Belize (Country) (Geographic Keyword)

DOCUMENT Citation Only Leszek Pawlowicz.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Modern methods of 3D characterization, like photogrammetry and structured light scanning, can capture high-resolution models of inscribed surfaces. Visualization and enhancement of surface details on these models can be limited by the computational requirements for manipulating high face and vertex counts. We present several methods for working around...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Sydney Lonaker. Julie Hoggarth. Jaime Awe.

Terminal deposits, defined here as dense midden-like assemblages that contain non-elite and elite paraphernalia (i.e. utilitarian and decorated ceramic vessels, faunal remains, obsidian blades, ground stone tools, and human remains) have been discovered at sites across central and northern Belize. Despite the research on these features, there is little consensus on what type of activities these deposits represent. In the past, archaeologists have labelled these deposits as de facto refuse,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Mario Borrero. Luke Stroth.

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. Photogrammetry is the process of generating 3-Dimensional digital models from still photographs. The process is applied in a variety of field and lab settings for documenting the archaeological record. Currently, there is a need for focus on individual...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Sharisse McCafferty. Geoffrey McCafferty.

This is an abstract from the "Postclassic Mesoamerica: The View from the Southern Frontier" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Colonial sources describe interaction between central Mexican groups and Central American cultures, including possible migration and colonization, during the Postclassic period (900–1520 CE). Linguistic and art historical evidence has been used to support and reify this connection. A 20-plus year archaeological program by the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Sandra Lopez Varela.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The archaeology of media frames the analysis of the film *Coco, a 3D, animated, fictional movie inspired by Day of the Dead, or Día de Muertos, in Mexico, released by Pixar Animation Studios in 2017, a subsidiary of Walt Disney Studios. This paper analyzes the tensions and contradictions within Pixar’s most successful movie at the box office in taking a stand...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jeremy Coltman. Andrew Turner.

This is an abstract from the "A Celebration and Critical Assessment of "The Maya Scribe and His World" on its Fiftieth Anniversary" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The controversial display of “Códice Maya de México” at the Grolier Club in 1971 and its subsequent publication by Coe in “The Maya Scribe and His World” opens debate regarding archaeologists’ involvement with unprovenienced objects. The sudden appearance of the previously unknown...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Rebecca Hazard. John Dudgeon.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Plant microfossil analysis has been utilized for environmental reconstruction at numerous archaeological sites around the world; however, the process of preparing and examining samples is labor intensive, requiring skill and a large investment of time in order to manually obtain sufficient count numbers. Furthermore, observations based on microfossil...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Lisa Johnson. Felipe Trabanino. Eloi Berube. Eos Lopez.

This is an abstract from the "The Urban Question: Interdisciplinary Approaches to Investigating the Ancient Mesoamerican City" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Archaeological studies of urbanism typically include a consideration of scale, from the household, the neighborhood, ward, and city. These spatial scales are also spheres of interaction and have implications for the kinds of shared material practices we can expect to find archaeologically....

DOCUMENT Citation Only Dominic Bush. Jennifer McKinnon. Erin Field.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Aircraft were a major component of the U.S. war effort in World War II, and today numerous examples can be found throughout the waters of the Asia-Pacific region. Due to their cultural and historical significance to modern stakeholders, understanding the decay trajectories has become an important issue in the realm of cultural heritage management, especially...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Harper Dine. Steph Miller.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The ancient Maya city of Yaxuna was a political and economic center of the northern lowlands in the Middle to Late Preclassic periods (1000 BC–AD 250), and residents continued to occupy the city through the Classic period (AD 250–900) amid geopolitical shifts in the region tied to the rise of Coba and the Late Classic (AD 600–800) construction of a...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Rebecca Hazard. Christopher Roos. Julie Field. John Dudgeon.

Microfossils in archaeology are defined as the floral and faunal-derived microscopic biogenic particles that preserve long after the original organism has died and decayed. Some such examples are silica phytoliths, starches, pollens and spores, calcium oxalates, and plant cellular tissue like trichomes and stomata. This type of analysis is a valuable proxy for inferring prehistoric environmental conditions and landscape change over time, as well as direct evidence for the presence of certain...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Amy Chan.

This is an abstract from the "Defining Perishables: The How, What, and Why of Perishables and Their Importance in Understanding the Past" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Midnight Terror Cave human remains collection consists of over 10,000 commingled bone fragments from at least 118 Maya sacrificial victims from the Classic period (250 CE–925 CE). Microscopic examination of dental calculus was carried out on a selection of teeth as part of a...

DOCUMENT Citation Only William Billeck. Meredith Luze.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Glass trade beads recovered during excavations by Smithsonian archaeologists Betty Meggers and Clifford Evans in Brazil, Guyana, and Ecuador can be readily placed in time using bead chronology studies developed in North America. The bead assemblages from their South America excavations date to multiple time periods, including the mid-16th, early-17th,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Caroline Parris.

Mundane utilitarian ware, finely decorated polychromes, fine paste and epigraphic imports, and plates bearing idiosyncratic local designs characterize La Corona’s ceramic assemblage. The ceramic chronology of La Corona is presented with emphasis on construction phases, middens, caches, burials, and special deposits in an effort to reconcile the ceramic assemblage and the political history of the site. Polychromes bearing place names highlight La Corona’s elite regional relationships while the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Debra Walker. Kathryn Reese-Taylor. Meaghan Peuramaki-Brown. Shawn Morton.

Joe Ball’s seminal work on the ceramics of Becan, Campeche, Mexico, anchored two generations of research on the the ancient Maya. His analysis, for the most part, has stood the test of time, and his recent revisions to it reflect the breadth of his knowledge, and his ability to re-conceptualize a problem in light of subsequent research. One aspect of his Becan work that has proved elusive to other researchers is the definition of a Middle Classic. Although some have isolated a Middle Classic...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Roberto Pimentel Nita. Krzysztof Makowski. Milosz Giersz.

Recent excavations at Castillo de Huarmey and Pachacamac leave no doubt that the earliest archaeological contexts associated with Middle Horizon in both sites are related to the second half of that period and coincide with the collapse of two main regional political systems on the Peruvian coast: Moche and Lima, respectively. Both systems, consolidated and politically transformed, have overcome adverse climate conditions of the sixth and seventh centuries A.D. In the case of Castillo de Huarmey...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Alessandra Villarreal.

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 value of ceramic sherds and vessels to the archaeologist extends far beyond the chronology of a site. Ceramic production and distribution data, for example, reveal information about ancient lifeways, ideologies, and movement across a landscape, ultimately telling us more about the people behind the pottery. In this paper, I will...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Brigitte Kovacevich. Kazuo Aoyama.

This is an abstract from the "Ceremonial Lithics of Mesoamerica: New Understandings of Technology, Distribution, and Symbolism of Eccentrics and Ritual Caches in the Maya World and Beyond" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. During the late Middle Preclassic period (700-350 B.C.) at Ceibal, common objects in ritual deposits in the public plaza shifted from greenstone celt caches to other artifacts, including obsidian prismatic-blade cores. Like...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Evan Parker. George J. Bey III. Tomás Gallareta Negrón.

Complex ritual deposits dating to the Middle Preclassic period are rarely encountered in Yucatan, and typically have only been recovered from disturbed contexts. Excavations along the center axes in the plaza of the Middle Preclassic village of Paso del Macho in the Puuc region of Yucatan have yielded a series of offerings spanning from the early Middle Preclassic to the cusp of the Late Preclassic. Three different floor sequences were each associated with several offerings. The forms of the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only M. Kathryn Brown. Jennifer Cochran. Rachel Horowitz.

This is an abstract from the "An Exchange of Ideas: Recent Research on Maya Commodities" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Marine shell was a highly valued long-distance trade material for the ancient Maya beginning as early as the Middle Preclassic. Symbolically, marine shell represented the watery underworld and was often used in ritual offerings that reference cosmological ordering of the world. Evidence for Middle Preclassic marine shell bead...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Richard Hansen. Edgar Suyuc. Gustavo Martinez.

This is an abstract from the "Recent Multidisciplinary Investigations in the Mirador Basin, Guatemala" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Archaeological excavations and technical analyses in the Mirador Basin of northern Guatemala have provided a new perspective of the origins and dynamics of incipient Maya civilization. Data relevant to settlement patterns, sampling strategies, demographic distributions, chronological evaluations, DNA and isotope...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Timothy Pugh.

This is an abstract from the "Recent Research in the Petén Lakes Region, Petén, Guatemala" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Proyecto Itza has recently resurveyed a large area to the south of Lake Petén Itzá in Petén, Guatemala, extending from Lake Salpeten to Laguna Perdida. The work utilized a variety of methods including total station mapping, photogrammetry, and lidar (conducted by the National Center for Airborne Laser Mapping). The goal of the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Verónica Vázquez López. Hannah Zanotto. Kazuo Aoyama. Takeshi Inomata.

This is an abstract from the "Aguada Fénix and the Middle Usumacinta Region: Interregional Interactions and Social Transformations in the Middle Preclassic Period" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Pajonal is a Middle Preclassic site situated between La Venta and Aguada Fénix in Tabasco, Mexico. The site has a spatial layout similar to La Venta, formed by an elongated plaza with an E Group at its center, several structures to the east and west edges,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Ruth Van Dyke.

This is an abstract from the "Archaeologies of Immigration and Refugee Resettlement" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. I direct a historical archaeological project in the Alsatian community of Castroville, Texas. Members of the local heritage society, who sponsor the project, are descendants of economic migrants brought from Alsace to Texas in the 1840s during the aftermath of Texas’ break from Mexico. Today, Castroville residents seek to...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kathleen Blue.

Dental non-metric data provide a means for the analysis of genetic affinities and relationships of individuals, and can therefore be used to reconstruct past migration and interaction patterns, both within and between sites. The dental traits of sixteen individuals, along with 21 individual teeth, from Cerro Magoni, an Epiclassic site in the Tula region, were collected in this preliminary analysis. Additionally, 13 individuals from two Xajay sites, El Zethe and Huesamenta, were also assessed....