General Archaeology
When archaeologists use this term, they mean that political systems cease to function effectively.
What is collapse?
Alongside a lower class uprising, overexploitation of the region, and declining health among common people, this environmental factor contributed to the collapse of Teotihuacan.
What is drought?
Runoff containing cinnabar, used as red paint to color nearby pyramids, was the likely source of this toxic element in the water reservoirs of the elite ceremonial area of the city of Tikal.
What is mercury?
Depictions of rulers were never part of the offerings to memorialize important public construction in this ancient Mesoamerican city.
What is Teotihuacan?
This plantation operated between 1752-1975 became important for their preserved cabins which people continued to live in until the 20th century. It is now a is a non-profit museum dedicated to the history of slavery.
What is the Whitney Plantation?
The unauthorized digging and taking of artifacts from archaeological sites
What is looting?
This aspect of society/identity might manifest in a household in Teotihuacan through differently sized and organized apartments, with lower-class apartments being less well-built and less organized.
What is social class?
Bishop Diego de Landa ordered the destruction of these ancient documents, which were key to understanding Maya history and culture.
What are Maya codices?
A style of architecture used widely on pyramids and temples in Mesoamerica using slopes and perpendicular panels.
What is Talud-Tablero architecture?
Excavations at this burial ground revealed that enslaved people buried there suffered poor nutrition, brutal violence, early hard labor, and exposure to infectious disease.
What is the New York African Burial Ground?
This field focuses on legally-mandated archaeological work connected to environmental protection.
What is Cultural Resource Management (CRM)?
In AD 350, the remodeling of this Teotihuacan temple involved digging tunnels into the pyramid’s core to remove at least two elite burials and their associated objects.
What is the Temple of Quetzalcoatl?
One of the key techniques used in Lowland Maya agriculture, alongside irrigation canals and raised fields, this method involved cutting and burning vegetation to clear and fertilize land.
What is slash and burn?
In the last 20 years, archaeologists discovered and excavated a deep ancient tunnel leading under Teotihuacan’s Pyramid of the Feathered Serpent/Temple of Quetzalcoatl and found abundant offerings of high-status objects and extensive use of pyrite as ornamentation of the floor and walls, but they were hoping to find this
What is a tomb?
Harsh preservation conditions that destroyed organic materials and corroded iron have made it difficult to find archaeological evidence of maroon communities in this swampy refuge for self-liberated people.
What is the Great Dismal Swamp?
This site in northern Germany documents large-scale fighting among groups who included people from fairly distant parts of Europe at about 1200 BCE, telling us about the breakdowns in economic networks and forces like environmental change to the south of the site which had impacts throughout the continent.
What is Tollense?
Archaeologists looking at Teotihuacan can differentiate purely residential areas by looking at housing and apartment compounds, which differ in wealth and status, versus this type of area, which is characterized by public spaces, large temples and courtyards.
What is administrative centers?
This Maya city, along with Aguateca, shows that during the collapse, warfare shifted from capturing elite rulers to destroying entire communities.
What is Dos Pilas?
This ancient Maya city shows evidence of environmental degradation, overpopulation, political instability, and economic disruption — but not of complete and abrupt abandonment — helping archaeologists piece together the factors behind the Classic Maya collapse.
What is Copán?
Traces of houses made from wood, sometimes with porches or raised floors, have helped document these self-liberated communities in The Great Dismal Swamp.
What are maroon communities?
He discovered extinct bison bones, Bison antiquus, with a projectile point in situ at a kill site, proving that humans were present and hunting in North America by at least 11,000 years ago.
Who is George McJunkin?
At this neighborhood in Teotihuacan, increasing malnutrition and low life expectancy may have contributed to revolts against the healthier, well-treated elites during the city’s collapse.
What is the barrio of Tlajinga?
Mayan inscriptions about this figure suggest that Teotihuacan’s role in the Maya area included military conflict, setting up local rulers, and Maya rulers imitating Teotihuacan to strengthen their power.
What is Fire is Born (Siyaj K’ak’)?
The growth in population at Teotihuacan coincides with the abandonment of this ancient city.
What is Cuicuilco?
In 1811, this event is remembered as the largest uprising of enslaved peoples in the history of the United States, which was suppressed before New Orleans.
What is the German Coast Uprising?