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. La sierra norte de Hidalgo no está bien documentada arqueológicamente, a pesar de su ubicación entre dos esferas culturales mayores del Postclásico: el señorío de Metztitlán y la Huasteca. Este trabajo busca llenar esta laguna del conocimiento, con dos metas principales: identificar la organización sociopolítica de los...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Patricia Fournier. Cynthia Otis Charlton.

This is an abstract from the "The Legacies of The Basin of Mexico: The Ecological Processes in the Evolution of a Civilization, Part 1" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Basin of Mexico book elucidated for a broader audience the work and philosophy of William Sanders and his first generation of collaborators and students and has influenced many generations of Mesoamerican scholars since. We draw on the broad studies of long-term work carried out...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Angela Huster.

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...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Christopher Morehart. Angela Huster. Dean Blumenfeld. Rudolf Cesaretti. Megan Parker.

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...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Alex Garcia-Putnam. Melissa Murphy. Christopher T. Fisher.

Little is known about the impact of Purépecha Empire formation on the skeletal health and well being of communities within the core zone of the Lake Pátzcuaro Basin, Michoacán, during the Postclassic period (AD 1000-1500). Here we report on recent bioarchaeological investigation of 19 mortuary contexts from the ancient Purépecha city of Angamuco located within the imperial heartland. We have identified at least seven different mortuary treatments from Angamuco and we compare these contexts with...