Belize (Country) (Geographic Keyword)
1,476-1,500 (4,066 Records)
This is an abstract from the "New and Emerging Perspectives on the Bajo el Laberinto Region of the Maya Lowlands, Part 1" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Forest resources supported a sizeable population at the Maya city of Calakmul for centuries. This study addresses questions about maximum potential carrying capacity based on aboveground biomass (AGB) production and the diversity of ethnobotanically significant forest species. AGB of the modern...
Forgery and the Pre-Columbian Art Market (2017)
Why forgery? "Because," as Willie Sutton once said, referring to why he robbed banks, "that’s where the money is." Forgery is a common problem in the art market with works by contemporary living artists as well as "old masters" having been and, continuing to be, faked. Some segments of the market, specifically pre-Columbian antiquities, are worse than others in the sheer number of forged and faked works being offered for sale in upscale galleries, online, and by independent,...
Forget Projections, Be the Change: Crushing Archaeology Career Myths to Inspire New Trajectories for CRM (2024)
This is an abstract from the "Transformations in Professional Archaeology" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. One of the most popular narratives at this time in archaeology, promoted by Atschul and Klein 2022, is that there will be a dearth of archaeologists now and into the near future, particularly archaeologists with master's degrees or higher. This presentation will bust the myths regarding the role and necessity of advanced degrees in CRM and...
Forging International Archaeological Research Collaborations and Mentorship Opportunities at Lower Dover, Belize (2024)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Our poster presents ongoing efforts at creating a collaborative research environment between international and Belizean early career scholars at the Classic Maya center of Lower Dover, Belize. Rather than incorporating Belizean collaborators in pre-existing research projects, our current goal has been to collaborate with Belizean early career scholars to...
Form is Emptiness, Emptiness is Form: Reimagining the Pyramids at Cochasquí, Ecuador (2017)
The archaeological site of Cochasquí, located north of Quito in the Ecuadorean highlands, has long been defined by its massive quadrangular pyramids with extended entry ramps. When Max Uhle arrived on site in 1932 he focused his excavations on the largest of the fifteen known pyramids. Uhle’s work laid the foundations for the interpretations and the chronology of the site, which are still applied today. Archaeologist Udo Oberem conducted the most extensive excavations on site between 1964 and...
Formal Open Space at Teotihuacan (2017)
The lack of large plazas at Teotihuacan has led archaeologists to claim that Teotihuacan was a city with very little public open space. There are, however, many smaller assembly areas distributed around the city. The Teotihuacan Mapping Project identified a large number of "plazas" in the city but the criteria were subjective and the data were never analyzed. I have filtered these data by applying a more formal definition of plaza than the initial field criteria used by the Mapping Project....
Formation and Context of Sitio Chivacabe, Western Highland Guatemala (2018)
Located in the Highlands of western Guatemala, Chivacabe is a Pleistocene-age bone bed and Archaic-age archaeological site. In 2009 the site was subjected to intensive geoarchaeological investigation with the goals of identifying the relationship between the faunal and archaeological remains through developing an understanding of their context. Three allostratigraphic units were identified: The oldest unit, which contains the bone bed, consists of colluvially reworked tephra bracketed by...
Formative Assessment of "Project Archaeology: Investigating Food and Land" (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Archaeology Education: Building a Research Base" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. "Project Archaeology: Investigating Food and Land" is a new education guide that explores the intersections of culture, food, people, and the environment in ancient North America. "Food and Land"’s first regional investigation invites 3th-5th grade students to examine food systems in the Great Basin by using environmental archaeology...
Formative Experiences: Everyday Life and Political Violence in Yucatan, 1847-1866 (2017)
How can we study political violence in the archaeological record? How does it impact civilian spaces and how can we rethink its consequences for everyday life? This paper argues for the interpretive value of civilian landscapes for the study of violent conflict. The tendency to treat political violence as an event (e.g. the Caste War of Yucatan) in archaeology, rather than a prolonged sociopolitical episode or process, impoverishes our archaeological theorization of violence: violence is forced...
Formative mobilities: Moving through the Atacama Desert, Northern Chile (2017)
Social spheres are constituted by population movements. Mobility entails not only the circulation of material goods, but of people, collective imaginary, experiences, flows of information, and knowledge. In this paper, we examine multiple types of movements through the Atacama Desert during the Formative Period (ca. 500 BCE—700 CE). Here, mobility required displacements whose variability included pedestrian travels, the movement of large llama caravans, and the use of sea lion-skin rafts to sail...
Formative to Postclassic Landuse Changes in the Lower Río Verde Valley, Oaxaca (2017)
We provide a summary of the past ~15 years of paleoecological and paleoenvironmental analysis in the Lower Río Verde Valley. Ten lacustrine, wetland and estuarine sites throughout the valley and coastal zone were selected for sediment coring. The sediments were intensively sampled for a suite of biological and sedimentary analyses chosen to provide insight into changes in local and regional landuse. Our findings indicate initial land clearance and incipient agriculture occurred during the...
Formative-period Izapa Kingdom at Its Neighbors (2017)
Mesoamerica is one of the cradles of civilization where the first kingdoms and states emerged during the latter part of the first millennium BCE. Recent lidar mapping and pedestrian survey documents the extent and internal political structure of the Izapa kingdom from its emergence at 700 BCE through its collapse after 100 BCE. At its peak, a four-tiered political hierarchy maintained internal cohesion and the distribution of large centers around the kingdom’s perimeter established external...
Fortified Capitals: Understanding Defensive Systems at Piedras Negras and Yaxchilan (2018)
Prior reconnaissance efforts in the Middle Usumacinta River region have identified a series of low walls associated with Tecolote, La Pasadita, and other border sites in the Yaxchilan kingdom. Similar defensive features have also been identified at the Piedras Negras secondary center of La Mar. These walls are interpreted as the foundations for wooden palisades, and served to protect not only immediate communities, but also the kingdom at large. However, this paper presents the first evidence...
Fortified settlements of the Upper basin of the Sama River (Tacna) during the Late Intermediate Period (1100-1450 AD) (2017)
During the Late Intermediate Period (1100-1450 AD), the upper valleys of Tacna, between Sitajara and Tarata, are known to have been multietnic areas of contacts between coastal and altiplano populations. Our research concerns the fortified settlements, called Pucara, to better understand the cohabitation relationships with different scales: from the study of the fortifications themselves to the territory analysis with the identification of the inhabitants of these fortresses.
Fostering Preservation and Public Engagement of a Colonial-Era Site on Barbuda with Photogrammetry (2024)
This is an abstract from the "At the Frontier of Big Climate, Disaster Capitalism, and Endangered Cultural Heritage in Barbuda, Lesser Antilles" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The threats to cultural heritage on the Caribbean island of Barbuda are multifaceted, stemming from natural disasters, rising sea levels, political and economic policies, and infrastructure development. While such threats are not new, their increasing and combined...
Foundations to the Late Classic Kingdom: Copan in the 6th century CE (2017)
Historical and archaeological data support interpretation of Classic Maya polities as centralized states—strongly integrated organizations with stratified and hierarchical political structures led by rulers wielding coercive power. Yet archaeology is often hard pressed to identify changes instigated by individuals or events, or define watershed moments when particular sites or regions coalesced as states. By the early sixth century CE, the kingdom of Copan had established itself as a dominant...
Fowling and Food Security in the Faroe Islands (2018)
Seabird fowling has long played an important role in the traditional domestic economy of the Faroe Islands, a small North Atlantic archipelago. Direct evidence for seabird exploitation in the earliest period of Faroese prehistory has been lacking, however. In this paper, I present new archaeofaunal evidence for substantial and sustained seabird exploitation in the Faroe Islands from the 9th through 13th centuries CE. The data suggest that seabirds represented a significant resource in the...
FRA Cultural Resources Division. (2024)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) Cultural Resources Division is comprised of archeologists, architectural historians, and historians. With responsibility to oversee federally funded and federally authorized projects across the United States. This presentation will provide an overview of FRA’s mission with emphasis on cultural resources...
Fragmentary Ceramic Assemblages as a Record of Ritual Practice at Las Cuevas, Belize (2018)
The most common artifacts found in Maya caves are unslipped and monochrome slipped ceramic sherds. The smashing of ceramic vessels as an element of ritual practice is recorded ethnographically among some twentieth-century Maya groups. Other Maya groups have been documented collecting sherds from domestic middens and depositing them at sacred sites. If caves were venues for the former type of behavior in antiquity, one would expect to find a high percentage of refitting sherds in their...
Fragmented Records: Fuego-Patagonian Hunter-gatherers and Archaeological Change (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Archaeology on the Edge(s): Transitions, Boundaries, Changes, and Causes" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. One common assumption in the interpretation of Fuego-Patagonian archaeological long stratigraphic sequences is that they represent occupational continuity. Several archaeological markers, including chronological and stratigraphic gaps, as well as recent molecular results erode that assumption, inviting us to...
The Frailty-Mortality Paradox: Insights from the Spanish Flu Pandemic of 1918 (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The difficulty of inferring health from skeletal remains is an enduring problem in bioarchaeology. The concept of "frailty" has emerged as a convenient tool for relating observed skeletal lesions to human health and mortality, yet the biases inherent in archaeological samples have left the concept undertheorized. It remains unclear whether frailty should be...
Framing Intent, Power, and Agency in Eastern Honduras (2021)
This is an abstract from the "Advances and New Perspectives in the Isthmo-Colombian Area" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Throughout their history, the polities in eastern Honduras existed along a frontier, interacting with larger, powerful groups from a different cultural tradition to the west and with more closely related people to the south. During the period between 500 and 1200 CE, eastern Honduran groups adopted several significant elements...
The French Scientific Mission to South America (1903): the controversies and material legacy of the first extensive excavations in Tiahuanaco, Bolivia (2017)
In the context of a pluridisciplinary mission organized by the French government in Chile, Argentina, Peru and Bolivia in 1903, archaeological excavations were conducted in the monumental site of Tiahuanaco by the naturalist Georges Courty. During his 3-month stay, he conducted extensive fieldwork in the Akapana mound, the Sunken Temple, the Kalasasaya, and the Chunchukala and Putuni structures. The material corpus unearthed is estimated to consist in over 1400 artifacts, later divided between...
Fringe Identities - Costume in the Mixtec Codices (2017)
The Mixtec codices depict costumes from Postclassic Oaxaca, including clothing, face paint, hairstyles, footwear, and jewelry. Contextualized in religious, military, and other social rituals, costume played an important role in framing the action as well as representing individuals in a variety of social identities. This paper focuses on styles and patterns of clothing as they were used to characterize gender, status, ethnicity, occupation, and religious and political roles. Specifically, we...
From "Nation" to "Indio" and "Español": Transitions in Indigenous Culture in the Missions of San Antonio (2018)
The Spanish colonial advance into Texas during the late 17th century resulted in the establishment of several missions to house members of dozens of indigenous groups and a handful of presidios to protect the missions from raiding bands of Comanches and Apaches. The Padres that were in charge of the missions enforced systematic policies and procedures to affect change in the identity of the resident indigenous nations. The policies and procedures specifically targeted religious believes,...