Scholarly Disciplines
Mesoamerican Archaeology
Social Science
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Origin from 1839
The material culture of ancient Mexico and Central America excavated and dated on its own physical evidence. Founded in 1839, when John Lloyd Stephens and Frederick Catherwood's expedition to Copan and Palenque proved the ruins were built by the ancestors of the living Maya rather than a vanished outside people.
Facts
Method
Methodsite excavation and documentary comparison of Mesoamerican monuments and material culture, dating and interpreting a site on its own physical evidence rather than through the assumptions of outside observers 2 Subject
Subjectthe material culture of ancient Mexico and Central America, and what religious practices are archaeologically attested at a Mesoamerican site and how confidently they can be dated 2 Identity
Field Category Parent Field Origins
Emerged As Named Discipline Learn More
Stephens and Catherwood Prove the Ruins Are Native and a Field Begins
Mesoamerican archaeology excavates and interprets the material culture of ancient Mexico and Central America, establishing what religious practices are archaeologically attested at a given site and how confidently they can be dated. The American traveler John Lloyd Stephens and the English artist Frederick Catherwood set out for Central America in 1839, visiting Copan, Palenque and dozens of other ruined cities, and their account, published as Incidents of Travel in Central America, Chiapas and Yucatan, demonstrated for the first time to a wide readership that the ruins had been built by the ancestors of the living Maya rather than by some vanished outside civilization, a conclusion most contemporaries had assumed was impossible.
Stephens and Catherwood's founding recognition, that the archaeological record belonged to a documented, continuous indigenous tradition rather than a lost foreign one, is what makes Mesoamerican archaeology able to connect an excavated temple, stela or offering directly to Aztec, Maya and other Mesoamerican religious practice rather than treating the ruins as an unexplained curiosity. The atlas relies on the discipline wherever a claim about ancient Mesoamerican ritual or cosmology needs grounding in what a specific excavated site actually contains.
Scholarly Disciplines of Mesoamerican Archaeology
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Associated With
This source names Americas directly: "The material culture of ancient Mexico and Central America excavated and dated on its own physical evidence."
Maya, Figures This source names Maya directly: "built by the ancestors of the living Maya rather than a vanished outside people."
This source names Mexico directly: "The material culture of ancient Mexico and Central America excavated and dated on its own physical evidence."
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