Highland Mesoamerica: Postclassic (Other Keyword)
176-200 (210 Records)
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 Mexica employed feathers to make lightweight objects utilized by elites and gods in various secular, religious, political, and military contexts. The use of feathers is represented in murals, codices, ceramics, sculpture, metalwork, and even some of these objects that have managed to survive more than five...
The Sighing, Bleeding, Feasting Soul: Speech Scrolls in Mesoamerica (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Speech scrolls are common elements of Mesoamerican codices and their frequent use and incorporation into a wide array of human and anthropomorphic entities highlights the need for a formal study of these elements of iconography. The use of speech scrolls is not ubiquitous simply because of their function as a marker of speech in service of a larger motif or...
Size and Morphology of Canid Skeletal Remains from Moxviquil, Chiapas, Mexico (2021)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The site of Moxviquil is located in the Jovel Valley of highland Chiapas, and contains a funerary cave from which human and faunal osteological remains have been recovered. The site’s occupation spans the Late Classic (AD 600–900) to Early Postclassic (AD 900–1250) periods. Approximately one-third of the remains belong to the species *Canis familiaris,...
Skirts and Scorpions: Female Power and Poisonous Creatures (2019)
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. In the Tratado de supersticiones (1626) Hernando Ruíz de Alarcón documented invocations and prayers to pre-Hispanic divinities to assure a good catch/hunt or to protect against poisonous/painful bites/stings. This confirmed that these divinities remained important the local consciousness even 100 years after...
Slow violence and environmental inequality in the Valley 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 1" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Valley of Mexico project was unprecedented in its documentation of demographic, social, and environmental processes over millennia. Nevertheless, its findings are limited because participants did not systematically collect archaeological data about settlements after the Spanish...
Sound Practices in Late Postclassic to Early Colonial Tlaxcallan: Applying a Community of Practice Framework to Investigate Sonic Expression (2021)
This is an abstract from the "Music Archaeology's Paradox: Contextual Dependency and Contextual Expressivity" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In archaeological interpretations of Postclassic period central Mexico, sound practices and related assemblages are often conceptualized as unchanging, standardized, and fixed to a common Mesoamerican religious system under the umbrella of Aztec cultural expression. This neglect of other polities’ sound...
Spatial Analysis and Community Organization at Iglesia Gentil (San Pedro Teozacoalco), Oaxaca (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Checking the Pulse: Current Research in Oaxaca Part I" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Between 2013 and 2017, archaeologists used GPS units to map Iglesia Gentil, a prehispanic mountaintop site in the Mixteca Alta of Oaxaca, Mexico. In addition to thousands of agricultural and residential terraces, more than 750 structures were recorded along with ancient roads, platforms, patios, and surface artifacts. In this paper,...
Spatial Analysis of an Ancient Mixtec Capital in Oaxaca (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Chiyo Cahnu, a Mixtec mountaintop capital, is unusual in relation to the archaeology of Oaxaca because it is larger than normal for Postclassic settlements and apparently was inhabited for a short length of time. Mapping a one square kilometer area of the capital using powerful GPS devices between 2013 and 2017 revealed about 370 building sites, almost 2,400...
A Symbolic Consideration of Birds in Teotihuacan and Mexico-Tenochtitlan (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Pre-Columbian material and visual culture encapsulate ideologies and symbolism of the Mesoamerican past. Birds play important roles in Mesoamerican societies, both as daily sources of food and in symbolic and ideological contexts found in ceramic and sculptural iterations combined with archaeological and zooarchaeological contexts. This paper will examine...
Symbolism of Frogs and Toads in Postclassic Mesoamerica (2019)
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. Frogs and toads were important animals in Mesoamerica with several species of Mexican frogs. They were especially associated with the rainy season. Some species of frogs are active above ground only in the reproductive period while some species of toads spend part of the year underground. These batrachians are...
Symmetries of Corn and Cloth in the Ancient Americas: Pattern Generation, Botany, and the Maize Matrix (2021)
This is an abstract from the "The Precolumbian Dotted-Diamond-Grid Pattern: References and Techniques" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Several precolumbian royal garments with simple, repeating geometric designs have explicit associations to maize, and hint at a deep significance to the cloth pattern–corn plant connection. In the Andes, Inca Coyas (noblewomen) wore special woven belts during the annual corn-planting ceremony. Sophie Desrosiers...
Take My Heart, Take My Head: Death among Gods in the Codex Borgia (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. Ritual violence is well represented in the Codex Borgia, a masterpiece from early sixteenth-century Central Mexico. Narrative scenes depict Venus gods alongside deities honored during seasonal *veintena festivals known from the Valley of Mexico and Tlaxcala. The Aztec Tlacaxipehualiztli festival...
The Tarascan Landscapes of the City of Tzintzuntzan: Dwelling in the Hillsides and in the Lakes (2021)
This is an abstract from the "Landscapes: Archaeological, Historic, and Ethnographic Perspectives from the New World / Paisajes: Perspectivas arqueológicas, históricas y etnográficas desde el Nuevo Mundo" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The ancient prehispanic city of Tzintzuntzan was a cosmopolitan and highly stratified settlement that is distributed between two great hills, the Tariaqueri and the Yahuarato. Its ancient builders gained flat land...
Tarascan Presence in Central South Michoacan. New Researches (2018)
For the last five years the Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia set up an archaeological project in the central south portion of the state of Michoacan in the Zirahuen and Balsas river basins. A systematic survey had been made in a large area identifying dozens of sites never previously recorded, some of them with a clear Tarascan component. In spite of, in this paper we will present the results of the research made at the Tarascan sites in the limits of the highlands and the Tierra...
A Technological Approach of Textile Production in Late Postclassic Tlaxcallan (2018)
Textile production had a pivotal role among Late Postclassic societies including ancient Tlaxcallan, a prominent altepetl of the Puebla-Tlaxcala region. Several scholars have studied prehispanic cloth and garments production based on 16th century historical sources, but using little archaeological evidence. In particular, poor attention has been paid on the technology of textile production based on archaeological artifacts, especially in relation to spinning techniques and the different fibers...
Templo Mayor and Representations of the Flower World: agriculture, fire, sacrifice, death, rebirth, and imperialistic agendas (2019)
This is an abstract from the "The Flower World: Religion, Aesthetics, and Ideology in Mesoamerica and the American Southwest" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. One of our primary sources of descriptive information about the Flower World comes from Central Mexican colonial historical documents. While ethnohistorical accounts have portrayed this world with shared beliefs of the floral paradise, this paper provides a complementary scenario, by...
Thirty Years Later. Revisiting the Tarascan City of Las Milpillas and Its Environment, Malpaís de Zacapu, Michoacán (2018)
Thirty years ago, investigations in the city of Las Milpillas in the Malpaís of Zacapu, provided unprecedented insights on the origins of Late Postclassic tarascan social organization. One was the highlighting of a unique kind of urban organization upon lava flows ; as in all four tarascan cities of the Malpaís. Yet, unlike its counterparts, Las Milpillas specificity resides in the fact that a site portion lies upon older volcanics, providing arable lands at hand for the city dwellers to use....
Thread Production in Ocotelulco, Tlaxcallan, Mexico (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Tlaxcallan: Mesoamerica's Bizarro World" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Archaeological excavations undertaken by the Tlaxcallan Archaeological Project have recovered an important sample of spindle whorls from Late Postclassic – Early Colonial (1420 -1540 A.D.) domestic contexts in Ocotelulco, a subsection of the urban site of Tlaxcallan, Mexico. In this paper, we present the results of the analysis of identified whorl...
Tlaloques, Tiemperos, and Trees: Cultural Models of Nature in Central Mexico (2018)
Abundant water-related art and architecture produced by Teotihuacanos and Mexica-Aztecs in the central Mexican highlands coupled with the rhetoric of today’s farmers from the same region regarding the catastrophic impacts of changes in local seasonal rainfall patterns make it clear that access to rainwater has always been a crucial factor for agricultural success in the semi-arid highlands of central Mexico, especially in communities that lack a reliable water source for irrigation. We collect a...
Tlaxcallan Pottery Manufacture and Restricted Networks (2018)
The debate whether pottery sherds equal people or just their ideas has been ongoing since the days of pioneers such as Ford and Spaulding. The advent of new technologies has given a new wind to old debates in which the questions surrounding pottery styles are examined more closely to determine their origin. Compositional analysis has been especially helpful in shedding new light on the relations between artifacts and people. Compositional analysis carried out on Postclassic Tlaxcallan pottery...
Toward a Typology of Late Postclassic Period Figurines from Tututepec, Oaxaca, Mexico (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Checking the Pulse: Current Research in Oaxaca Part I" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In this paper, we present a preliminary typology, description, and discussion of ceramic figurines from Late Postclassic period (CE 1100–1522) Tututepec, a regional capital located on the coast of Oaxaca. The figurine sample is primarily drawn from household excavations carried out in 2005 and 2022 but also includes material curated...
Tridimensionality, Multimediality, Polychromy, and Other Forms of Visual Complexity in Late Postclassic Mosaic Art (2021)
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. Building on previous works that led to the definition of various stylistic families within the corpus of Late Postclassic central and southwestern Mexican mosaics, the paper explores the various formal and technological resources that each group of mosaics employed to attain specific forms of visual complexity....
Un acercamiento al pensamiento simbólico de los Huastecos, siglos XV y XVI (2018)
Definir una región tan antigua y compleja como la Huasteca, implica conocer las características de los grupos humanos que la habitaron; en ella existen diversas manifestaciones culturales a través del tiempo; en esta ocasión presento un primer acercamiento al mundo simbólico que encontramos durante el período Posclásico. Inicié el estudio utilizando cuatro indicadores arqueológicos: Vasijas de cerámica, Concha labrada, Pintura Mural y Escultura. Lo primero que hice fue reconocer los símbolos que...
Una perspectiva sobre el empleo del barro cocido en el beneficio del cobre: Caso de Jicalán Viejo, Michoacán (2023)
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. Jicalán Viejo, es uno de los sitios prehispánicos donde se han encontrado vestigios de escoria metálica asociada al proceso metalúrgico del cobre. Al igual que las escorias, el barro utilizado en la manufactura de...
Una síntesis de la historia prehispánica de Michoacán (2018)
El avance de los estudios arqueológicos realizados hasta el momento permiten delinear ya un panorama general de la historia prehispánica en Michoacán desde aproximadamente 1500 aC hasta 1522 dC. En esta ponencia presentaré una síntesis de dicha historia, vinculando la información de Michoacán a la de otras regiones colindantes con el fin de distintguir los rasgos particulares de diversas zonas pero identificando también las tendencias generales de desarrollo que se dieron a través del tiempo.