Belize (Country) (Geographic Keyword)
2,376-2,400 (4,066 Records)
This is an abstract from the "Public Lands, Public Sites: Research, Engagement, and Collaboration" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Military lands have evolved over the years, beginning as coastal defenses and outposts on the frontier, to major military installations that are small self-contained cities. Beyond their significance for national security and training, these lands contain natural and cultural resources that present unique challenges in...
A Millennium of Sociopolitical Transitions in the PRALC Region: The View from La Cariba (2018)
Excavations at minor centers provide us not only with a wealth of information about those sites, but they can also illuminate sociopolitical shifts over time within the broader region. The minor center of La Cariba, located four kilometers southwest of La Corona, has been investigated since 2009. A broad dataset including architectural, epigraphic, osteological, and artifactual evidence has provided a detailed narrative of political and demographic changes over a millennium at La Cariba. The...
Mimesis and Alterity in Classic Veracruz Ceramic Art (2017)
The relief-carved fine paste wares, figurines, and ceramic sculptures of south-central Veracruz exhibit stylistic similarities often attributed to mass production. Yet, there are few molds in the archaeological record, suggesting that replication hinges on the artist’s understanding of materials, techniques and canons of representation. Looking beyond the southern Gulf lowlands we see certain affinities between Classic Veracruz ceramic art and that of its Mesoamerican neighbors. Barbara Stark...
Mineralogical and Chemical Properties of Preclassic Maya Ceramics from Colha, Belize (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This paper examines the question of whether or not Preclassic Maya exploited volcanogenic ceramic raw materials, which have refractory properties such as thermal conductivity, resistance to thermal shock, abrasion, chemical weathering, and thermal decomposition. Scanning electron microscopy, energy dispersive X-rays, energy dispersive X-ray fluorescence, and...
Mineralogical and geochemical characterization of botijas peruleras from the Fort of San Diego, Acapulco (2018)
One of the challenges in the historical archeology for the Mexican Viceregal Period, is to determinate the provenance and distribution of several goods which were recovered in archaeological excavations in the San Diego fortress, Acapulco, on the Pacific coast of Mexico. These ceramic shipping containers, generally referred in the historical sources as "botijas peruleras", were made for the transatlantic trade between the Iberian Peninsula and the New World since the sixteenth century. At the...
Mineralogy Without Minerals: A Proposed Methodology for Reconstructing the Original Compositions of Highly Altered Ceramic Bodies Using Thin Section Petrography (2018)
The rock and mineral fragments present in archaeological pottery, whether naturally occurring in the clay component or intentionally added as a temper, often serve as the primary geologic basis for provenance ascription in petrographic analysis. In certain contexts, however, the original compositional characteristics of pottery have been highly altered through technological or postdepositional processes. In these situations, accurate characterization and sourcing of original raw material...
Mineros del Alto Cielo: Social space and materiality during the capitalist expansion in the north of Chile (Ollagüe, 20th century) (2017)
In Chile, the process of modernization, expressed by the expansion of capitalism and industrialization, had many economic and social impacts. Based on sulphur mining camps located in Ollagüe, a commune of the Antofagasta region, we show the importance of modern materiality associated with the development of mining industries in northern Chile during the 20th century. We consider that the modernization process, the industrial ruins and the materiality of the recent past, have generated memory...
Minor Temple Groups, Water Management and Community Formation at Ceibal, Guatemala (2018)
Recent investigations of reservoirs associated with minor temple groups at Ceibal, Guatemala shed light on the role of water management in intermediate-level sociopolitical organization in ancient Maya society. Over the course of the Late and Terminal Preclassic periods (ca. 350BC-AD200), as Ceibal grew into an urban center, minor temples were built at regular intervals around the site core. These temples were the centers of local communities that were integrated primarily through ritual...
Mirador Mountain, Ritual Landscapes, and the Protohistoric Maya Community at Mensabak, Chiapas, Mexico (2021)
This is an abstract from the "Place-Making in Indigenous Mesoamerican Communities Past and Present" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Mirador Mountain, or Chak Aktun for contemporary Lacandon Maya, dominates the landscape at Lake Mensabak, Chiapas, Mexico. The mountain, which has a natural red stain on its east side, rises from an island. Late Preclassic Maya (ca. 200 BCE–200 CE) created temples, platforms, and plazas on the island Mountain for an...
The Missing Medieval in the North Atlantic (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Mind the Gap: Exploring Uncharted Territories in Medieval European Archaeology" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Archaeological research in the North Atlantic has overwhelmingly focused on the long-term political and environmental impacts of the Viking Age colonization of these remote, marginal islands. In places like Iceland, these impacts were profound and resulted in the radical transformation of the previously...
Mississippian Modes of Exchange: Documenting Shifting Networks and Distribution at Ancient Cahokia (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This study investigates changes in distribution at the ancient Mississippian site of Cahokia using social network analysis. Over the course of its history, Cahokia transformed from a small village to a large macroregional center. This transformation was accompanied by a marked increase in institutional complexity, specialization, rank/class differences,...
Mixed metaphors and mixed media: using commodity chains and commodity circuits to better understand Aztec textile production (2017)
Archaeological and ethnohistoric investigations of Aztec textile production have shown how women’s labor and domestic economies were interwoven with the imperial political economy. However, remarkably little attention has been paid to the people involved in affiliated industries—like cotton growers, dyers, and spindle-whorl-makers. Material evidence of these people is often ephemeral or isolated, but it is available. In this paper, we draw on theories of commodity chains and commodity circuits...
Mixtec Goldworking: New Evidence for Lost-Wax Casting from Late Postclassic Tututepec, Oaxaca. (2017)
Gold jewelry and ornaments produced in Late Postclassic Oaxaca were among the finest ever made in Mesoamerica. Yet the paucity of archaeological evidence for metallurgical production in Oaxaca has frustrated efforts to better understand these spectacular objects and their role in Postclassic society. This paper presents the results of an analysis of 42 ceramic molds from the Late Postclassic (1100-1522 CE) Mixtec Capital of Tututepec. I argue that the molds were utilized to cast internal cores,...
The Mixteca-Puebla International Style as a Mesoamerican Marker in Postclassic Greater Nicoya: A Reevaluation (2021)
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. The beautiful polychrome ceramics of Pacific Nicaragua’s Sapoá period (800–1300 CE) have long been touted as the southernmost manifestation of the Mixteca-Puebla phenomenon in lower Central America. Traditionally, these ceramics have been treated as de facto cultural markers of two independent migrant groups of Mesoamerican...
Mobility Among Hunter-Gatherers in the Central Andean Highlands During the Early-Middle Holocene: GIS Models from Sr and O isotopic Analyses (2017)
Cuncaicha rock shelter (4480 masl) is one of the highest hunter-gatherer occupation sites found so far in the Americas; it brings new insights about human adaptation to extreme living conditions and subsistence strategies within the Peruvian puna. This research intends to define the possible type of occupation and mobility patterns at the site during the Early and Middle Holocene through Sr and O isotopic analyses in dental enamel of the human individuals and faunal remains found buried in this...
Mobility and Pre-Columbian Censers (2018)
Mobility, as it relates to censers, can be discussed on both large and small scales; it includes the movement of iconographic concepts, the physical objects, and the material or organics burned inside the censer. Censers styles fluctuate across pre-Columbian time due to a wide variety of reasons, though the purpose remains the same, which is to burn incense. The singular function of censers makes it an exemplary artefact class for the discussion of mobility across geographical and cultural...
Mobility network in El Shincal de Quimivil (Londres, Catamarca, Northwest Argentina) (2017)
The use of Geographic Information Systems (GIS) allows analyzing the space as an integral part of any social phenomenon and produce interdisciplinary explanatory models with quantifiable basis. As it is known, the spatial organization of the incas was scheduled under certain political and religious principles materialized in the landscape through various features such as rocks, water bodies, mountains, celestial bodies, plazas, ushnus, roads and kanchas, among other. In the case of the inca site...
Modeling Agricultural Production in the Mopan Valley, Belize (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Provisioning Ancient Maya Cities: Modeling Food Production and Land Use in Tropical Urban Environments" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Modeling agricultural yields provides one way to examine questions of Classic Maya agricultural practices and land management, with follow-on implications regarding intensification, household sustainability, and exchange practices. In this paper, we use models to examine whether milpa...
Modeling Demographic Change in the Precolumbian Caribbean (2021)
This is an abstract from the "Constructing Chronologies II: The Big Picture with Bayes and Beyond" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. A recent synthesis of radiocarbon dates in the Caribbean indicated two major population dispersals that correspond to the longstanding cultural divisions of the region's Archaic and Ceramic Ages. Using the most reliable dates from this dataset, we constructed both region-wide and local summed probability distributions...
Modeling Hands: Photogrammetric Analysis of Hand Imprints in Ceramic Vessels from Copán, Honduras (2017)
In A.D. 756, Ruler 15 of Copán, Honduras—a Classic Maya settlement—erected Stela M in front of the Hieroglyphic Staircase as a permanent marker of a calendrical event – the 9.16.5.0.0 Period Ending. As part of the ritual ceremony conducted at the time of the stela’s dedication, offerings were placed under the stela to activate or ensoul the monument. In a recent study of the ceramics from this offering conducted at the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology at Harvard University, the...
Modeling Hazard Risk, Vulnerability, Recovery, and Adaptation in Tilarán-Arenal, Costa Rica: An Integrative Approach to Disaster Studies (2018)
The Tilarán -Arenal region of Costa Rica is one of the most volcanically active regions in the world. Despite the inherent hazard, people have occupied this region since the Paleo-Indian period (7000 B.C.). Numerous studies have explored volcanic eruptions as forcing mechanism that lead to culture; however, starting with the advent of sedentary villages during the Tronodora phase (2000-500 B.C.) until the arrival of Spanish in the 16th century, people maintained relatively small-scale,...
Modeling Mobility in Inland Waters (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Modeling Mobility across Waterbodies" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. While rivers, lakes, lagoons, and estuaries were commonly navigated in prehistory, the only well-established methods for modeling aquatic human movement are restricted to the open sea. A small handful of researchers have proposed methods and/or attempted to simulate travel in rivers and lakes, but these methods have not been consolidated into a...
Modeling of the Impacts and Sustainability of Ancient Maya Hunting: An Interdisciplinary Ecological and Archaeological Study (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The environmental impact of sizable Late Classic ancient Maya populations remains a persistent question in archaeology. To date, studies of ancient Maya environmental impacts have focused primarily on land-cover change and the conversion of forest to agricultural fields, orchards, and habitation areas. In contrast, few empirical studies have focused on the...
Modeling Preceramic Occupation around the Wetlands of the Low-Lying Coastal Zone (2021)
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. While the Late Archaic (3400–900 BCE) has received comparably less research attention than the subsequent Maya period, there has been a surge of interest in this important period in the past two decades. In Belize, the majority of Late Archaic or Preceramic finds occur on the surface and...
Modeling the Early Settlement of Yap, Western Caroline Islands (2018)
In recent decades, increased research on the early human settlement of islands in western Micronesia (northwest tropical Pacific) has resulted in a relatively clear picture of the Palau and the Mariana Islands being settled between ca. 3200-2800 years cal BP. Despite an increased understanding of when the two major archipelagos were settled, human arrival in Yap, a group of four small islands situated between the two other islands groups, remains unclear. New radiocarbon dates from the southern...