Belize (Country) (Geographic Keyword)

DOCUMENT Citation Only Tucker Austin.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Despite more than a century of intensive archaeological research, factors leading to the Classic Maya Collapse continue to be debated by Maya archaeologists. This presentation discusses the Classic Maya Collapse and its effects on the people of Xunantunich, Belize. Investigations from the 2018 field season, carried out by the Belize Valley Archaeological...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jonathan Cybulski. Nicole Smith-Guzmán. Luis Sánchez Herrera. Kelton McMahon. Ashley Sharpe.

This is an abstract from the "Unraveling the Mysteries of the Isthmo-Colombian Area’s Past: A Symposium in Honor of Archaeologist Richard Cooke and His Contributions" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Subsistence strategies and foodways were at the heart of Richard Cooke's and colleagues' pioneering work in Panamá. Early work found that shifting resource reliance (terrestrial and marine) had impacts on the evolution of these early peoples’ cultures...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Daniel Conley. Rissa Trachman.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Finding evidence of an ancient Maya marketplace is difficult due to the perishability of telltale materials such as food, textiles, and wooden stalls in the tropical environment of northwestern Belize. Therefore, multiple lines of evidence including material culture, stratigraphy, soil chemistry, and spatial analysis are essential in identifying possible...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Evan Parker.

This is an abstract from the "The Bolonchen Regional Archaeological Project: 25 Years of Research in the Puuc" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Research conducted by the Bolonchen Regional Archaeological Project over the last several decades has firmly established the presence of Middle Preclassic occupations across the Puuc region. Survey and excavation at sites such as Xocnaceh, Yaxhom, and Kiuic have identified and confirmed the antiquity of a...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jeff Bryant. Robert Feranec. Nayeli Jiminez Cano. Marilyn Masson.

This paper will offer preliminary results of fish otolith thin-section growth ring analysis from the Postclassic archaeological site of Mayapan, Yucatan, Mexico. This study offers the first use of otoliths for investigating seasonality of the fish trade in the Yucatan, utilizing perhaps the largest collection of otoliths from an inland site in the Maya world. Data on seasonality, age, and size of several fish species are presented, and discussed in the context of trade ethnohistory, ecology,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only George J. Micheletti. Terry Powis. Norbert Stanchly.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Since the discovery of Stela 6 in the mid-1980s, the weathered remains of this Early Classic period carved stone monument continue to lie in the main plaza at Pacbitun, displaced in antiquity. Re-exposed in 2003, epigraphic analysis verified the monument’s AD 485 Long Count date—confirming it as one of the earliest carved stelae in the Maya lowlands—and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Delaney Cooley.

The Numic Expansion (A.D. 900 to 1300) and other explanatory models that have been used to explain the distribution of Numic speakers across the American West often fall short of providing specific methods for identifying peoples, such as Ute, in the archaeological record. This paper expands on previous investigations of this Numic Expansion narrative through the detailed reanalysis of lithics from two excavated sites: Christmas Rockshelter (5DT2) and Shavano Spring (5MN40). I compare lithic...

DOCUMENT Citation Only George Kollias. Jaime Awe.

Over fifty years of settlement research in the Belize River Valley has made the region one of the most intensively investigated areas of the Maya Lowlands. Recent LiDAR research by the Belize Valley Archaeological Reconnaissance Project identified the previously unknown center of Lower Barton Creek in the southern extent of the Belize Valley, filling in a major gap in our understanding of settlement histories. In this paper, we present the results of settlement survey based on spatial analysis...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Susan Kuzminsky.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Western North America has emerged as a key region of focus in studies addressing the migration routes and demographic processes involved in the peopling of the Americas. Archaeological investigations in this region have resulted in the discovery of several of the earliest human skeletons and archaeological sites on the North American continent. Given that this...

DOCUMENT Citation Only John Walden. Michael Biggie. Rafael Guerra. Julie Hoggarth.

Classic Maya settlement patterns can be characterized as dispersed or ‘low density’. Yet among the dispersed house groups scattered across the landscape, patterns of residential clustering can often be discerned. These settlement clusters likely resulted from an array of different forms of interaction which collectively acted as centripetal forces bringing people together. For this reason, Maya residential clusters probably represent extended corporate groups or neighborhoods. Unlike their...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Brian Waldo. Samantha Lorenz. Toni Gonzales.

Mul Ch’en Witz (Hill with Many Caves) was first excavated in the summer of 2017 by the Contested Caves Archaeological Project (CCAP), a subproject of the Three Rivers Archaeological Project (TRAP). The area, located just below the escarpment on which the core architecture of the ancient site of La Milpa, Belize is situated, was chosen for excavation because of the high density of chultunes encountered within a restricted area. The chultunes have similar entrance styles and diameters, and five of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Wendy Layco.

This is an abstract from the "Studies in Mesoamerican Subterranean Archaeology" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Some 75 m southwest of the Las Monjas complex at Chichen Itza and just west of Sacbe No. 7, lie a series of eleven sascaberas that are shown schematically on the Carnegie map. While ceiling collapse has undoubtedly occurred in the millennium since their creation, some, such as Sascabera #2, have an extensive enclosed dark zone space. In...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Arthur Demarest. Carlos Alvarado. Tomas Barrientos.

The site of San Andres Semetabaj, Guatemala, located on the northern edge of Lake Atitlan, is central, geographically and chronologically, to major theoretical and culture-historical controversies and problems of PreClassic highland archaeology. The size, nature, and importance of the site have been underestimated, in part due to limited available information based only on smaller preliminary seasons and a looted tomb and also due to the assumption by many that the very large structures there...

DOCUMENT Citation Only M. Kathryn Brown. Rachel Horowitz.

This is an abstract from the "The Preclassic Landscape in the Mopan Valley, Belize" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Mopan Valley Preclassic Project began a multiyear project at Las Ruinas de Arenal as part of a larger regional study of the Preclassic social and political landscape in the upper Belize River valley. New excavations of the site’s E Group complex and associated ball court have shed light on Preclassic ritual behavior at the site....

DOCUMENT Citation Only Alyssa Haggard. Jeffrey Brewer. Meaghan Peuramaki-Brown.

Peri-urban zones of settlement are unique localities among the urban-rural continuum that form due to dispersed urban growth, creating hybrid landscapes of fragmented urban and rural characteristics. Within these zones, domestic-scale reservoirs that the ancient Maya modified and maintained to manage their seasonally-scarce water resources are an important component. This study focuses on processes of multiple nuclei urban development and associated peri-urban formation at the site of Yaxnohcah...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Erin Ray. Holley Moyes.

The ancient Maya site of Las Cuevas, in Western Belize features a cave system that runs beneath the main plaza. Investigations by the Las Cuevas Archaeological Reconnaissance project suggest that the site functioned as a Late Classic ritual pilgrimage venue and that the cave was used for large public centrally-organized performances. The cathedral-like cave entrance contains monumental architecture consisting of at least 76 plastered platforms. I hypothesize that the level of managerial...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Michele Hayeur Smith.

This is an abstract from the "Social Archaeology in the North and North Atlantic (SANNA 3.0): Investigating the Social Lives of Northern Things" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Waterlogged or deeply buried deposits from medieval harbors in certain northern European towns have produced large and well-preserved textile assemblages that contain a surprising number of non-indigenous textiles. Some of these appear to have originated in the North...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Emily Dean.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. By partnering with federal land agencies, local landowners and developers, regional non-profit organizations, state museums, and county libraries, Southern Utah University (SUU) archaeology students gain access to valuable experiential learning opportunities, build their professional resumes, practice service learning, and help educate the public about the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Alexander Anthony.

Excavations at the McHugh Site (47WP294), a mid-to-late Nineteenth Century homestead in Wisconsin, resulted in the recovery of a large material culture assemblage. Historical documents reveal the site’s occupants to have been pre-famine Irish emigrants who settled in Ohio before moving to Wisconsin in 1850. However, analyses of the material culture have thus far failed to uncover evidence of an Irish identity distinct from an American identity. This paper presents results of an analysis of the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Nicholas Zeitlin.

The environment of Iceland was rapidly and severely affected by the Norse Settlement, in particular by deforestation. In Iceland’s changing environment the production of iron, an essential material, became limited not by access to iron ore but by availability of wood to make charcoal fuel. The large-scale production of iron may be one of the primary processes that led to deforestation in Iceland due to the large need for charcoal. Investigations at Stekkjarborg on the farm of Keldudalur in...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Steven A. Wernke.

The Reducción General de Indios (General Resettlement of Indians) in the Viceroyalty of Peru brought about one of the largest mass resettlement programs ever enacted by a colonial power, forcibly displacing some 1.5 million native Andeans to compact towns (reducciones) built around plazas and churches. As a colonial utopic project, the Reducción was to remake the Andean world in the ideal self-image of Spanish civic and religious community. As materialized manifestations in the Andean...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Andrew Beaupre.

This is an abstract from the "Recent Colonial Archaeological Research in the American Midcontinent" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. By the first quarter of the eighteenth century, the “blue crescent” of French land claims and settlement had spread across North America from the Acadian coast to southern Louisiana. While French colonial settlements existed contemporaneously throughout the middle of the continent, historians and archaeologists have...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Birgitta Stephenson.

Environmental factors associated with open context sites are frequently considered to negatively impact on the survival of archaeological residues on lithic artefacts. This report challenges these views and documents how the simple combination of three lines of evidence enabled the identification and characterisation of significant and varied subsistence practises from two sites on opposite sides of Australia. The identification of use-related residues was facilitated by using a specifically...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Eponine Wong.

This is an abstract from the "Misinformation and Misrepresentation Part 1: Reconsidering “Human Sacrifice,” Religion, Slavery, Modernity, and Other European-Derived Concepts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The term “democracy,” with its roots in the Greek word demokratia, originally referred to the capacity of “the people” to make collective decisions regarding wider society and to effect change in the public sphere. As republicanism emerged in...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Rachel Archambault.

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. Islands like Barbuda are particularly sensitive to waste management policies and behaviours; in addition to having to manage their waste daily, they also suffer the effects of tourism and the marine litter washed up on their coasts. These challenges are certainly not new,...