Publications
From warless to warlike times in the Central Andes: the origins of institutional war between Moche and Casma Valleys, northern coast of Peru
The issue of the origins and modalities of war in prehistoric societies is an old and controversial debate. In this article, we focus on the beginning of institutionalized war on the northern coast of Peru at the Pre-Hispanic period using...
Análisis de áreas de actividad a partir de residuos químicos en pisos del sitio Loma de Piritícuaro en el río Balsas Medio, Michoacán, México
Despite its large quantities of archaeological remains, the Middle Balsas region has been the subject of few archaeological excavations. In 2015, a preventive archaeology project was developed in this region, as part of the construction of a dam close to...
Intensificación productiva e ideología en las marismas de Escuinapa, Sinaloa. Patrón de asentamiento prehispánico y fuentes etnohistóricas
The salt marsh area of Escuinapa, Sinaloa, is part of the so-called Marismas Nacionales, an extensive network of coastal lagoons, marshes, swamps and mangroves in southern Sinaloa and northern Nayarit (Mexico). Thanks to the results of three field seasons of...
Legua a legua. Análisis de la visita de Antonio de Caravajal a Michoacán (1523-1524) desde los Sistemas de Información Geográfica
In this paper, we examine the Antonio de Caravajal’s visit to Michoacán in 1523-1524 through the analytical tools of a Geographic Information System. In particular, we estimate the distances travelled by Caravajal by considering the friction offered by different types of...
Bone tools and ornaments in the Classic period Valley of Oaxaca, Mexico
In prehispanic Mesoamerica, bone was a broadly recovered raw material for the fabrication of implements and ornaments, used in both ritual and domestic production activities. To date, researchers have employed broad, general descriptions for these tools such as awls, needles,...
Plaza settings and public interactions during the Formative Period in Nepeña, North-Central Coast of Peru
In this article, we evaluate the relationships between plaza settings, ritual performances, and modes of sociopolitical integration in coastal Ancash during the Formative Period (local Cerro Blanco, Nepeña, and Samanco phases, 1100-150 cal. BC). We chronicle shifts in the forms, dimensions, arrangements,...
Claude Stresser-Péan (coord.), Vista Hermosa. Nobles, artesanos y mercaderes en los confines del mundo huasteco…
Secretaría de Cultura/Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia/Museo Nacional de Antropología/Fundación Stresser-Péan/Centro de estudios Mexicanos y Centroamericanos
Este libro es el primer volumen de una serie de tres dedicados al sitio arqueológico de Vista Hermosa en la Huasteca tamaulipeca. En esta monografía se publican los estudios y resultados tanto de las excavaciones realizadas entre 1965 y 1967 por el...
The Regalia of Sacred War: costume and militarism at Teotihuacan
Throughout Mesoamerica costume and clothing formed an important part of marking identity. At the Classic Period site of Teotihuacan, Mexico, this was further reinforced through artistic representations that submerge the body beneath elaborate costume elements marking an individual’s identity whether...
Beyond rain and storm: Tlaloc and his relationship with warfare, earth and territory in Teotihuacan
This article offers a series of reflections on the iconographic relations between the Tlaloc of Teotihuacan and the politico-military sphere of the city. In particular, it considers the explanations for the presence of Tlaloc iconography alongside the warriors and representatives...
Auto-sacrifice at Teotihuacan
Bloodletting, together with a variable amount of pain, was probably common practice in most of Mesoamerica, well before the beginnings of Teotihuacan. A mural painting from Tlacuilapaxco shows priests presenting or offering maguey spines planted into a thick layer of...
Alexandra Morgan, The Pottery Figurines of the Pre-Columbian Peru, vol. II. The Figurines of the Central Coast
Archaeopress
Hoy día salió el tercer volumen –más exactamente el segundo, por motivos geográficos–, de la trilogía sobre los figurines de cerámica del Perú[1]Traducción de Catherine Lara.. El vol. I, publicado en el 2009, trataba de la Costa norte, y el vol. III, publicado...
Economía y ritual en Teotihuacan y su órbita
During Teotihuacan’s apogee, the city served as a hub for the grandest rituals and most robust economic system in Mesoamerica. Tens of thousands of individuals gathered regularly for religious spectacles designed to sustain the cosmos and time itself. They also...
Prólogo
El tema del altepetl en la historia y la arqueología de México no es de ninguna manera nuevo –probablemente ni siquiera Charles Gibson en los años 1960 haya sido el primero en abordarlo. Dos generaciones de investigadores han vertido muchos análisis...
La identificación de unidades sociales y administrativas en el seno de la ciudad maya clásica a través de sus sedes
Formal and spatial analysis of architectural groups surrounding the epicenter of Classic Maya cities can discriminate significant units in areas that would otherwise appear as an undifferentiated aggregation of domestic groups. The article starts introducing a procedure for the identification...
Cocción experimental de tortillas de casabe (Manihot esculenta Crantz) y de camote (Ipomoea batatas [L.] Lam.) en planchas de barro: evaluando sus efectos en la morfometría de los almidones desde una perspectiva paleoetnobotánica
Previous paleoethnobotanical studies on clay griddles—an artifact traditionally related to the processing and cooking of cassava tortillas (Manihot esculenta Crantz) in the lowland Neotropics—has revealed a limited ubiquity of ancient manioc starch grains. In turn, other starchy plants such as...
Markets, tribute, and class in Tarascan commodity consumption: the Lake Pátzcuaro Basin
The Late Postclassic Tarascan society of West-Central Mexico has long been characterized as having had a state-dominated economy in contrast to the highly commercialized contemporary states in Mesoamerica. To test this model of the Tarascan political economy the production and...
David CARBALLO, Urbanization and Religion in Ancient Central Mexico
Oxford University Press
Nous n’avons jamais été aussi nombreux à vivre en ville. Ce phénomène et les problématiques qu’il entraîne (nouveaux comportements sociaux, complexification des infrastructures et viabilité des systèmes) invitent les sciences sociales, du contemporain comme du passé, à porter une attention...
Agua-cerro, ideología y realidades en el área maya
The pair of words (or “difrasismo”) water/hill, in náhuatl atl/tepetl, refers both to a class of toponyms and a notion of polity. With the support of epigraphic and iconographic evidence, the present study is archaeological and mainly focuses upon the...
Tlalloc-Tlallocan: el altepetl arquetípico
More than a century ago, Georges Raynaud wrote with great clear-sightedness in a brief paper dedicated to Tlalloc “Of all the gods related to Cipactli, only one is linked as him by the earth and the water, the god that...
El señorío matlatzinca, una manera de abordar el altepetl
This article analyzes the transformations of the Matlatzinca seigneury between the 15th and 16th centuries. Between the period when the Calixtlahuaca seigneury was known as Pintanbati (before the Aztec conquest in 1474) until the foundation of the Toluca villa (in the 1530s), the Matlatzinco...
Tecnología cerámica y transiciones de tiempo y espacio: el caso de Malqui (Ecuador septentrional)
Located in an ecological and cultural border, the area of the village of Malqui (western foothills of northern Ecuador), was recently disclosed to science, through the discovery of its impressive structures related to at least the three last periods of...
Why potters have not borrowed the kiln? Comparing narratives of Indian and Ecuadorian potters
In a recent study (Roux et al. forthcoming), it has been possible to demonstrate that in a context where different techniques are used for different types of objects by actors living in close geographical proximity, there is a cognitive bias which...
Altepetl: el lugar del poder
In the center of Mexico, on the eve of the Spanish conquest, the human settlements formed around a sovereign received the nahuatl name of atl tepetl (“water/mountain”). The article shows that this pair or difrasismo expresses a concept and supports...
