Maya: Classic (Other Keyword)
26-50 (688 Records)
The Classic Maya, with their towering jungle temples and sprawling cities have been the focus of archaeological studies since the mid-1800s. Although numerous investigations have fostered considerable insights, important questions remain regarding the circumstances in which these settlements originated, interacted, developed, and were ultimately abandoned. The organization of Maya settlements is best conceptualized as a continuum consisting of three basic, but variable types, including:...
Ancient Maya Sustainability at Caracol, Belize: Implications for Past and Future (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Advancing Public Perceptions of Sustainability through Archaeology" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Long-term archaeological research at Caracol, Belize has revealed a sizeable city with over 100,000 inhabitants at A.D. 650 that practiced intensive agriculture within its urban boundaries. Over 160 square kilometers of the landscape within Caracol was anthropogenic, having been rebuilt to both provide agricultural...
Ancient Maya Use of Fauna from the Wetlands and Beyond (2021)
This is an abstract from the "Archaeology and the History of Human-Environment Interaction in the Lower Belize River Watershed" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Understanding how the ancient Maya interacted with wetland environments has been a topic of research for roughly 50 years. Previous studies suggest these resource-rich environments provided a diverse assortment of flora and fauna for the ancient Maya to utilize. Wetlands provide an ideal...
Ancient Maya Water Control, Wetlands, and the Fiery Pool (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Decipherment, Digs, and Discourse: Honoring Stephen Houston's Contributions to Maya Archaeology" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. One of Steve Houston’s sublime volumes is The Fiery Pool, which was also a groundbreaking exhibit. These explored the themes of the Maya and their relationships with water. Here we consider the themes from The Fiery Pool from the perspectives of ancient Maya Wetland fields, "creatures", and...
Ancient Obsidian Trade in Campeche, Mexico (2023)
This is an abstract from the "A Session in Memory of William J. Folan: Cities, Settlement, and Climate" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Those of us who were fortunate enough to work with Willie Folan all know that he was generous to a fault. I was invited first to study obsidian artifacts excavated by his team at the great Preclassic to Classic Maya city of Calakmul, and then to continue that work with later projects, including Postclassic...
Ancient Population History in the Palenque Region: The Problem of the Selection of Population Proxies (2021)
This is an abstract from the "Ancient Mesoamerican Population History: Demography, Social Complexity, and Change" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Proyecto Regional Palenque (PREP) has recorded a total of 653 sites within an area of 650 km2. Regional population ranges from 28,000 to 32,000 inhabitants. Mapping efforts and household excavations undertaken as part of the Proyecto Especial Palenque during the seasons of 1992–1994 identified 1,480...
And here’s the NEWS from Xnoha! Understanding Maya settlement and Early Anthropocene Landscape Modifications at a small Maya center. (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. Xnoha is a small Maya center in northwestern Belize that has seen two phases of investigation since it was recorded in 1990. While current research is largely focused on the Central Precinct or kawik, we have also invested much energy in the outlying groups of monumental architecture and settlement. Xnoha is located in a heavily...
Animal Management of the Late Classic Maya at Copán, Honduras, Using Stable Isotope Analysis (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In the late nineteenth century, Harvard Peabody Museum excavations at the Classic Maya site of Copán, Honduras, identified a large deposit of animal bones in structure 10L-36, a platform located in the El Cementerio area of Copán’s Late Classic Palace Complex. Primarily associated with the eighth–ninth-century CE reign of Yax Pahsaj, 10L-36 is thought to...
Animal, Human, and Crafted Bone from the S-Sector of Piedras Negras (2018)
Excavations within the S-Sector at Piedras Negras in 2016 yielded an assemblage of lithic and bone artifacts consistent with evidence of craft production. The Proyecto Paisaje Piedras Negras – Yaxchilan returned to the S-Sector during the 2017 field season to conduct more extensive excavations in an attempt to understand production and exchange at this Maya polity capital. Between the 2016 and 2017 seasons, over 4,300 fragments of worked and unworked bone, both human and animal, were excavated...
The Anthropogenic Wetlands of Northwestern Belize: Decades of Research and New Horizons for Study (2023)
This is an abstract from the "2023 Fryxell Award Symposium: Papers in Honor of Timothy Beach Part II" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. It is now clear that wetlands were critical resources for populations throughout human history in the Maya Lowlands of Belize and adjacent regions, and that these wetlands serve as important ecosystems and cultural heritage zones today. In northwestern Belize, decades of research have transformed our understanding of...
Application of the Geospatial Method to On-Floor Assemblages: A Case Study from the Classic Maya City of El Palmar, Mexico (2021)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. On-floor assemblages provide clues as to how complex administrative and domestic activities interplayed within a structure. By combining photogrammetry, total station and GIS, we developed a geospatial method that plotted each on-floor remain accurately on a GIS map. This poster presents its application to horizontal excavations that took place at the Guzmán...
Archaeo-Tourism and Heritage Policies: What Works, What Doesn’t, and How to Move Forward—Case Studies from Belize and the United States (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Archaeological sites in the United States are governed by a complex network of state and federal regulations, sovereign tribal governments, and private landowners. This often leads to difficulties managing access to heritage sites and their research potential. In contrast, extant literature describes the efforts of the Belize Institute of Archaeology and...
An Archaeogeochemical Perspective on Ancient Maya Land Use and Climate Change: The Case of Lagunas de Yalahau, Yucatan, Mexico (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Recent theoretical advances emerging from Historical Ecology have reoriented thinking regarding human-environment relations in many ancient contexts. Consistent with this research program, the concept of the Maya Forest-Garden introduced by Ford and Nigh and Rivera-Núñez and Fargher’s work on Kanan Ka’ax, among others, have provided a more integrated...
Archaeological Applications of Airborne LiDAR at the Maya Archaeological Site of El Palmar, Mexico (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Airborne Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR) survey has changed our perspectives on ancient Maya urbanism. In 2017, we conducted airborne lidar mapping at the Classic Maya city of El Palmar, located in southeastern Campeche, Mexico, covering a total area of 94 km2. Results show monumental architecture, possible marketplaces, causeways, vast intensive...
Archaeological Reconnaissance and Excavations at El Encanto (Petén, Guatemala) in 2018 (2021)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Maya site of El Encanto is situated 12 km to the northeast from Tikal epicenter. Discovered in 1907 and occasionally visited by various projects throughout the twentieth century, it has never been the subject of large-scale excavations. Based on the map by the University of Pennsylvania Tikal project in 1964 that included two groups, El Encanto was...
Archaeological Use of Meta-analyses to Limit Researcher Bias: Results from El Coyote, Honduras (2018)
There is extensive evidence that people are self-serving in the interpretation of data and are very likely to reach their desired conclusions. This paper describes the use of meta-analyses for combating researcher bias in archaeological and the results of my research at El Coyote, a Classic Period center in western Honduras.
The Archaeology of the Southern Belize Region in Context (2018)
The region of Southern Belize is part of the Maya lowlands, an area that is geographically circumscribed, and located in-between several larger regional centers such as Tikal to the west, Caracol to the north, and the sites of Copán and Quiriguá to the southeast. The general history of archaeological investigations for this area are presented, along with site-specific studies from the Southern Belize Region. The current archaeological data of four major ancient polities of this region are...
Archaeology, History, and Ancient Political Dynamics of the Mopan River Valley (2018)
One hallmark of Joseph Ball’s research has been integration of archaeological data and ethnohistorical and historical data, put to the service of addressing larger anthropological questions. In this paper, we present new data to examine one research question studied by Joseph Ball and Jennifer Taschek: Classic Maya political dynamics in the Mopan Valley of western Belize. This valley was home to five large centers, spaced 1 to 5 km apart: Las Ruinas de Arenal, Early Xunantunich, Classic...
Architecture as an Expression of Maya Political Organization in the Cochuah Region, Quintana Roo during the Early Terminal Classic: The Perspective from Non-primary Sites (2018)
Political leaders among the ancient Maya were actors performing for an audience with the intent to receive the people’s support to govern. These actors often used specific architecture as stages for their performances; therefore, this architecture serves as a source of information on various aspects of political organization. Architecture embodies political symbolism and has the potential to communicate type of political institution. This paper examines the distribution of architecture that...
The Architecture of the Classic Maya Regal Palace of La Corona, Guatemala (2018)
The regal palace of La Corona flanks Plaza A to the west and is the largest construction at the site: a complex of structures sitting atop a sustaining platform extending over ca. 80 x 55m, and 7m in height. This paper describes the architecture of the two northern groups of the regal palace during their two last phases of construction, spanning roughly 750-850 A.D. While the Northeast Group comprised elaborately decorated corbel-vaulted buildings, the Northwest Group featured a mix of sturdy...
Artifact Ubiquity as an Index of Ancient Maya Socioeconomic Variability at Actuncan, Belize (2018)
The Actuncan Archaeological Project has conducted ten field seasons of research at this ancient lowland Maya site in Belize, Central America and inventoried all artifact classes including ceramics, lithics, marine shell, jade, daub, etc. from excavation contexts. One of my research goals was to consolidate this information into a relational Access database so that project members could more easily analyze artifacts across contexts and time periods. The database allowed me to construct...
Artisanal Diversification or “Multi-crafting” as Economic Strategy among Upper-Class Extra-household Groups at Cotzumalhuapa (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. Various contexts in the sector of El Baúl, at the site of Cotzumalhuapa have been the subject of recent excavations to better understand the lithic industries of this urban center. These sectors were chosen for excavation due to the large surface scatters of lithic material indicating areas...
Assessing Botanical Diversity of Late-to-Terminal Classic Households at Xunantunich, Belize (2018)
Understanding household plant use can provide a wealth of data about subsistence practices, past agricultural systems, and strategies used to mitigate climatic stress. Plant use may also vary between households. By examining this variation, botanical data may yield further information on personal preference and cuisine differences between households. Aside from consumption for subsistence, plants were used for a wide range of activities conducted by individual households. Botanical datasets may...
Assessing Classic Maya Intermediate Elite Political Strategies through Multivariate Statistical Manipulation of Settlement Pattern Data (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Intermediate elites played pivotal roles in the politics of ancient complex societies across the world. In the Classic period (AD 250-900/1000) Maya lowlands, intermediate elites acted as intercessors between apical rulers and commoners. These intermediate elites and the political strategies they employed, however, have rarely taken center stage in...
An Assessment of Water Resources at Chichen Itza (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Studies in Mesoamerican Subterranean Archaeology" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Water has long been recognized as a critical but scarce resource in the Yucatan. At Chichen Itza, water resources have not received the attention they deserve. Traditionally, because of the focus on the Sacred Cenote, the Cenote Xtoloc became by default the profane cenote. Clearly, such a simplistic and culture-bound dichotomy tells us...