Highland Mesoamerica: Postclassic (Other Keyword)
76-100 (210 Records)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Aztatlán tradition constituted the primary economic and cultural development during the Early/Middle Postclassic (AD 900-1350) in west Mexico. Though politically decentralized, this culture was rooted on the Pacific coastal plain and featured vast trade networks. Located 100 km inland, the Etzatlán Basin is the westernmost lake basin in the Jalisco...
Enriched Spatial Syntax Analysis of Two Late Postclassic Terraces in 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. The work studies, from a human ecology perspective, the process of adapting the environment to the needs of the pre-Hispanic population of Tlaxcallan during the period of 1250-1519 A.D. It is proposed that the construction of the environment is the result of the interaction among ecological, historical, political, economic and symbolic factors...
The Epiclassic outside of the Basin: Measuring Population and Settlement Dynamics in the Puebla-Tlaxcala Valley, Mexico (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. Shared characteristics between settlements create the archaeological classification of the "Epiclassic" in central Mexico. These characteristics include rise in militarism, increase in long-distance networks, the upswing in regional centers vying for power, and a boost in art, architecture, and...
Estudios Químicos sobre la Cal de Tlaxcallan del Posclásico Tardío (1250-1519 d.C.) (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Tlaxcallan: Mesoamerica's Bizarro World" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. La cal fue uno de los principales cementantes en Mesoamérica y es considerada un rasgo clave para identificar niveles de complejidad social debido al alto costo energético que conllevó su producción artesanal en sociedades preindustriales. La cal también fue utilizada ampliamente en la antigua Tlaxcallan durante el Posclásico Tardío (1250-1519...
Evidencias arqueológicas del “ika” tojolabal, una tradición ancestral (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Heat, Steam, and Health: The Archaeology of the Mesoamerican Pib Naah (Sweat Baths)" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. La ceremonia del temascal, el baño ritual prehispánico, está presente desde épocas remotas en muchos sitios arqueológicos de Mesoamérica hasta la actualidad. Para la etnia tojolabal es de gran importancia terapéutica relacionada con la salud del grupo familiar que habita en la casa, en especial la...
Excavaciones en un barrio de Cholula (2021)
This is an abstract from the "Cholula to Chachoapan: Celebrating the Career of Michael Lind" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Se reportan las excavaciones realizadas en los terrenos de la UDLAP en los años 1968 y 1979 a 1 km al este de la Gran Pirámide de Cholula. En 1968 se localizó un parte de un complejo habitacional y se identificaron diferentes áreas de actividades, entre ellas un horno para la producción de cerámica. En 1979, a 30 m al este...
Experimental Investigation of Primary Copper Smelting in Central Michoacan (2019)
This is an abstract from the "From Materials to Materiality: Analysis and Interpretation of Archaeological and Historical Artifacts Using Non-destructive and Micro/Nano-sampling Scientific Methods" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Copper was the main metal produced and worked in Mesoamerica, but data for pre-modern primary production and processing remain elusive. Systematic research at Itziparátzico, a Late Postclassic location in Central...
Exploring Long-Term Environmental Dynamics and Human Transformation of Aquatic Spaces in Lake Texcoco, Mexico (2023)
This is an abstract from the "2023 Fryxell Award Symposium: Papers in Honor of Timothy Beach Part II" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Lake Texcoco was the largest of the five lakes that existed in the Basin of Mexico. Drained almost completely in the early 1900s, most of its western part has been occupied by Mexico City’s metropolitan area, though its eastern part remains undeveloped, which permits exploring the prehistory of the lake. In addition...
Exploring the Role of Fire in Tarascan Ritual Contexts of the Zacapu Basin, Michoacan, Mexico (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Journeying to the South, from Mimbres (New Mexico) to Malpaso (Zacatecas) and Beyond: Papers in Honor of Ben A. Nelson" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Studies of ritual activities often focus on paraphernalia, architectural structures, and other aspects of performance. While these are all important features, other more subtle elements that are nevertheless crucial to these activities are often not considered in...
Extracting Copper from Sulphidic Ores: The Jicalán Viejo Smelting Site (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. Contrary to other Mesoamerican cultural and political entities, the Purépecha Empire is renowned for its remarkable development of metallurgical production. Ongoing research at the site of Jicalán Viejo involves the...
A Few Considerations Regarding Jade Circulation during the Aztec Period (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Approaches to Cultural and Biological Complexity in Mexico at the Time of Spanish Conquest" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. It is well a known fact among researchers that the only confirmed jade deposits in Mesoamerica are found in the middle Motagua Valley in Guatemala. This gem’s brightest shades of green were the most appreciated among Mesoamerican people, yet, barely three hundred objects made with emerald green...
Financing the Domestic Economy: A Study of Craft Production and Technological Change in Central Mexico (2018)
Studies of technological change often leave unasked how people finance their adoption of new technologies, focusing instead on concepts of risk and uncertainty. The means of finance—whether by surplus production, saving, assuming debt, sharing costs, or other mechanisms—depends on the particulars of the economy in question and can have systemic and long-term consequences for adopters. To show why finance matters in explanations of technological change and how archaeologists can study it, this...
Fire and Death in the Great Platform of Tzintzuntzan, Mexico (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Tzintzuntzan, Capital of the Tarascan Empire: New Perspectives" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Just as fire and firewood were considered very important elements in the cosmovision of the Tarascan culture, so were war and sacrificial practices. Prisoners of war were sacrificed to two types of deities, the first linked to the celestial bodies and the second linked to the earth and water. Historical sources mention that...
First Results of the “Proyecto de investigación de poblaciones antiguas en el norte y occidente de México” (2021)
This is an abstract from the "Increasing the Accessibility of Ancient DNA within Archaeology" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Genomic analytical techniques have matured enough to address longstanding problems about the interactions and migrations of ancient populations inhabiting the north and west border of Mesoamerica, as well with populations from the US Southwest. With this in mind, we have established a collaborative, binational project...
Foodways and Diet in the Prehispanic Mixteca Alta : Ceramic and Isotope Analyses in the Specific Case of the Tomb 1 Burial in Nduatiucu (San Felipe Ixtapa, Teposcolula) (2019)
This is an abstract from the "The Archaeology of Oaxacan Cuisine" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This presentation examines the archaeological possibilities for investigating prehispanic foodways and diet. We do this through the analysis of a burial recovered in Tomb 1 at Nduatiucu, in the Teposcolula valley in the Mixteca Alta. The burial first excavated in the 1970s by Winter et al. (1975) and later re-assessed and radiocarbon dated by Saumur...
Foregrounding Food: Mixtec Cuisine, Identity, and Household Ritual at Late Postclassic Tututepec, Oaxaca (2019)
This is an abstract from the "The Archaeology of Oaxacan Cuisine" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This paper highlights the results of a recent analysis of macrobotanical remains from commoner households at the Late Postclassic (AD 1100-1522) Mixtec capital of Tututepec. The paleoethnobotanical data is considered in light of archaeological evidence, as well as ethnographic and ethnohistoric data, to investigate the nature of household food...
From a Cave near Tehuacán? Reconstructing Object Histories of Looted Postclassic Mesoamerican Turquoise Mosaics (2018)
The mid-20th-century market for pre-Columbian antiquities is notoriously opaque. Riddled as this moment in the market is with stories of looting, forgery and deceit, the period between roughly 1950 and 1990 is also the era in which significant parts of today’s best-known museum collections of pre-Columbian art were formed. Because of the practices of art dealers many pieces that once formed part of the same original deposit are now scattered over the globe. Any possible information on the ...
From the Sky and from the Ground: Using Multiple Survey Strategies to Map El Palacio, Northern Michoacán (2019)
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. In this paper, I present the recent results of the archaeological surveys conducted at El Palacio, an important pre-Tarascan site located in the Zacapu Basin, Northern Michoacán. The settlement was occupied from the Epiclassic through the Colonial era, with an important episode of urbanization occurring ca. 1250 A.D. If...
From Tlacolol to Metepantle: A Reappraisal of the Antiquity of the Agricultural Niches of the Central Mexican Symbiotic Region (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. With the benefit of a culture-ecological mindset and thousands of man-hours spent in the then still extensive countryside of the Basin of Mexico, The Book devoted many pages to the discussion of traditional farming techniques, potential maize yields, and abandoned agricultural...
Getting to the Point: Evidence for the Bow at Epiclassic Xochicalco, Mexico (2023)
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. Conventional wisdom suggests that the bow was not present in Mesoamerica until the Postclassic period (AD 900–1519). This date is chronologically convenient because it is consistent with the notion that the bow diffused from North America after AD 700. New evidence from the...
GIS Analysis of the Road Network at the Postclassic Purépecha Site of Angamuco, Mexico (2018)
The growing adoption of LiDAR for archaeological analysis makes determining how ancient peoples modified, interacted and moved through the landscape more practical. Initial analysis of the LiDAR produced imagery covering the Postclassic (1000-1520 CE) Purépecha site of Angamuco, located in the Lake Pátzcuaro Basin of Michoacán, Mexico showed a highly urbanized multi-nucleated settlement sprawled across 26km2 of an ancient lava flow, with a complex urban structure. Here I discuss the results from...
Going Up, Coming Down: Ruins, Verticality, and Time in the Postclassic Mixteca (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. For peoples of the Postclassic Mixtec highlands, ruins of earlier civilizations were often found on mountaintops outside some of the most politically prominent communities in the region. These ruined hilltop sites came to be viewed as places of primordial origin and were sites of religious pilgrimage. In this paper, drawing...
Hallazgo del Templo de Ehecatl Quetzalcoatl de México-Tenochtitlan (2018)
Entre los años 2009 y 2010 el Programa de Arqueología Urbana (PAU) del Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia (INAH), llevó a cabo excavaciones en el predio de Guatemala 16 del centro histórico de la Ciudad de México. Durante dichas excavaciones se encontró parte de uno de los templos del recinto sagrado, el templo dedicado al dios del viento, Ehecatl; más tarde, entre el 2016 y 2017el PAU concluyó la excavación y restauración de dicho edificio. Como resultado de estos trabajos se han...
Household Lake Exploitation and Aquatic Lifeways in Pre-Aztec Central 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. Lake exploitation was central to ways of life and culture in the Basin of Mexico. Evidence of lake exploitation, however, is often difficult to document archaeologically. Thus, discussions of production and exchange in pre-Aztec times usually focus on more durable goods such as...
Houses in the City: Domestic Economy and Space at Malpaís Prieto, Michoacan (2018)
Compared to other Postclassic cultures, not much attention has been given to the organization of daily life and domestic space in the Tarascan tradition. The political, religious and economic systems have been the focus of most archaeological and ethno-historical research, leaving the household systems understudied. It is yet critical to understand the fundamental role of household in the community organization, specifically in the context of the growing social and political complexity that led...