Archaeology: What's Hot Now: Aztec Origins and the Foundin

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Aztec Origins and the Foundin Oct 2nd 2011, 10:02 Aztec Tenochtitlan, in the Valley of Mexico, now under the modern Mexico City, was the capital of the Aztec empire. According to native sources, it was founded in 1325, after the Aztecs wandered for years in search of a new homeland. The Origins of the Aztecs The Aztecs-who called themselves Mexica -- were not originally from the Valley of Mexico, but migrated from the north, from a mythical island called Aztlan, "The Place of Herons". Historically, the Aztecs/Mexica were the last of many tribes-collectively known as Chichimeca -- who migrated towards south from what is now Northern Mexico and the Southwest of the United States due to a period of great drought. In many codices (painted folding-books) the Aztecs are shown carrying with them the idol of their patron deity Huitzilopochtli. After almost 2 centuries of migration, at around A.D. 1250, the Mexica arrived in the Valley of Mexico. The Valley of Mexico: An Occupied Land The Valley of Mexico lies ~7000 feet above the sea level and is surrounded by high mountains and volcanoes. Today this area is almost completely covered by the monstrous expansion of Mexico City, but in antiquity, water coming down from these mountains created a series of shallow, marshy lakes that were intensely exploited for fishing and hunting, collecting plants, salt and water for cultivation. Because of its wealth of natural resources, the Valley of Mexico has been continuously occupied for millennia. Before the Aztecs arrived in the Valley of Mexico other societies developed there and exploited this rich environment. Teotihuacan: Almost 1000 years before the Aztecs, the city of Teotihuacan (between 200 BC and AD 750) flourished there. Today Teotihuacan is a main archaeological site a few miles north of modern Mexico City and every year attracts thousands of tourists. The word Teotihuacan is a Nahuatl term -- the language spoken by the Aztecs -- and means "The Birthplace of the God". We don't know its real name, but the Aztecs gave this name to the city because it was a sacred place, associated with the legendary origins of the world. The Legend of the Fifth Sun: The legend of the Fifth Sun is a famous Aztec myth about the creation of the universe and the origins of the world. According to the myth, the Gods, after the destruction of humankind during the era of the Forth Sun, met at Teotihuacan to decide which gods had to sacrifice themselves in order for a new era to start. They performed ceremonies at the pyramids of the Moon and the Sun, and finally threw themselves in a great fire. But the sun and moon were still immobile. So Ehecatl, the wind god, blowing at the sun, could finally move it through its way: the Fifth Sun -the era in which the Aztecs lived- was born. Tula: Another city that developed in the Valley of Mexico before the Aztecs was the city of Tula. This, between AD 950 and 1150, was the capital of the Toltecs. The Toltecs were considered by the Aztecs to excel in the arts and science and to be brave warriors. This place was so revered by the Aztecs, that the king Motecuhzoma (aka Montezuma) sent people to dig up Toltec objects to be placed in temples at Tenochtitlan. The First Settlement on Chapultepec ("Grasshopper Hill"), and the Princess' Sacrifice When the Aztecs/Mexica finally arrived in the Valley of Mexico Teotihuacan and Tula had been abandoned from centuries, but they found other groups settled on the best land. Those were groups of Chichimecs who had migrated in earlier times. The Mexica were, therefore, forced to settle on the inhospitable hill of Chapultepec. They later became vassals of the city of Culhuacan, a prestigious city whose rulers were considered heirs of the Toltecs. As acknowledgment for their help in battle, they obtained by the Culhua king one of his daughters to be worshipped as a goddess/priestess. However, when the Colhua king arrived to attend the ceremony, he found one of the priest dressed with the flayed skin of her daughter: Hutzilopochtli asked for the sacrifice of the princess. This provoked a clash and the defeat of the Mexica who had to leave and moved to some marshy islands in the middle of the lake. Tenochtitlan, "The place of the Fruit of the Prickly Pear Cactus" According to the myth, after weeks of wandering, Huitzilopochtli appeared to the Mexica leaders and guided his people to a place where a great eagle perched on a cactus killing a snake. This was the place elected for them by the god, the place where they will found their capital Tenochtitlan. The year was 2 Calli (Two House) or A.D. 1325. Tenochtitlan rapidly grew as a commercial and military center. The Mexica were skillful and fierce soldiers and created solid alliances with the surrounding cities. The apparently unfortunate position of their city, actually facilitates economic connections using canoes and boats across the lakes and at the same time helped against military attacks. The city grew rapidly, with palaces and well organized residential areas and aqueducts that provided fresh water to the city from the mountains. At the center of the city stood the sacred precinct with ball courts, schools for nobles, priests' quarters and the ceremonial heart of the city and of the whole empire: the Great Temple of Mexico-Tenochtitlan, the Huey Teocalli (the Great House of the Gods). This was a stepped pyramid with a double temple on top dedicated to Huitzilopochtli and Tlaloc, the main deities of the Aztecs. The temple, decorated with bright colors, was rebuilt many times during Aztec history, the 7th and last version was the one seen and described by Hernan Cortés and the Conquistadors. When, on November 8 1519, Hernan Cortés and his soldiers entered the Aztec capital, they were entering one of the largest cities in the world, many of them had never seen a city like that before. Sources Smith Michael, 2003, The Aztecs, Second Edition, Blackwell Publishing

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Archaeology: What's Hot Now: Maya Bloodletting Rituals

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Maya Bloodletting Rituals Oct 2nd 2011, 10:02 Bloodletting--cutting part of the body to release blood--is an ancient ritual used by many Mesoamerican societies. For the ancient Maya, bloodletting rituals constituted a way to communicate with the gods and royal ancestors. This practice was usually performed by nobles through the perforation of body parts, mainly, but not only, tongue, lips, and genitals. Both men and women practiced these types of sacrifices. Ritual bloodletting, along with fasting, tobacco smoking and ritual enemas, were pursued by the royal Maya in order to provoke trance-like state and supernatural visions and therefore communicate with dynastic ancestors or underworld gods. Bloodletting Occasions and Locations These rituals were usually performed at significant dates and state events, such as beginning or end of calendar cycles, when a king ascended to the throne, and at building dedications, as well as at other important life stages of kings and queens, such as births, deaths, marriages, and war. Bloodletting rituals were usually carried out in secluded temple rooms on the top of pyramids, but public ceremonies were organized during these events and people attended them, crowding in the plaza at the bottom of the pyramid. These public displays were used by the rulers to show their ability to communicate with the gods in order to obtain advice on how to balance the world of the living and to ensure the natural cycles of the seasons and stars.    Bloodletting Tools Piercing of body parts during bloodletting rituals involved the use of sharp objects such as obsidian blades, stingray spines, carved bones, perforators, and knotted ropes. Equipment also included bark paper and copal incense, the first one used to collect the blood and then burnt with copal to provoke smoke. Blood was then collected in recepticals made out of ceramic or basketry. Cloth bundles were probably used to carry around all the equipment. Bloodletting Imagery Evidence of bloodletting rituals comes primarily from scenes depicting royal figures on carved monuments and painted pots. Stone sculptures and paintings from Maya sites such as Palenque, Yaxchilan, and Uaxactun, among others, offer dramatic examples of these practices. The Maya site of Yaxchilan, Chiapas, offers a particularly rich gallery of images about bloodletting rituals. In a series of three door lintels from this site, a royal woman, Lady Xook, is portrayed performing bloodletting, piercing her tongue with a knotted rope, and provoking a serpent isionduring the throne accession ceremony of his husband. Read about Lintel 24 at Yaxchilan Sources This glossary entry is a part of the guide to Maya Civilization, and the Dictionary of Archaeology. Adams, Richard E. W. , 2005 [1977], Prehistoric Mesoamerica. Third Edition. University of Oklahoma Press, Norman. Mc Killop, Heather, 2004, The Ancient Maya. New Perspectives. ABC-CLIO. Santa Barbara, California Schele, Linda, and Mary Miller, 1986. The Blood of Kings: Dynasty and Ritual in Maya Art. George Braziller, New York.

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Archaeology: What's Hot Now: House of the Faun

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House of the Faun Oct 2nd 2011, 10:02 The House of the Faun was the largest and most expensive residence in ancient Pompeii, and today it is the most visited of all the houses in the famous ruins of Pompeii, Italy. The house takes up a whole city block, with an interior of some 3000 square meters. Built in the late second century BC, the house is remarkable for the lavish mosaics which covered the floors, some still in place, and several magnificent examples at the National Museum of Naples. Although scholars are somewhat divided about the exact dates, it is likely that the first construction of the House of the Faun as it is today was built about 180 BC. Some small changes were made over the next 250 years, but the house remained pretty much as it was constructed until August 24, 79 AD, when Vesuvius erupted, and the owners either fled the city, or died with the other residents of Pompeii. The House of the Faun was nearly completely exposed by Carlo Bonucci between October 1831 and May 1832, which is in a way too bad--because modern techniques in archaeology could tell us quite a bit more than they could more than 180 years ago. This reconstruction of the front facade--what you'd see from the main street entrance--was published by August Mau in 1902. The two main entrances are surrounded by four shops, perhaps rented out or managed by the owners of the House of the Faun. Sources For more on the archaeology of Pompeii, see Pompeii: Buried in Ashes. Beard, Mary. 2008. The Fires of Vesuvius: Pompeii Lost and Found. Harvard University Press, Cambridge. Christensen, Alexis. 2006. From palaces to Pompeii: The architectural and social context of Hellenistic floor mosaics in the House of the Faun. PhD dissertation, Department of Classics, Florida State University. Mau, August. 1902. Pompeii, Its Life and Art. Translated by Francis Wiley Kelsey. The MacMillan Company.

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Archaeology: What's Hot Now: The Koster Site

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The Koster Site Oct 2nd 2011, 10:02 Struever, Stuart and Felicia Antonelli Holton. 2000 (reprint). Koster: Americans in Search of Their Prehistoric Past. Waveland Press. ISBN 1-57766-167-2 Buried Beneath a Farmstead In the state of Illinois, in the middle of the continental United States, in the river valley named for the Native American group and from which the state takes its name, near where the Illinois River meets the Mississippi, lies the archaeological site known as Koster. Koster's importance to the recognition of the existence of deeply buried sites is not often articulated, but it should be. In 1968, Stuart Struever was a faculty member in the anthropology department at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois. He was a "down-stater," however, having grown up far from Chicago in the small town of Peru, Illinois, and he never lost the ability to speak the language of the down-stater. And so it was that he made true friendships among the landowners of the Lowilva, the local name for the Lower Illinois Valley, where the Mississippi River meets the Illinois. Among the life-long friends he made were Theodore "Teed" Koster and his wife Mary, retired farmers who just happened to have an archaeological site on their property, who just happened to be interested in the past. It's really not coincidence, you know. Koster: 26 Human Occupations It's what happens, sometimes, when landowner and archaeologist meet on a plane that has more to do with an intense curiosity than anything else. For, beneath the Koster farm lies evidence of 26 different human occupations, beginning with the early Archaic period, around 7500 BC, and ending with the Koster farm. Village after village, some with cemeteries, some with houses, beginning some 34 feet below the modern Koster farmstead. Each occupation was buried by the flood deposits of the river, each occupation leaving its mark on the landscape nonetheless. The year 2001 marks the twenty-second year since the original publication of the report of the Koster site written for the general public, surely one of the first and most successful of general public archaeological texts. And, to celebrate, the Waveland Press has produced a third edition of the book entitled Koster: Americans in Search of their Prehistoric Past. I first read Koster as a graduate student, and until I read it again, was unaware of its impact on me as a public archaeologist. Koster provides an intimate glimpse into how archaeology works, into its human aspects, into the importance of identifying our collective past. Reading the Koster site book will remind the working archaeologist of how much has changed since 1968; how safety issues have changed, and how interaction with Native American communities has changed, both for the better. But the essence of the book and the importance of the site hasn't changed: because of the Koster site, we are aware that an immense prehistory lies beneath us. This article is a part of the Guide to Archaic Period.

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Archaeology: What's Hot Now: Abu Hureyra (Syria)

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Abu Hureyra (Syria) Oct 1st 2011, 10:02 Abu Hureyra is the ruins of an ancient settlement, located on the south side of the Euphrates valley of northern Syria, and on an abandoned channel of that famous river. Occupied from ~13,000 to 6,000 years ago, before, during and after the introduction of agriculture in the region. Abu Hureyra is remarkable for its excellent faunal and floral preservation--that is, the bones of animals and seeds of plants were found in very good condition there. The tell at Abu Hureyra covers an area of some 11.5 hectares, and has occupations which archaeologists call Late Epipaleolithic to Pre-Pottery Neolithic B. The cultural period during this long occupation is for Pre-Pottery Neolithic A, during which time apparently the site was abandoned. Living at Abu Hureyra I The earliest occupation at Abu Hureyra, ca. 13,000-12,000 years ago, was a permanent, year-round settlement of hunter-gatherers, who gathered over 100 species of edible seeds and fruits from the Euphrates valley and nearby regions. They also had access to an abundance of animals, particularly gazelles. The Abu Hureyra I people lived in a cluster of semi-subterranean pit houses (semi-subterranean meaning, the dwellings were partially dug into the ground). Beginning ~11,000 RCYBP, the people experienced environmental changes to a cold, dry conditions associated with the Younger Dryas period. Many of the wild plants the people had relied on disappeared. The earliest cultivated species at Abu Hureyra appears to have been rye (Secale cereale) and lentils and possibly wheat. During the latter part of Abu Hureyra I (~10,000-9400 RCYBP), and after the original dwelling pits were filled in with debris, the people built above-ground huts of perishable materials, and grew rye, lentils and einkorn wheat. Abu Hureyra II The fully Neolithic Abu Hureyra II (~9400-7000 RCYBP) was composed of a collection of rectangular, multi-roomed family dwellings built of mud brick. This village grew to a maximum population of between 4000 and 6000 people, and the people grew crops including rye, lentils, and einkorn wheat, but added emmer wheat, barley, chickpeas and field beans, all of the latter probably domesticated elsewhere. Abu Hureyra Excavations Abu Hureyra was excavated in the 1970s by Andrew Moore and colleagues as a salvage operation prior to construction of the Tabqa Dam, which flooded this part of the Euphrates Valley and created Lake Assad. Excavation results from the Abu Hureyra site were reported by A.M.T. Moore, G.C. Hillman, and A.J. Legge, recently published by Oxford University Press. Sources This glossary entry is a part of the Guides to the Pre-Pottery Neolithic and Plant Domestication, and part of the Dictionary of Archaeology. Colledge S, and Conolly J. 2010. Reassessing the evidence for the cultivation of wild crops during the Younger Dryas at Tell Abu Hureyra, Syria. Environmental Archaeology 15:124-138. Doebley, John F., Brandon S. Gaut, and Bruce D. Smith. 2006. The molecular genetics of crop domestication. Cell 127: 1309-1321. Hillman G, Hedges R, Moore A, Colledge S, and Pettitt P. 2001. New evidence of Lateglacial cereal cultivation at Abu Hureyra on the Euphrates. The Holocene 11(4):383-393. Moore, A.M.T., G.C. Hillman, and A.J. Legge. 2000. Villages on the Euphrates: The Excavation of Abu Hureyra. Oxford University Press, London.

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Archaeology: What's Hot Now: Eridu (Iraq)

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Eridu (Iraq) Oct 1st 2011, 10:02 Definition: The Mesopotamian city of Eridu (now called Tell Abu Shahrain) is located about 22 kilometers south of Nasiriya in Iraq, and it was occupied between about 5000 and 2000 BC, during the Ubaid through Ur periods of southern Mesopotamia. Eridu is the oldest Sumerian city known, a capital of the Early Dynastic Period, and, according to Sumerian tradition was the city that belonged to the god Enki. Eridu is best known for its temples, called ziggurats. The earliest temple, dated to the Ubaid period about 5570 BC, consisted of a small room with a possible cult niche and an offering table. After a break, there are ever-larger temples built and rebuilt on this site throughout its history. Each of these temples was built with classical early Mesopotamian format of tripartite plan, with a buttressed facade and a long central room with an altar. The Ziggurat of Enki was built for the Third Dynasty of Ur, 3,000 years after the city's founding. In addition to the temples, Eridu had a village (12 hectares), and a cemetery with nearly 1,000 interments, little of which to date have evidence of social stratification. Tell Abu Shahrain was excavated in the 1940s by Fuad Safar and his British colleague Seton Lloyd. Sources This glossary entry is part of the Guide to Mesopotamia and the Dictionary of Archaeology. Armstrong, James F. 1996. Mesopotamia: The Rise of Urban Culture. in Brian Fagan (ed). 1996. The Oxford Companion to Archaeology. Oxford University Press, Oxford, UK. Hole, Frank. 1966. Investigating the Origins of Mesopotamian Civilization. Science 153(3736):605-611. Nichols, Deborah L., R. A. Covey, and Kamyar Abdia. 2008 Rise of civilization and urbanism. Pp. 1003-1015 in Encyclopedia of Archaeology, Deborah M. Pearsall, editor. Elsevier: London. Also Known As: Tell Abu Shahrain (also spelled Abu Shahrein)

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Archaeology: What's Hot Now: Ardipithecus Ramidus

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Ardipithecus Ramidus Sep 30th 2011, 10:01 An Introduction to Ardipithecus ramidus Ardipithecus ramidus is an ancient hominin first discovered in 1994; over 110 specimens have been recovered from several different sites in the Afar rift of Ethiopia since that time. The 4.4 million year old creature was a tall, tree-climbing and bipedal fellow with a predominantly plant-based diet. They lived in a woodland environment and while they were certainly not fully human, neither did they exhibit climbing and walking strategies of modern chimpanzees or gorillas. A. ramidus is tentatively believed to be ancestral to Australopithecus: but it is a million years older than Australopithecus afarensis (ca. 3.7 million years ago) and older than Australopithecus anamensis (3.9-4.2 million years ago). They were not tool makersâ€"even Australopithecus didn't get into that until 2.5 mya, but Ardipithecus does have some traits carried on into Australopithecus. But most surprisingly, A. ramidus walked upright on two legs while on the ground (called bipedal locomotion), and climbed on all fours along the branches of trees. That's surprising, because researchers had surmised that our ancestor would have more chimpanzee or gorilla-like characteristicsâ€"that it would spend most of its time swinging and hanging from tree branches. Ardipithecus ramidus got a star treatment in Science magazine, with 11 separate articles written by nearly 50 scholars. This photos essay is a little taste of what was reported. Sources and Further Information White, Tim D., et al. 2009 Ardipithecus ramidus and the Paleobiology of Early Hominids. Science 326:75-86. Ardipithecus ramidus, the blog post, which has links to recent news stories Lucy, famous Australopithecus afarensis Hominin Aramis, Ethiopia Bipedal locomotion

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