Regional and Intensive Site Survey: Case Studies from Mesoamerica

Part of: Society for American Archaeology 84th Annual Meeting, Albuquerque, NM (2019)

This collection contains the abstracts of the papers presented in the session entitled "Regional and Intensive Site Survey: Case Studies from Mesoamerica," at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Systematic survey, whether extensive, intensive, and at varying scales, is one of the basic archaeological fieldwork strategies, and it remains among the most productive research tools in the discipline, allowing researchers to detect patterns related to economic and political organization, make generalizations, or test hypotheses about the human behavior reflected in the material record, as well as make comparisons across Mesoamerica and beyond. Frequently, regional surveys provide the first information regarding the location, organization, and potential significance of archaeological resources in previously unexplored contexts, as well as crucial evidence for past human activities over a large area. Alternately, intensive site survey has the potential to reveal new data at even the most rigorously excavated sites. This session reinforces the role and value of surveys in archaeological research by presenting new data and interpretations derived from a series of recent surveys. Spanning the geographic extent of Mesoamerica, these papers explore the above issues and others, including questions ranging from the ways in which remote sensing techniques or new lines of evidence— such as the use of LiDAR or genomic data— can augment and complement traditional pedestrian survey, to how archaeological survey data may be used politically to craft heritage conservation policy.

Other Keywords
Survey • Settlement patterns • Highland Mesoamerica: Postclassic • Landscape Archaeology • Social and Political Organization • Remote Sensing/Geophysics • Highland Mesoamerica: Classic • Architecture • Spatial Analysis • Paleoethnobotany

Geographic Keywords
North America (Continent) • United Mexican States (Country) • Colima (State / Territory) • Michoacan (State / Territory) • Jalisco (State / Territory) • Nayarit (State / Territory) • Aguascalientes (State / Territory) • Guanajuato (State / Territory) • Mesoamerica: Western • Tlaxcala (State / Territory)

Resources Inside This Collection (Viewing 1-13 of 13)

  • Documents (13)
Documents
  • Archaeological Survey in Delimited Units: The Altépetl of Ixmiquilpan in the Sixteenth Century (2019)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Fernando Aguilar.

    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. Archaeological surveys at a regional scale have faced the dilemma of concordance between the archaeological sampling units, normally defined by physiographic elements of the landscape, and the use of significant components of the studied societies, for example, political units or symbolic landscapes. Research undertaken...

  • Arqueología del agua y las montañas: paisaje y patrón de asentamiento en la costa este de Los Tuxtlas. (2019)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Lourdes Budar. Gibrann Becerra.

    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. Desde el año 2008 arqueólogos de la Universidad Veracruzana han realizado el estudio sistemático del corredor costero que se encuentra en la parte noreste de Los Tuxtlas. Bajo cobertura total del terreno, se ha recorrido una extensión de 300 km2, desde la Laguna de Sontecomapan al norte, hasta la Laguna del Ostión al sur,...

  • ¿Bajo el Yugo de Metztitlán? Un Reconocimiento Arqueológico de la Sierra Norte de Hidalgo, México (2019)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Alba Tellez-Nieto. Joshua Englehardt.

    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. La sierra norte de Hidalgo no está bien documentada arqueológicamente, a pesar de su ubicación entre dos esferas culturales mayores del Postclásico: el señorío de Metztitlán y la Huasteca. Este trabajo busca llenar esta laguna del conocimiento, con dos metas principales: identificar la organización sociopolítica de los...

  • Digitally Augmented Survey of Southern Veracruz Using Open-Source LiDAR Data (2019)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Bethany Swartz. Wesley Stoner. Barbara Stark.

    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 recent years, the Mexican Instituto Nacional de Estadística y Geografía (INEGI) released a LiDAR-based digital elevation module (DEM) that provides a mechanism to augment the area covered by pedestrian surveys. The DEM is of low resolution (5-m horizontal grid) compared to research-grade LIDAR studies in Mesoamerica,...

  • Distribution Analysis of Archaeological Ceramics on the "Malpaís de Tacámbaro Site", La Garita Sector, Michoacán, México (2019)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Mijaely Castañón-Suárez. José Luis Punzo Díaz. Lissandra González González.

    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 we will present the results of the geostatistical analysis of the ceramics recovered during the archaeological prospecting works at Malpaís de Tacámbaro site in the La Garita sector. This is a big settlement located on top of a volcanic flow in the municipality of Tacámbaro, the south central of Michoacán....

  • Ethnoarchaeological Survey in Santo Domingo Tonaltepec, Oaxaca (2019)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Antonio Martínez Tuñón. Veronica Perez Rodriguez.

    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. The Tonaltepec Ethnoarchaeological Project focused on one of the few surviving pottery-producing communities in the Mixteca Alta region of Oaxaca. The project investigated whether Tonaltepec’s contemporary tradition of pottery production can be traced back to prehispanic times. To do this, we conducted ethnographic...

  • From the Sky and from the Ground: Using Multiple Survey Strategies to Map El Palacio, Northern Michoacán (2019)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Marion Forest.

    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...

  • Full-Coverage Survey in the Lower Río Verde Valley, Oaxaca, Mexico: Broad-Scale Insights on Human-Environment Relations (2019)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Jessica Hedgepeth Balkin. Arthur Joyce. Raymond Mueller. Sarah Barber.

    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. Regional survey in the lower Río Verde Valley, Oaxaca, Mexico has been ongoing since 1994. Our full-coverage approach resulted in extensive spatial coverage (224 km2) spanning the valley’s major physiographic zones (e.g., floodplain, piedmont, etc.). The coarse-grained data produced via this methodology is ideal for...

  • Genomics and Archaeological Survey: Elucidating Ancient Mesoamerican Human-Plant Interactions (2019)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Joshua Englehardt. Angélica Cibrian Jaramillo.

    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. Archaeogenetics, a term coined by Colin Renfrew in 2000, is a relatively new line of inquiry into the archaeological past. Archaeogenetic techniques use ancient DNA and genomic sequencing to reveal population-level data that may be used to elucidate processes central to archaeological research, such as group migrations...

  • Las unidades habitacionales de Chavinda y sus estrategias de apropiación del espacio. (2019)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only David Muñiz. Kimberly Sumano Ortega. José Luis Punzo Díaz.

    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. Habitar un espacio es apropiarse del entorno mediante distintas estrategias que pueden interpretadas por el arqueólogo. Durante el epiclásico se desarrolló el sitio Chavinda en la Ciénega de Chapala, es este lugar se realizaron recorridos sistemáticos de superficie y excavaciones que permitieron identificar unidades...

  • Mapping the Ancient City of Chichen Itza, Yucatan, Mexico (2019)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Rafael Cobos.

    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. A systematic mapping program conducted at Chichen Itza, Yucatan, Mexico, revealed a considerable amount of archaeological as well as non-archaeological features distributed over the surface of several areas located in the site’s periphery. This program relied upon the traditional mapping method consisting in clearing the...

  • A Methodological Challenge: Understanding the Population Dynamics in the Lerma Floodplain through the Case of Tres Mezquites, Michoacan (2019)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Véronique Darras. Alejandra Castañeda. Laure Déodat.

    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. Alluvial plains in Mexico are still little explored. At first glance their archaeological potential is difficult to appreciate because they are areas of both sedimentary accumulation and destruction caused by intensive agriculture. To compensate these limitations in the Lerma alluvial plain (Michoacan, Guanajuato), we...

  • Sculpting the Landscape: Analyzing the Formative-Classic Period Built Environment at Los Guachimontones, Jalisco (2019)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Verenice Y. Heredia Espinoza.

    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. Los Guachimontones is the quintessential and largest archaeological site of the Teuchitlán tradition or culture. Despite this, until recently our understanding of the site has been hampered in part by an overemphasis on excavations in the largest, most monumental guachimontón (or circular architectural groups). However,...