Aztec (Other Keyword)
Aztecs
1-25 (32 Records)
The following is an interpretation of Long-Nosed God masks. From O'Brien 1991 "Early State Economics: Cahokia, Capital of the Ramey State."
Aztec Imperial Strategies in Guerrero, Mexico: Evaluating the Greengo Collection from the Burke Museum, Seattle (2016)
Aztec presence in Guerrero, Mexico is documented ethnohistorically, but archaeological work can be difficult to undertake in this volatile region. The Triple Alliance provinces in Guerrero served as important sources of tribute, but also as buffers against the hostile Purépecha regime to the west. Though Aztec imperial strategies varied in different provinces, tribute policies in Tepecoacuilco were thought to have facilitated intensification of production and reorganization of economic...
Aztec Ruins, 2.0 (2015)
This poster will present a "new" view of Aztec Ruins -- particularly Aztec West -- which refines modern base maps with historic data. This latter includes data drawn from Morris-era excavation photos, as well as additional information from unpublished sketch maps, correspondence, and field notes. This 'new' map will include unpublished locational data on mounds, burials, floor features, wall features, remodeling, refuse, burning... etc etc. Almost no reading required. SAA 2015 abstracts made...
Big Changes in Little Places: An Examination of the Political Strategies of Leaders at Late Postclassic Xaltocan, Mexico (2017)
During the Late Postclassic the Basin of Mexico underwent dramatic political and cultural shifts, chiefly due to the formation and rapid expansion of the Aztec Triple Alliance. Xaltocan was among the many regional centers to be conquered and incorporated into the Aztec state. Historical documents indicate that prolonged conflict ultimately resulted in Xaltocan’s conquest and partial abandonment, thus local leaders were not integrated into the new political framework and were replaced by Mexica...
The Birth of Ehecatl: The Cultural Origins of the Avian Wind God OF Central Mexico (2015)
One of the most striking deities of the Aztec pantheon is Ehecatl-Quetzalcoatl, a duck-billed being embodying such ethereal concepts as rain-bringing wind and the breath of life. He is in jarring contrast to Quetzalcoatl, who although embodying the same concepts of wind, is a quetzal-plumed rattlesnake in Aztec thought. This study argues that in contrast to the plumed serpent, Ehecatl-Quetzalcoatl constitutes a relatively recent introduction of an avian wind deity from eastern Mesoamerica into...
By Themselves They Celebrated His Feast Day: Regional Variation in Postclassic Central Mexican Domestic Ritual (2016)
This poster examines the variation in domestic ritual practices in Postclassic Central Mexico, using data from the Basin of Mexico, the Toluca Valley, and Morelos. I use cluster analysis to identify patterning in censer and figurine use, based on the functional attributes of these artifact classes (use mechanics for censers, subject matter for figurines). These clusters are then compared spatially and temporally to identify patterns based on ethnicity and the expansion of the Aztec Empire. The...
Center and Satellites The Relationship of Templo Mayor to Similar twin-temple pyramids in Central Mexico (2015)
This poster displays the relationship between the Great Temple of Tenochtitlán and four smaller pyramids, of similar architecture, concurrently in operation during the period of Aztec dominance in central Mexico. I will demonstrate how the satellite pyramids worked in conjunction with Templo Mayor to form a cohesive religious network, reflecting shared ideology through common ritual use . Using the ethnographic analogy of medieval Catholicism, I will show how Mexica-Aztec religion utilized this...
Characterization of Local and Aztec Rule at Calixtlahuaca (2017)
The Aztec Empire has been characterized as both an example of relatively indirect rule and as a case of relatively collective rule, positions which are least superficially opposed. In this paper, I use ceramic data (INAA, petrography, and type classification) from multiple contemporaneous households at the provincial capital of Calixtlahuaca in the Toluca Valley to evaluate these two positions. I compare data from the time periods during which the site was under local rule and when it was...
Closing the Gap at Aztec Ruins: Refining the Dating Sequence Using Corn and Pottery (2017)
Excavation of a recent test unit at Aztec West revealed stratigraphic deposits yielding corn samples that were well distributed throughout. The primary research objective was to use Accelerator Mass Spectometry (AMS) Radiocarbon dating to date charred corn from the test unit and compare the results with date ranges for pottery from the same levels. A tree-ring date of AD 1130 was also obtained from charred wood in a pit feature below the levels yielding corn, suggesting that the deposits, corn,...
Colonizers and Colonized: Indigenous Allies and the New Spanish Colonial Culture of the 1559-1561 Tristán de Luna y Arellano Settlement on Pensacola Bay, Florida (2023)
This is an abstract from the session entitled "Colonial Ventures and Native Voices: Legacies from the Spanish and Portuguese Empires", at the 2023 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. Indigenous allies on Spanish expeditions of expansion, conquest, and colonization in the Americas throughout the 16th century are well documented. The Tristán de Luna Settlement effort was dispatched from New Spain to La Florida with 12 ships and 1,500 colonists. Luna’s complement included...
Cosmology in the New World
This project consists of articles written by members of Santa Fe Institute’s cosmology research group. Overall, the goal of this group is to understand the larger relationships between cosmology and society through a theoretically open-ended, comparative examination of the ancient American Southwest, Southeast, and Mesoamerica.
Cross-dressing to Complement the King: Eco-iconography of the Aztec Cihuacoatl’s Costume (2015)
Co-regents led the Aztec state: the principal Tlatoani, "supreme speaker," and his second, the Cihuacoatl, "Woman Snake," also the name of a fearsome goddess. The complementary rulers reflected Aztec notions of cosmic balance between opposites: while the male king directed external military campaigns during the dry season ("the day sun"), the Cihuacoatl managed internal affairs, especially agriculture, during the rainy season, or "night sun." A ruthless and visionary individual named Tlacaelel...
Entre genes y memes: estudios de paleogenética de poblaciones en el México antiguo (2017)
El centro de México ha sido una región de convergencia y tránsito de ideas y mercancías desde la época prehispánica. Los grandes centros urbanos del Clásico y del Posclásico se caracterizaron por un constante trasiego que alcanzó desde el actual centro de México hasta Centroamérica. La intensidad de este intercambio desde épocas muy tempranas consolidó el complejo cultural mesoamericano principalmente identificado por la iconografía. Sin embargo no sólo las ideas y las mercaderías viajan,...
The Epiclassic from the Mexica perspective: Stone sculpture evidence (2015)
The ways in which human societies create a sense of history and incorporate it into daily life varies through time. In the Late Postclassic Basin of Mexico for example, cultural groups perpetuated, but also abandoned aspects of the stories of their ancestors. The uses, causes and reasons for this practice depends on a combination of several factors. The use of the past and how it was conceived and incorporated into the perspective of the Mexica is of particular interest. Previous studies have...
Evolution of the Aztec Tecpan Palace (2017)
Sahagún called the Aztec palace a place of wisdom, and in the mature Aztec empire, sages of all kinds gathered in the tecpans and were members of elite families. The power of ruling families was based, in part, on their more sophisticated education, including divination and curing, and palaces as centers of knowledge served their communities. We know this from descriptions of contact-era imperial palaces, and we also know that these impressive places were the products of the evolution of the...
Feather headdresses among the offerings at Tenochtitlan’s Great Temple (2015)
The excavations conducted during the seventh field season of the Templo Mayor Project have uncovered a large quantity of organic matter, thus the conservation team has dedicated a large part of their efforts to the treatment of these rare materials. During the cleaning of these materials, feathers associated with heron bones were identified. In a level below them were found more remains of feathers belonging to the headdresses of Tlaloc masks. The degree of their deterioration required us to...
How Tlaloc Got His Groove (2018)
One of the distinctive features of one of the principal Maya solar deities, the Jaguar God of the Underworld, is the twisted cord—nicknamed "cruller" for the German doughnut over 100 years ago by Eduard Seler—that loops under the eyes (with their characteristic inward curl for pupils) and twists between them, sometimes ending under the deity’s jaguar ears. This feature, perhaps to be associated with fire and burning, takes up its place on the nose of a different deity, Tlaloc, in Central Mexico,...
It's Alive: Gambling, Animatism, and Divination Among the Aztecs (2015)
Gambling and divination both pit the hopes of the petitioner against an uncertain future outcome. Popular for millennia, they seem to inhabit distinct spheres of interest, secular and spiritual, but overlap as the individual tries to assess the odds and garner available forces of knowledge, luck, or patronage of the spirits. In Aztec culture, this overlap linked the spiritual realm of divination and the base entertainment presented by gambling (which they regarded as dissolute, though common). ...
Mixed metaphors and mixed media: using commodity chains and commodity circuits to better understand Aztec textile production (2017)
Archaeological and ethnohistoric investigations of Aztec textile production have shown how women’s labor and domestic economies were interwoven with the imperial political economy. However, remarkably little attention has been paid to the people involved in affiliated industries—like cotton growers, dyers, and spindle-whorl-makers. Material evidence of these people is often ephemeral or isolated, but it is available. In this paper, we draw on theories of commodity chains and commodity circuits...
Patterns of Postclassic Ceramic Exchange in the Toluca Valley and Surrounding Areas of Central Mexico (2015)
In Central Mexico, the Late Postclassic period encompasses the expansion of both a robust market system and the growth of the Aztec Empire. However, increasingly refined chronologies in multiple subregions have made it clear that changes in economic and political organization did not happen simultaneously, nor did they happen consistently across the region. This poster presents data on the changing geographic patterning and intensity of ceramic exchange at the site of Calixtlahuaca, in the...
Persistence of Aztec Religious Belief Materialized in the Early Colonial Religious Architecture of the Central Mexican Highlands (2015)
Late Classic conceptualizations of sacred space, cosmologies, calendrical systems, and religious symbols combined to form a powerful and enduring core of indigenous religious beliefs that persisted well into the Early Colonial period in the central highlands of Mexico. Indigenous builders and artisans reconstructed their temples, now Christian, within pre-existing Aztec sacred space, often following indigenous alignments of cosmological significance. The elaborate facades of these churches were...
Producers on the Lake: Late Aztec Lakebed Chinampa Communities of Lake Xochimilco (2015)
Recent historic imagery analysis combined with 1960-70s archaeological surface survey data in a geographic information system (GIS) has generated a detailed spatial model of chinampa beds, canals, and settlement mounds for a 1,010 hectare area of Lake Xochimilco distinct from remnant Xochimilco chinampas that persisted into historic and modern times. The delineated agricultural waterscape was characterized by an approximately 1:1 land to water ratio with narrow raised agricultural beds (3.75 x...
Sacrifice and the Sun: The Aztec Calendar Stone and Its Origins (2021)
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...
Seasonality in Central Mexican Painted Images of Tlaloc: From Classic to Postclassic (2016)
Tlaloc, the rain god of Central Mexico, has different seasonal avatars in painted imagery. Colonial codices document these variants in veintena festivals recorded to help Spanish friars detect survivals of indigenous religion. Rainy season imagery shows Tlaloc associated with maize plants and agricultural fertility. In contrast, imagery of the dry season emphasizes Tlaloc’s mountain aspect, because the rain god withdrew into the mountains to hold back the rainfall. The priests performed mountain...
Social Archaeology and Debating Local Scholars (2016)
How can archaeologists both benefit from interaction with local communities and also debate with local scholars? Engaging with local scholars can sometimes require walking a fine line between imposing foreign values in a colonizing manner and accepting ideas that are either incorrect or that promote oppression and inequality. Theoretically-informed social archaeology can help us engage with local scholars with respect and debate their ideas with the goals of promoting social justice, and without...