Maya: Classic (Other Keyword)
201-225 (688 Records)
Social identification is the perception of oneness with, or belongingness to, some human aggregate. The definition of others and self is largely relational and comparative. Archaeologists demonstrate Maya elite identity by comparing them to non-elites in terms of energy expenditure in burial preparation, house and platform construction, access to luxury items, and cranial and dental modifications. Although non-elites include some urban residents and all hinterland residents, this study proposes...
Embedded Ancient Maya Economies (2021)
This is an abstract from the "Ancient Maya Embedded Economies" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Ancient economies are intertwined with aspects of the daily life of individuals in both market and premarket economies. To more fully understand these relationships, we must explore the ways in which economic actions are embedded and entangled within social, political, and religious practices. We briefly discuss the history of the term and how we utilize...
Emblems of Authority: A Comparison of Preclassic and Classic Maya Inscribed Jade Adornment (2021)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In antiquity, the use of prestige objects and adornment made of jade was a key aspect of Maya elite life which carried over from the Preclassic to the Classic period. The establishment of jade indicating high social status has shown to have begun in Mesoamerica with the Olmec, however the scope of this dissertation will focus only on the 1,800-year span of...
Embodied Identities and Moving Bodies: The Archaeology and Bioarchaeology of Ninth-Century Cultural Contacts from the Perspective of K’anwitznal (Ucanal), Guatemala (2023)
This is an abstract from the "The Movement of People and Ideas in Eastern Mesoamerica during the Ninth and Tenth Centuries CE: A Multidisciplinary Approach Part I" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Fifty years ago, Maya scholars argued that peoples from the Gulf Coast invaded and settled several sites in the Southern Maya Lowlands in the ninth century, including the site of Ucanal. These invasions were thought to have led to the collapse of Southern...
Embodying the Sun. Pyrotechniques as Part of Human Sacrifice in Ancient Mesoamerica (2018)
In Mesoamerica, sacrificial ceremonies for the sake of religious merit-making tended to bridge polarities between action and symbols. Some of the ritual practices were mediated by mythical narratives surrounding domestic hearths, divine fire, and the sun itself. Among ancient Mesoamericans with their hierophagic cosmic understanding, the fiery protagonists to which sacrifices were destined to were deemed necessary complements of all life and had to be fed. This talk combines graphic and textual...
An Empirical Study of the Economy of the Classic Maya Regal Palace of La Corona, Guatemala (2018)
This paper reports on the final results of a multi-facetted study of the northern section of the regal palace of La Corona. This study sampled (n=328) both plaster and soil in three adjacent patios and adjoining middens. The plaster samples underwent a geochemical analysis (ICP-MS), while the soil samples underwent flotation analysis which recovered macro-botanical remains and micro-artifacts. These results were then combined to traditional artifactual data derived from five middens excavated...
Emplacing a Classic Maya Ritual: Locating Deity Impersonation through Space and Time (2023)
This is an abstract from the "A Celebration and Critical Assessment of "The Maya Scribe and His World" on its Fiftieth Anniversary" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Michael Coe’s “The Maya Scribe and His World” (1973) and the 1971 Grolier Club exhibition for which it was produced marked the first sustained treatment of scribes and artists in scholarship on Classic Maya civilization. It also highlighted the wealth of information that ceramics and...
The End Is Nigh: Applying Regional, Contextual and Ethnographic Approaches for Understanding the Significance of Terminal "Problematic" Deposits in Western Belize (2018)
The discovery of cultural remains on or above the floors of rooms and courtyards at several Maya sites has been interpreted by some archaeologists as problematic deposits, defacto refuse, or as evidence for rapid abandonment. Investigations in the Belize River valley have recorded similar deposits at several surface and subterranean sites. Our regional and contextual approach to the study of these remains, coupled with ethnohistoric and ethnographic information provide limited support for...
Entangled: The Shifting Networks that Linked the Classic Maya of Belize’s Mopan Valley to Adjacent Regions (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Making and Breaking Boundaries in the Maya Lowlands: Alliance and Conflict across the Guatemala–Belize Border" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Some Mayanists have eschewed the notion that Classic Maya polities were territorially based, arguing instead that they were constituted through networks of political alliances that were continually reinforced through gifting, diplomacy, and warfare. That idea is our springboard...
Environmental Justice and the Water Temple at Cara Blanca, Belize (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Unsettling Infrastructure: Theorizing Infrastructure and Bio-Political Ecologies in a More-Than-Human World" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Nestled between stark white limestone cliffs and freshly burned agricultural fields, the Cara Blanca, Belize, water temple complex sits teetering on the edge of a 60+ m deep cenote. The Ancestral Maya built the structures so as to integrate the structure and the landscape—with...
Environmental Legacy of Precolumbian Maya Mercury: Using the Present to Understand the Past (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. The Mexico and Central American region has a history of mercury use that began at least two millennia before European colonization in the sixteenth century. Archaeologists have reported deposits of cinnabar (HgS) and other mercury materials at Classic period (ca. 250–900 CE) Maya settlements across the region;...
Epigraphy and History at La Corona (2018)
The ancient Maya ruins of La Corona (ancient Saknikte') has an unusually large textual and historical record. The site's inscriptions, despite their highly fragmented and incomplete state, present epigraphers and archaeologists with a detailed account of a royal family that ruled there at least from the 6th to 8th centuries. Excavations in the last several years have revealed many more inscribed sculptures. This paper will focus on the distinctive characteristics of La Corona as a literate...
Epigraphy and the Archaeology of Settlement in the Dolores Region, Peten, Guatemala (2019)
This is an abstract from the "At the Interface the Use of Archaeology and Texts in Research" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This paper summarizes recent research into the timing, distribution, and causes of ancient Maya settlement in the area of Dolores, Peten, Guatemala, in the western Maya Mountains. Integrating evidence from hieroglyphic inscriptions, ceramic studies, and GIS modeling of least-cost pathways and viewsheds, I propose an...
Erasing Borders: Integrating the Settlement Hierarchies of Central Belize and the Petén, Guatemala (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Making and Breaking Boundaries in the Maya Lowlands: Alliance and Conflict across the Guatemala–Belize Border" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Over the last 18 years, the Department of Conservation and Rescue of Prehispanic Archaeological Sites (DECORSIAP) in Guatemala has carried out extensive systematic surveys of the northeast region of Petén, Guatemala in order to better understand the internal and external...
Estelas y Calendarios de la Plaza del Sol de Copán, Honduras (2021)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Presentamos un estudio arqueoastronómico del patrón de distribución espaciotemporal de seis estelas que Waxaklaju’n U B’aah K’awiil colocó en la Plaza del Sol de Copán, Honduras, entre 9.14.0.0.0 y 9.15.0.0.0. Realizamos observaciones astronómicas en la Plaza del Sol entre 2000 y 2010; revisiones históricas, epigráficas e iconográficas; y un análisis...
Ethnographic Perspectives on Debt & Political Economy: Contributions to a Conversation on Graeber (2018)
This paper contributes contemporary ethnological perspectives and a case study on debt, moral economies, financial citizenship and human rights to a conversation among and between archeologists considering these perspectives in Mesoamerica.
Evaluating the Food Values of Alternative Crops and Implications for Drought Effects on the Ancient Maya (2021)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Far from being limited to maize, beans, and squash, the ethnographic Maya are known to make use of 497 species of food plants indigenous to the Maya Lowlands. This study presents initial results of determining “food values” based on nutritional content for these plant species, and the methods used to determine the values. The results have significant...
Evaluating Turkey Wellness and Treatment in the Maya World (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Current Research on Turkey (Meleagris gallopavo) Domestication, Husbandry and Management in North America and Beyond" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. As the primary domesticated animal in prehistoric Mesoamerica, the turkey occupied a prominent and multivalent role in society, as a food source, a feather provider, and a subject of ritual sacrifice. The preponderance of turkey remains across the archaeological record of...
Everyday Life in a Maya Center: New Data towards Social, Economic, and Ritual Behavior at the Ancient City of Dos Hombres (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Ancient Maya Landscapes in Northwestern Belize, Part I" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The current research in the Dos Hombres civic ceremonial center utilizes the lens of "everyday life" in order to understand the internal ritual, economic, social, and ideological activities of this ancient city, as well as how it interacted with the surrounding household hinterlands, and the socio-political and economic role this...
Evidence of Meteor Shower Outbursts Recorded in the Classic Maya Hieroglyphic Script Using Orbital Integrations (2018)
No firm evidence has existed that the ancient Maya civilization recorded specific occurrences of meteor showers or oubursts in the corpus of Maya hieroglyphic inscriptions. In fact, there has been no evidence of any pre-hispanic civilization in the Western Hemisphere recording any observations of any meteor showers on any specific dates. The authors numerically integrated meteoroid-sized particles released by Comet Halley as early as 1404 BC to identify years within the Maya Classic Period, AD...
Examining Everyday Lives: Non-Elite Maya Households and the Terminal Classic Collapse (2018)
In this paper I will discuss recent archaeological investigations at the Floodplain North settlement cluster, located within the Rancho San Lorenzo Survey Area in Belize’s Mopan River valley. My research investigates the adaptive responses of non-elite Maya to Terminal Classic (AD 780-900) socioeconomic and political transformations. Preliminary analysis indicates occupation continued at Floodplain North after the Terminal Classic collapse and the abandonment of nearby settlements. Materials...
Examining Flaked Stone from Caracol, Belize, at the Urban Scale (2021)
This is an abstract from the "The Urban Question: Interdisciplinary Approaches to Investigating the Ancient Mesoamerican City" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Household and city scales are typical units of archaeological analysis at Maya sites. More recent models of urban space include intermediate scales referred to as “neighborhoods” that encompass clusters of households and “districts” that effectively integrate neighborhoods. Using flaked stone...
Examining Intermediate Elite Relationships with Apical Elite Polity Rulers through Ritualization, Ancestor Veneration and District-Scale Identity Formation at the Late Classic Maya Polity of Lower Dover, Belize (2021)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Traditionally anthropologists envisioned ritual as playing a functional role in the formation and ongoing cohesion of ancient complex societies. More recent perspectives consider ritual to represent a powerful tool of resistance, and therefore pivotal not just to the integration, but also the disintegration of polities. Situations in which a higher order...
Examining Production in Maya Households: A Case from the Settlement Zone of Dos Hombres (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Economic integration of households outside of site cores has often been under theorized in Maya scholarship. In this paper I explore the evidence of craft production and spatial relationships in several of these residential groups as well as the implications for connections with social, political, and economic institutions. These groups make decisions...
Examining the Bread-Basket Model: Puuc Intra and Inter-Site Diversity in Plant Foods (2018)
The Puuc mountains in the northwestern Maya lowlands have proven themselves to be double-faced in regard to pre-Columbian human settlement. On one side, the valleys exhibit the region's most fertile soils. On the other hand, rainfall is scarce and access to the underground water table is comparatively difficult. Nonetheless, authors such as Smyth (1991) have long suggested that the Puuc represented some of the bread-basket for the wider northwestern lowlands. As part of a broader study, in this...