The million dollar question: what is a machacador?

Wednesday, December 16, 2009 P1030223

During our 2009 survey season, a student approached us asking if it was ok to collect a strange object lying on a mound by his feet. Immediately, Natalia got closer to him and identified the artifact as a “machacador”, reported by Bertha Cuevas in her thesis on El Carrizal. Instantly, the artifact was collected, labeled [...]

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Día de Muertos (Day of the Dead) at El Carrizal

Wednesday, November 11, 2009 P1020762

This past week was very important for all Mexicans, especially for those in communities away from big cities who still preserve traditions and habits inherited from their pre-Hispanic ancestors.
The Día de Muertos celebration is really relevant for El Carrizal and neighboring communities, since it combines elements from indigenous as well as European customs. This festivity [...]

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Archaeological Research Processes

Tuesday, October 27, 2009 Pedestrian survey, archaeologists are walking the terrain at a 20 meter distance between each other.

Generally, our work is viewed only as digging holes in archaeological sites. However, behind and through any serious research there must exist a theoretical and methodological coherence, which is usually unnoticed by students and the general public. For that reason, we’ve decided to use this update to share our views about this topic and its [...]

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Archaeology and Architecture

Friday, October 16, 2009 Mound 54, almost completely liberated (Cuevas 1970)

During our survey, we detected that all the buildings are quadrangular. We also found a couple of structures that allowed us to compare the construction techniques with the ones found by Cuevas. Preliminary results seem to indicate that this tradition was started during the Formative and continued through the Classic.
Apart from that, we have done [...]

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Things are Moving Really Fast

Friday, October 9, 2009 Rodolfo Parra analyzing with students

Analysis is moving fast. With Universidad Veracruzana’s students help, Rodolfo Parra has already analyzed 40% of the ground stone artifacts collected during the survey. Among the collection we have manos and metates, dishes, and hammers. Meanwhile, in the camp-lab Eli, Ramiro & Natalia continue the ceramic analysis. So far, materials indicates an occupation dating from [...]

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