[Aztlan] September Meeting of the Pre-Columbian Society at the University Museum

[michael ruggeri]

September 12, 1:30 PM
Pre-Columbian Society at the University Museum Lecture
Dr. Timothy Pugh
"Spanish Things in Maya Worlds: the Archaeology of First Contact"
Upon first contact with the Spaniards and afterwards, many Maya  
appropriated European objects.  The Spaniards manipulated indigenous  
desires for European things in order to achieve political domination.   
Hernán Cortés left beads, cloth, religious objects, and military  
projectiles as he traveled through Cozumel and Yucatan in 1519.  He  
visited Nojpeten, the capital of the Itza, with a large army in 1525  
and presented gifts and a wounded horse.  These initial interactions  
and those over the next 200 years have much to say about the role of  
material culture in situations of contact.  During the Contact period,  
A.D. 1525-1697, the Petén Lakes region was dominated by the Itza and  
their rivals, the Kowoj.  Archaeological research is revealing the  
complex roles of European objects in the political and religious  
systems of the Petén Maya.

Timothy W. Pugh is an associate professor at Queens College and the  
Graduate Center of the City University of New York and is now the  
director of the Tayasal Archaeological Project.  He has conducted  
archaeological investigations in Petén, Guatemala for fifteen years.   
His current research focuses upon Contact period power networks in the  
Petén Lakes region of Guatemala.  His past work focused upon the sites  
of Zacpetén and Nixtun-Ch’ich’, but he began a new project at the site  
of Tayasal in 2009.
Room 345
University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology
3260 South Street,
Philadelphia, PA
http://www.precolumbian.org/nextmeeting.HTM