Belize (Country) (Geographic Keyword)
3,026-3,050 (4,066 Records)
Up until the late 1990s, researchers believed the Maya were solely reliant on slash and burn agricultural practices. However, discoveries of rectangular canal patterns in the margins of wetlands in the Maya lowlands of Guatemala, Belize, and Mexico shined light on a new agricultural practice: raised wetland fields. One example of wetland fields is found at the site Birds of Paradise (BOP) in the Rio Bravo region of northwestern Belize. The macrobotanicals recovered from the raised fields and...
Raised Field Nutrient Cycling: Implications for Hydrologic Controls and Landesque Capital (2024)
This is an abstract from the "The Barbacoan World: Recognizing and Preserving the Unique Indigenous Cultural Developments of the Northern Andes" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Beginning around AD 600, the Barbacoan speaking peoples of the northern Ecuadorian highlands began building alternating ridge and canal raised field systems. One of the leading hypothesized functions of these raised fields is their role in nutrient cycling. In this scenario,...
Rancherías: Historical Archaeology of Early Colonial Campsites on Margarita and Coche Islands, Venezuela (2017)
Little is known from the present-day archaeological perspective of early colonial realities of Margarita and Coche islands located in north-eastern Venezuela, in the state of Nueva Esparta. Moreover, the island of Coche has never been surveyed archaeologically. This paper discusses the preliminary results of systematic archaeological surveys of Coche and the southern coast of Margarita Island, carried out within the frame of the Nexus 1492 ERC research project coordinated by Leiden University....
Raw Artifact & Chemical Data - Community Identity and Social Practice during the Terminal Classic Period at Actuncan, Belize (2015)
Raw Artifact & Chemical Data
(Re)Creating Monumental Space: The everyday use of plaza space at Aventura, Belize from the Terminal Classic to Late Postclassic (2017)
During the comprehensive survey of the Maya city of Aventura, Belize, the Aventura Archaeology Project (AAP) identified 29 structures located within the confines of the site’s largest monumental plaza, the A Plaza. While Maya plazas tend to be open places for ritual performance and/or market exchange, the structures in Aventura’s A Plaza, constructed with "seemingly" no regard to the orientation and layout of the site’s other monumental architecture, suggests the possibility of an alternative...
(Re)integrating Cultures at Cacalchen: Recent Excavations at Two Rral Chapels in Central Yucatan (2017)
The arrival of Europeans to the Americas in the sixteenth century forever changed processes of cultural integration. This paper explores how small Maya communities in Central Yucatan navigated the process of integration of new religious practices and the use of pre-existing structures in the landscape. This examination stems from recent excavations of two different rural chapel structures at the site of Cacalchen, located in the greater Yaxuna region between the towns of Yaxcabá and...
Re-Contextualizing Pre-Columbian Gold and Resin Artifacts from Panama in the National Museum of the American Indian (2018)
Until recent years the study of Pre-Columbian gold and resin objects from Panama was slow to progress due to the relative scarcity of archaeological projects excavating these materials. While the original contexts of many museum objects have been lost, the collection of Panamanian gold and resin in the National Museum of the American Indian was re-evaluated for its potential to answer key questions about the ancient craftspeople of this region. To ensure accurate provenience information was...
Re-dissecting an Old Friend: Looking Back at the Evidence of Kiuic’s First Court (2024)
This is an abstract from the "The Bolonchen Regional Archaeological Project: 25 Years of Research in the Puuc" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. From 2007 to 2016, a team of archaeologists under the direction of George J. Bey III excavated Structure N1065E1025, a pyramid temple dated to the Terminal Classic period and located at the Yaxché group in the heart of the archaeological site of Kiuic, Yucatán. The structure had a complex construction...
Re-Evaluating the Case for America’s First Cities: evidence from the Norte Chico region of Peru (2017)
The Late Archaic Period (3000-1800 B.C.) was a time of dramatic cultural transformations in the Central Andes. At the beginning of the 3rd millennium B.C., at least 30 large, sedentary agricultural settlements with monumental architecture appeared between the Huaura and Fortaleza river valleys in a region known locally as the "Norte Chico" ("Little North"). Given the quantity, size, and complexity of monumental architecture at these sites, as well as the unique settlement patterns, some have...
Re-evaluating the Earliest Evidence for Wild Potato Use in South-Central Chile (2018)
The earliest evidence of wild potato use anywhere in the world comes from Monte Verde (southern Chile), where tuber fragments were recovered from hearths that directly date to 14,500 cal B.P. Those tubers were tentatively assigned to a wild potato species (Solanum maglia) based on their starch granule morphology, which, according to Ugent et al., could be distinguished from the granule morphology of the domesticated potato (S. tuberosum). Recently, that identification has been called into...
A Re-evaluation of Yotholin Pattern-Burnished: Evidence of Early Preclassic Ceramics? (2018)
In 1958, Brainerd first described "the earliest deposits yet to come from Yucatan"—composed primarily of narrow-mouthed jar fragments recovered from the lowest strata of excavations at the Mani cenote. This type, classified as Yotholin Pattern-Burnished, has a medium-fine paste and unslipped surfaces that had been smoothed or burnished in decorative patterns. Since then, similar wares have been recovered from Preclassic contexts at a number of other sites. Although Brainerd originally described...
Re-excavating Xno’ha: Aligning Maya Architecture across Seven Years of Archaeological Research (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Ancient Maya Landscapes in Northwestern Belize, Part II" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Maya architecture at Xno’ha has been recorded digitally every field season since 2012 by the Blue Creek Archaeological Project in conjunction with the Center for Heritage Conservation at Texas A&M University. Through the application of preservation technologies such as laser scanning, it is now possible to juxtapose completely...
Real Alto and the Origins of Valdivia (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Recent geomorphological analysis of shoreline deposits in Manabí and Santa Elena provinces (Ecuador) provides evidence of significant mid-Holocene marine transgression. Newly obtained radiocarbon dates from relict coastal features places these changes to the Valdivia Phase (4400 to 1500 cal BC). Arguments for and against this phenomenon are reviewed with...
Really ugly Nasca pots of ancient Peru, and why they are important. (2017)
Polychrome ceramics of the Nasca culture (south coast of Peru, c. 100 BC - AD 600) are world renowned as one of the most colorful and artistically complex creations of the ancient Americas. Up to ten distinct colors depicting fabulous supernatural creatures adorn unique vessel forms with eggshell thin walls fixed in perfect oxidizing firings. Such masterpieces fill art books and spawn enthusiastic but fanciful speculations about Nasca society and its artisans. This paper rounds out the view of...
Reappraising Mobility during the Ninth and Tenth Centuries CE among Lowland Maya Populations: A Bioarchaeological and Isotopic Approach (2023)
This is an abstract from the "The Movement of People and Ideas in Eastern Mesoamerica during the Ninth and Tenth Centuries CE: A Multidisciplinary Approach Part II" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Conventional inferences of Maya mobility have been based on cultural exchange. The isotopic composition measured in human skeletal remains provides a direct measure of past peoples’ movements. Founded on published isotopic datasets across the Maya area,...
Reassessing a Postclassic Subterranean Ceremonial Complex at Teotihuacan (2024)
This is an abstract from the "What Happened after the Fall of Teotihuacan?" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Life in the ancient city of Teotihuacan did not end with the collapse of Classic period society, but rather, until the constitution of the current zone of archaeological monuments, the area was a place of residence, rituals, and somewhat later, pastures and crops. We must remember that the period from AD 600 until 1521 occupies a broader...
Reassessing Classic Maya Identity and the Southern Edge of Mesoamerica (2018)
Certain classes of material culture found in Honduras and El Salvador have long been recognized as being related to "Maya style" artwork and artifacts from Copan and Classic Maya cities to the north and west. These objects have been framed through questions of "influence", ethnicity, and boundaries. The recent re-analysis of a ceramic flask from Tazumal, with an unusual inscription tying the object to a Copan king and imagery of tribute, suggests a more distinct political lens through which to...
Reassessment of Population Density in Late Precolumbian Central Caribbean Panama (2021)
This is an abstract from the "Advances and New Perspectives in the Isthmo-Colombian Area" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Using radiometric and settlement survey data from an area with 100% survey coverage in the rain-forested lowlands of the Caribbean watershed of Colón, Panama, we present the results of an analysis of site distribution and 14C dates to calculate population density. The archaeological data is compared with previous population...
Recent Advances on Multidisciplinary Research at Castillo de Huarmey (2017)
The Peruvian site of Castillo de Huarmey located on the desert coast some 300 kms north of Lima and 4 kms east of the Pacific Ocean, is widely known for the 2012-13 discovery of the Middle Horizon imperial mausoleum with the first undisturbed Wari high elite women’s multiple burial. The tomb, which concealed 64 individuals was accompanied by an abundance of valuable grave goods such as gold and silver jewelry, fine pottery, religious paraphernalia, and textile production materials and tools....
Recent Archaeological Research in Gorgona Island, Colombia (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This research, framed within the problematic environmental archaeology, aims to see the environments used by pre-Hispanic settlers from the analysis of plant and animal remains. Zooarchaeological analyses of invertebrates describe a rocky, sandy, mixed intertidal environment typical of the Pacific Ocean. In the case of vertebrates, a lizard element...
Recent Archaeological Work in the Kingdom of Sak Tz’i’ and the Santo Domingo-Lacanja Valley (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Dynamic Frontiers in the Archaeology of Chiapas" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Santo Domingo-Lacanja Valley hosted a number of small but important Classic period centers, including Bonampak, Lacanha, Plan de Ayutla, and Lacanja Tzeltal (seat of the Sak Tz’i’ dynasty). It was also an important corridor of travel between the major polities of Yaxchilan, Tonina, and Palenque, among others. Here, we review the...
Recent Building Excavations in the Triple-Courtyard "Palace" Group at the Ancient Maya Site of Pacbitun, Belize (2018)
Adjacent to Plaza B at Pacbitun is a Classic Period "palace" complex consisting of three conjoined courtyards each ringed by elevated range structures, likely serving elite-residential and administrative functions. Previous excavations indicated initial construction in the Early Classic period with numerous modifications made in the Late Classic, and preliminary evidence of occupation or use into the Terminal Classic period. The Pacbitun Regional Archaeological Project has begun to explore this...
Recent Excavations at Cerro de la Virgen, Oaxaca, Mexico (2017)
This paper presents the preliminary results of recent excavations carried out at Cerro de la Virgen, a 92-ha hilltop site located in the lower Río Verde Valley of coastal Oaxaca, Mexico. The lower Verde’s first complex polity emerged during the Terminal Formative period (150 BCE – CE 250), during which Cerro de la Virgen was one of several secondary political centers distributed around the region’s political seat, Río Viejo. Current research at Cerro de la Virgen is designed to study the...
Recent Investigations at the 18th Century Fort Frederik Archaeological Site and Cemetery, St. Croix, US Virgin Islands (2018)
In 2010, a tropical storm disturbed human remains and archaeological deposits at the Fort Frederik Archaeological Site, a multicomponent site consisting of dense 18th-19th century midden deposits associated with Fort Frederik, a two-story fortification (est. 1760) dating to the colonial development of St. Croix, then a part of the Danish West Indies. Subsequent investigations, including a geophysical survey, subsurface testing, and osteological analysis, have identified a cemetery within the...
Recent Investigations at the Ancient Maya Port Site of Conil, Quintana Roo, Mexico (2017)
The site of Conil is located in the modern community of Chiquilá on the north coast of Quintana Roo, Mexico. In 1528 Francisco de Montejo, a Spanish conquistador, reported that Conil was a large town consisting of 5,000 houses. Conil was abandoned in the middle of the 17th century and was not reoccupied again until the 19th century, when it was named Chiquilá. William Sanders was the first archaeologist to work at the site in 1954, but the site core was not mapped until 2005 by Glover. Further...