Bringing the Past to Life, Part 1: Papers in Honor of John M. D. Pohl

Part of: Society for American Archaeology 89th Annual Meeting, New Orleans, LA (2024)

This collection contains the abstracts of the papers presented in the session entitled "Bringing the Past to Life, Part 1: Papers in Honor of John M. D. Pohl" at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

This double symposium brings together a select group of archaeologists, ethnohistorians, museum professionals, and social justice advocates who have either collaborated with John M. D. Pohl directly or took inspiration from his remarkable half-century career. A trailblazer in the study of Mixtec, Nahua, and Zapotec civilizations of southern Mexico, Dr. Pohl is equally noted for bringing the ancient Indigenous past of the Americas to life through his numerous publications, collaborative field research, codical studies, blockbuster exhibitions, film and media production, dazzling artwork, and not least his inspired teaching at various universities across the United States. The panels are organized around two fundamental areas that reflect John Pohl’s interdisciplinary endeavors, the first in scholarship and the second in media and advocacy. The speakers are both current and former students together with emerging and senior scholars who are currently engaged in innovative research ranging from investigations into the Classic, Postclassic, and colonial cultural transformations across Mexico, Guatemala, and the United States; the use of cutting-edge technologies in the field and lab; digital media in museums and architectural reconstructions; and Indigenous representation in the public interpretation of their cultural histories.

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

  • Documents (13)

Documents
  • The Acolman Cross and the Maize God (2024)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Manuel Aguilar-Moreno.

    This is an abstract from the "Bringing the Past to Life, Part 1: Papers in Honor of John M. D. Pohl" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The monastery of Acolman founded by the Augustinian order is located near Teotihuacan. The most astonishing tequitqui (Amerindian-Christian art of the sixteenth century) monument in Acolman is the atrial cross made in 1550. Although open-air crosses existed in Europe, the Mexican crosses have a different iconography...

  • The Aztatlán-Huasteca Network: A Model for the Acquisition and Dissemination of Scarlet Macaws from Mesoamerica to the US Southwest/Mexican Northwest (2024)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Michael Mathiowetz.

    This is an abstract from the "Bringing the Past to Life, Part 1: Papers in Honor of John M. D. Pohl" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In the long-running debate on the nature of interaction between societies in prehispanic Mesoamerica and the US Southwest/Northwest Mexico, the acquisition of scarlet macaws and their dissemination to the SW/NW has been perplexing. Questions abound as to how and why long-distance social networks were established and...

  • Coastlines, Mountains, Linguistic Diversity, or Subaltern Trade Networks: Hypothesizing Sources of Language Isolates in the Isthmus of Oaxaca (2024)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Aaron Sonnenschein.

    This is an abstract from the "Bringing the Past to Life, Part 1: Papers in Honor of John M. D. Pohl" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. As a linguist and specialist in the languages and cultures of the Isthmus of Tehuantepec and Oaxaca, I have long considered that one of the most intriguing hypotheses Dr. Pohl has presented has been on potential maritime networks which might explain the presence of language isolates (Chontal and Huave) in the Isthmus...

  • In the Many Realms of John Pohl: An Introduction to a Double Symposium (2024)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only John Pohl. Jeremy Coltman. Danny Zborover.

    This is an abstract from the "Bringing the Past to Life, Part 1: Papers in Honor of John M. D. Pohl" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This double symposium brings together a select group of archaeologists, ethnohistorians, museum professionals, and social justice advocates who have either collaborated with John M. D. Pohl directly or took inspiration from his remarkable half-century career. A trailblazer in the study of Mixtec, Nahua, and Zapotec...

  • Legacies of the Códice de Cholula: An Ethnoarchaeology of the Valley of Puebla’s Indigenous Landscape (2024)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Jonathan Extract.

    This is an abstract from the "Bringing the Past to Life, Part 1: Papers in Honor of John M. D. Pohl" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Ethnoarchaeology is a critical methodology for analyzing prehispanic and early colonial codices. Drawing on the foundational work of John Pohl and Bruce Byland’s In the Realm of 8 Deer, I discuss how ethnography can help decipher, contextualize, and bring to life Indigenous pictographic documents. My...

  • Lyobaa Project: Results of Subsoil Geophysical Study in the Ancient Zapotec Monuments of Mitla, Oaxaca (2024)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Leobardo Pacheco Arias. Andrés Tejero Andrade. Denisse Argote Espino. Gerardo Cifuentes Nava. Martín Cárdenas Soto.

    This is an abstract from the "Bringing the Past to Life, Part 1: Papers in Honor of John M. D. Pohl" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This paper presents the methodology employed, as well as the results obtained from the geophysical research conducted in the archaeological site of Mitla, Oaxaca, during the 2022 season of the Lyobaa Project. In this project, noninvasive geophysical techniques, such as ground-penetrating radar (GPR), electrical...

  • Material Transformations and Vegetal Ontologies in the Postclassic and Colonial Mesoamerican Flower Worlds (2024)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Jamie Forde.

    This is an abstract from the "Bringing the Past to Life, Part 1: Papers in Honor of John M. D. Pohl" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Prehispanic visual sources and colonial alphabetic texts provide rich descriptions of what scholars have termed "the Flower World" in Mesoamerica. This idealized celestial realm was filled not just with flowers, but an array of other precious substances, ranging from gemstones to precious metals, to bird feathers and...

  • Merchants, Mercenaries, and Migration in the Art of Cacaxtla (AD 600–900) (2024)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Andrew D. Turner.

    This is an abstract from the "Bringing the Past to Life, Part 1: Papers in Honor of John M. D. Pohl" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. John Pohl’s groundbreaking investigations of the tandem roles of merchant exchange, alliance building, and migration have caused us to reconceptualize the multiethnic sociopolitical landscapes of central Mexico and Oaxaca in the Epiclassic and Postclassic periods and the social actors that populated them. In the...

  • The Mesoamerican Knife Handles at the Museo delle Civiltà (Rome): A Cultural Biography (2024)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Davide Domenici.

    This is an abstract from the "Bringing the Past to Life, Part 1: Papers in Honor of John M. D. Pohl" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Museo delle Civiltà (Rome) holds two famous Late Postclassic Mesoamerican knife-handles, sculpted in wood and encrusted with a mosaic of turquoise, malachite, lignite, Spondylus, Strombus, mother-of-pearl, and gold. Both represent crouching figures—one anthropomorphic and the other zoomorphic—facing toward the...

  • Pathways to Power for Classic Maya Sub-royal Elites (2024)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Anna Brandeberry.

    This is an abstract from the "Bringing the Past to Life, Part 1: Papers in Honor of John M. D. Pohl" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. John Pohl’s research is groundbreaking in its analysis of the supporting characters in Mesoamerican royal courts. Secondary elites (including the nobles, priests, merchants, and artisans of the court) vied for power using innovative tactics that worked outside the traditional systems of inherited authority. Pohl’s...

  • Reconsidering Tomb 7 at Monte Albán: Style, Ethnicity and Migration (2024)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Robert Markens.

    This is an abstract from the "Bringing the Past to Life, Part 1: Papers in Honor of John M. D. Pohl" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Monte Albán’s Tomb 7 is the most famous prehispanic find in Oaxaca owing to its exquisite mortuary offering. Since 1932 when Dr. Alfonso Caso and his colleagues discovered the treasure, archaeologists have routinely ascribed the deposit to Mixtec migrants since the tomb’s objects were rendered in the Mixteca-Puebla...

  • The Transformations of the Sacred Spaces Linked to the Ancestors in Mitla, Oaxaca: A Historical and Phenomenological Perspective (2024)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Uriel Sánchez Sosa. Leobardo Pacheco Arias.

    This is an abstract from the "Bringing the Past to Life, Part 1: Papers in Honor of John M. D. Pohl" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This paper presents an investigation on how the transformations of rituals and spaces linked to ancestors have occurred in San Pablo Villa de Mitla, Oaxaca, from the Late Postclassic to the present. The spaces known as the Grupo de la Iglesia and Grupo del Calvario are addressed, both with antecedents from prehispanic...

  • Victims of Mesoamerican Royal Funerals: Companions of the Dead or Sacrificial Victims? (2024)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Guilhem Olivier.

    This is an abstract from the "Bringing the Past to Life, Part 1: Papers in Honor of John M. D. Pohl" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Since the seminal studies by Alain Testard, there has been debate over the function of victims in royal funerals in different parts of the world. In the case of Mesoamerica, did the wives, servants, dwarves, slaves, and other immolated individuals serve as “companions of the dead,” as “belongings” of the deceased...