Highland Mesoamerica: Postclassic (Other Keyword)
101-125 (276 Records)
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 Jalisco, Mexico, to Quimistán, Honduras: Analyzing Mesoamerican Metals from the Field Museum (2024)
This is an abstract from the "Twenty Years of Archaeological Science at the Field Museum’s Elemental Analysis Facility" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Copper artifacts were prominent in Mesoamerica during the last precolonial millennium, more widely distributed than silver and gold. Mesoamerican copper was formed into axes, axe-monies, rings, pendants, bells, and needles, among other artifacts. The most used alloy in this region was...
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...
Habitar en el Irechequa Tzintzuntzani: Resultados preliminares del análisis lidar (2024)
This is an abstract from the "Ways to Do, Ways to Inhabit, Ways to Interact: An Archaeological View of Communities and Daily Life" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Como parte del proyecto “Prospección Arqueológica de Tzintzuntzan, Antigua Ciudad de Michoacán”, se analizó el paisaje norte de la cuenca del lago de Pátzcuaro para identificar la extensión de las modificaciones hechas en las laderas de los cerros, mediante la construcción de terrazas. A...
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...
The “Hands of God” as Instruments of Death and Creation: Physicality, Embodiment, and Symbolism of Sacrificial Knives in Mesoamerica (2024)
This is an abstract from the "Sacrificial and Autosacrifice Instruments in Mesoamerica: Symbolism and Technology" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In this talk, we shall analyze sacrificial knives in Mesoamerica’s (bio) archaeological record, among written sources, and iconography. Our survey emphasizes the diversity of cutting weaponry through time and cultural spheres. By combining forensic evidence with the material study of sacrificial knives,...
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...
An Iconographic Analysis on the Offering H Polychrome Knives of Templo Mayor of Tenochtitlan (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Crossing Boundaries: Interregional Interactions in Pre-Columbian Times" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Mexicas were one of the civilizations that achieved a striking power of acquisition during Postclassic Mesoamerica. Through trade routes reaching down to Central America, they were able to procure exotic materials and artifacts not accessible in the basin of Mexico. One of these exotic materials was flint, a...
Identification of Altars at Angamuco in Michoacán, Mexico Using Geospatial Analysis of LiDAR Data (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The site of Angamuco was discovered during a survey of the Lake Pátzcuaro Basin in 2007. Angamuco is located in western Mexico, within the modern Mexican state of Michoacán. This site has been identified as part of the Purépecha Empire. Angamuco has primarily been examined using spatial data from LiDAR flights. Previous researchers have used the spatial data...
The Imperial Stone Sculpture of Tenochtitlan: Changes and Organization (2018)
The rise of the Aztec Mexica Empire is well represented in the archaeological record,especially through the wide spread evidence of stone sculptures in the main Precinct of the imperial capital. In less two hundred year of history, the island became the principal producer of these artifacts. Its workshops created not only numerically more pieces, butalso monumental pieces and sculptures with complex iconography and new discourses. This paper will discuss the problem of using the term "Aztec" to...
Implementation of Pore-Space Surface Descriptors for the Characterization of Taphonomy and Pathological Changes on Temporal Bones (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. This study describes the techniques developed to obtain a set of 2D/3D surface and volume descriptors from photogrammetry and tomography datasets that evaluate the pore space presented in a collection of temporal bones from Tzintzuntzan, Mexico. These methods could help to distinguish between taphonomy and pathological...
The Importance of Different Ontologies for Heritage Conservation in the Maya Area (2024)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Heritage conservation has as one of its main objectives, the recovery of specific values defined on many occasions by restorers and trained professionals. However, these values might not be the same for everyone. How can restorers incorporate the different ontologies regarding heritage in their conservation treatments and policies? Through a case study of...
Ingredients for Resistance: Foodways in Prehispanic and Colonial Tlaxcallan (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. Known as the "traitors to Mexico" for their fateful alliance with the Spanish, the Tlaxcalteca are often denigrated in Aztec-influenced versions of Mexican history. In these accounts, Tlaxcallan’s alliance with the Spanish was assumed to be a sign of the population’s political and economic...
The Institutional Basis of Sustained Farming Systems (2024)
This is an abstract from the "The Archaeology of Property Regimes" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. For key agricultural resources, people form and refine social institutions of property tailored to biophysical constraints and affordances of the local environment. As known from indigenous texts and practices, and a large body of historical research, in Oaxaca—and by extension Mesoamerica and beyond—intensive terracing, irrigation, and...
An Integrated Approach to Urban and Artifact Analysis of Residential Buildings in Late Postclassic Guiengola, Tehuantepec, Oaxaca (2024)
This is an abstract from the "Checking the Pulse II: Current Research in Oaxaca Part 2" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This paper explores ethnogenesis and cultural hybridity by analyzing survey and lidar data in 72 buildings from the Guiengola archaeological site in Oaxaca, Mexico. Specifically, it examines the Zapotec people's domestic construction and pottery assemblages in four areas of this fortified site during the Late Postclassic period...
Intercambio de materiales pétreos durante el Posclásico Temprano (900-1200 EC) al sur de la cuenca de México: El caso de Acatla-Tulyehualco (2024)
This is an abstract from the "Interactions during the Epiclassic and Early Postclassic (AD 650–1100) in the Central Highlands: New Insights from Material and Visual Culture" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Los recursos pétreos son una materia prima imprescindible para la obtención de instrumentos, manufactura de joyería y objetos de consumo ceremonial. En este trabajo se emplean diversas metodologías de estudio que incluyen el análisis tipológico,...