Mazapan Style Figurines at El Palacio: What Significance for The Early Postclassic Interregional Interactions in Northern Michoacán?

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Mesoamerican Figurines in Context. New Insights on Tridimensional Representations from Archaeology" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Recent work conducted in Northern Michoacán by the CEMCA in the Zacapu Basin, 30 km North of the Tarascan core-region, shed light on a specific and poorly defined time period at the region before the Tarascan kingdom: The Early Postclassic. The local phase Palacio ranges from A.D. 900 to 1200±50, and recent field works conducted at the major and eponym site of El Palacio brought to the attention a new set of data. Among it, in radiocarbon dated contexts, the encounter of a series of figurines, known in the literature as Mazapan style, questioned many of hypotheses. Mazapan style figurines have never been observed in this sector of Michoacán before, whereas they constitute a strong and diagnostic marker of Early Postclassic cultural and economic dynamics among different regions of the Mexican highlands. The presence of this corpus at El Palacio becomes therefore critical in the understanding of the interregional cultural and economic connections during the Early Postclassic period. This paper presents the study of the figurine's fragments collection and stress a series of issues concerning their context (ceremonial sector, secondary contexts of refuse) and their interpretation at both local and regional levels.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Mesoamerican Figurines in Context. New Insights on Tridimensional Representations from Archaeology   •
• Society for American Archaeology 84th Annual Meeting, Albuquerque, NM (2019)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 23845