Belize (Country) (Geographic Keyword)

DOCUMENT Citation Only Ann Laffey.

This is an abstract from the "Seeing Wari through the Lens of the Everyday: Results from the Patipampa Sector of Huari" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Here we present preliminary findings of chemical analyses performed on a Middle Horizon pottery sherd (c. 600-1100 AD). The sherd originates from the capital region of the Wari and has the striking iconographic representation of either a frog or a toad with visual indications of preserved residues....

DOCUMENT Citation Only Amanda Brock.

This is an abstract from the "Working with the Community in Ecuador" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Agua Blanca community has participated in one of the most successful and sustainable community archaeology projects in Ecuador. Since the start of excavations in the Manabí region in 1979, archaeologist Collin McEwan and Maria-Isabel Silva have worked collaboratively with community members to excavate, interpret, and present findings about the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only James Doyle.

This is an abstract from the "The Rollout Keepers: Papers on Maya Ceramic Texts, Scenes, and Styles in Honor of Justin and Barbara Kerr" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. While Justin Kerr might be best known for pioneering the rollout photographic technique specific to three-dimensional drinking cups and serving vessels, some of his still photographs of painted plates also proved pivotal to the understanding of Classic Maya religion and history....

DOCUMENT Citation Only William Barse.

A series of radiocarbon dates obtained recently from carbonized encrustations on ceramics sheds new light on the Barrancas to Ronquin ceramic sequence, a chronology that has been long contested in the Orinoco River Valley by many investigators. These new radiocarbon dates clearly argue that the so-called "long chronology" suggested by Rouse and Roosevelt for the La Gruta to Ronquin sequence developed for the Middle Orinoco River, a chronology that was argued to extend close to 4000 years, is...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jean Hudson. Roberta Boczkiewicz.

The increasing number of samples of zooarchaeological remains from the prehistoric Chimu settlement of Cerro La Virgen, on the North Coast of Peru, allow a comparison of consumption and discard patterns within and between households and neighborhoods. The information from this analysis adds to our understanding of economic and political realities of life in a community which would have to balance the demands of family consumption and the state tributes requested by the Chimu polity. Of special...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Daniela Triadan. Takeshi Inomata.

Our research at the Maya site of Ceibal, Guatemala, has led to new insights into processes involved in the transition of mobile hunting and horticultural populations to a more sedentary lifestyle and emergent social inequalities. Like in other areas of the world, the first architectural constructions at Ceibal, were public-ritual configurations, built communally by a still mobile population around 950 BC. Sedentism developed gradually and may have first involved people with higher social status...

DOCUMENT Citation Only E. James Dixon. Loren G. Davis.

This is an abstract from the "Advances in Global Submerged Paleolandscapes Research" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This presentation reports the outcomes of a workshop held at the Smithsonian Institution Museum of Natural History, Washington, DC, June 2019. The workshop identified stakeholders, collaborations, and synergistic relationships to establish and expand cooperative interdisciplinary and agency partnerships to encourage, advance, and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Gavin Davies.

Combining archaeological, ethnohistoric and ethnographic data with an analysis of least cost routes, the current paper examines the network connections and craft industries that fueled Lake Atitlan’s prehispanic economy and connected it to the wider Mesoamerican World. The documentary evidence, which I synthesize here, indicates that the lake’s principle exports were perishable goods such as textiles, mats, rope products and foodstuffs. While insufficient to produce significant wealth, I argue...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Annabeth Headrick.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The city of Chichen Itza has defied attempts to identify individuals who ruled the city and its basic political organization. Scholars once argued for a shared governance system called multepal, basing this assertion on glyphic references to a series of people who apparently jointly held power. Subsequent scholarship challenged this assertion, as revised...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Gavin Davies.

This is an abstract from the "Art, Archaeology, and Science: Investigations in the Guatemala Highlands" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Ruler stelae are a well known class of monument in the Southern Maya region but have so far been recovered only from only the largest sites, such as Kaminaljuyu, Takalik Abaj, and Chocola, all of which are considered to have been regional capitals. The recovery of a basal fragment of one of these monuments near the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Karine Lefebvre.

A mitad del siglo XV, el joven reino tarasco llevó a cabo una importante fase de expansión de su territorio. Es en este marco que la región de Acámbaro-Maravatío, ubicado a unos 130 km de laguna de Pátzcuaro (corazón del reino), cayó en mano de los tarascos. Pero la conquista no se persiguió más allá y el sector de Acámbaro se convirtió en una zona de frontera. La dominación tarasca de la región fue breve, apenas unos 80 años. Sin embargo, estas ocho décadas fueron suficientes para que el poder...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Sheridan Lea. Natasha P. Vang. Tiffiny A. Tung.

Life in a rural village can be vastly different from life in the metropolis, and when an empire collapses the effects can reach even the smallest village. For Qasa Pampa, an agricultural village that was occupied in Wari (ca. 650 – 850 CE) and post-Wari (ca. 1000 – 1200 CE) times and located several kilometers away from the capital of Huari, life for its population may have been quite distinct from their capital counterparts. Stable carbon and oxygen isotope analysis can shed light on the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Marcel Kornfeld. Mary Lou Larson.

This is an abstract from the "Paleo Lithics to Legacy Management: Ruthann Knudson—Inawa’sioskitsipaki" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Ruthann Knudson's career in archaeology began with work on midwestern ceramics in 1963 at the University of Minnesota and spanned nearly six decades. During that remarkable time, she taught at academic institutions, engaged in contract archaeology, much research focused on Paleoindians and lithics, surveyed,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jeanne Moe.

This is an abstract from the "Paleo Lithics to Legacy Management: Ruthann Knudson—Inawa’sioskitsipaki" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Ruthann Knudson was always a proponent of archaeology education and public outreach. As her student at the University of Idaho, I got to see Ruthann in action early in my career. Ruthann’s dedication to involving the public stuck with me and everywhere I went for school and employment, I volunteered to go to schools...

DOCUMENT Citation Only William Lipe.

This is an abstract from the "Paleo Lithics to Legacy Management: Ruthann Knudson—Inawa’sioskitsipaki" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Two projects with both substantive archaeological and archaeopolitical aspects are discussed. Frist, Ruthann's role in leading a survey of Forest Service campgrounds on the Middle Fork of the Salmon River in central Idaho and her related work to obtain better representation of cultural resources in Wilderness Area...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Benoît Baconnet.

This is an abstract from the "New and Emerging Perspectives on the Bajo el Laberinto Region of the Maya Lowlands, Part 2" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Located on the border between the central and northern lowlands, the Río Bec region developed a singular architecture and iconography from the sixth century. In the eighth century, the Central Lowlands underwent major sociopolitical transformations, such as the gradual fall of the Kaan dynasty and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jeffrey B. Glover. Dominique Rissolo. Daniel Leonard.

The Yalahau region of northern Quintana Roo, Mexico is one of the few regions in the Maya Lowlands where a robust Preclassic population was not followed by the emergence of Classic period polities. For that reason it is an important area when trying to understand the unique characteristics of the Preclassic period in the Northern Lowlands. The Yalahau region is defined physiographically by freshwater wetlands (sabanas), which stand in stark contrast the rest of the Northern Lowlands. These...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Justine Shaw.

During the Terminal Classic, sacbeob were built at three Maya sites in the Cochuah region of west-central Quintana Roo, Mexico. The roads provided a physical connection between portions of Ichmul, San Felipe, and Yo’okop, running between important structures, out to outlying groups, and even to what had likely been separate settlements. Although they would have been used for processions between termini and may have had numerous symbolic meanings, the impact of some the roadways on the lives of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Erin Sears.

This is an abstract from the "Multidisciplinary Approaches to the Subterranean" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. An accidental discovery by bulldozer of an ancient Maya ceramic workshop has created a post-civil war chapter of exploration in central Alta Verapaz. The site of Aragón lies at the base of a mountain, near the headwaters of what becomes the Usumacinta drainage. Its Late Classic-Terminal figural contents represent a range of ritual and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only M. Kathryn Brown. Jason Yaeger.

This is an abstract from the "Manifesting Movement Materially: Broadening the Mesoamerican View" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Early Maya communities centered themselves within a broader sacred landscape imbued with meaning through ritual practices. Centuries of movement through the landscape converted spaces into places that were deeply rooted in cosmology and social memory. Ritual practices at the center of the community and important places in...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Megan Parker. Jon Spenard.

Material culture studies allow archaeologists to examine the social implications of the physical world in which people are embedded. Sacred landscapes, for example, inspire social narratives regarding how people should interact with the environment. Components of those landscapes, such as caves and mountains, become active participants in the establishment, maintenance, and mobilization of environmental narratives. They serve as hegemonic tools for conveying morality and proper behavior, and as...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Brent Woodfill.

The Northern Transversal Region in central Guatemala is one of the most fertile regions of the Maya world in addition to being a key strategic point in the past and present. The rivers flowing out of the highlands provide fertile, volcanic soil in addition to natural communication routes. As a result, it has been subject to multiple waves of colonization over the past two millennia, from Classic period Tikal and Calakmul to contemporary narcotraffickers and transnational corporations. In this...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Mallory Matsumoto.

This is an abstract from the "Beyond Maize and Cacao: Reflections on Visual and Textual Representation and Archaeological Evidence of Other Plants in Precolumbian Mesoamerica" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Archaeological, ethnohistorical, art historical, and ethnographic evidence attests to extensive use of reed mats over millennia across the Maya region. In addition to being used for sleeping or sitting atop benches or floors, mats partitioned...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Stacie King. Shanti Morell-Hart. Elizabeth Konwest.

In the 16th century, Dominican priests attempted to eradicate various non-Catholic ritual practices in Nejapa. Native peoples apparently regularly visited Cerro del Convento, a Sierra Sur landmark, to perform rituals and leave offerings. In the late 1500s, priests from the Dominican doctrina in Nexapa visited Cerro del Convento to destroy and burn all evidence of "idolatry". Between 2009 and 2013, members of the Proyecto Arqueológico Nejapa Tavela surveyed and excavated at Cerro del Convento to...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Steve Fox. Jaime Awe.

The functions of cosmologically oriented structures within the site core of Ancient Maya sites have been analyzed by archaeologist throughout time. However, the role of terminus groups in relation to the function of site cores have received little attention. In this paper, we analyze the function of the Zopilote Complex, a Terminus group located south of the Cahal Pech site core. Excavations on Str. 1 at Zopilote uncovered two elite burials accompanied by evidence of human sacrifice....