Belize (Country) (Geographic Keyword)

DOCUMENT Citation Only David Ingleman.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Zooarchaeological analyses of pre-contact Hawaiian midden deposits have yielded significant information on subsistence practices and, to a lesser extent, associated foodways practices. Archaeologists have also occasionally excavated burials of non-human domesticated animals, including dog, pig, and chicken. These ritual deposits provide unparalleled...

DOCUMENT Citation Only David Cohen. Monika Therrien.

Infrastructure is currently one of the critical studies in social sciences at the global level, having been promoted as one of the great promises of equality and accessibility, through good performance and penetration of public services among the population, as well as a tool that would contribute to strengthen the control, authority and visibility of the State. The case study of the calle real of Bogota, being one of the oldest and most important streets in the city, makes visible what became...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Anthony Ranere.

The first substantial evidence of a preceramic occupation of Greater Chiriqui resulted from the 1970 excavations of upland rockshelters in the watershed of the Chiriqui River in Western Panama. Results from these excavations were reported in a 1972 dissertation and the 1980 publication Adaptive Radiations in Prehistoric Panama. Our current understanding of the preceramic period occupations in Greater Chiriqui owes more to subsequent innovations in research methods – phytolith and starch grain...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Asli Erem.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Throughout thousands of years, various civilizations and groups have depicted their beliefs on objects and architecture. Maya rulers are an example in how architecture, extravagant costumes, jewelry, weaponry, ceramics were used to emphasize their title as ajaw.Ajaw, the title for a ruler which represents the king’s massive authority for their people...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Christina Halperin. Katherine Miller Wolf. Maria Fernandez López López.

This is an abstract from the "The Marking and Making of Social Persons: Embodied Understandings in the Archaeologies of Childhood and Adolescence" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Previous studies of bodily ornaments from burial contexts have often fixated on notions of wealth, social inequality, and prestige. Although we consider analyses focused on economic wealth, we turn, in particular, to Indigenous and ladino (mestizo) medical-spiritual...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kazuo Aoyama.

This is an abstract from the "Preclassic Maya Social Transformations along the Usumacinta: Views from Ceibal and Aguada Fénix" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. I discuss the results of a diachronic analysis of lithic artifacts collected from Ceibal, Guatemala, in order to elucidate long-term patterns and changes in the Preclassic and Classic Maya exchange, craft production and ritual practices. The interregional exchange of large polyhedral cores of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Armando Anaya Hernandez. Kathryn Reese-Taylor.

The Preclassic (900 BCE – 150 CE) was the period during which the earliest sedentary communities in the Maya lowlands were founded. Acts that initiated these early civic charters, such as the construction of E-groups and communal platforms, were followed quickly by rapid expansion of communities throughout the landscape, involving population growth, monumental architecture, massive waterworks, and a high degree of sociopolitical complexity. It was also during this period when ideologies and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kaitlin Crow. Norbert Stanchly.

Archaeological excavations within the Belize River Valley region have produced robust faunal assemblages that have increased our understanding of the Maya use of animals during the Preclassic. At Pacbitun, located on the southern periphery of the Valley, large scale horizontal excavations are providing insights into animal utilization during the Preclassic period at the site (1000 BC – AD 300). These investigations have probed into plaza floors, residential and ceremonial platforms, as well as...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Justin Bracken.

A third season of fieldwork at the fortified site of Muralla de León has expanded the scope of coverage for the project by mapping and excavating nearby hilltop occupations on the shores of Lake Macanché. The work serves to contextualize the space contained by the site’s enceinte, a physical barrier that serves also as a boundary feature. Earlier investigations into the site interior and the ramparts of the enceinte itself begged for a comparative data set, as the significance of a barrier...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Mary Jane Acuña. Carlos Chiriboga. Varinia Matute. Francisco Castañeda.

The site of El Tintal, located in northern Petén, Guatemala, provides early evidence of monumental construction, initiating with the large-scale transformation of the landscape in preparation for the site’s ceremonial core, followed by construction programs consisting of pyramids, elevated causeways, and a diversity of hydraulic features. Recent investigations at El Tintal have shed light on its Preclassic settlement, organized around what we propose was an ancient lagoon which settlers...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Alessandra Villarreal.

Understanding the organization of ancient ceramic production and distribution patterns can provide archaeologists a means of exploring past economies. Recent studies have shown that petrographic analysis can be operationalized to detect variability in production recipes, distribution of production groups across a landscape, and even producer-specific material choices. Ceramicists working in the Maya lowlands have demonstrated the benefit of using petrographic analysis in conjunction with other...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kazuo Aoyama.

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. This paper discusses the results of my diachronic analysis of lithic artifacts collected in Aguada Fénix and its neighboring sites in the Middle Usumacinta region, Mexico, in order to elucidate one aspect of long-term changing patterns in the Preclassic...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Clarissa Cagnato.

This is an abstract from the "Preclassic Maya Social Transformations along the Usumacinta: Views from Ceibal and Aguada Fénix" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Paleoethnobotanical evidence, in conjunction with other archaeological data, provides key information regarding ancient practices. This paper presents the results of microbotanical analyses —specifically the study of starch grains—carried out on diverse Preclassic Maya archaeological...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Michael Callaghan. Brigitte Kovacevich. Rachel Gill. Karla Cardona.

Recent research in the Maya lowlands has shown that "E-Group" architectural complexes were intricately tied to the development of complex society during the Middle Preclassic period (900 BC – 300 BC). First identified at the site of Uaxactun, Guatemala, E-Group complexes consist of a western radial platform and eastern range structure. For many years Maya archaeologists believed E-Groups functioned primarily as celestial observatories. However, recent data have shown E-groups were the locus of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Fernando C. Atasta Flores Esquivel. Alejandro Uriarte.

Yaxnohcah is an important Maya settlement in the southern Campeche lowlands, which, according to what present evidence suggests, had its main civic development during the Middle and Late Preclassic periods. The city’s layout includes some features that are specific to Yaxnohcah, as well as others shared with nearby and distant centres. One of central features of the Yaxnohcah settlement, which it shares with other sites, has been described as "clustered nucleation" or "dismembered" pattern for...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Nicholas Dunning. Armando Anaya Hernández. Christopher Carr. Deborah Walker. Helga Geovannini Acuña.

The need to collect and store rain water has been proposed as an important urbanizing force during the development of Maya civilization in the Elevated Interior Region on the Maya Lowlands, where surface water is naturally scarce and the dry season lengthy. We present data from Yaxnohcah, Campeche, Mexico indicating that the construction of large reservoirs was an integral part of the development of this urban center in the Middle and Late Preclassic periods. Data collected to date indicate that...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Michael Smyth.

Some of the earliest and largest monumental architecture in the Puuc Hills are found at the Maya center of Xcoch. Noted by John Stephens in 1841 as a large city with a deep water cave and gigantic pyramid, Xcoch is among a host of Puuc sites now dated to the Preclassic period. An interdisciplinary research program at Xcoch and vicinity from 2006 to 2013 revealed Preclassic Maya community patterns, megalithic architecture, and material culture for a developing complex society. Massive high...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Josephine Thompson. Carlos Morales. Richard Hansen. Ross Ensley.

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. A new model of Preclassic settlement patterns has emerged with the use of lidar to document a large-scale landscape in northern Guatemala. These patterns include highly sophisticated man-made hydrographic features, monolithic transportation networks, extensive residential complexes, and monumental civic complexes...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Miguel García Mollinedo.

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. In the Middle Usumacinta region, located in southeastern Mexico, multiple standardized architectural complexes dated from the Middle Preclassic (1000–00 BC) have been detected with the use of lidar technology. Of these complexes, three belong to the Middle...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jose Narvaez.

This investigation is an archaeological analysis of the lower Rimac River Valley, located in the Peruvian Central Coast, where several irrigation channels, that were originated from the River allowed the cultivation of a great extension of land in this valley. The objectives of this study were to establish the occupation sequence and settlement pattern in those artificial valleys in Precolonial times and their relation with this irrigation system. Modern and old maps and aerial photos were used...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Matthew Brown. Cory Look. Reg Murphy.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. A series of burials were excavated from one of the longest inhabited precolumbian sites in the Caribbean, Indian Creek located in Antigua. Research on mortuary practices throughout the Caribbean remain sparse, with varied excavation strategies and limited documentation further complicating our understanding. Our research design integrated geoarchaeological...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Robert Kelly. Madeline Mackie. Erick Robinson. Spencer Pelton.

This is an abstract from the "A Tribute to the Contributions of Lawrence C. Todd to World Prehistory" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Lawrence Todd has long contributed to “big picture” research. Here we discuss one instance of such research using a new radiocarbon database (Kelly et al. 2022, American Antiquity) of >104,000 ages to discuss population trends of North America’s Indigenous population of the past 13,000 years. We focus on the late...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Autumn Rose. Kitty Emery. Robert Guralnick.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Human-caused environmental changes and their effects on the Classic Maya continue to be topics of vital research importance. Zooarchaeological data can provide valuable inferences about ancient Maya environments but must be assessed with care. In the Maya area, habitat fidelity models use high predator abundances to indicate the local presence of the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only María Luisa Vázquez De Ágredos Pascual. Cristina Vidal Lorenzo. Patricia Horcajada Campos. Núria Feliú Beltrán.

This is an abstract from the "The Maya Wall Paintings of Chajul (Guatemala)" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The houses of Chajul, region of Ixil, Guatemala, have preserved stucco coatings and mural paintings from the colonial period. Since 2019, the University of Valencia (Spain) has collaborated with the Jagiellonian University (Poland) within the framework of the Project of Conservation of Chajul Murals–COMUCH. The objective of this study has...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Ken Seligson. Soledad Ortiz Ruiz. Luis Barba Pingarrón.

Burnt lime has played a significant role in daily Maya life since at least as far back as 1100 BC, and yet its ephemeral nature has limited archaeological studies of its production and distribution. The application of new surveying and remote sensing technologies in recent decades is now allowing for a more in-depth investigation of the burnt lime industries that existed in different sub-regions of the Maya area. In this talk, we present an overview of the current understanding of Prehispanic...