The Urban Question: Interdisciplinary Approaches to Investigating the Ancient Mesoamerican City
Part of: Society for American Archaeology 86th Annual Meeting, Online (2021)
This collection contains the abstracts of the papers presented in the session entitled "The Urban Question: Interdisciplinary Approaches to Investigating the Ancient Mesoamerican City" at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.
Urbanism and architecture in Mesoamerica have been the subject of intense investigations; however, there is still much to learn surrounding the various trajectories leading to city development, functioning, and sustainability. The extreme variability of precolumbian Mesoamerican settlements in terms of configuration and nucleation makes it often impossible to identify the city edges and reconstruct its gradual development. Because cities are dynamic, they require dynamic programs of investigation that address the urban experience as multiscalar, nonlinear, and materially rich. This session proposes a multidisciplinary and multiscalar approach to the consideration of the history of urban development in Mesoamerica, from the individual event, to the household and finally the urban scale. That approach, including both micro and macro methods, spatial analyses, and digital archaeological techniques presents an opportunity to investigate the relationship between the Mesoamerican city and its gradual expansion to its inhabitants, in terms of population scale with respect to infrastructure for people’s daily movement, living, and interaction. With the papers presented here, we aim to contribute to a comprehensive theoretical and methodological approach to Mesoamerican urban studies that attends to the city as the result of intertwined social, economic, political, practical, and worldview related processes.
Other Keywords
Maya: Classic •
Urbanism •
Digital Archaeology: GIS •
Lithic Analysis •
Landscape Archaeology •
Political economy •
Spatial Analysis •
Craft Production •
Settlement patterns •
Classic Period
Geographic Keywords
United Mexican States (Country) •
North America (Continent) •
Yucatan (State / Territory) •
Belize (Country) •
Corozal (State / Territory) •
Quintana Roo (State / Territory) •
Campeche (State / Territory) •
Tabasco (State / Territory) •
Peten (State / Territory) •
Orange Walk (State / Territory)
Resources Inside This Collection (Viewing 1-10 of 10)
- Documents (10)
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Artisanal Diversification or “Multi-crafting” as Economic Strategy among Upper-Class Extra-household Groups at Cotzumalhuapa (2021)
DOCUMENT Citation Only
This is an abstract from the "The Urban Question: Interdisciplinary Approaches to Investigating the Ancient Mesoamerican City" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Various contexts in the sector of El Baúl, at the site of Cotzumalhuapa have been the subject of recent excavations to better understand the lithic industries of this urban center. These sectors were chosen for excavation due to the large surface scatters of lithic material indicating areas...
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Collective Action, Households, Neighborhoods, and Urban Landscapes: A Multiscalar Perspective on Late Postclassic Urbanism at Tlaxcallan (2021)
DOCUMENT Citation Only
This is an abstract from the "The Urban Question: Interdisciplinary Approaches to Investigating the Ancient Mesoamerican City" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Systematic cross-cultural research on premodern cities at the global scale has begun to shed light on the relationships among political-economic strategies at various scales, the sociospatial organization of cities, and the daily lived experience of urban residents and visitors. Drawing on...
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Examining Flaked Stone from Caracol, Belize, at the Urban Scale (2021)
DOCUMENT Citation Only
This is an abstract from the "The Urban Question: Interdisciplinary Approaches to Investigating the Ancient Mesoamerican City" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Household and city scales are typical units of archaeological analysis at Maya sites. More recent models of urban space include intermediate scales referred to as “neighborhoods” that encompass clusters of households and “districts” that effectively integrate neighborhoods. Using flaked stone...
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Land Systems Architecture and Ecology as Infrastructure in Cities and Regions across the Maya Lowlands (2021)
DOCUMENT Citation Only
This is an abstract from the "The Urban Question: Interdisciplinary Approaches to Investigating the Ancient Mesoamerican City" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Relying on the lens of ecological urbanism this paper describes the diversity of long-term patterns of urbanization and agricultural intensification on regional landscapes in the Maya lowlands of southern Mexico and Central America. Best described as a mosaic, the Maya lowlands offers an...
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Living in the City of Naachtun (Guatemala): A Perspective from Urban Neighborhoods (2021)
DOCUMENT Citation Only
This is an abstract from the "The Urban Question: Interdisciplinary Approaches to Investigating the Ancient Mesoamerican City" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Archaeological investigations carried out since 2011 at the site of Naachtun provide series of data useful to draw with sufficient details, the historical trajectory of this Maya Classic regional capital located between Tikal and Calakmul. Starting its development with the construction of...
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Microarchaeology and the Production of Urban Life at the Classic Maya City of Palenque (2021)
DOCUMENT Citation Only
This is an abstract from the "The Urban Question: Interdisciplinary Approaches to Investigating the Ancient Mesoamerican City" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Archaeological studies of urbanism typically include a consideration of scale, from the household, the neighborhood, ward, and city. These spatial scales are also spheres of interaction and have implications for the kinds of shared material practices we can expect to find archaeologically....
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Patrones de movilidad como reflejo de la concepción del diseño urbano: Un caso del Centro Sur de Veracruz en el Clásico (2021)
DOCUMENT Citation Only
This is an abstract from the "The Urban Question: Interdisciplinary Approaches to Investigating the Ancient Mesoamerican City" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. En la actualidad, la visita a las zonas arqueológicas está determinada por un recorrido establecido por cuestiones de conservación y disfrute. Sin embargo, la movilidad dentro de las ciudades prehispánicas estuvo organizada por el diseño urbano, y su desarrollo a través del tiempo,...
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Production in Urban Spaces: Lithic Production and Economic Organization at La Corona, Guatemala (2021)
DOCUMENT Citation Only
This is an abstract from the "The Urban Question: Interdisciplinary Approaches to Investigating the Ancient Mesoamerican City" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Studies of urban spaces have often relied on specialized production as a marker of urbanism. More recently, our understandings of production activities in urban environments have been used to understand the variety of activities that occurred within these spaces and the ways in which they...
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Settlement and Mobility in Early Colonial Tabasco, Mexico (2021)
DOCUMENT Citation Only
This is an abstract from the "The Urban Question: Interdisciplinary Approaches to Investigating the Ancient Mesoamerican City" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. One of the most pervasive changes in Mesoamerican early colonial period was the new form of urban and town configuration and their relations with the surrounding landscape. Native settlement abandonment, forced congregations, and changes in communication and trade routes profoundly...
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Urban Form and Social Dimension at the Classic Maya City of Palenque (2021)
DOCUMENT Citation Only
This is an abstract from the "The Urban Question: Interdisciplinary Approaches to Investigating the Ancient Mesoamerican City" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In this paper I will explore the extent of planning and its social dimension at the ancient Maya city of Palenque, Chiapas, Mexico. Between the seventh and ninth centuries, during the Classic period, the plateau where Palenque is located was extensively modified resulting in a prosperous,...