Maya archaeology (Other Keyword)
1-25 (44 Records)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The development of digital technologies and the use of advanced photogrammetry programs for modeling archaeological excavations and sites have opened new possibilities for spatial analysis in archaeology and the reconstruction of archaeological contexts. Among its main objectives, the Dos Hombres to Gran Cacao Archaeology Project investigates the...
Analysis of Faunal Material from Sacred Spaces at Agua Lluvia and Along the Dos Hombres to Gran Cacao Archaeology Project in Northwestern Belize. (2015)
This research focuses on the faunal material from the caves and sacred deposits at Agua Lluvia and along the Dos Hombres to Gran Cacao Archaeology Project in northwestern Belize. The analysis and interpretation of faunal material in caves can be problematic for zooarchaeologists. Unlike other archaeological features, caves have the added complexity of bioturbation, irregular stratigraphy, and inconsistent preservation. Similarly, faunal remains found within caves can easily be disregarded on the...
Animal Use in Ancient Maya Terminal Deposits: Examining Faunal Remains from sites in the Belize Valley to Identify Ritual Activities (2017)
Zooarchaeological materials from terminal deposits in the Belize Valley have the potential to assist archaeologists with understanding if terminal deposits represent ritual activities. This poster presents the results of zooarchaeological investigations of terminal deposits at the sites of Lower Dover and Baking Pot. While archaeologists from the Belize Valley Archaeological Reconnaissance Project (BVAR) have focused on the pottery and lithic materials in these deposits a thorough comparative...
Architectural Caves and Glyphic Stepped Platforms (2015)
Natural and man-made caves are clearly attested to in myth, iconography and the glyphic corpus as powerful features for the ancient and contemporary Maya. Caves are paramount for they function as entrances into the sacred earth, the most powerful entity of the sacred Maya universe. A third and less explicit category of these subterranean features, although extensively documented (Brady 2011; Rivera Dorado 1993; Tate 1992) in the Maya area, are architectural caves. This latter category, due to...
Bayesian Approaches for Chronology-Building in Maya Archaeology: Direct AMS 14C Dating of Burials in the Belize River Valley (2017)
Chronology-building in Maya archaeology has long been dominated by relative ceramic typologies based on excavations conducted in the 1950s, with date ranges temporally grounded by long-count calendar dates and a small number of imprecise radiocarbon dates. Higher-precision chronologies based on more recent methodological innovations in radiocarbon dating, including Accelerator Mass Spectrometry (AMS) 14C dating, Bayesian statistical modeling of radiocarbon dates, and ultrafiltration and XAD...
Branching Out: Cerro Maya as a Strategic Link in a Preclassic Maya Exchange Network (2015)
Ours is the first generation of Maya archaeologists to be fully rooted in Maya history. Thanks to our mentors, and especially cooperation between epigraphers and archaeologists, we have come to know the faces, names and life stories of important figures in our own New World history, epics that rival those of the Old World. The telling of these stories is a work in progress, however, our mentors, Linda Schele and David Freidel, provided a courageous and insightful first effort at embodying the...
Building Nature: An Analysis of Landscape Modifications in the Classic Period Maya Polity of Pacbitun, Cayo District, Belize. (2016)
This presentation offers an analysis of the architectural modifications made to the limestone karst landscape in the Classic period Maya polity of Pacbitun in the Cayo District, Belize. The Maya concepts ch’een (hole in the ground for communication with the supernatural world), and k’aax (wilderness) provide the overall framework for this paper. Through two case studies, I explore the range of karst features the Pacbitun Maya used as ch’een, the variety of ways the landmarks were modified for...
The Center as Cosmos in Early Colonial period Campeche (2015)
The center, as the Maya universe’s fifth direction, is a little understood component of Colonial period Maya cosmos. This paper will explore a diachronic notion of function and form for center as umbilicus, placing particular emphasis on pre-Hispanic Canpech and Chakanputun provinces, and Early Colonial contexts at Dzaptun/Ceiba Cabecera, Campeche. Pre-Hispanic Dzaptun, renamed "la Zeiba" and Ceiba Cabecera in later Colonial sources, had served as central cog in a hypothesized regional ritual...
Classic Maya Housholds in Northern Peten, Guatemala: An Overview (2015)
The Northern Peten is composed by a complex network of monumental sites that proliferated in the Preclassic during a time period that witnessed the maximal centralization of power in the area. Afterward, during the Classic period, this region experimented a cultural shift and a reoccupation forming a different political panorama. However, little is still known about the Classic Maya settlements of Northern Peten especially about their households. Recent archaeological investigations at Naachtun...
Community Archaeology and Ancient Ceramics: Developing an Inclusive Research Design in San Jose Succotz, Belize (2017)
Collaborative archaeology is an approach that promotes the inclusion of modern, indigenous communities in the study of the ancient past. In the Maya area, local communities have recently become more involved with archaeological research at multiple stages, including research design, data collection, and community outreach. At the same time, advances in the qualitative and quantitative study of early ceramics have allowed archaeologists to further elucidate ancient Maya chronology, economy, and...
Craft, Literacy, and Ephemera: Maya Textiles in the Gendered Scribal Tradition (2016)
Although art historians, archaeologists, and epigraphers often decry the poor preservation of certain ephemeral categories of Maya hieroglyphic remains – wooden lintels, codex-style books and plaster facades – the missing corpus of ancient hieroglyphic textiles is rarely discussed. Yet unlike the handful of maddeningly flat, angular, or profile-view representations of codices in Maya art, the "extant" inscribed textiles seen in murals, painted on narrative vessels, incised into stone and molded...
Digital Documentation of Ancient Ritual Landmarks: Modeling Senses of Place with Photogrammetry, LiDAR, and Virtual Tours. (2017)
Ritual karstscape archaeological research at the pre-Hispanic Maya site of Pacbitun, Belize, by the Pacbitun Regional Archaeological Project (PRAP) has included experimentation with a range of digital recording technologies. The overall goal of these experiments has been to better document ritual landmarks and the archaeological materials within them than has been possible with traditional recordation methods such as hand-drawn maps, photographs, and written descriptions. Our efforts have...
Digitizing Archaeological Data from the Dos Hombres to Gran Cacao Archaeology Project (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. A wealth of digital data is produced during an archaeological excavation and because so much of the fieldwork is unrepeatable, once the site is fully excavated, the digital records must be archived in a manner that best facilitates reuse. This paper presents the ongoing undertaking of digitizing data for the Dos Hombres to Gran Cacao Archaeology Project...
Eccentric Caching Practices of the Belize Valley (2017)
The ancient Maya expressed complex ideological and cosmological systems through diverse material practices. The ritual caching of objects, particularly offerings of chert and obsidian eccentrics, was a common manifestation of this integrated worldview throughout the Maya Lowlands. The study of these caches allows archaeologists to explore elements of ancient Maya ideology, which were shared across broad temporal and spatial landscapes. With over 100 years of previous archaeological research,...
The Evolving Nature of Landscape: An Example from La Milpa, Belize (2016)
In 2014, the California State University, Los Angeles Sacred Landscapes Archaeology Project took over the investigation of what appeared to be a sinkhole with a small cave chamber at its northern end. In 2015, excavation was continued to bedrock. Lying on bedrock, was a chultun capstone and examination of the ceiling directly above it disclosed the remains of what had been the entry tube into the feature. The lack of deposition between the ceiling collapse and the floor suggests that the...
Experiencing Yaxhom: Materiality, Memory, and Monumentality in the Puuc Hills of Yucatan (2016)
Research conducted at the ancient Maya site of Yaxhom has identified very early monumental architecture next to one of the most fertile tracts in the Puuc region of northern Yucatan. A third field season, reported on here, carried out further mapping and testing of the urban center to determine the extent of accompanying Formative architecture. We wished to test whether the platform served to mark place for a population with minimal investment in residential architecture or whether it formed...
Exploring the Coastal Mosaic of Northern Quintana Roo: The Proyecto Costa Escondida and Scott L. Fedick’s Continuing Legacy in the Northern Maya Lowlands (2015)
Glover and Rissolo owe a great deal to Scott Fedick for his mentorship through our graduate school years and for his friendship and council as we embarked on our own multidisciplinary project, the Proyecto Costa Escondida. This paper highlights the contributions Scott has made to interdisciplinary research in the Maya area. In so doing, we discuss how our project on the north coast of Quintana Roo builds on this intellectual heritage. We, like Scott, are investigating the dynamic interplay...
Famine Foods and Food Security in Ancient and Modern Yaxuna (2017)
Food as an object of study can reveal relationships between biological necessity, culture, and oppression. The 1996 World Summit on Food Security declared that "food should not be used as an instrument for political and economic pressure," yet archaeology shows myriad ways in which food access was manipulated in the past, and the ramifications of those manipulations. In the Maya area, prestige foods have tended to be the focus of analysis. In this paper, we emphasize the importance of the...
Games and foodstuffs at Chichen Itza: Relating patolli and starch grains at Structure 2D6 (2015)
Strucuture 2D6 is a gallery-patio type building situated within Chichen Itza’s site core right north of the Temple of the Warriors and the Temple of the Big Tables. Its gallery was excavated in 2009 and discoveries included a C-shaped bench following the buildings walls with just one exception – an altar right next to the passage that leads to the patio – as well as several column caches and a possible sacrificial stone. The removal of roof debris also freed up a well-preserved stucco floor that...
Geoarchaeology at La Milpa, Belize: An Ancient Maya Community and Its Temple (2016)
This paper discusses the preliminary results of geochemical and micromorphological analysis of sediments at Structure 3, a monumental temple structure at the site of La Milpa, northwest Belize. This analysis forms part of a project that aims to examine the impact of a community in shaping the functions of monumental architecture. Artifact and architectural evidence gathered at Structure 3 have indicated that the Late Classic period (550-850 CE) constituted a time of intense access and use of the...
Geospatial Analysis of Material Procurement and Distribution in the Hinterlands of Northwestern Belize (2015)
The ancient Maya employed a wide variety of lithic raw materials for tool manufacture, such as strategies that combined local production of flaked stone tools with the import of some finished tools from distant sources. Over time, variable stone tool acquisition, manufacture, and use are reflected in the comparative differences in the formal versus expedient technologies and raw material types from a variety of contexts, including ceremonial, non-domestic, and domestic. The authors will present...
A GIS and Remote Sensing Approach to Settlement Patterns, Cultural Landscape, and Utilization of Natural Resources in the Hinterlands: Dos Hombres to Gran Cacao Archaeology Project (2023)
This is an abstract from the "2023 Fryxell Award Symposium: Papers in Honor of Timothy Beach Part I" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Besides using lidar data, the application of various methods (e.g., documentation by total station, aerial photographs, modern/historical maps, and archaeological data) helps to assure a more precise identification and interpretation process of the archaeological features. In addition, the geographical information...
Has anyone heard from Scott Fedick? (2015)
Scott Fedick co-founded the Yalahau Regional Human Ecology Project in 1993, and his cross disciplinary approach continues to influence both his colleagues and students. This paper provides an overview of how Fedick’s mentorship and scholarship shaped and guided the research of two former students at various sites in the Yalahau region, and how this research has led to a deeper understanding of the settlement patterns during the Preclassic/Classic transition and into the recent historic...
"He Entered the Water" … Maya Wetlands and Their Caretakers (2015)
An epitaph for the death of Classic Maya rulers, "he entered the water" is an apt descriptor for a Maya archaeologist whose career spanned the royal and the watery. Peter D. Harrison—whose email address contained the word ahau (ruler, using a Colonial orthography)—was a master of scalar contrast. He attended to the small-scale details of a dynastic headquarters within the Tikal Central Acropolis and also theorized grandly about the role of wetlands in Classic Maya society. He became an advocate...
Hilltops and Boundaries: The LiDAR Survey of El Zotz and Tikal (2017)
The ancient Maya kingdoms of El Zotz and Tikal, while not comparable in size or influence, share a geographical region in the central Peten of Guatemala. Tikal is located at the eastern head of the Buenavista Valley, the northernmost east-west corridor of the Peten Karst Plateau, with El Zotz situated 23 km to the west at the intersection of the valley and a north-south drainage leading to El Mirador and the northern Peten. A steep limestone escarpment and the karstic uplands north of it bind...