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Cocijo is a lightning deity of the pre-Columbian Zapotec civilization of southern Mexico. He has attributes characteristic of similar Mesoamerican deities associated with rain, thunder and lightning, such as Tlaloc of central Mexico, and Chaac of the Maya civilization. In the Zapotec language, the word cocijo means "lightning", as well as referring to the deity.
Monte Albán is a large pre-Columbian archaeological site in the Santa Cruz Xoxocotlán Municipality in the southern Mexican state of Oaxaca. The site is located on a low mountainous range rising above the plain in the central section of the Valley of Oaxaca, where the latter's northern Etla, eastern Tlacolula, and southern Zimatlán and Ocotlán branches meet. The present-day state capital Oaxaca City is located approximately 9 km (6 mi) east of Monte Albán.
San José Mogote is a pre-Columbian archaeological site of the Zapotec, a Mesoamerican culture that flourished in the region of what is now the Mexican state of Oaxaca. A forerunner to the better-known Zapotec site of Monte Albán, San José Mogote was the largest and most important settlement in the Valley of Oaxaca during the Early and Middle Formative periods of Mesoamerican cultural development.
Alfonso Caso y Andrade was an archaeologist who made important contributions to pre-Columbian studies in his native Mexico. Caso believed that the systematic study of ancient Mexican civilizations was an important way to understand Mexican cultural roots.
Mesoamerica, along with Mesopotamia and China, is one of three known places in the world where writing is thought to have developed independently. Mesoamerican scripts deciphered to date are a combination of logographic and syllabic systems. They are often called hieroglyphs due to the iconic shapes of many of the glyphs, a pattern superficially similar to Egyptian hieroglyphs. Fifteen distinct writing systems have been identified in pre-Columbian Mesoamerica, many from a single inscription. The limits of archaeological dating methods make it difficult to establish which was the earliest and hence the progenitor from which the others developed. The best documented and deciphered Mesoamerican writing system, and the most widely known, is the classic Maya script. Earlier scripts with poorer and varying levels of decipherment include the Olmec hieroglyphs, the Zapotec script, and the Isthmian script, all of which date back to the 1st millennium BC. An extensive Mesoamerican literature has been conserved, partly in indigenous scripts and partly in postconquest transcriptions in the Latin script.
The Zapotec civilization was an indigenous pre-Columbian civilization that flourished in the Valley of Oaxaca in Mesoamerica. Archaeological evidence shows that their culture originated at least 2,500 years ago. The Zapotec archaeological site at the ancient city of Monte Albán has monumental buildings, ball courts, magnificent tombs and grave goods, including finely worked gold jewelry. Monte Albán was one of the first major cities in Mesoamerica. It was the center of a Zapotec state that dominated much of the territory which today is known as the Mexican state of Oaxaca.
The causes and degree of Olmec influences on Mesoamerican cultures has been a subject of debate over many decades. Although the Olmecs are considered to be perhaps the earliest Mesoamerican civilization, there are questions concerning how and how much the Olmecs influenced cultures outside the Olmec heartland. This debate is succinctly, if simplistically, framed by the title of a 2005 The New York Times article: “Mother Culture, or Only a Sister?”.
The Central Valleys of Oaxaca, also simply known as the Oaxaca Valley, is a geographic region located within the modern-day state of Oaxaca in southern Mexico. In an administrative context, it has been defined as comprising the districts of Etla, Centro, Zaachila, Zimatlán, Ocotlán, Tlacolula and Ejutla. The valley, which is located within the Sierra Madre Mountains, is shaped like a distorted and almost upside-down “Y,” with each of its arms bearing specific names: the northwestern Etla arm, the central southern Valle Grande, and the Tlacolula arm to the east. The Oaxaca Valley was home to the Zapotec civilization, one of the earliest complex societies in Mesoamerica, and the later Mixtec culture. A number of important and well-known archaeological sites are found in the Oaxaca Valley, including Monte Albán, Mitla, San José Mogote and Yagul. Today, the capital of the state, Oaxaca City, is located in the central portion of the valley.
The Zapotec script is the writing system of the Zapotec culture and represents one of the earliest writing systems in Mesoamerica. Rising in the late Pre-Classic era after the decline of the Olmec civilization, the Zapotecs of present-day Oaxaca built an empire around Monte Albán. One characteristic of Monte Albán is the large number of carved stone monuments one encounters throughout the plaza. There and at other sites, archaeologists have found extended text in a glyphic script.
Kent Vaughn Flannery is a North American archaeologist who has conducted and published extensive research on the pre-Columbian cultures and civilizations of Mesoamerica, and in particular those of central and southern Mexico. He has also published influential work on origins of agriculture and village life in the Near east, pastoralists in the Andes, and cultural evolution, and many critiques of modern trends in archaeological method, theory, and practice. At the University of Chicago he gained his B.A. degree in 1954; the M.A. in 1961 and a Ph.D. in 1964. From 1966 to 1980 he directed project “Prehistory and Human Ecology of the Valley of Oaxaca, Mexico.” dealing with the origins of agriculture, village life, and social inequality in Mexico. He is James B. Griffin Professor in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Michigan. In 2005, he was elected to the American Philosophical Society.
Ronald M. Spores is an American academic anthropologist, archaeologist and ethnohistorian, whose research career has centered on the pre-Columbian cultures of Mesoamerica. He is Professor Emeritus of anthropology at Vanderbilt University's College of Arts and Science, where he has been a faculty member for over four decades. Spores is most renowned for his scholarship conducted on the cultural history of the Oaxacan region in southwestern Mexico. In particular, he has made many contributions on the Mixtec culture, investigating its archaeological sites, ethnohistorical documents, political economies, and ethnohistory in both the pre-Columbian and Colonial eras. He was co-director of the Proyecto Arqueológico de la Ciudad Yucundaa Pueblo Viejo de Teposcolula, Oaxaca, sponsored by the Fundación Alfredo Harp Helu, the National Geographic Society, and INAH (2004–2010), and currently (2017) directs research on the sixteenth century Casa del Cacique de Yanhuitlan, Oaxaca, and related investigation of the surrounding Prehispanic-Colonial city and region. He is also Research Associate at the American Museum of Natural History, New York, and at the University of Oregon and investigator on the Proyecto Geoparque de la Mixteca Alta, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México/UNESCO, centered at Yanhuitlan, Oaxaca (2016-2017). Recent research relates to the colonial Manila Galleon trade between the Philippines and Acapulco.
Richard E. Blanton is an American anthropologist, archaeologist, and academic. He is most renowned for his archaeological field and theoretical research into the development of civilizations in pre-Columbian Mesoamerica, particularly those from the central Mexican plateau and Valley of Oaxaca regions. Blanton taught at Rice University and Hunter College of the City University of New York before joining the faculty at Purdue University in 1976. He is currently Professor Emeritus of Anthropology at Purdue's College of Liberal Arts.
Joseph W. Whitecotton is an American academic anthropologist and ethnohistorian, a specialist in Latin American cultural anthropology and in particular of Mesoamerican cultures. His primary research focus has been on the Zapotec civilization of central Mexico and Oaxaca, and he is the author of half a dozen monographs on the subject. In addition to his research on the Zapotec, Whitecotton has made contributions in historical ethnography, the study of political economies and the effects of globalization trends on local cultures. He has also investigated evidence for pre-Columbian contacts and trade between Mesoamerica and cultures in the American Southwest, and conducted ethnographical research of the Hispanos in New Mexico. Whitecotton is also a performing jazz musician and has written on the influences of jazz in popular culture.
Robert Norman Zeitlin is an American professor emeritus of anthropology at Brandeis University. He has a B.A. in psychology from Cornell University, a B.S. in aeronautical engineering from Boston University, an M.A. in anthropology from City University of New York, and a M.Phil. and Ph.D. in anthropology from Yale University.
Huamelulpan is an archaeological site of the Mixtec culture, located in the town of San Martín Huamelulpan at an elevation of 2,218 metres (7,277 ft), about 96 kilometres (60 mi) north-west of the city of Oaxaca, the capital of Oaxaca state.
Jeremy "Jerry" Arac Sabloff is an American anthropologist and past president of the Santa Fe Institute. Sabloff is an expert on ancient Maya civilization and pre-industrial urbanism. His academic interests have included settlement pattern studies, archaeological theory and method, the history of archaeology, the relevance of archaeology in the modern world, complexity theory, and trans-disciplinary science.
Pusilhá is an archaeological site in Belize. The location of this Late Classic Maya urban complex, along the east and west flow of trade, made the city a major transfer point for economic activities in the whole region. In addition, the city gave archaeologists a historical view of a secondary Maya site. Large and extended excavation efforts have changed the overall picture of Maya social and political relationships between larger and smaller cities and challenged the prevailing view of conquest and absorption of smaller cities into the larger cities in the region. The research conducted at Pusilhá began in 1927 and continues to this day.
Gheo-shih, which translates to “River of the Gourd Trees” in the Zapotec language, is an open-air site found in the Oaxaca Valley that holds what is considered as the earliest representation of civic-ceremonial architecture. Within this site is a cleared area lined by boulders that is thought to have been used for rituals, dances or athletic competitions. This site could have held 25-30 people and is believed to be a congregation site for microbands during the rainy seasons of the Archaic period.
Tierras Largas is a formative-period archaeological site located in the Etla arm in the Valley of Oaxaca in Mexico. It is considered to be one of the first villages where sedentism originated in the Oaxaca area. The name is Spanish for “Long Lands”.
Elsa Marion Redmond is an American archaeologist at the American Museum of Natural History. She specialises in Latin American archaeology. She is an elected a member of the National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
References
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- 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 Wayne, Tiffany K. (2011). American Women of Science Since 1900. Vol.2. Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, LLC. pp. 654–655. ISBN 9781598841596.
- ↑ "Joyce Marcus". www.nasonline.org. Retrieved 2015-10-29.
- 1 2 Kowalewski, Stephen (1996). "Review: Zapotec Civilization: How Urban Society Evolved in Mexico's Oaxaca Valley". Antiquity. 270 (70): 1002. doi:10.1017/S0003598X00084374. S2CID 163225267.
- 1 2 Marcus, Joyce (1976). Emblem and State in the Classic Maya Lowlands: An Epigraphic Approach to Territorial Organization. Washington, DC: Dumbarton Oaks. ISBN 978-0884020660.
- ↑ Cohodas, Marvin (1978). "Review: Emblem and State in the Classic Maya Lowlands: An Epigraphic Approach to Territorial Organization". American Indian Quarterly. 4 (1): 62–65. doi:10.2307/1183968. JSTOR 1183968.
- 1 2 Marcus, Joyce (1992). Mesoamerican Writing Systems: Propaganda, Myth, and History in Four Ancient Civilizations. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press. pp. xxi–xxii. ISBN 978-0691094748.
- ↑ "Ancient City Planning on the Yucatan Peninsula". Science News. 103 (22): 354. 1973. doi:10.2307/3957903. JSTOR 3957903.
- ↑ Feinman, Gary M. (2007). "The Last Quarter Century of Archaeological Research in the Central Valleys of Oaxaca". Mexicon. 29: 3–15.
- ↑ "joyce marcus | University of Michigan - Academia.edu". umich.academia.edu. Retrieved 2015-10-29.
- ↑ Marcus, Joyce; Flannery, Kent V. (1983). The Cloud People: Divergent Evolution of the Zapotec and Mixtec Civilizations. Academic Press. pp. xix. ISBN 978-0971958746.
- ↑ Dunnell, Robert C. (1992). "Review: Debating Oaxaca Archaeology". American Antiquity. 57 (3): 557. doi:10.2307/280944. JSTOR 280944. S2CID 164222827.
- ↑ Marcus, Joyce; Sabloff, Jeremy A., eds. (2008). The Ancient City: New Perspectives on Urbanism in the Old and New World. School for Advanced Research Press. pp. xv. ISBN 978-1934691021.
