Bloodletting in Ancient Central Mexico: Using Lithic Analyses to Detect Changes in Ritual Practices and Local Ontologies

Walton, David

doi:10.1007/s10816-020-09454-x

Cited by 9 publications

(10 citation statements)

References 80 publications

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“…Donaldson found concentrations of phosphates at several locations within the bounds of the Moorehead Circle, which caused Riordan to speculate about the relevance of similar types of analysis to further understand activities at the site. Specifically, he wondered whether one reason for the high frequency of bladelet fragments might have been their use in sacrificial bloodletting as a part of rituals conducted there (for evidence of bloodletters in central America, see Stemp et al 2019; Walton 2021). This train of thought inspired the 2016 decision to collect bladelets in a manner that would leave open the possibility of testing them for blood protein residues.…”

Section: Previous Studies Of Bladelet Use At the Moorehead Circlementioning

confidence: 99%

Bladelets, Blood, and Bones: Integrating Protein Residue, Lithic Use-Wear, and Faunal Data from the Moorehead Circle, Fort Ancient

2023

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Modified teeth and jaws have long been recognized as important ceremonial objects during the Middle Woodland period of eastern North America. Direct evidence for the manufacture of the objects is exceedingly rare because they are typically recovered from mortuary contexts or ceremonial caches. Here, we present multiple lines of evidence pointing to the manufacture of modified teeth and jaws at the Moorehead Circle post enclosure within the Fort Ancient Earthworks. The convergence of protein residue, lithic use-wear, and faunal data indicate that bear and likely canid bones were modified by artisans working within the Moorehead Circle. These findings add an important new layer of understanding to our knowledge of these objects, human–animal relations, and craft production in the Middle Woodland.

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Section: Previous Studies Of Bladelet Use At the Moorehead Circlementioning

confidence: 99%

Bladelets, Blood, and Bones: Integrating Protein Residue, Lithic Use-Wear, and Faunal Data from the Moorehead Circle, Fort Ancient

2023

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“…Vander Loo et al extracted edge images of ceramic tile cracks by wavelet transform and morphological fusion difference method [18]. Walton used sliding filtering and automatic zone growth method to detect ceramic tile cracks [19]. is method can detect cracks in tile head area accurately, but the detection speed is slow and the detection rate of cracks in texture area is not high.…”

Section: Related Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

Crack Repair Model of Ancient Ceramics Based on Digital Image

Fang

2022

Scientific Programming

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Ancient ceramics is an important carrier of concretization and artistic transformation of Traditional Chinese culture. It is also an extremely indispensable link for the world to understand traditional Chinese culture. It is of great significance to ensure the quality of ceramic products and improve the reliability of products by nondestructive testing of ceramic microdefect cracks. It is necessary to extract the microdefect crack area first and describe the characteristics of the ceramic crack image with the gradient weighting feature of the model to complete the nondestructive detection of the crack image. The traditional method sets the pixel point and brightness threshold according to the pixel value of the microdefect area but ignores the description of the weighted feature of the image and completes the nondestructive detection of the microdefect crack image of ceramic products. In this study, the improved algorithm of edge detection based on cluster analysis was applied to the ancient ceramic crack repair. First, cluster analysis is used to optimize the Sobel operator in edge detection. Then, the gray value distribution of edge detection map is changed by the Clustering algorithm. Finally，the experimental results show that the contour crack trace and edge direction of the improved edge detection map are obviously enhanced by 20%, which is beneficial to improve the accuracy of ancient ceramic crack repair.

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“…However, obsidian tools may have been used to craft prestige goods from other materials, which can be detected through use-wear analyses. Obsidian began to be transformed into specialized tools designed for domestic rituals during the later Middle Formative but more frequently for public ritual practices in the Terminal Formative (Walton 2021; Walton and Carballo 2016). Simply put, social elites and public institutions neither systemically controlled or sponsored lithic production systems nor stimulated consumer demand for obsidian prestige goods during the Early and Middle Formative.…”

Section: Formative Lithic Economies In the Central Highlandsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Technological criteria that can be used to identify bloodletters include very thin (i.e., 0.5 cm or often less in width) and precise bifacial pressure-trimming flake scars, or retouch, on distal and/or proximal ends of a pressure blade that is less than 1 cm wide (Figures 2j and 2p), or a similarly thin blade with an unusually tapered distal termination that ends with a fine point (Walton 2021; Walton and Carballo 2016:115). Stemp and colleagues (2019) find that measuring cutting-edge/mass ratios to identify the finest range of blades in an assemblage can help to predict which blades may have been designed and used as bloodletters.…”

Section: Toolkits and Sampling Strategymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Likewise, use-wear analyses can detect craft specialization versus multicrafting, a Mesoamerican domestic production strategy where multiple craft-producing activities yielded goods that exceeded the needs of an individual household's consumption (Hirth 2009). Furthermore, use-wear analyses can help reveal the production and consumption of prestige goods or ritual practices, such as public ceremonies and acts of ritual bloodletting (Levine and Carballo 2014; Stemp 2016b; Stemp et al 2019; Walton 2021).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Stone Tool Functions, Household Activities, and Formative Lithic Economies in Northern Tlaxcala, Mexico

Walton

2022

Ancient Mesoam

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High-magnification use-wear analyses create datasets that enable microeconomic studies of lithic consumption and household activities that complement macroeconomic studies of lithic production and exchange to collectively improve our reconstructions of ancient economies. In recent decades, compositional and technological analyses have revealed how certain obsidian sources and lithic technologies were exploited, produced, and exchanged in Mexico's central highlands region during the Formative period (1500 b.c.–a.d. 100). This article presents use-wear analyses of 275 lithic artifacts from four sites in northern Tlaxcala—Amomoloc (900–650 b.c.), Tetel (750–500 b.c.), Las Mesitas (600–500 b.c.), and La Laguna (600–400 b.c. and 100 b.c.–a.d. 150)—to compare household activities with lithic technologies and evaluate their roles in regional economies. Blades were used for subsistence and domestic crafting; maguey fiber extraction for textile production increased over time, especially in non-elite households. The preparation and consumption of meat acquired by hunting and other methods increased slightly over time, and bipolar tools were used as kitchen utensils. Bloodletting was practiced with two variations of late-series pressure blades, but these and other tools were neither exchanged as nor used to craft prestige goods, often viewed as driving forces of Formative economies in Mesoamerica.

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Bloodletting in Ancient Central Mexico: Using Lithic Analyses to Detect Changes in Ritual Practices and Local Ontologies

Cited by 9 publications

References 80 publications

Bladelets, Blood, and Bones: Integrating Protein Residue, Lithic Use-Wear, and Faunal Data from the Moorehead Circle, Fort Ancient

Bladelets, Blood, and Bones: Integrating Protein Residue, Lithic Use-Wear, and Faunal Data from the Moorehead Circle, Fort Ancient

Crack Repair Model of Ancient Ceramics Based on Digital Image

Stone Tool Functions, Household Activities, and Formative Lithic Economies in Northern Tlaxcala, Mexico

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