Excavations of Early Postclassic Commoner Households at Jalieza, Valley of Oaxaca, Mexico

Summary

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

This paper summarizes the results of two seasons of excavations at Cerro Tecolote, the Early Postclassic (A.D. 750-1000) settlement at Jalieza in the southern Valley of Oaxaca, Mexico. While the Valley of Oaxaca has been the focus of intensive and seminal archaeological research for over a century, the Early Postclassic is poorly understood in this region. The Early Postclassic has been referred to by scholars as a time of "changing politics." It marks the transition from a highly centralized state-level society to a decentralized society governed by small competing kingdoms. The excavations summarized in this paper targeted domestic terraces at Cerro Jalieza to explore how non-elite households were affected by the collapse of the Zapotec state. Furthermore, this project presents one of the first attempts to investigate the scale of these “changing politics.”

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts   •
• Society for American Archaeology 89th Annual Meeting, New Orleans, LA (2024)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 39878.0