New Perspectives of Monte Albán-Atzompa Complex through New Lidar Mapping Survey

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Ancient Landscapes and Cosmic Cities out of Eurasia: Transdisciplinary Studies with New Lidar Mapping" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Monte Albán, the central mountain area in the Oaxaca Valley was largely modified around 500 BC and functioned as a ceremonial precinct and state headquarters for more than 1,300 years. As one of the objectives under the umbrella program of “Out of Eurasia,” we here explore the worldview, the underlying conception of time-space that was often materialized in calendar systems, and the cognition of nature and human communities. We focus on the astronomical alignments of cities, specific buildings, and the general site orientations retrievable from our precise maps in the whole valley’s contexts, and examine them by ArcAstroVR, a new archaeoastronomy program, built on Stellarium. We are recording all architectural features, sculptures, murals, and elite tombs, with multiple strategies, including drone-mounted lidar, Slam-lidar, 3D scanners, and photogrammetric devices. We mapped more than 17 km2 covering most of the Monte Albán-Aztompa complex, recoverable today in a modern urban expansion context, for the first time to three-dimensionally reconstruct one of the largest and oldest hilltop urban centers in Mesoamerica. As a final goal, we search how governments integrated their rulership into the human cognitive systems and materialized their honor systems in monuments, cityscapes, landscapes, and skyscapes.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Ancient Landscapes and Cosmic Cities out of Eurasia: Transdisciplinary Studies with New Lidar Mapping   •
• Society for American Archaeology 89th Annual Meeting, New Orleans, LA (2024)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 39227.0