Postclassic Mesoamerica: The View from the Southern Frontier

Part of: Society for American Archaeology 86th Annual Meeting, Online (2021)

This collection contains the abstracts of the papers presented in the session entitled "Postclassic Mesoamerica: The View from the Southern Frontier" at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Papers will consider the question of Mesoamerica’s southern frontier during the Postclassic period (800–1520 CE) from the perspectives of El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, and Costa Rica. Long considered peripheral from a world systems perspective, ethnohistorical accounts describe migrations from central Mexico to lands along the Pacific shore of Central America by Otomanguean- and Nahuat-speakers in the centuries leading up to European contact. The chronology of these migrations is frustratingly vague, as are the explanations of why the migrations occurred. These historical accounts have been mined to highlight the Mexican connections, and in many cases have been incorporated into the cultural identities of these Central American countries. Using the ethnohistorical sources to guide hypotheses and structure interpretations, the past 20 years have been busy in terms of producing archaeological data to challenge and evaluate interaction scenarios relating "Mesoamerica" with neighbors from the southern frontier. These papers offer important new insights into the Mesoamerican frontier with substantive information and updated interpretations. Can these perspectives be used to revision what is "Mesoamerica"? Papers in this symposium provide archaeological case studies from throughout the region, as leading scholars attempt to critically integrate the ethnohistorical accounts with the material record.

Other Keywords
Intermediate Area • Trade and exchange • Ceramic Analysis • Ethnohistory/History • Frontiers and Borderlands • demography • Political economy • Migration • Mobility • Borderlands

Geographic Keywords
Republic of El Salvador (Country) • Republic of Guatemala (Country) • Department of Martinique (Country) • Department of Guadeloupe (Country) • Antigua and Barbuda (Country) • Belize (Country) • Anguilla (Country) • Republic of Honduras (Country) • St. Lucia (Country) • Montserrat (Country)

Resources Inside This Collection (Viewing 1-11 of 11)

  • Documents (11)
Documents
  • Classic through Postclassic in El Salvador (2021)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Paul Amaroli.

    This is an abstract from the "Postclassic Mesoamerica: The View from the Southern Frontier" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Beginning with the first formal archaeological studies nearly a century ago, findings in the territory of El Salvador have been recognized as attesting to the establishment of Nahua migrants. This has commonly been interpreted, in conjunction with ethnohistoric accounts, as resulting from a single episode of what has been...

  • Crafting and Trading along the Banks of the Telica: Artisan Communities and Regional Interaction in Eastern Honduras and Beyond (2021)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Virginia Ochoa-Winemiller.

    This is an abstract from the "Postclassic Mesoamerica: The View from the Southern Frontier" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This paper focuses on the regional role that two artisan communities, Chichicaste and Dos Quebradas, played as producers of pottery and obsidian blades within regional exchange networks. Chichicaste pottery has been recovered from many Honduran sites as well as from El Salvador and northern Nicaragua. The wide distribution of...

  • It Was Not Always the Frontier: Multicultural Interaction between Isthmo-Colombian and Mesoamerican Peoples in Central Costa Rica (2021)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Francisco Corrales-Ulloa. Yajaira Núñez-Cortés.

    This is an abstract from the "Postclassic Mesoamerica: The View from the Southern Frontier" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Evidence for interregional exchange between Central Costa Rica and Greater Nicoya dates back to AD 300, and lasted until the arrival of Europeans in the sixteenth century. Previous scholarship postulates that these regions were located in a changing boundary between Mesoamerican and Isthmo-Colombian peoples. While this may be...

  • Long-Distance Interaction in Central Nicaragua: An Archaeological View on Local Practices and Globalizing Postclassic Trends (2021)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Alexander Geurds. Natalia R. Donner.

    This is an abstract from the "Postclassic Mesoamerica: The View from the Southern Frontier" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Archaeological work on Greater Nicoya modeled perceived Postclassic changes in material culture by invoking foreign incursions and population displacement. At the eastern edges of Greater Nicoya, however, small-scale communities navigated the increasing flow of Mesoamerican cultural features through a social dynamic of active...

  • The Maya, the Nahua, and Lower Central America (2021)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Karen Bruhns.

    This is an abstract from the "Postclassic Mesoamerica: The View from the Southern Frontier" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In the Terminal Classic and Early Postclassic, Mesoamerican cultures underwent not only political turmoil but also a general renaissance in terms of material culture, including urban planning, architectural forms, ceramics (such as Tohil Plumbate), and the growth of truly international cults such as those of Tlaloc and Xipe...

  • The Mexican Pantheon in Postclassic Pacific Nicaragua (2021)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Sharisse McCafferty. Geoffrey McCafferty.

    This is an abstract from the "Postclassic Mesoamerica: The View from the Southern Frontier" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Colonial sources describe interaction between central Mexican groups and Central American cultures, including possible migration and colonization, during the Postclassic period (900–1520 CE). Linguistic and art historical evidence has been used to support and reify this connection. A 20-plus year archaeological program by the...

  • The Mixteca-Puebla International Style as a Mesoamerican Marker in Postclassic Greater Nicoya: A Reevaluation (2021)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Larry Steinbrenner.

    This is an abstract from the "Postclassic Mesoamerica: The View from the Southern Frontier" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The beautiful polychrome ceramics of Pacific Nicaragua’s Sapoá period (800–1300 CE) have long been touted as the southernmost manifestation of the Mixteca-Puebla phenomenon in lower Central America. Traditionally, these ceramics have been treated as de facto cultural markers of two independent migrant groups of Mesoamerican...

  • Nahua Diaspora and Cacao (2021)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Kathryn Sampeck.

    This is an abstract from the "Postclassic Mesoamerica: The View from the Southern Frontier" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. A significant amount of archaeological evidence demonstrates that Late Postclassic Mesoamericans exchanged cacao intensively and over long distances. A reason for high-volume cacao commerce in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries was the expansion of its use from a ritual offering and the ingredient in socially important...

  • Out of Mexico: An Archaeological Evaluation of the Migration Legends of Greater Nicoya (2021)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only John Hoopes. Geoffrey McCafferty. Sharisse McCafferty.

    This is an abstract from the "Postclassic Mesoamerica: The View from the Southern Frontier" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Ethnohistoric documents pertaining to the Greater Nicoya archaeological subarea document legends in which the inhabitants of western Nicaragua and northwestern Costa Rica traced their ancestry to migrations from the north, presumably in Mexico. Linguistic data indicate that speakers of Chorotega, an Oto-Manguean language, and...

  • Reorganización socio-política entre lago y montañas: El sitio de Los Naranjos y la cuenca de Yojoa durante el Postclásico Temprano (2021)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Julien Sion. Jennifer Arguijo. Divina Perla-Barrera. Ricardo Rodas. Antolín Velásquez.

    This is an abstract from the "Postclassic Mesoamerica: The View from the Southern Frontier" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Durante la transición entre Clásico y Postclásico (siglos IX-XII dC), se observan notables cambios en las dinámicas de ocupación y la organización socio-política de los sitios del Noroeste de Honduras, así como en las redes de intercambio a larga distancia con la Zona Maya o la Gran Nicoya. Sin embargo, debido a las...

  • Situating Mobility: Local and Regional Connectivities in and beyond the Gulf of Fonseca (AD 800–1520) (2021)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Marie Kolbenstetter.

    This is an abstract from the "Postclassic Mesoamerica: The View from the Southern Frontier" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In precolonial times, the social landscapes of Central America underwent numerous changes. While the impetus for those social changes are still under investigation, they are well documented, both on local and regional scales, in Greater Nicoya between the Bagaces and the Sapoá periods. In the Gulf of Fonseca, to the north,...