Belize (Country) (Geographic Keyword)

DOCUMENT Citation Only Ann Laffey.

Excavations from the Monqachayaq sector of the site of Huari uncovered an impressive burial that contained over 300 miniature vessels. The vessels were offered by a people known as the Wari (c. A.D. 600 – 1100), an ancient culture thought to be responsible for one of the Andes first great empires. Even more remarkable, the vessels retained the desiccated remains of their contents. The anthropological insight that can be gained has direct implications for a better understanding of Wari practices...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jeffrey Brewer. Nicholas Dunning. Shane Montgomery. Nicolaus Seefeld. Christopher Carr.

This is an abstract from the "New and Emerging Perspectives on the Bajo el Laberinto Region of the Maya Lowlands, Part 1" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Calakmul is known to be one of the largest ancient Maya urban centers in the Elevated Interior Region of the Maya Lowlands. Thus, it is not surprising that in this water-challenged environment, the population of Calakmul invested in some of the region’s grandest reservoirs. While limited...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kelly J. Knudson. Catharina Santasillia. Jaime Awe. Anna Novotny.

Interaction of the living with the bones of the deceased is a tradition practiced in various forms throughout ancient and modern Mesoamerica. Among the ancient Maya the manipulation of the deceased body is associated with powerful ancestral rituals likely carried out to reinforce and legitimate sociopolitical power. Structures placed on the eastern perimeter of plaza groups often contain multiple inhumations and are interpreted as ancestral locations. Structure B1 at Cahal Pech, located within...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Dana Kollmann.

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. This paper presents the preliminary findings pertaining to the exhumation and bioarchaeological examination of a collection of Preclassic period human remains recovered from a lime kiln in El Mirador Basin, Guatemala. The disarticulated and fragmented skeletal remains of nine individuals were compressed into a...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Horvey Palacios. J. Marla Toyne. Michael Callaghan. Brigitte Kovacevich.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In the Maya area, bioarchaeological and mortuary analysis can help identify patterns of mortuary ritual and social experience of past peoples. However, there is very little bioarchaeological and mortuary evidence for the developing complexity and social experience of the Preclassic period. Major ceremonial centers like Naranjo, Tikal, and Yaxha surround...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Olivia Franklin. John Dudgeon. Amy Commendador. Rebecca Hazard. Michael Dega.

Garapan, a Latte Period (A.D. 1000-1521) archaeological site in Saipan, Northern Mariana Islands, was excavated under mitigation efforts by Scientific Consultant Services, Hawaii in 2015. The recovery produced over 400 sets of skeletal remains, of which forty-eight were submitted for dietary bioarchaeological analysis in the Center for Archaeology, Materials and Applied Spectroscopy. This research focuses on the importance of marine versus terrestrial protein sources and introduced plant...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Wieslaw C. Wieckowski. Kelly Knudson. Lars Fehren-Schmitz.

The Wari imperial mausoleum, discovered in 2012-13 at the site of Castillo de Huarmey, Peru brought to light remains of 64 individuals buried within the main chamber underneath and additional seven in the contexts directly associated with the mausoleum. The upper layers of the building also yielded a collection of human and animal remains. The collection of human remains brings a unique set of data for bioarchaeologists. The research performed so far include standard analyses like taphonomy,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Allisen Dahlstedt. Jane Buikstra.

Recent studies of pre-Columbian Mycobacterium tuberculosis complex (MTC) genomes identify pinnipeds as a source of human tuberculosis in South America (Bos et al. 2014). These results raise questions regarding the timing of this zoonotic transfer and the subsequent human host adaptation and dissemination of Mycobacterium tuberculosis. Here we present a survey of skeletal tuberculosis throughout the Osmore Drainage of southern Peru, where the pinniped to human "jump" had occurred by ~AD 1000....

DOCUMENT Citation Only Rebecca Tsosie.

This is an abstract from the "Social Justice in Native North American Archaeology" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This paper examines the theme of "discovery," used in relation to Indigenous lands and peoples to designate the respective claims of Indigenous peoples and the European peoples that colonized North America. In particular, I look at the domain of "bioarchaeology" and the construct of "genome justice" to explore how DNA science attempts...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Nicole Smith-Guzmán.

Greater Chiriquí, the pre-Columbian cultural sphere encompassing western Panama and southern Costa Rica, has been subjected to intense looting activities since the mid-19th century. Nevertheless, archaeological exploration of the area to date has successfully contextualized the nature and transitions of non-perishable material culture. However, organic remains rarely survive in funerary contexts due to the high acidity of the soil, high humidity, and high precipitation in this region. Human...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Erin Patterson.

Analysis of human skeletal remains has made significant contributions to the understanding of the history of La Corona and its interaction with the wider Maya world. The skeletal sample has now grown to include nearly thirty individuals, and includes single and multiples burials, non-burial deposits, and individuals from the site center and outlying sites. The study, one of the most comprehensive in northwest Peten, has focused on establishing demographic information and examining osteological...

DOCUMENT Citation Only James Watson. Ivan Munoz. Bernardo Arriaza.

Indigenous groups have inhabited and exploited the coastal valleys of the Atacama Desert since Paleoindian times. Contact with the altiplano began early on but marine-based diets were eventually supplemented by agricultural adaptations as influence turned to population movement over time. We propose that the oral complex was likely subject to some degree of selection early in the sequence in response to dietary demands, but would have been relaxed as diet diversified and softened. This trend...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Elizabeth Hannigan. Shintaro Suzuki. Felipe Trabanino. Boris Beltran.

Micro and macroscopic bioarchaeological analyses enable archaeologists to generate biological profiles of past individuals, including characteristics such as diet, sex, age, occupational stress, pathologies, and social status, among others. In this paper, we discuss the significance of a Maya individual by constructing a biological profile from both micro and macroscopic analyses. The individual of interest was excavated during the 2012 field season at Xultún, Guatemala in a patio situated in...

DOCUMENT Full-Text Steven Bozarth. Thomas Guderjan.

Residues from nine ancient Maya dedicatory vessels were analyzed for biosilicates. In all cases, the analysis was successful in identifying plant and sponge remains that had been placed in the vessels. This analysis sheds light on ancient Maya plant use as well as ritual and religious practices.

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jacob Welch.

This is an abstract from the "The Role of Women in Mesoamerican Ritual" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Underneath a Classic Maya palace at Ucanha, builders buried a Terminal Preclassic platform outfitted with monumental portraits of rain gods. Analogous architecture appears throughout the Maya lowlands from the Middle Preclassic to Early Classic periods, and several scholars suggest their role in expediting the apotheosis of royal figures into...

DOCUMENT Citation Only David Hyde.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This poster details the findings of a contextual analysis of portable material culture, commonly referred to as “small finds” artifacts, collected from 2004 to 2019 at the hinterland Maya community of Medicinal Trail, located in northwestern Belize. The collection from Medicinal Trail comes from a variety of contexts, such as middens, burials, caches, and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Aja Lans. Daniel Sunshine.

This is an abstract from the "Storeroom Taphonomies: Site Formation in the Archaeological Archive" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. University and museum collections containing human remains belonging to members of the African diaspora have recently come under scrutiny and for valid reasons. The curation of the bodies of Black individuals continues to inflict violence and reinforces the notion that Black people are objects, not humans. During the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Heather Hurst. Caitlin O'Grady.

Black and red are foundational colors in Mesoamerican painting and scribal arts, often derived from easily accessible raw materials. Although their presence is ubiquitous, variations in chemistry and microscopic properties are data that tell a more nuanced story. This paper summarizes analysis of black and red colorants used in Maya wall paintings that contribute to observations regarding local traditions in manufacture, as well as individual variation in artistic practice. Reported results...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Cecelia Klein.

Scholars have invariably interpreted the blindfolds worn by certain figures in Aztec painted manuscripts as a sign of—in their words—"transgression," "sin," and "punishment." This talk challenges the simplicity and inherent Eurocentrism of that reading. It is true that the Aztecs perceived a person’s mistakes to plunge him into darkness and chaos, and that blindfolds, at one level, symbolized that disorder. The cause of a moral error, however, was embodied by certain objects and substances that...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Bethany Potter. Caroline Kisielinski. Justin Tackney. Dennis O'Rourke. Frederic Sellet.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Species detection using DNA recovered from lithic artifacts could indicate the manner in which tools were utilized and ultimately enhance our understanding of the mobility strategies and subsistence patterns employed by past peoples. Geneticists and archaeologists in the 1980s and 1990s managed to successfully extract DNA from lithics, using both modern...

PROJECT Maya Research Program.

Background—The Maya City of Blue Creek Blue Creek is an ancient Maya city (900 BC–AD 1000) in northwestern Belize, just south of the southern Mexican border. Annual investigations of the site have been under way since 1990. Except for four years, these were, and continue to be, directed by Thomas Guderjan. Consequently, we have access to all records and archives of the project and have an excellent relationship with the government of Belize. The ancient city of Blue Creek covers more than 100...

DOCUMENT Full-Text Thomas Guderjan.

This report details the efforts of the 18th consecutive field season of the Blue Creek Archaeological Project. In 2009, we conducted major fieldwork at the Maya centers of Blue Creek, Nojol Nah, and Grey Fox in northwestern Belize. We also conducted continuing investigations of ancient Maya agriculture and related activity at Nojol Nah, Blue Creek and Lamanai.

PROJECT Thomas Guderjan.

Multi-format digital data set that focuses on the central precinct of the Blue Creek site, which is composed of Plaza A and B complexes. These data consist of PDF documents of published and unpublished papers, reports, and manuscripts, Microsoft Excel databases of artifact collections, images of architectural features, artifacts and surrounding landscapes, scanned topographic and survey maps produced by the Blue Creek project, and aerial images. The information contained in BCAP reports and...

IMAGE Thomas Guderjan.

Blue Creek Central Precinct Images consisting of aerials, site core plan map, and architectural reconstruction illustrations

IMAGE Thomas Guderjan.

Map of the Central Precinct at the Blue Creek Site, Belize