Mobility and Migration in Ancient Mesoamerican Cities

by M. Charlotte Arnauld

Author	: M. Charlotte Arnauld
Publisher	: University Press of Colorado
Total Pages	: 392
Release	: 2021-02-01
Genre	: Social Science
ISBN	: 164642073X

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Mobility and Migration in Ancient Mesoamerican Cities is the first focused book-length discussion of migration in central Mexico, west Mexico and the Maya region, presenting case studies on population movement in and among Classic, Epiclassic, and Postclassic Mesoamerican societies and polities within the framework of urbanization and de-urbanization. Looking beyond the conceptual dichotomy of sedentism versus mobility, the contributors show that mobility and migration reveal a great deal about the formation, development, and decline of town- and city-based societies in the ancient world. In a series of data-rich chapters that address specific evidence for movement in their respective study areas, an international group of scholars assesses mobility through the isotopic and demographic analysis of human remains, stratigraphic identification of gaps in occupation, and local intensification of water capture in the Maya lowlands. Others examine migration through the integration of historic and archaeological evidence in Michoacán and Yucatán and by registering how daily life changed in response to the influx of new people in the Basin of Mexico. Offering a range of critical insights into the vital and under-studied role that mobility and migration played in complex agrarian societies, Mobility and Migration in Ancient Mesoamerican Cities will be of value to Mesoamericanist archaeologists, ethnohistorians, and bioarchaeologists and to any scholars working on complex societies. Contributors: Jaime J. Awe, Meggan Bullock, Sarah C. Clayton, Andrea Cucina, Véronique Darras, Nicholas P. Dunning, Mélanie Forné, Marion Forest, Carolyn Freiwald, Elizabeth Graham, Nancy Gonlin, Julie A. Hoggarth, Linda Howie, Elsa Jadot, Kristin V. Landau, Eva Lemonnier, Dominique Michelet, David Ortegón Zapata, Prudence M. Rice, Thelma N. Sierra Sosa, Michael P. Smyth, Vera Tiesler, Eric Weaver

Ancient Mesoamerican Population History

by Adrian S.Z. Chase

Author	: Adrian S.Z. Chase
Publisher	: University of Arizona Press
Total Pages	: 448
Release	: 2024-05-07
Genre	: Social Science
ISBN	: 081655319X

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Establishing ancient population numbers and determining how they were distributed across a landscape over time constitute two of the most pressing problems in archaeology. Accurate population data is crucial for modeling, interpreting, and understanding the past. Now, advances in both archaeology and technology have changed the way that such approximations can be achieved. Including research from both highland central Mexico and the tropical lowlands of the Maya and Olmec areas, this book reexamines the demography in ancient Mesoamerica. Contributors present methods for determining population estimates, field methods for settlement pattern studies to obtain demographic data, and new technologies such as LiDAR (light detecting and ranging) that have expanded views of the ground in forested areas. Contributions to this book provide a view of ancient landscape use and modification that was not possible in the twentieth century. This important new work provides new understandings of Mesoamerican urbanism, development, and changes over time. Contributors Traci Ardren M. Charlotte Arnauld Bárbara Arroyo Luke Auld-Thomas Marcello A. Canuto Adrian S. Z. Chase Arlen F. Chase Diane Z. Chase Elyse D. Z. Chase Javier Estrada Gary M. Feinman L. J. Gorenflo Julien Hiquet Scott R. Hutson Gerardo Jiménez Delgado Eva Lemonnier Rodrigo Liendo Stuardo José Lobo Javier López Mejía Michael L. Loughlin Deborah L. Nichols Christopher A. Pool Ian G. Robertson Jeremy A. Sabloff Travis W. Stanton

Healing Like Our Ancestors

by Edward Anthony Polanco

Author	: Edward Anthony Polanco
Publisher	: University of Arizona Press
Total Pages	: 300
Release	: 2024-08-27
Genre	: History
ISBN	: 0816552894

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Offering a provocative new perspective, Healing Like Our Ancestors examines sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Nahua healers in central Mexico and how their practices have been misconstrued and misunderstood in colonial records. Early colonial Spanish settlers defined, assessed, and admonished Nahua titiçih (healing specialists) and tiçiyotl (healing knowledge) in the process of building a society in Mexico that mirrored Iberia. Nevertheless, Nahua survivance (intergenerational knowledge transfer) has allowed communities to heal like their ancestors through changes and adaptations. Edward Anthony Polanco draws from diverse colonial primary sources, largely in Spanish and Nahuatl (the Nahua ancestral language), to explore how Spanish settlers framed titiçih, their knowledge, and their practices within a Western complex. Polanco argues for the usage of Indigenous terms when discussing Indigenous concepts and arms the reader with the Nahuatl words to discuss central Mexican Nahua healing. In particular, this book emphasizes the importance of women as titiçih and highlights their work as creators and keepers of knowledge. These vital Nahua perspectives of healing—and how they differed from the settler narrative—will guide community members as well as scholars and students of the history of science, Latin America, and Indigenous studies.

Foreigners Among Us

by Christina Halperin

Author	: Christina Halperin
Publisher	: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages	: 226
Release	: 2023-09-14
Genre	: Social Science
ISBN	: 1000904466

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Assessing key questions such as who the foreigners and outsiders in ancient Maya societies were and how was the foreign a generative component of identity, Foreigners Among Us reassess the arrival of foreigners as part of archaeological understandings of Pre-Columbian Maya and questions not only who these foreigners might have been but who were making such designations of difference in the first place. Drawing from identity studies, standpoint theory, and ideas on alterity, Foreigners Among Us highlights the diverse ways being foreign was constituted, imitated, and marked – from quotidian practices of making corn tortillas to ceremonial acts between king and captive and their memorialization in scenes on sculpted stone monuments. Rather than treat the foreign as axiomatically determined by geographical distance or fixed at birth, the book considers the foreign as much performed as inherited. It examines practices of captivity, cuisine, body ornamentation and dress, diasporic objects, relationships with deities, migration, and pilgrimage. The book focuses, in particular, on diverse peoples in the Maya area during the Classic and Postclassic periods, but also necessarily peers into contacts, engagements and relations throughout Mesoamerica, the Americas more broadly, and with Europeans during the Colonial period – all the while insisting that outsider status must be approached as multi-scalar, relational, and intersectional rather than as neutral, intrinsic, and static. Contributing broadly to intellectual investigations on foreign identities from an anthropological perspective, this book enriches the understanding of Maya society for students and researchers of Mesoamerican archaeology and art history.

The Maya World

by Scott R. Hutson

Author	: Scott R. Hutson
Publisher	: Routledge
Total Pages	: 983
Release	: 2020-06-17
Genre	: Education
ISBN	: 1351029568

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The Maya World brings together over 60 authors, representing the fields of archaeology, art history, epigraphy, geography, and ethnography, who explore cutting-edge research on every major facet of the ancient Maya and all sub-regions within the Maya world. The Maya world, which covers Guatemala, Belize, and parts of Mexico, Honduras, and El Salvador, contains over a hundred ancient sites that are open to tourism, eight of which are UNESCO World Heritage Sites, and many thousands more that have been dug or await investigation. In addition to captivating the lay public, the ancient Maya have attracted scores of major interdisciplinary research expeditions and hundreds of smaller projects going back to the 19th century, making them one of the best-known ancient cultures. The Maya World explores their renowned writing system, towering stone pyramids, exquisitely painted murals, and elaborate funerary tombs as well as their creative agricultural strategies, complex social, economic, and political relationships, widespread interactions with other societies, and remarkable cultural resilience in the face of historical ruptures. This is an invaluable reference volume for scholars of the ancient Maya, including archaeologists, historians, and anthropologists.

The Routledge Handbook of Mesoamerican Bioarchaeology

by Vera Tiesler

Author	: Vera Tiesler
Publisher	: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages	: 771
Release	: 2022-05-23
Genre	: Social Science
ISBN	: 1000586278

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This volume brings together a range of contributors with different and hybrid academic backgrounds to explore, through bioarchaeology, the past human experience in the territories that span Mesoamerica. This handbook provides systematic bioarchaeological coverage of skeletal research in the ancient Mesoamericas. It offers an integrated collection of engrained, bioculturally embedded explorations of relevant and timely topics, such as population shifts, lifestyles, body concepts, beauty, gender, health, foodways, social inequality, and violence. The additional treatment of new methodologies, local cultural settings, and theoretic frames rounds out the scope of this handbook. The selection of 36 chapter contributions invites readers to engage with the human condition in ancient and not-so-ancient Mesoamerica and beyond. The Routledge Handbook of Mesoamerican Bioarchaeology is addressed to an audience of Mesoamericanists, students, and researchers in bioarchaeology and related fields. It serves as a comprehensive reference for courses on Mesoamerica, bioarchaeology, and Native American studies.

Exploring Human Behavior Through Isotope Analysis

by Melanie M. Beasley

Author	: Melanie M. Beasley
Publisher	: Springer Nature
Total Pages	: 308
Release	: 2023-06-23
Genre	: Social Science
ISBN	: 3031322681

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This edited volume compiles a series of chapters written by experts of isotopic analysis in order to highlight the utility of various isotope systems in the reconstruction of past human behaviors. Rather than grouping contributions by specific isotopes or analytical techniques, as many isotope review articles are arranged, the volume organizes chapters by broadly defined themes of archaeological research. These include: paleodiet and life histories, human-animal interactions, and migration and mobility. In this sense, the book is arranged with the intent of being as much question based as method based. Chapters under these themes provide background information on the principles of the techniques and on the theoretical underpinnings of the research; yet they are written with the non-specialist in mind and attempt to convey these ideas clearly and succinctly. In addition to the case studies and reviews, three chapters provide greater context to the field of isotopic archaeology, discussing its history, basic principles, and future potential. The volume aims to serve as a reference source for students and practicing archaeologists seeking to apply isotopic studies to their own research projects or to act as a reader for courses in archaeological science. Chapter 6 is available open access under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License via link.springer.com.

Migration and Disruptions

by Brenda J. Baker

Author	: Brenda J. Baker
Publisher	: University Press of Florida
Total Pages	: 345
Release	: 2018-03-19
Genre	: Social Science
ISBN	: 0813063515

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“Artfully integrates scholarship on both past and present migration. With its thematic focus on disruption, this volume develops unprecedented nuance in the treatment of migration.”—Graciela S. Cabana, coeditor of Rethinking Anthropological Perspectives on Migration “A significant contribution to the social sciences in general and a future staple for archaeologists and anthropologists. Migration and Disruptions demonstrates the importance of collaboration and constructive dialogues between the traditional subfields composing the umbrella title of anthropology.”—Stephen A. Brighton, author of Historical Archaeology of the Irish Diaspora: A Transnational Approach Migration has always been a fundamental human activity, yet little collaboration exists between scientists and social scientists examining how it has shaped past and contemporary societies. This innovative volume brings together sociocultural anthropologists, archaeologists, bioarchaeologists, ethnographers, paleopathologists, and others to develop a unifying theory of migration. The contributors relate past movements, including the Anglo-Saxon settlement of Britain and the Islamic conquest of Andalucía, to present-day events, such as those in northern Ethiopia or at the U.S.-Mexico border. They examine the extent to which environmental and social disruptions have been a cause of migration over time and how these migratory flows have in turn led to disruptive consequences for the receiving societies. The observed cycles of social disruption, resettlement, and its consequences offer a new perspective on how human migration has shaped the social, economic, political, and environmental landscapes of societies from prehistory to today. Contributors:Brenda J. Baker | Christopher S. Beekman | George L. Cowgill | Jason De Leon | James F. Eder | Anna Forringer-Beal | Cameron Gokee | Catherine Hills | Kelly J. Knudson | Patrick Manning | Jonathan Maupin | Lisa Meierotto | James Morrissey | Rachel E. Scott | Christina Torres-Rouff | Takeyuki (Gaku) Tsuda | Sonia Zakrzewski

Migrations in Late Mesoamerica

by Christopher S. Beekman

Author	: Christopher S. Beekman
Publisher	: University Press of Florida
Total Pages	: 401
Release	: 2019-10-14
Genre	: Social Science
ISBN	: 081305723X

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Bringing the often-neglected topic of migration to the forefront of ancient Mesoamerican studies, this volume uses an illuminating multidisciplinary approach to address the role of population movements in Mexico and Central America from AD 500 to 1500, the tumultuous centuries before European contact. Clarifying what has to date been chiefly speculation, researchers from the fields of archaeology, biological anthropology, linguistics, ethnohistory, and art history delve deeply into the causes and impacts of prehistoric migration in the region. They draw on evidence including records of the Nahuatl language, murals painted at the Cacaxtla polity, ceramics in the style known as Coyotlatelco, skeletal samples from multiple sites, and conquest-era accounts of the origins of the Chichén Itzá Maya from both Native and Spanish scribes. The diverse datasets in this volume help reveal the choices and priorities of migrants during times of political, economic, and social changes that unmoored populations from ancestral lands. Migrations in Late Mesoamerica shows how migration patterns are vitally important to study due to their connection to environmental and political disruption in both ancient societies and today’s world. A volume in the series Maya Studies, edited by Diane Z. Chase and Arlen F. Chase