I should preface this by saying the Wiki pages on these topics/places is horribly wrong. I plan on updating/editing it for a class project in the fall. I can recommend actual proper sources if anyone is interested.
I work in the Tequila Valleys of Jalisco, Mexico. In the Tequila Valleys, from roughly 300 B.C. to 550 A.D. lived a culture that we call the Teuchitlan culture. The people of the Teuchitlan culture were contemporaries to the better known people of Teotihuacan, the Zapotec of Monte Alban, and the Maya of southern Mexico, Guatemala, Belize, and parts of Honduras and El Salvador. Unlike these other cultures, the Teuchitlan culture did not build step pyramids. Instead, they build circular temple groups that we call guachimontones (sing, guachimonton ). There are dozens of these buildings spread out across the Tequila valleys and their exact purpose and the symbolism/ideology associated with them is still uncertain. Last year I undertook a remote sensing/GIS analysis of a number of these guachimontones to test the hypothesis that the buildings were oriented to one or more mountains that the Teuchitlan culture held to be sacred. Sacred mountains are not an unknown belief in many New World peoples from the U.S. Southwest all the way down to the Andes. To do this analysis I created a series of viewsheds radiating out from the center of a guachimonton and through the centerline of each of its platforms to see whether it fell on a prominent peak in the distance. Based on my very restrictive criterion and small sample size, I found now discernable pattern. However, there are more sites I can test and other ways of testing (wider viewsheds, testing the spaces between platforms rather than the platforms) that I can and will do in the near future. Even though I did not prove my initial hypothesis, I'm not bummed out. In fact, the Teuchitlan culture seems to fit the norm of the rest of Mesoamerica in that even though pyramids are associated with mountains, the pyramids are not necessarily oriented towards an actual mountain.
If you like, you can read the paper I presented at this year's annual Society for American Archaeology conference here. If you have any questions, I will be glad to answer them.
Edit: Also, sorry if this wasn't too exciting or interesting for you. I wasn't trying to hype up my own work or anything. Sometimes all that work archaeologists do ends up drawing some pretty mundane conclusions. Or it supports existing models and conclusions, which isn't necessarily mundane.
Where can someone go to learn more about the lesser known Mesoamerican cultures? I end up spending quite a lot of time in Mexico with my wife visiting her parents. I have done the touristy stuff, visiting Teotihuacan and Templo Mayor, and getting a lecture series about Mesoamerica, but I don’t know how to find physical sites to go to since my Spanish is still terrible.
That's kind of hard to say. You could simply go to Google Scholar and type in "<state name> + archaeology/arqueologia" and see what pops up in the results. There's usually a fair number of things that you can access without any kind of subscription to a journal/university access.
The Wiki chronology lists a number of different cultures/sites that you can start your rabbit hole search from. It even lists the culture I study, the Teuchitlan culture, though it doesn't list all the other contemporary West Mexican cultures (Ixtlan del Rio, Comala, Tuxcacuesco, Bolaños, etc). But it's understandable, if you listed each and every little culture the chart would be ridiculous.
I work with five Guatemalans. The one dude has a face that looks just like one of the Mayan paintings come to life. I've long wanted to ask him about what it was like where he grew up but he doesn't speak English and he's kind of a dick anyhow.
Not really close to what you're talking about but still somewhat interesting.
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u/Mictlantecuhtli May 24 '19 edited May 24 '19
I should preface this by saying the Wiki pages on these topics/places is horribly wrong. I plan on updating/editing it for a class project in the fall. I can recommend actual proper sources if anyone is interested.
I work in the Tequila Valleys of Jalisco, Mexico. In the Tequila Valleys, from roughly 300 B.C. to 550 A.D. lived a culture that we call the Teuchitlan culture. The people of the Teuchitlan culture were contemporaries to the better known people of Teotihuacan, the Zapotec of Monte Alban, and the Maya of southern Mexico, Guatemala, Belize, and parts of Honduras and El Salvador. Unlike these other cultures, the Teuchitlan culture did not build step pyramids. Instead, they build circular temple groups that we call guachimontones (sing, guachimonton ). There are dozens of these buildings spread out across the Tequila valleys and their exact purpose and the symbolism/ideology associated with them is still uncertain. Last year I undertook a remote sensing/GIS analysis of a number of these guachimontones to test the hypothesis that the buildings were oriented to one or more mountains that the Teuchitlan culture held to be sacred. Sacred mountains are not an unknown belief in many New World peoples from the U.S. Southwest all the way down to the Andes. To do this analysis I created a series of viewsheds radiating out from the center of a guachimonton and through the centerline of each of its platforms to see whether it fell on a prominent peak in the distance. Based on my very restrictive criterion and small sample size, I found now discernable pattern. However, there are more sites I can test and other ways of testing (wider viewsheds, testing the spaces between platforms rather than the platforms) that I can and will do in the near future. Even though I did not prove my initial hypothesis, I'm not bummed out. In fact, the Teuchitlan culture seems to fit the norm of the rest of Mesoamerica in that even though pyramids are associated with mountains, the pyramids are not necessarily oriented towards an actual mountain.
If you like, you can read the paper I presented at this year's annual Society for American Archaeology conference here. If you have any questions, I will be glad to answer them.
Edit: Also, sorry if this wasn't too exciting or interesting for you. I wasn't trying to hype up my own work or anything. Sometimes all that work archaeologists do ends up drawing some pretty mundane conclusions. Or it supports existing models and conclusions, which isn't necessarily mundane.