Belize (Country) (Geographic Keyword)

DOCUMENT Citation Only Esteban Miron Marvan.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The practice of Mexican and Maya archaeology is yet to be affected by the postcolonial dialogues in the anglophone world that have discussed the terms of engagement between archaeologists and indigenous communities. Mexico is constitutionally conceived of as a multicultural nation, but the collective rights of indigenous communities are obscured under the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Maline Werness-Rude. Kaylee Spencer.

It has long been recognized that ancient Maya architecture encoded sacred ideologies and replicated primordial landscapes through building forms and structural orientations. Many studies have focused on the architecture of the Southern Maya Lowlands, where rich textual sources exist and where an abundance of archaeological data aids in efforts to understand and interpret the meanings of architectural groups. We seek to augment interpretive frameworks with respect to the Northern Maya Lowlands,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Angelina Locker. Diane Z. Chase. Arlen F. Chase. Tiffiny A. Tung. Rick W. A. Smith.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Located in Corozal District in northern Belize, the coastal Maya archaeological site of Santa Rita Corozal, hereafter Chactemal, was continuously occupied from the Middle Preclassic (BCE 800–300) through the Late Postclassic (CE 1250–1532). While many sites in the Southern Lowlands experienced decline and abandonment in the Terminal Classic (CE 800–900),...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Adam Kaeding. Eleanor Harrison-Buck.

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. Throughout the colonial period the Mérida-based Spanish administration organized and launched multiple entradas headed south into the Petén. These entradas ranged from relatively small groups of religious missionaries and their envoys, to private armies funded by opportunists seeking a...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Nicolas Delsol.

This is an abstract from the "Frontiers in Animal Management: Unconventional Species, New Methods, and Understudied Regions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In colonial Guatemala, cattle constituted a vital element of Hispanic lifestyles through the supply of meat but also by providing basic materials necessary to a multitude of crafts. By the mid-sixteenth century, this flowering industry was thriving thanks to the rapid growth of herds. While the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Travis Stanton.

Maya potters in the towns of Muna, Mama, and Ticul have historically used a calcite crystal to temper cooking pots due to its perceived role in mitigating the negative effects of thermal shock. When a clay cooking pot begins to be used it is exposed to extreme temperature variations which lead it to experience catastrophic failure are a higher rate than many ceramic vessels used for other activities. In this paper we discuss the results of experimental archaeology using calcite crystals in...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Michael Prout.

Our knowledge of Maya human sacrifice is drawn from iconographic representations and contact period Spanish sources. Unfortunately, the corpus related to child sacrifice is extremely limited. In 1971 David M. Pendergast described the burial of a child from Eduardo Quiroz Cave with traumatic perimortem holes in the parietals. Later, Brady reported on a second child with similar wounds. Both Pendergast and Brady interpreted the evidence as reflecting child sacrifice. The recovery of thousands...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Gabriel Wrobel.

The Maya Cranial Photogrammetry Project aims to create a large digital repository for the purpose of comparative shape analyses to test hypotheses relating to ethnic and political distinctions among ancient Maya groups. The shape of skeletons reflects a combination of genetic and environmental influences on development and thus comparison of skeletal variability provides an important means to reconstruct microevolutionary processes. In particular, because of its complex morphology the skull has...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Amy Hair. Gabriel Wrobel. Jack Biggs.

This is an abstract from the "Towards a Standardization of Photogrammetric Methods in Archaeology: A Conversation about 'Best Practices' in An Emerging Methodology" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Maya Cranial Photogrammetry Project consists of a database of digitized crania that can be used to investigate questions related to biological and cultural histories. The shape of human remains reflects a complex interplay between the environment and...

DOCUMENT Full-Text John M. Weeks. Sachse Franke. Christian M. Prager.

In Maya Daykeeping, three divinatory calendars from highland Guatemala - examples of a Mayan literary tradition that includes the Popul Vuh, Annals of the Cakchiquels, and the Titles of the Lords of Totonicapan - dating to 1685, 1722, and 1855, are transcribed in K'iche or Kaqchikel side-by-side with English translations. Calendars such as these continue to be the basis for prognostication, determining everything from the time for planting and harvest to foreshadowing illness and death. Good,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Devon Howell. Jennifer Newton. Helen Haines.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This research investigated the intentionally modified dentition found within chultuns at the Maya site of Ka’kabish, Belize. The site has a history spanning from the Middle Formative (800–600 BC) to the Postclassic (900–1500 AD) periods. The primary aim of this research was to closely examine the modified dentition, evaluate any dental pathologies present,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jim Aimers.

Maya E-Group architectural assemblages have attracted scholarly attention for about a century, and yet our ideas about them have become more muddled through time. Since the beginning of investigations in the 1920’s these structures have been thought to have had some astronomical function, but the exact astronomical significance suggested by archaeologists has changed though time. Today there is very little agreement about their meaning and function. In this presentation I will briefly review the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Michael Callaghan. Brigitte Kovacevich.

This is an abstract from the "Ancient Maya Embedded Economies" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In this paper we argue that the complexity of Maya economic structures and the debates that ensue over their interpretation stem from the fact that manifestations of those economic structures vary so greatly across time and space in the precolumbian Maya world. Maya economies were both dichotomized along elite and commoner lines, while also integrated in...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Alizé Lacoste Jeanson.

This is an abstract from the "Recent Archaeological Investigations in Chiapas, Mexico" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Ancient Maya land is characterized by a great diversity of funerary practices. The settlement of Lakamha’ (Palenque) sharply evidences such heterogeneity: pluralism is found in terms of places of inhumation, types of containers, number of people per grave, grave goods, postmortem treatments, positions, and orientations of the body....

DOCUMENT Citation Only Mirko De Tomassi.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Susan Gillespie remarked the importance of human body and funerary ritual in the process of transmission of memory and legitimation of social status among Maya royalty. Would this process be visible in domestic contexts, too? To answer this question, I chose to study domestic funerary record, context where an archaeologist can find the reflection of collective...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Adrian Chase.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In 2009 and 2013, LiDAR data collected for Caracol, Belize revealed the anthropogenic landscape of this Maya city. These data have advanced our understanding of water management, agriculture, markets, urbanism, and inequality at Caracol. Now with the analytical unit of the district – an urban administrative boundary of urban service provisioning within a city...

DOCUMENT Citation Only W. James Stemp. Rachel Horowitz. Scott Simmons.

This is an abstract from the "“The Center and the Edge”: How the Archaeology of Belize Is Foundational for Understanding the Ancient Maya" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Over more than a century, archaeological research in Belize has contributed greatly to our understanding of past Maya stone and metal technologies. From the preceramic through the colonial periods (~11,000 BC−AD 1700), the analysis of flaked and ground stone tools recovered from...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Alejandra Roche Recinos. Mallory Matsumoto.

In recent years significant headway has been made to understand New World marketing systems. In contrast with the highly complex and easily identifiable market systems of the Mexican Highlands, ancient Maya systems of production and distribution have traditionally been assumed to have operated at the level of the household, and thus have been overlooked. However, recent work in the Maya area has shown the likely presence of production beyond the household at possible market areas. In this paper,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Scott Simmons. Bryan Cockrell.

Investigations at the southern Maya Lowland sites of Lamanai and Tipu, Belize have yielded diverse assemblages of metal artifacts. These metals are from the Postclassic and Colonial (12th to 17th century) occupations at Lamanai and Colonial (mid-16th to early 18th century) contexts at Tipu. As a rare occasion to look at the similarities and differences between artifacts made of the same material from different sites, this research compares the forms, contexts, and technologies of metal artifacts...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Emmett Nahil. Mary Clarke.

Analyses of sculptural practices of the Ancient Maya have centered on the final stages of production, namely the identities of sculptors, the locations of production, and the techne of sculptural practice. While the contributions of these analyses cannot be contested, there remains a poorly resolved understanding of when in the process of sculpture limestone gains its cultural significance. This paper presents data from recent excavations at a quarry workshop at Xultun where a stela still...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Meaghan Peuramaki-Brown. Shawn Morton.

In the 1980s, archaeological investigations by the Point Placencia Archaeological Project (PPAP) noted the rapid, single-phase development of monumental construction at the Maya site of Alabama in the Stann Creek District. Though never fully investigated by PPAP, this rapid, ‘boom-like’ development during the late facet of the Late Classic to Terminal Classic periods is being pursued in current investigations by the Stann Creek Regional Archaeology Project (SCRAP). This presentation, by...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kirsten Green.

Mortuary practices are created to convey something about the deceased individual, as well as their surviving relatives, but can also give insight into the religious, social, and political structure of the community. This paper focuses on Maya mortuary practices in Belize, and how/why those practices changed over the transition from the Formative period (2000 BC – AD 300) to the Classic Maya florescence (AD 300-800). Comparing differences of mortuary characteristics within and between...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Alejandro Garay Herrera.

This is an abstract from the "Mountains, Rain, and Techniques of Governance in Mesoamerica" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Among the Maya of northwestern Guatemala, modern populations continue to use the mountains found in their territories as places of worship. Often altars are located directly on the peaks of hills and mountains, while in other cases they are found on pilgrimage routes in or around these high sacred points, such as on the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Geoffrey Braswell.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Permanent occupation of inland southern Belize began at the dawn of the Classic period and continued into the Terminal Classic. Excavations at Pusilha, Lubaantun, and Nim li Punit have recovered more than 5,000 obsidian artifacts that date to these periods. These have all been sourced using portable XRF and subject to metric and attribute analyses....

DOCUMENT Citation Only Horvey Palacios. Traci Ardren. Julie Wesp. Travis Stanton.

The allocation of space for the deceased is an integral component of understanding the relationship between a community and its mortuary practices.  This paper explores how Maya ossuaries, or deposits with the commingled remains of multiple individuals, form a distinct body processing method that increases in frequency during the Terminal and Postclassic period in the Northern Maya lowlands. Data from salvage excavations of a Terminal Classic disturbed ossuary in the archaeological zone of...