913 - The Origins, Development, and Distribution of the Mixteca-Puebla Ceramic Style

18.07.2012 | 17:30 - 19:30
19.07.2012 | 17:30 - 19:30

Coordinator 1: Sergio, Suarez Cruz (Instituto Nacional de Antropologia e Historia , Puebla, Mexico / Mexiko)
Coordinator 2: Steinbrenner, Larry (Red Deer College, Canada / Kanada)

As one of the overarching styles of the Mesoamerican Postclassic period, the Mixteca-Puebla stylistic tradition has a long history of investigation. In fact, it is reported from all corners of this culture area, making it an appropriate theme for a conference on 'building dialogues' since it was an important means of symbolic discourse during the pre-Columbian period. The Mixteca-Puebla style was expressed on a variety of media, including murals, pictorial manuscripts, textiles, and polychrome ceramics. As the most ubiquitous of material evidence, ceramics have become the focus of most recent research on the origins and spread -- as well as regional expressions -- of the style.

Based loosely on the concept of primogeniture, the 'Mixteca-Puebla' style was so-named because of early discoveries of the style on ceramics from the Oaxaca and Puebla regions of central Mexico, and especially at sites in the Mixteca Alta and at Cholula. In the early 20 th century George Vaillant was the first scholar to suggest a culturally integrated relationship between these regions, and his ideas were operationalized by Mexican archaeologists such as Alfonso Caso and Eduardo Noguera, who excavated sites in Oaxaca and Puebla in order to better characterize the distribution of the style. In the later 20 th century Henry B. Nicholson developed the clearest definitions of the Mixteca-Puebla style, and coordinated a conference for the 1991 Congress of Americanists on the topic. One outcome of the ICA symposium and subsequent publication was the primacy of Cholula as a center for the development of the ceramic style, as well as the geographic breadth of its distribution including the Greater Nicoya region of Pacific Nicaragua and Costa Rica.

The symposium proposed for the 2012 Congress of Americanists is designed to provide a 'state of the Mixteca-Puebla concept' based on recent research. Case studies will be used to characterize this influential cultural marker that probably served as a means of elite symbolic communication linking widely dispersed communities. This symposium will bring together scholars

Palabras claves: Mesoamerica, ceramics, art style