The Construction and Activation of Place at the Maya Port of Isla Cerritos

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Place-Making in Indigenous Mesoamerican Communities Past and Present" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Mesoamerican ports were not only settings for exchange but also communities with residential populations and dynamic shared identities that contributed to both coastal and inland cultural landscapes. Ancient ports commonly incorporated a variety of sacred architecture and symbolism to accommodate visitors from distant places, along with their cosmologies, and reinforce the neutrality of places of exchange. Excavations at the Maya coastal port of Isla Cerritos indicate a long history of human occupation from 300 BCE on and suggest that the island was one part of a multicomponent community, connected to mainland segments, artificial canals, and freshwater springs. Island sites are particularly salient expressions of the *alteptl, or water-mountain concept, with visual sight lines to horizons and distant landscape features. Perhaps the most famous example of an archetypal “water-mountain” islandscape is Tenochtitlan, whose ceremonial precinct became the axis mundi of Anahuac. In this paper, I discuss place-making (and re-making) that took place at Isla Cerritos between 800 and 1100 CE, including the expansion of the islandscape and modification and ritual activation of domestic architecture and sacred geography. Port residents used these to actively forge and alter social and political alliances and regional networks with interior cities and other coastal communities.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 86th Annual Meeting, Online (2021)   •
• Place-Making in Indigenous Mesoamerican Communities Past and Present

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 32707