A. Gabriel Vicencio

Matriculated September 2020

Research Interests

Mesoamerica; political economy; exchange networks; obsidian; geochemical analysis

About

Gabriel Vicencio is a Mexican archaeologist whose research has focused primarily on Central Mexico. His interests lie in understanding political economy and regional systems of exchange identified through the analysis of obsidian. He has worked in several sites throughout Central Mexico, including Cuauhtinchan Viejo, Cholula, Cacaxtla-Xochitecatl, Teotihuacan, and Tepeticpac. Additionally, he has worked in projects in the Maya region, such as Yaxuná, and a speleology project around central Yucatan.

Before entering the Ph.D. program at BU, Gabriel completed his undergraduate studies at the Department of Anthropology of the University of the Americas, Puebla (2015) and earned his Master’s degree at the Institute of Anthropological Investigations of the National Autonomous University of Mexico (2019). His master’s thesis “El Paredón and Tlaxcala: a regional study of an obsidian source during the Middle and Late Formative in Tlaxcala” identified the obsidian supply networks of different sites in the Tlaxcala region and their commercial ties to the El Paredón quarry in Puebla. In 2020, he was awarded the Alfonso Caso prize through Mexico’s National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH) for best Master’s thesis in archaeology.

Awards & Grants

• NSF Doctoral Dissertation Fellowship (2024)
• Mobius Fund for Summer Fieldwork. (Summer 2023).
• Short-term Graduate Research Abroad Fellowship (GRAF). (awarded Spring 2023).
• Department of Anthropology Summer Research Grant. (2022).
• Boston University (GRAS) Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Scholarship. (Fall 2021- present).
• Boston University Dean’s Fellowship. (Fall 2020, Spring 2021).
• Alfonso Caso Award, for Best Master’s dissertation in Archaeology, Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia, Mexico City. (2020).

Publications

• Gentil, Bianca, A. Gabriel Vicencio and Kenneth G. Hirth. (2021) Aztec and Tlaxcalan Economic Interaction: Blockade or Interregional Exchange? Latin American Antiquity 32(4): 723-740
•  López-Corral, Aurelio, A. Gabriel Vicencio, Ramón Santacruz-Cano, Bianca L. Gentil, and Armando Arciniega
   2021   Core and Periphery: Obsidian Craft Production in Late Postclassic (A.D. 1250/1300–1519) Tlaxcallan, Mexico. Journal of Field Archaeology:1–16.
• Straulino, Luisa, Luisa Mainou, Teresa Pi, Sergey Sedov, Aurelio López-Corral, Ramón Santacruz-Cano, and A. Gabriel Vicencio
   2019   Approach to the knowledge of preservation of Pleistocenic bone: The case of a Gomphothere cranium from the site of Tepeticpac, Tlaxcala, Mexico. Revista Mexicana de Ciencias Geológicas 36(2):170–182.