Belize (Country) (Geographic Keyword)

DOCUMENT Citation Only Mike Carson.

This is an abstract from the "Coastal Environments in Archaeology: Ancient Life, Lore, and Landscapes" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. People first migrated to the remote-distance Pacific Islands around 1500 BC, and their ancient sites have provided insights into the physical and cultural world that these people had inhabited. Geoarchaeological investigations have clarified the composition of the coastal landforms and ecosystems, availability of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Zoe Rawski.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Over the last decade, the Mopan Valley Preclassic Project has extensively investigated the Preclassic ceremonial center of Early Xunantunich, Belize. These excavations have yielded significant information regarding the construction of monumental architecture during the Middle and Late Preclassic periods, as well as data regarding early ritual activities and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Erwin Roemer.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Natural resources conservation arrangements, including easements on land, have existed in the US for many years, with origins in the Conservation Movement dating to the time and efforts of T.R. Roosevelt. In recent years, the land conservation movement has grown across the US, and often involves support from national, state and local governments partnering...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Nezahualcoyotl Xiuhtecutli. Aurelio Lopez Corral. Alonso Gabriel Vicencio Castellanos.

As the political landscape changed continuously in central Mexico during the Late Postclassic, polities of the region had to constantly adjust and adapt, forging new alliances and dispensing old ones. Faced with an increasingly expansive state in the Basin of Mexico, polities in the Puebla-Tlaxcala Valley likewise had to adjust accordingly. Increasingly isolated, Tlaxcallan found alternate ways to integrate into the greater Mesoamerican market system, while resisting political integration in the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Roberto Herrera. Francisco Corrales.

This paper explores the dynamic between local and foreign perceptions towards cultural and environmental exploitation and stewardship, presenting recent reactions to medium to long term initiatives that have been started by national and international institutions in southern Costa Rica. It reviews how researchers are attempting to better integrate themselves with local communities and national organizations in a more sustainable and responsible manner, presenting the current challenges...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kasey Diserens Morgan.

A national narrative glorifying the deep past of Mexico was formed using archaeological sites. The government has gone to great lengths to rebuild and preserve many ancient indigenous sites and objects for use as national symbols and as a draw for tourism. However, this practice has contributed to the ‘othering’ of indigenous groups by placing the ‘mysterious Indians’ firmly in the past, and restricting the access of descendant communities. Working within a modern Maya community, the members...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Craig Shapiro.

This is an abstract from the "Geospatial Studies in the Archaeology of Oceania" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In 2014, The World Bank helped the government of Samoa to launch a climate resilience program. Included in this initiative was the financing of a light detecting and ranging (LiDAR) survey throughout the entirety of the country. Although originally meant solely for national climate information services and hazard mapping, the LiDAR...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Sarah Kurnick.

Societal regenerations are common events in world history. Be they in ancient times, the recent past, or the present, such regenerations are instructive and encourage reflection on several critical issues. How, for example, do those exercising political authority negotiate traumatic social memories? And how, if at all, are preexisting built environments modified? To addresses these and other questions, I examine the regeneration of communities and the reestablishment of political authority...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Rachael Wedemeyer. Kenichiro Tsukamoto.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The data presented in this paper are results from the 2022 field season at the López Plaza, a small plazuela group located within the site center of El Palmar. Fieldwork included test pit excavations, shovel test pits, and geophysical prospections. Lidar images show that the López Plaza has two separate plaza spaces and approximately eight structures and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Abigail Judkins. Katherine Peck. Martin Welker.

This is an abstract from the "The Columbian Exchange Revisited: Archaeological and Anthropological Perspectives on Eurasian Domesticates in the Americas" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. European settlers in the Americas brought with them a familiar suite of domesticated plants and animals and frequently relied upon them for subsistence. Between the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries, European colonial powers became involved in the fur trade,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Daniel Schavelzon.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The discovery of the Nazi refuge on the border of Argentina and Paraguay during 2015, built around the year 1945 and abandoned shortly after, led to work inside it first to demonstrate the hypothesis of use and chronology. Last year, the mapping of the area and the survey of the surroundings intensified, finding new structures and groups strategically located...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Timothy Rieth. Alex E. Morrison. Rona Ikehara-Quebral.

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. Through CRM compliance-mandated investigations nearly two millennia of occupation at Ylig Bay, Guam, has been documented. Stratified archaeological deposits at three locales along the northern portion of the embayment reveal late Pre-Latte occupation and a possible decades- to centuries-long hiatus...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Carola Flores-Fernandez. Sandra Rebolledo. Jimena Torres. Diego Salazar. Bernardo Broitman.

This is an abstract from the "Palaeoeconomic and Environmental Reconstructions in Island and Coastal Archaeology" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The transition period between the Early and Middle Holocene is associated with important changes in climate and human dynamics around the world. The coast of the Atacama Desert (Chile, 25°S) is not an exception. Early Holocene archaeological sites show evidence of a generalized coastal economy that...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Carol Colaninno-Meeks.

Over the last several decades, STEM scholars have recognized the importance of developing and integrating discipline-based education research (DBER). As outlined by the National Research Council of the National Academies, the goals of DBER are to 1) understand how students learn discipline concepts, practices, and ways of thinking; 2) understand how students develop expertise; 3) identify and measure learning objectives and forms of instruction that advance students towards those objectives; 4)...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Mirko De Tomassi.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Weaving-related objects, mainly spindle whorls and needles, found in prehispanic Maya burials are usually interpreted as an indication of either the identity of the deceased or the activities carried out in life. Such a symbolic approach is valuable in tracking the construction of identity in funerary contexts. However, it can be misleading in some contexts....

DOCUMENT Citation Only David Gadsby.

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. Appropriate stewardship of sensitive archeological data necessarily involves overlapping and intertwined authorities, systems, and institutions. The authorities, in turn have different limits and requirements, while various entities have divergent purposes, needs, and protocols. Archeologists, librarians,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Linda Brown. Kitty Emery.

This is an abstract from the "Supernatural Gamekeepers and Animal Masters: A Cross-Cultural Perspective" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In various contemporary Maya communities, hunting involves careful negotiations among various active agents – human and other-than-human – involved in the hunt. A pivotal actor in these negotiations is the deity known as the Lord of Wild Animals, the supernatural gamekeeper of the wild species in the forest....

DOCUMENT Citation Only Madeline Snyder.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. There has been a long history of settlement and household archaeology in the Belize River valley that has added significantly to our understanding of everyday people in the Maya lowlands. This research has allowed us to examine questions related to broader cultural norms and traditions, as well as better understand the distribution of settlement across the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Borislava Simova.

Our understanding of the ancient Maya is informed to a great extent by the material remains of ritual performance in both domestic and public contexts. Maya populations throughout Mesoamerica were united by a shared cosmology patterning the timing, location, and material aspects of ritual performance. Yet, ritual was not a static or rigid construct, dutifully replicated across populations. At the site of Actuncan, Belize, we find that aspects of domestic ritual cycles, - including form, content,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only John Walden. Michael Biggie. Kyle Shaw-Müller. Anaïs Levin. Rafael Guerra.

One relatively understudied aspect of neighborhood integration in ancient cities relates to the divergent trajectories along which cities form. In some ancient cities, the urban periphery appeared as autonomous communities prior to the development of a center, representing an ‘outside-in’ model of urbanism. Such contexts provide a valuable case study for investigating neighborhood integration into cities, due to a clear comparative temporal threshold (before and after incorporation). This...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jacob Welch. Scott Hutson.

Archaeologists working on the question of integration of neighborhoods within cities or polities often begin by assuming the existence of centralized authority. Next, they move to consider the relationship between neighborhoods and such authorities. Researchers typically see this relationship as one of domination, independence, or something in between. The case of Chunchucmil, a large Maya site located in northwest Yucatan, Mexico, challenges this common approach to neighborhood integration. At...

DOCUMENT Citation Only María Martínez-Polanco. Florent Rivals.

This is an abstract from the "Recent Advances in Zooarchaeological Methods" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Cervids in Neotropics played a vital role in precolumbian subsistence strategies. The study of deer remains from archaeological sites, particularly their teeth, as biomarkers offers information about their behavior, environment, feeding preferences, and important events in their life history and by extension to the human groups that could...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Izumi Shimada.

Different facets and stages of craft production commonly occur in different spatial loci regardless of differences in medium, technology, intensity and/or scale. Locational differences may be relatively minor with different facets or production stages being practiced concurrently, or masters and apprentices occupying different areas of a given room or workshop. While sheet metal preparation and alloying both require constant heat sources, the former requires a clean area protected from winds and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Billie Follensbee.

While considerable research has been conducted on the importance of textiles in Mesoamerica, little study has been done on textiles among Formative Period cultures such as the Gulf Coast Olmec. This is in great part because direct evidence of early textiles is scanty, consisting only of a fabric-impressed clay sherd, some hand-formed spindle whorls, and fragments of cordage and woven mats. As noted in my recent publications, however, depictions of textiles in Olmec sculpture provide additional...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Luis Soto Rodriguez.

This is an abstract from the "Archaeological Applications of Network Analysis" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This paper seeks to present the results of network analysis for the case of the chiefdom communities that inhabited the northwestern slope of the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta from AD 400 to 1600 in the El Congo microbasin. Through the use of statistical algorithms in R language and databases in geographic information systems, this paper...