Ancient Southeast Mesoamerica

Ancient Southeast Mesoamerica explores the distinctive development and political history of the region from its earliest inhabitants up to the Spanish conquest. It demonstrates how inhabitants from different locales were organized within a matrix of social networks, and how they mobilized the assets that they needed to achieve their own goals.

Southeastern Mesoamerica highlights the diversity and dynamism of the Indigenous groups that inhabited and continue to inhabit the borders of Southeastern Mesoamerica, an area that includes parts of present-day Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador. Chapters combine archaeological, ethnohistoric, and historic data and approaches to better understand the long-term sociopolitical and cultural changes that occurred throughout the entirety of human occupation of this area. Drawing on archaeological evidence ranging back to the late Pleistocene as well as extensive documentation from the historic period, contributors show how Southeastern Mesoamericans created unique identities, strategically incorporating cosmopolitan influences from cultures to the north and south with their own long-lived traditions. These populations developed autochthonous forms of monumental architecture and routes and methods of exchange and had distinct social, cultural, political, and economic traits. They also established unique long-term human-environment relations that were the result of internal creativity and inspiration influenced by local social and natural trajectories. Southeastern Mesoamerica calls upon archaeologists, anthropologists, historians, ethnohistorians, and others working in Mesoamerica, Central America, and other cultural boundaries around the world to reexamine the role Indigenous resilience and agency play in these areas and in the cultural developments and interactions that occur within them. Contributors: Edy Barrios, Christopher Begley, Walter Burgos, Mauricio Díaz García, William R. Fowler, Rosemary A. Joyce, Gloria Lara-Pinto, Eva L. Martínez, William J. McFarlane, Cameron L. McNeil, Lorena D. Mihok, Pastor Rodolfo Gómez Zúñiga, Timothy Scheffler, Edward Schortman, Russell Sheptak, Miranda Suri, Patricia Urban, Antolín Velásquez, E. Christian Wells

This book explores the development and political history of Southeast Mesoamerica from its earliest inhabitants up to the Spanish conquest.

Interregional Interaction in Ancient Mesoamerica explores the role of interregional interaction in the dynamic sociocultural processes that shaped the pre-Columbian societies of Mesoamerica. Interdisciplinary contributions from leading scholars investigate linguistic exchange and borrowing, scribal practices, settlement patterns, ceramics, iconography, and trade systems, presenting a variety of case studies drawn from multiple spatial, temporal, and cultural contexts within Mesoamerica. Archaeologists have long recognized the crucial role of interregional interaction in the development and cultural dynamics of ancient societies, particularly in terms of the evolution of sociocultural complexity and economic systems. Recent research has further expanded the archaeological, art historical, ethnographic, and epigraphic records in Mesoamerica, permitting a critical reassessment of the complex relationship between interaction and cultural dynamics. This volume builds on and amplifies earlier research to examine sociocultural phenomena—including movement, migration, symbolic exchange, and material interaction—in their role as catalysts for variability in cultural systems. Interregional cultural exchange in pre-Columbian Mesoamerica played a key role in the creation of systems of shared ideologies, the production of regional or “international” artistic and architectural styles, shifting sociopolitical patterns, and changes in cultural practices and meanings. Interregional Interaction in Ancient Mesoamerica highlights, engages with, and provokes questions pertinent to understanding the complex relationship between interaction, sociocultural processes, and cultural innovation and change in the ancient societies and cultural histories of Mesoamerica and will be of interest to archaeologists, linguists, and art historians. Contributors: Philip J. Arnold III, Lourdes Budar, José Luis Punzo Diaz, Gary Feinman, David Freidel, Elizabeth Jiménez Garcia, Guy David Hepp, Kerry M. Hull, Timothy J. Knab, Charles L. F. Knight, Blanca E. Maldonado, Joyce Marcus, Jesper Nielsen, John M. D. Pohl, Iván Rivera, D. Bryan Schaeffer, Niklas Schulze

The Central Andes, Mexico, El Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Peru, and Bolivia all have deep roots in their pre-Columbian civilizations. The first chapters of Latin America's history correspond to those who inhabited it before encountering Europeans. This is especially true in Mesoamerica. The objectives are to show the development of the peoples and high civilizations of Mesoamerica before the arrival of the Mexica (Aztecs) in the Valley of Mexico (1325); second, to examine the key features of the political and socioeconomic organization, as well as the artistic and intellectual achievements achieved during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries under Mexica (Aztec) rule. Finally, present a vision of Mesoamerican life on the eve of the European invasion (1519), between North and South America's solid continental masses; the area of Mesoamerica (that is, the region where it developed with great cultural difficulties, which reached an area of about 900,000 km2 when the Spaniards arrived), with its varied isthmic characteristics and geographical features, such as Tehuantepec and Fonseca Gulfs, the Yucatan Peninsula, and the Gulf of Honduras Gulf. German specialists, such as Eduard Seler, introduced Mittel Amerika over 70 years ago to denote the region where high indigenous cultures flourished in central and southern Mexico. Norah Romney focused attention on what he called Mesoamerica many years later. The concept of Mesoamerica goes beyond geography. High indigenous culture and civilization have also developed and unfolded in various forms and periods. When the Spanish invaded in 1519, its northern borders were the Sinaloa River to the northwest and the Panuco to the northeast; it extended beyond the Lerma River basin in the north-central part. Its southern limits were the Motagua River that empties into the Gulf of Honduras in the Caribbean, the south shore of Lake Nicaragua, and the Nicoya Peninsula in Costa Rica, and these locations developed highly advanced cultures, showing a greater degree of geographical and ecological diversity than any other region of comparable extension in the entire planet. There is a complex geological history in the region. Recent volcanic activity and mountain formation have played a vital role in the shape of various natural regions. The mountains have two volcanic axes, one that runs east-west along the southern limits of the Valley of Mexico and the other that runs northwest-southeast through Mexico and Central America.

Night and Darkness in Ancient Mesoamerica is the first volume to explicitly incorporate how nocturnal aspects of the natural world were imbued with deep cultural meanings and expressed by different peoples from various time periods in Mexico and Central America. Material culture, iconography, epigraphy, art history, ethnohistory, ethnographies, and anthropological theory are deftly used to illuminate dimensions of darkness and the night that are often neglected in reconstructions of the past. The anthropological study of night and darkness enriches and strengthens the understanding of human behavior, power, economy, and the supernatural. In eleven case studies featuring the residents of Teotihuacan, the Classic period Maya, inhabitants of Rio Ulúa, and the Aztecs, the authors challenge archaeologists to consider the influence of the ignored dimension of the night and the role and expression of darkness on ancient behavior. Chapters examine the significance of eclipses, burials, tombs, and natural phenomena considered to be portals to the underworld; animals hunted at twilight; the use and ritual meaning of blindfolds; night-blooming plants; nocturnal foodways; fuel sources and lighting technology; and other connected practices. Night and Darkness in Ancient Mesoamerica expands the scope of published research and media on the archaeology of the night. The book will be of interest to those who study the humanistic, anthropological, and archaeological aspects of the Aztec, Maya, Teotihuacanos, and southeastern Mesoamericans, as well as sensory archaeology, art history, material culture studies, anthropological archaeology, paleonutrition, socioeconomics, sociopolitics, epigraphy, mortuary studies, volcanology, and paleoethnobotany. Contributors: Jeremy Coltman, Christine Dixon, Rachel Egan, Kirby Farah, Carolyn Freiwald, Nancy Gonlin, Julia Hendon, Cecelia Klein, Jeanne Lopiparo, Brian McKee, Jan Marie Olson, David M. Reed, Payson Sheets, Venicia Slotten, Michael Thomason, Randolph Widmer, W. Scott Zeleznik

The main goal of this book is to produce a methodologically sound and ethically valid interdisciplinary introduction into the exciting world of ancient Mesoamerica.

There are great mysteries that surround the earliest peoples that settled in the rainforests and coastal areas of Central America. Life in Ancient Mesoamerica explores the Olmec peoples and their massive stone sculptures, the great architecture, language, and art of the Maya, and the military achievement of the Aztec civilization. The book also features the many gods and goddesses of Mesoamerica, the role of religion in the daily life of the people, and what is known about each civilization's decline.