Belize (Country) (Geographic Keyword)
1,701-1,725 (4,066 Records)
Domestic gardens are a well-established aspect of Classic Maya residential settlement, and they are rightly considered important components of food security and even food sovereignty strategies utilized by the ninety-nine percent. Taking inspiration from the emerging field of human-plant studies, I argue daily interactions with household garden plants exerted a profound influence on not only the daily habits of ancient Maya populations, but also on their memories and sense of social identity. ...
Household Pottery from Aventura, Belize (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Households at Aventura: Life and Community Longevity at an Ancient Maya City" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Household pottery from recent excavations at Aventura informs our current understanding of life near Chetumal Bay, its resilient villagers situated within a larger boom-and-bust economy. Although Preclassic pottery has been found near bedrock in some household excavations, construction began in earnest about...
Household Resilience, Political Collapse, and Community Transformation: Late-Terminal Classic Transition of the Ancient Maya Center of Xuenkal (2018)
Across the Maya Lowlands, the Terminal Classic Period (AD 800-1000) represented a time of dramatic sociopolitical transformation. Investigation of the Northern Maya lowland site of Xuenkal, shows an abrupt break in the pattern of steady demographic growth during the Terminal Classic, associated with the center of Chichen Itza 45 km away. Xuenkal presents a unique case to evaluate this transition as it contains discrete households associated with the Late Classic zenith of local political...
Household Ritual and the Development of Complex Societies in Formative Mesoamerica: Comparing the Maya Lowlands and Central Mexico (2018)
Recognizing that households contribute to – rather than simply reflect – broad social changes, scholars working in the Maya lowlands and Central Mexico argue that domestic ritual played a role in the emergence of complex societies in Formative (or Preclassic) Mesoamerica (c. 1000 BC - AD 300). Certain aspects of household-level, ritualized activities are shared across Mesoamerican cultures. However, major differences within and between the two regions show that a variety of social organizations...
Household Variation in the Maya Hinterlands (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Hinterland households are an under-explored aspect of Maya area. Further research in this area will help to build our understanding of variation present within and between regions. This analysis looks at several households in northwestern Belize in order to better understand the variation that exists within this region. I analyze the construction methods, the...
Households, Growth, Contraction, and Mobility at the Classic Maya Center of Naachtun (2018)
At Naachtun, extensive excavation programs carried out in monumental Group B, a compact set of three large elite clusters of residential compounds located in the site epicenter, and intensive test-pitting programs applied to the residential zones which surround the monumental core, have enabled us to understand the site occupation development during the Classic phases. We identify contraction, dispersal and expansion where and when most households units were occupied. We compare these space-time...
Houses of Colonial Chiefly Authority: Local Elites in the Social Order of Mawchu Llacta, a Colonial Reducción Town in the Southern Highlands of Peru (2017)
As a result of the Toledan Reforms in the Viceroyalty of Peru during the late fifteenth century, new settlements known as reducciones were established to centralize indigenous populations. Such is the case of Mawchu Llacta, originally Espinar de Tute, in the Caylloma Province, Arequipa. The introduction of these sweeping reforms brought a series of major changes to the social order. External agents were established as the new bearers of power and local elites took on a secondary status. However,...
Houses of Power: Community Houses and Specialized Houses as Markers of Social Complexity in the Pre-Contact Society Island Chiefdoms (2017)
World-wide, communal houses and specialized houses represent hallmarks of social complexity. In pre-contact Society Island chiefdoms, social complexity was materially marked by architectural differences between elite and commoner residences. Yet perhaps more pronounced are architectural differences and varied spatial patterning between residential houses, communal houses, and specialized houses. This paper provides a spatio-temporal analysis of communal and specialized houses on the Maʻohi...
How Advances in Archaeobotany Benefit Us All: Perspectives from Zooarchaeology, Bioarchaeology, and Isotope Research (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Fryxell Symposium in Honor of Dolores Piperno" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The origin of agriculture in the American tropics drastically altered human societies and their environmental settings. Through the domestication of various plants for subsistence, medicine, and technological purposes, human populations grew and expanded at an unprecedented rate across the landscape from the Middle Holocene onward, spreading...
How can archaeologists better engage the public, tribes, land managers, law enforcement officers and prosecutors regarding the importance and relevance of heritage protection? (2019)
This is an abstract from the "New Perspectives on Heritage Protection: Accomplishing Goals" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Planning for active engagement with land managers, law enforcement, tribes and the public during federal archaeological project development can lead to a more comprehensive, reciprocal appreciation of heritage and its protection. To include public engagement and interpretation into project work, especially NHPA Section 110,...
How do we keep "bro-ing" away from open access archaeology?: Open Access, Cultural Appropriation, and Archaeology (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Openness & Sensitivity: Practical Concerns in Taking Archaeological Data Online" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. "Bro-ing" is a market research practice pioneered by Nike and reported by Naomi Klein (2000:75) where designers bring prototypes to inner-city neighborhoods to gauge reactions to new styles and products. This practice also creates buzz that can be used to sell those products to the same communities. Open...
How does the organization of ceramic production change through time? An Ethnoarchaeological View (2016)
Changes in pottery through time and their organizational correlates are fundamental to archaeological inference. Such correlates rely upon theory based upon distilling various ethnographic cases filtered through a series of socio-economic and socio-political assumptions about the relationship of production to the society at large. This paper summarizes some of the results of a diachronic study of pottery production units in Ticul, Yucatán, from 1965 to 2008. The data show that the kin structure...
How Experimental Research in Forensic Archaeology Informs Archaeological Practice: Differentiating Perimortem Fracture From Postmortem Breakage (2018)
Often perceived as a highly specialized and peripheral subfield of archaeology, forensic archaeology contributes to our understanding of not only forensic anthropology and forensic science, but also traditional archaeological practice. Forensic archaeologists’ extensive knowledge of postmortem taphonomic effects on material objects has led to more precise interpretations of postmortem interval, environmental (including scavenger-induced) scattering and alteration of human remains, and site...
How Indigenous Museology and Archaeology Can Contribute to the Well-Being of the Comcaac Community (2024)
This is an abstract from the "Ideas, Ethical Ideals, and Museum Practice in North American Archaeological Collections" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The history and everyday lives of the Comcaac (Seri) people are intrinsically linked to their ancestral landscape on the central coast of the Sonoran Desert and the Gulf of California. The community’s powerful and complex oral tradition, language, and the continuous occupancy of their originally...
How Many Birds Does It Take to Make a Feathered Shield? The Resources and Techniques of Mexica Featherworkers (2017)
The Florentine Codex is an excellent source for understanding the manufacturing techniques used by Mexica featherworkers to make luxury items. It records many of the tools and steps necessary to tie feathers and produce multicolor mosaics. Historical information about the selection of the raw materials, their storage, preparation, and handling, however, is scarce. The meticulous study of two Mexica feathered shields has allowed us to understand, not only the materials used in their manufacture,...
How many, how few, how long: pre-Columbian population density and human impact in pre-Columbian Amazonia (2017)
Assessing the landscape impact of past settlement and subsistence systems in space and in time is essential to reconstructing pre-Columbian land use in the Amazon basin. In this paper we consider archaeological and landscape evidence for past land use by examining the strengths and limitations of archaeological radiocarbon evidence as a proxy for broad demographic patterns in pre-Columbian Amazonia.
How Monumental Architecture Directs Movement: Defensive and Hydrological Features at Muralla de León (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Manifesting Movement Materially: Broadening the Mesoamerican View" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Tracking patterns of everyday movement by individuals within a local population offers deep insight into the spatialized social structure of the group, providing information such as who interacts with whom, which areas are public and which are private, and the tightness or openness of different social circles. Like most...
How to Build a Better reservoir: Evolving Ancient Maya Strategies (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 ancient inhabitants of the Elevated Interior Region of the Maya Lowlands spent centuries devising ways to capture and store rainwater in this seasonally arid environment devoid of sizeable permanent surface water bodies. Over time, varied methods were created to ensure a sufficient quantity of water to meet the...
How Unusual Is the Trajectory of Precolumbian Social Change in San Ramón, Costa Rica among the Trajectories of Chiefdom Development? A Comparison Exercise (2024)
This is an abstract from the "Centralizing Central America: New Evidence, Fresh Perspectives, and Working on New Paradigms" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Recent literature on comparative archaeology has pointed out the need for systematic comparisons of trajectories of social change that use primary quantitative data and standardized variables. This type of comparison has the potential to discover and explore the diversity and complexity in the...
Human Behavior and Environment: A Preliminary Zooarchaeological Investigation at the Alm Shelter Wyoming (2024)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Alm Shelter in Wyoming lies in the foothills of the Bighorn Mountains, and its repeated use for 12,000 years provides a snapshot into human life throughout the Holocene. Moisture is a controlling factor in this (semi)arid environment. Mountains provided refuge and increased moisture access for humans, animals, and plants. This aridity also leads to...
Human Coprolite Diet Reconstruction Confirms Wetland Resource Use in the Coast of the Atacama Desert, 6580 cal. yr BP (2017)
It has been proposed that Chinchorro coastal people along the Atacama Desert in northern Chile had marginal access to plant food, a position refuted by recent scholars. The older perspective comes from bone chemistry analyses which showed a nearly exclusive reliance on marine animal resources. Newer analyses of mummy gut contents shows a substantial reliance on wetland plant resources, especially sedge rhizomes and seeds. Therefore, existing analyses present very different ideas of Chinchorro...
Human Ecodynamics in Central East Polynesia (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Research and CRM Are Not Mutually Exclusive: J. Stephen Athens—Forty Years and Counting" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Our understanding of Pacific paleoenvironments, how they changed with human arrival, and further transformations in the post-settlement period owes much to the research and insights of Steve Athens. This paper considers palaeoenvironmental records from central East Polynesian islands in relation to...
The Human Experience of Social Transformations in the North Atlantic and US Southwest (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Celebrating Anna Kerttula's Contributions to Northern Research" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Archaeologists and other scholars have long studied the causes of collapse and other major social transformations and debated how they can be understood. This paper instead focuses on the human experience of living through those transformations, analyzing 18 transformation cases from the North Atlantic and the US Southwest....
A Human Geography of Aventura: Lidar and Settlement Survey (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Households at Aventura: Life and Community Longevity at an Ancient Maya City" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. A human geography perspective provides our broadest lens to envision the entwined relationships of people, communities, and environments at Aventura. Drawing from an 18 km2 lidar survey and 1 km2 pedestrian survey, this paper presents a human geography of Aventura that links people, settlement, agriculture,...
Human Induced Percussion Technology: A Synthesis of Bone Modification as Archaeological Evidence (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Animal bone modification by humans has long been part of the archaeological record; however, debate continues as to whether this evidence alone is sufficient to interpret human activity. This is especially true if such evidence is used in support of archaeological sites older than 16 ka in the Americas. We synthesize data representing over three decades of...