Aguada Fénix and the Middle Usumacinta Region: Interregional Interactions and Social Transformations in the Middle Preclassic Period

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Aguada Fénix and the Middle Usumacinta Region: Interregional Interactions and Social Transformations in the Middle Preclassic Period" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

The recently discovered site of Aguada Fenix in eastern Tabasco, Mexico is one of the largest monumental constructions in Mesoamerica. It was built in a standardized architectural pattern that we call the Middle Formative Usumacinta Pattern (MFU). Its earliest construction phases date to the beginning of the early Middle Preclassic, around 1100 BC. This complex represents an altered landscape of a scale and complexity that was previously unknown for Mesoamerica. The overall layout of the ceremonial space clearly represents a vision of the cosmology of the people at that time. Remarkably, this cosmology, exemplified in this very standardized pattern, was not only present in the Middle Usumacinta drainage, but it was shared over a very large region from the Usumacinta Basin to western Veracruz. So far, we have identified 478 of these formalized complexes along the Mexican Gulf Coast. The widespread use of the MFU shows extensive interregional interactions during the early Middle Preclassic among people that were probably of different ethnic groups and spoke different languages. These new discoveries and data lead to new insights into the processes involved in the formation of Maya civilization and other early Gulf Coast groups.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Aguada Fénix and the Middle Usumacinta Region: Interregional Interactions and Social Transformations in the Middle Preclassic Period   •
• Society for American Archaeology 89th Annual Meeting, New Orleans, LA (2024)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 38435.0