Bioarchaeology of Postclassic West Mexico: A Research Framework and Preliminary Results

Summary

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Over the past three millennia, West Mexico’s complex cultural developments and social transformations have characterized it as a unique entity pivotal in the histories of population admixture and cultural transmission, producing long-lasting effects still evident in Mesoamerica. During the Early to Middle Postclassic periods (850/900–1350s CE), polities in West Mexico underwent long-term transformation in waves of integration that shaped the course of regional history. Past studies on Postclassic Mesoamerica often adopted a macro-regional view evaluating topics such as artifact dispersal, ceremonial structures, and polity boundaries. While shedding light on the region’s overarching inter-community structure, this approach overshadowed the agency held by individuals and communities, a fundamental level on which actions and choices were initiated. We present a multiphased bioarchaeological project on nine human skeletal assemblages from across West Mexico, with a particular focus on sites that pertain to the Aztatlán-tradition sphere, to highlight individuals’ life experiences as reflected in skeletal morphology and chemical signatures. The project aims to understand how people managed and mitigated opportunities and challenges associated with sociocultural changes during this dynamic period. Preliminary demographic and osteobiographical results will be discussed as they are the first steps toward a nuanced reconstruction of individual daily social and biological behavior.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts   •
• Society for American Archaeology 88th Annual Meeting, Portland, OR (2023)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 37366.0