Frontiers y Refugios: The In-between Places of Oaxaca and Mesoamerica

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Moving the Needle: Expanding the Discourse on Modern Archaeology in Oaxaca (Part 1)" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Created by both geography and politics, frontier regions are dynamic zones where people, practices, ideas, and objects from different homelands are exchanged in novel and distinct ways. They are often productive sites of ethnogenesis through the integration, disintegration, and/or entrenchment of social boundaries and markers of identity. Frontier areas are not commonly associated with Mesoamerica, except for the somewhat artificial boundaries that scholars have placed at its extreme south and north. However, we contend that a multiplicity of frontiers existed throughout Mesoamerica, located in the permeable spaces between the physical and social territories that were both controlled by regional powers and occupied by peoples who were able to switch their loyalties and relationships as needed, and every variation in between. Using the Nejapa region specifically and Oaxaca more generally as a case study, this presentation will demonstrate how the frontier concept can theoretically and methodologically be a useful tool for investigating and interrogating multiple areas of Oaxaca and Mesoamerica where ethnolinguistic and social boundaries were highly permeable and why.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 90th Annual Meeting, Denver, CO (2025)   •
• Moving the Needle: Expanding the Discourse on Modern Archaeology in Oaxaca (Part 1)

Keywords

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 51377