Maya: Classic (Other Keyword)

DOCUMENT Citation Only Danielle Mercure. Dominique Meyer. Eric Lo. Tanya Anaya. Traci Ardren.

Using aerial imagery in archaeological sites has been viewed as a powerful tool for site recordation. At the Maya site of Yaxuna, located 20km south of the ancient ruins of Chichen Itza and on the longest recorded Maya sacbe, we provide a case study of aerial survey work, combining altitude varying imagery from fixed wing and multirotor aircrafts. Combining such multi-scale imagery allows us to relate excavation scale to landscape wide architecture and layout. Features such as terrain,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Sarah Kurnick.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Photography is a ubiquitous part of our daily lives and a pervasive feature of archaeological practice. For over a century, photographs have fostered interest in archaeology and offered a means to document artifacts, sites, and excavations. Perhaps because of its prevalence, archaeological photography is often taken for granted and only occasionally examined...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Cameron McNeil. Edy Barrios. Mauricio Díaz García. Agapito Carballo. Samuel Pinto.

This is an abstract from the "The Role of Women in Mesoamerican Ritual" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This paper explores evidence of women’s ritual practice at Río Amarillo, a site located 20 km from the Classic period center of Copan. While the ritual activities of royal women are largely hidden from view in Copan’s Acropolis, excavations at the site of Río Amarillo and in the groups surrounding it uncovered two contexts that were particularly...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Tomás Gallareta Cervera. Anna Novotny. Brett Houk.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Funerary customs and monumental architecture in the Maya Region are viewed by archaeologists as markers of social status and complexity. The intersection of mortuary rituals and the built environment gives us a window through which to understand the development of social complexity. Excavations at Chan Chich, a medium-sized city located in northwest...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jacob Welch.

This is an abstract from the "Place-Making in Indigenous Mesoamerican Communities Past and Present" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. During the Late Classic period, ancient excavators at an elite residence at Ucanha, Yucatan, Mexico, broke through several stucco floors and peeled away rocky fill before partially exposing two earlier buildings dating back to the Late Preclassic. Centuries separated the initial burial of these Preclassic buildings and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Franco Rossi. Heather Hurst.

This is an abstract from the "Place-Making in Indigenous Mesoamerican Communities Past and Present" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In 2010, archaeologists of the San Bartolo-Xultun Project began investigations of an acropolis complex located at the northern limit of the urban center of Xultun, designated "Los Arboles." The penultimate phase of the complex, dating to the Early Classic period (likely fifth century AD), included extensive preserved...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Sheldon Skaggs. Adam King. Christina Luke. George Micheletti. Terry Powis.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. During the Late Classic Period (550–800 CE) at Pacbitun, a sequence of events took place that changed the landscape of power and sacredness in the site’s core during a tumultuous time in the Belize River Valley. The sequence of caches and burials likely began in order to consecrate a new courtyard (Court 3) and establish the new center of power at the site....

DOCUMENT Citation Only James Brady. Brenna Perteet.

This is an abstract from the "Studies in Mesoamerican Subterranean Archaeology" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. During the construction of a plaza group on a 5 m high raised platform, a sascabera was excavated into the hill that formed the nucleus of the group. The original circular opening in the cap rock was carefully maintained. When the platform was completed, the northern end of the sascabera was filled with rubble and smoothed to form the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Luke Stroth. Mario Borrero. Geoffrey Braswell.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. We describe the paleobotanical collection from Nim li Punit (AD 150 to 830), a small-scale center in the Toledo District, Belize. The samples were collected from Structure 50, a range building that we interpret to be a Late Classic (AD 700 to 830) elite domestic context. This was a time of growth and change for Nim li Punit, where new construction coincided...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Leah McCurdy. M. Kathryn Brown.

In 2016, we discovered a sage’s chamber in the El Castillo acropolis at the ancient Maya site of Xunantunich, Belize. In the Late Classic Tut Building on the east side of El Castillo, all interior and exterior plaster walls are incised with "graffiti." The total number of elements documented is nearly 300 with themes ranging from human and animal forms to glyphs and multi-figure scenes. We expect to encounter more in future field seasons. Based on a variety of factors, we view this as practice...

DOCUMENT Citation Only W. James Stemp. Jaime Awe.

Sixteen small chert bifaces are part of a Terminal Classic (AD 800-900) peri-abandonment "problematic deposit" recovered just above the surface near the western base of Structure A2 at the ancient Maya site of Cahal Pech, Belize. The results of stylistic, technological, and use-wear analyses performed on these chert artifacts indicate: 1) production from locally available stone; 2) five different tool styles; 3) evidence for some tool curation/re-sharpening; and 4) wear patterns on some of the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jaroslaw Zralka. Bernard Hermes. Carmen Ting. Christophe Helmke. Wieslaw Koszkul.

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. Archaeological investigations at Nakum (an important Maya site located in northeastern Guatemala) brought about the discovery of many monochrome and polychrome ceramics in many different architectural contexts. The style of ceramics supplemented in many cases by mineralogical...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Arthur Demarest. Paola Torres.

Joe Ball’s research, his ceramic studies, his insistence on material culture as basis for work, and his honesty in critique of poorly grounded interpretation together provide a standard of building culture-history on solid ceramic studies, chronology, and material culture analyses. Many recent interpretations of Classic Maya society have not met that standard. Here we aspire to his bottom-up, material culture approach to interpretation in recent collaborative research in the western Peten and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Verónica Vázquez López. Felix Kuppat. Kathryn Reese-Taylor. Armando Anaya Hernández.

This is an abstract from the "Regimes of the Ancient Maya" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The history of the Kanu’l dynasty and their Late Classic regime at Calakmul has been researched extensively since the 1990s. The most recent insights into the earlier episodes of Kanu’l politics have emphasized that their seat of power during the Early Classic was Dzibanche and that it was a powerful faction that took power in Calakmul in the early seventh...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kacey Grauer.

This is an abstract from the "Materializing Political Ecology: Landscape, Power, and Inequality" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Post-humanism importantly considers active roles of nonhuman entities in society. However, it is crucial that power relationships between people do not fall by the wayside when studying past societies. In this paper, I approach geological features at the ancient Maya city of Aventura, Belize, from a perspective that...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Simon Martin.

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. The region now divided by the national boundaries of Belize and Guatemala was once home to a broad range of political entities. Noticeably, large centers with monumental inscriptions in the western and southern portions contrast with smaller and far less textually verbose sites...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Alyce De Carteret. Diana Magaloni Kerpel.

This is an abstract from the "Polychromy, Multimediality, and Visual Complexity in Mesoamerican Art" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Maya polychrome ceramics have long been regarded for the distinctive regional styles that emerged during the Late Classic period (ca. 600–900 CE). These styles, aligned with royal workshops and their patrons, encompass a wide range of aesthetic strategies, particularly with respect to color. Some workshops and their...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Arlen Chase. Diane Chase. Adrian Chase.

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 determination of accurate population numbers for ancient Mesoamerican societies is key for making interpretations about past levels of complexity. This is not only necessary for understanding how societies changed over time but also for how they were organized over space. The techniques that...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Elyse Chase. Adrian Chase. Diane Chase. Arlen Chase.

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. Caracol, Belize, is among the largest known ancient Maya cities. Its urban area spans some 200 km2 and is integrated by a series of radial causeways that connect outlying public architecture and plazas to the central hub. The entire landscape is covered by residential settlement and agricultural...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Phyllis Johnson.

This is an abstract from the "Advances in Obsidian Studies of the Old and New Worlds" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Archaeologists have been using agent-based modelling (ABM) to re-create prehistoric social, economic, and political processes, along with prehistoric environments since the first publication of the model commonly known as "Artificial Anasazi." Very few archaeologists have attempted to model prehistoric lithic technology, however,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Laura Kosakowsky.

Early work in the 1970’s by Joe Ball on Northern Belize ceramics from the site of Aventura highlighted its geopolitical location between multiple spheres of interaction. These spheres, reflected in the ceramics of the Classic Period, demonstrate that Aventura’s intermediary position between the cities of the Petén to the west, and the Yucatan to the north no doubt contributed to its success and long occupation. My own research on the Aventura ceramics, begun in 2015 as part of the Aventura...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jim Aimers. Jaime Awe.

During the Belize Tourism Development Project (2000-2004), Awe excavated dense on-floor deposits on the stairs and stairside outsets of Structures A2 and A3 at Cahal Pech. These deposits were mainly pottery sherds but included a variety of other materials including whole and partial vessels, projectile points, obsidian blades, deer antlers, figurines and ocarinas, spindle whorls, and jade pendants. A standard interpretations of such deposits is that they represent garbage left behind by Terminal...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jillian M. Jordan. Jaime Awe. Julie Hoggarth.

This is an abstract from the "Where Is Provenance? Bridging Method, Evidence, and Theory for the Interpretation of Local Production" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Ceramic provenance studies often focus on resource acquisition to address the question "what is local?", overlooking the role that practice plays in vessel manufacture. Potters must learn to create viable ceramic vessels, engaging with learning networks that extend beyond conventionally...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Autumn Rose. Kitty Emery. Robert Guralnick.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Human-caused environmental changes and their effects on the Classic Maya continue to be topics of vital research importance. Zooarchaeological data can provide valuable inferences about ancient Maya environments but must be assessed with care. In the Maya area, habitat fidelity models use high predator abundances to indicate the local presence of the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Ken Seligson. Soledad Ortiz Ruiz. Luis Barba Pingarrón.

Burnt lime has played a significant role in daily Maya life since at least as far back as 1100 BC, and yet its ephemeral nature has limited archaeological studies of its production and distribution. The application of new surveying and remote sensing technologies in recent decades is now allowing for a more in-depth investigation of the burnt lime industries that existed in different sub-regions of the Maya area. In this talk, we present an overview of the current understanding of Prehispanic...