CASE STUDIES WITH ARCHAEOASTRONOMIC APPROACH IN THE STATE OF TABASCO, MEXICO

Abstract

In the year of 2016 started the Research Project Archeology, Archaeoastronomy, Calendar and Landscape

Olmec and Maya (PIAACPOM). It focuses on archaeoastronomy, and in this field season, research was

steered in the state of Tabasco, Mexico.

The work is centred on the methodology of the case studies, which allow to know in greater detail each of

the archaeological zones. The places researched in this paper are the Olmec site La Venta and the Zoque like

archaeological zone of Malpasito, and also San Claudio and Comalcalco, these representatives of the Mayan

culture. All of them have an architecture in which a series of measurements have been carried out. The

objective is to know in more detail the intention of their orientation and, to a certain extent, the relations

with the surrounding landscape, in these cultural regions.

The work will cover cases of orientations ranging from the relationship between settlements, such as La

Venta, to the general profile of a site and the relationship it has with the landscape, in the case of Malpasito

and San Claudio. The architectural component is also studied, such as a burial chamber, a temple structure

at Comalcalco or the orientation axis of some structures at San Claudio. The different levels of information

complement each other and help to better understand the intention that existed about orientation in

Mesoamerica.

In summary, it is possible to see how the orientation was considered in the planning of spaces, constructions,

building traces, location, among others, from the smallest to the largest structures. In this work it will be

shown with different cases how the result is in some way the same. The orientation was an aspect of great

relevance in Mesoamerica, and it reveals that it can be associated with iconography, architecture, settlement

and landscape.