Belize (Country) (Geographic Keyword)

DOCUMENT Citation Only Damien Marken. Keith Eppich. Olivia Navarro-Farr. Juan Carlos Perez.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Part I of II. The Waka’ Archaeological Project (PAW) has conducted over a decade of archaeological investigations documenting the modification, layout, use, and chronology of monumental and residential landscapes of the Classic lowland city of El Perú-Waka’. These papers will evaluate current theoretical and methodological perspectives of ancient Classic Maya...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Keith Eppich. Damien Marken. Olivia Navarro-Farr. Juan Carlos Pérez.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Part II of II. The Waka’ Archaeological Project (PAW) has conducted over a decade of archaeological investigations documenting the modification, layout, use, and chronology of monumental and residential landscapes of the Classic lowland city of El Perú-Waka’. These papers will evaluate current theoretical and methodological perspectives of ancient Classic Maya...

DATASET Michael E. Smith.

Total site areas, epicenter areas, and population estimates for Postclassic Mesoamerican cities, presented in various publications by Michael E. Smith and others.

DOCUMENT Citation Only John Walden. Olivia Ellis. Claire Ebert. Julie Hoggarth. Jaime Awe.

This is an abstract from the "Provisioning Ancient Maya Cities: Modeling Food Production and Land Use in Tropical Urban Environments" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Classic Maya polities of the Upper Belize River Valley were situated in an especially rich alluvial environment, which may have served as a breadbasket for surrounding regions. The region was also one of the most densely settled regions of the Maya lowlands, showing evidence of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Lorraine Williams-Beck.

This paper revisits Classic Maya free-standing towers and portal vaults, some of which were first reported as isolated structures in the Chenes Region during the late 19th Century. Recent research highlights not only formal attributes, but also their particular architectural compound and urban contexts not mentioned by previous studies. More complete architectural compound and urban layout data suggest new temporal and functional interpretations for these unique masonry features at Tabasqueño,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kaylee Spencer.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Ancient Maya artists fashioned ceramic cache vessels that bear a rich array of painted imagery and iconography, making them popular subjects for scholarly investigation. Themes focusing on bloodletting and burning rites are emphasized in many of these discussions, and these themes form the foundations for interpreting the meanings and uses of this class of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Harper Dine.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The ancient Maya utilized a range of landscape modifications for agricultural production, including terraces and raised fields. These agricultural strategies were tied into food systems that also included taxation and tribute, all significant components of a political economy that may have reflected autonomy, exploitation, or both. Using a paleoethnobotanical...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Amy Thompson. Gary Feinman. Keith Prufer.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Inequality is present in all forms of human societies, but the degree of inequality within a single city or region varies. Recently in archaeological contexts, inequality has been quantitatively evaluated based on house size using the Gini coefficient and Lorenz Curve, thus enabling the comparison of wealth measures and inequality between ancient cities of...

DOCUMENT Full-Text Sarah Jackson.

This resource is an application for the Post PhD Research Grant from the Wenner-Gren Foundation. This project investigated how Classic Maya individuals understood the objects that archaeologists characterize as 'artifacts,' and applied this Maya material perspective to modern archaeological practices in order to transform how we interpret excavations at Classic Maya sites. To accomplish this, the project focused on three activities: reconstructing elements of a Classic Maya perspective on the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Beniamino Volta. Nikolai Grube.

Settlements are both product and site of innumerable, multi-layered, and constantly changing interactions between humans and the material world. At any given moment, the quintessence of a place reflects the prevailing meanings that are associated with it. In this sense, quintessence is inextricably linked to power—over discourse, material, and space. This talk explores the role played by political power in defining the character of the Classic Maya settlement of Uxul, Campeche, Mexico. After...

DOCUMENT Citation Only M. Charlotte Arnauld. Eva Lemonnier. Julien Hiquet.

This is an abstract from the "Ancient Mesoamerican Population History: Demography, Social Complexity, and Change" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Ideally every ancient Maya city should be characterized by its population density and its urban agricultural productivity, closely linked parameters that must be explored before tackling the issue of production/exchange relations with hinterlands. Río Bec can be characterized as a low-density urban...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Megan Leight. Christina Halperin.

One of the striking features of contemporary Maya textiles is that their production techniques and aesthetics can be highly regionalized. These textiles manifest strong village, town, and community identities while simultaneously reproducing other identity formations (e.g., gender, ethnicity). Likewise, Classic period Maya (ca. 300-900 CE) political formations were highly regionalized with multiple, shifting centers of gravity. Nonetheless, relatively little is known about the variability of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Damien Marken. Charlotte Arnauld.

Following decades of debate, most scholars accept Classic Maya cities as the hearts of spatially expansive, low-density urban settlements. This introductory paper will summarize past and current perceptions of Maya urbanism, emphasizing potentially overshadowed considerations of urban planning, mobility, and community dynamics – fundamental cross-cultural features of urbanization – and their detection in lowland settlement patterns. The recent florescence of research deriving insight from urban...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Francisco Estrada-Belli. Sandra Balanzario Granados.

This is an abstract from the "The Rise and Apogee of the Classic Maya Kaanu’l Hegemonic State at Dzibanche" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Lidar survey of the city of Dzibanche reveals the city's settlement to be more extensive and populous than previously thought and consistent with its political reach as a hegemonic state. A closer look at the organization of public spaces within its center reveals architectural arrangements that appear to share...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Joanne Baron.

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. The Kerr cataloging project at Dumbarton Oaks is creating opportunities to re-examine iconographic motifs and hieroglyphic texts on Maya pottery. One avenue in which this has been fruitful is the analysis of vessels depicting wahy creatures. In modern communities, ways are powerful...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Michael L. Loughlin.

During the Protoclassic (A.D. 1-300) and Early Classic (A.D. 300-600) periods, the Eastern Lower Papaloapan Basin (ELPB) experienced an important reorganization. The political influence of the large center at Tres Zapotes began to wane and a series of new centers were established across an increasingly independent, but fragmented political landscape. Eschewing the architectural cannons of the Tres Zapotes polity, these new centers are characterized by diverse configurations revealed by...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Matthew Longstaffe. Kyle Farquharson. Kathryn Reese-Taylor. Felix Kupprat. Armando Anaya Hernández.

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. Recent investigations at the Ximbal Che group at Yaxnohcah have documented intriguing new data with implications for understanding sociopolitical and economic integration in the Bajo el Laberinto region. These data include diverse cultural assemblages that show radical changes to the built...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Justyna Olko.

This is an abstract from the "Misinformation and Misrepresentation Part 2: Reconsidering “Human Sacrifice,” Religion, Slavery, Modernity, and Other European-Derived Concepts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Nahuatl, often referred to as the “Aztec language,” is one of the languages most widely identified, both in the academy and in public awareness, with prehispanic cultures. In archaeological and historical research, it often receives the name...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Samantha Kirkley. Jeanne Moe.

This is an abstract from the "Archaeology Education: Building a Research Base" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Project Archaeology is a heritage education organization dedicated to teaching scientific and historical inquiry, cultural understanding, and the importance of protecting our nation’s rich cultural resources. It is a diverse network of educators that make archaeology education accessible to students and teachers nationwide through...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Simone Muhammad.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. While scholars have long studied the pottery production of African peoples in the Caribbean during the colonial era, there has been minimal archaeological research on the ceramics used by enslaved African and African-descended peoples on St. Croix, USVI. This paper represents the culmination of thesis research to conclusively establish defining...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Maia Dedrick. Patricia McAnany. Adolfo Batún Alpuche.

This is an abstract from the "Rethinking Persistent Places: Relationships, Atmospheres, and Affects" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This paper focuses on the past 500 years of nearly continual human presence on the lands held today by residents of Tahcabo, Yucatán, Mexico. Previous work addressed why town residents continued to persist in this area despite the violence of colonialism. One answer pointed to significant human relationships with...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Julie Hoggarth. Claire Ebert. Douglas Kennett.

This is an abstract from the "“The Center and the Edge”: How the Archaeology of Belize Is Foundational for Understanding the Ancient Maya, Part II" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Over the past 25 years, numerous paleoclimate studies have been published across the Maya Lowlands, providing the climatic context for cultural change from Preclassic through modern times. Increasing archaeological studies have followed suit by documenting cultural...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Michele Koons.

In this paper I will discuss the different lines of evidence pertaining to detecting El Niño and La Niña events at the site of Licapa II and surrounding Northern Chicama Valley. Flood deposits, dune encroachments episodes, malacological data, canal destruction and rebuilding events, and radiocarbon evidence are used as proxies to help understand the intensity and timing of ENSO events. I compare evidence from Licapa II to other sites inside and outside the Chicama Valley to highlight the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Sara Ayers-Rigsby. Victoria Dominguez. Valentina Martinez.

This is an abstract from the "Recent Innovations in Ecuadorian Archaeology" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Climate change is negatively impacting cultural heritage and archaeological sites worldwide. The site of Balsamaragua, which signifies 2,500 years of human occupation on the coast, is rapidly deteriorating, having lost 10 m of shoreline since 2009. Increased awareness and documentation at the site can help us glean valuable information about...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Hans Harmsen. Christian Koch Madsen. Elie Pinta. Michael Nielsen.

This is an abstract from the "Accelerating Environmental Change Threats to Cultural Heritage: Serious Challenges, Promising Responses" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Eastern Arctic is currently observed to be undergoing significant environmental change as a direct consequence of global warming. For archaeologists working in Greenland, this means the rapid and complete loss of cultural remains due to changing soil conditions. As annual...