Highland Mesoamerica: Postclassic (Other Keyword)

DOCUMENT Citation Only 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. What role do ruins play in the lives of descendant peoples? Surrounding the small mountain pueblo of San Antonio La Baeza are numerous ruins dating to different time periods. For example, below the modern pueblo are large, deep rockshelters that have been occupied from the Late Formative up until today and are covered in...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Annabeth Headrick.

This is an abstract from the "Dancing through Iconographic Corpora: A Symposium in Honor of F. Kent Reilly III" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. While many scholars have suggested that the Aztec sacrificed individuals on the Calendar Stone, this paper will not only explore this aspect but also the object’s affiliation with another form of sacrifice, auto-sacrifice. Using ethnohistoric records, connections between the imagery of the stone and acts of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Alejandra Aguirre.

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. The complex Mesoamerican cosmovisión includes myths about the cultures to try to understand, their history, natural events, and their universe, through narrations and fantastic facts, which gave them an explanation about everything that they did not understand. As a consequence of this, the invention of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Katarzyna Mikulska.

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. The aim of this paper is to analyze the meaning encoded in the "curved like obsidian" graphic pattern present in the cap and face of Itztlacoliuhqui, the Nahua god of frost. Though supposedly it is a pattern that encodes "obsidian," the sacrificial obsidian knives are painted in a different way. On the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jeanne Gillespie.

This is an abstract from the "Advances in Puebla/Tlaxcala Archaeology" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In the “Historia de Tlaxcala,” mestizo chronicler Diego Muñoz de Camargo commemorates the first significant military endeavor between Tlaxcalan forces and the European soldiers under the command of Hernán Cortés. This study analyzes how Muñoz Camargo constructed the narrative of the siege and battle, and how he framed the Tlaxcalan victory as a...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Liana Jiménez Osorio.

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. El tema de los santuarios y paisajes sagrados de origen precolonial en Ñuu Savi o Mixteca lo he estado investigado desde la arqueología, antropología, los códices y documentos coloniales. También han sido fundamentales las experiencias y aprendizajes que he tenido en diferentes rituales mixtecos. De esta manera, en esta plática me...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Cristina García-Moreno. James T. Watson.

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 archaeological site of El Cementerio, dated between the Middle and Late Sonoran Ceramic Period (circa AD 1000-1521) and located in central Sonora along the Yaqui River, displays several characteristics suggestive of closer links to West Mexican coastal settlements including the presence of shell jewelry and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Laura Filloy. María Olvido Moreno.

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...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Meghan Cartier.

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...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Miranda George. Ellizabeth Paris. Roberto López Bravo.

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,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jeanne Gillespie.

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...

DOCUMENT Citation Only John K. Millhauser.

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...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Katrina Kosyk.

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...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Soren Frykholm. Stephen Whittington.

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,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Stephen Whittington.

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...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Ronald Faulseit.

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. During archaeological excavations I directed on the lands of San Mateo Macuilxóchitl in Oaxaca México, members of the community shared several narratives with me about the mountains surrounding their village. These stories intertwined myth and history to convey the special connection between the people and place. In this paper, I...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Ryohei Takatsuchi. Karina López Hernández. Víctor Cortés Meléndez.

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...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Elizabeth Baquedano.

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...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Lois Martin.

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...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Susan Milbrath.

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...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Angelica Perez Diosdado. Fernanda Lucia Sandoval. José Luis Punzo.

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...

DOCUMENT Citation Only José Luis Punzo Díaz.

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...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Thania Ibarra. Aurelio López Corral.

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...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Angel González López. Lorena Vázquez Vallín.

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...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Marion Forest. Andrew Somerville. Claudia María López Pérez. Jennifer Saumur.

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. Interregional relations are widely documented for Classic period Teotihuacan (AD 1–600), where a rich and extensive network of goods, people, and ideas connected the ancient city with the rest of Mesoamerica. After its political collapse at about...