The Maya, the Nahua, and Lower Central America

Summary

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 Totec. A marked “internationalization” of elite culture is noticeable from Cahokia in Illinois to southwestern El Salvador, where El Salvador’s first and last precolumbian Maya city flourished for a brief century to century and a half. But what effect did the Early Postclassic of what was at that time the southeastern frontier of Mesoamerica have on the cultures of Nicaragua, eastern Honduras, and Costa Rica? And what influence did these latter cultures have on the Early Postclassic southeastern Maya? These are questions that archaeologists, entirely too prone to ascribe any and every cultural change to some hypothetical migration, have essentially ignored. Some of the answers are there; others remain to be explored.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 86th Annual Meeting, Online (2021)   •
• Postclassic Mesoamerica: The View from the Southern Frontier

Keywords

Spatial Coverage

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 32561