Belize (Country) (Geographic Keyword)

DOCUMENT Citation Only Augusto Oyuela-Caycedo.

This is an abstract from the "Dedication, Collaboration, and Vision, Part II: Papers in Honor of Tom D. Dillehay" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Subject to different historical forms of colonialism, the northern tip of South America is a politically marginalized area that is arguably the least understood from an archaeological perspective. While there is a basic understanding of ceramically defined periods, little is known about human interactions...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Adriana Sanchez.

Mensabak Lake, in the Lacandon Rainforest, is surrounded by caves that were used as pilgrimage destinations and for different rituals in the Protohistoric period. The role of Maya women in the rituals and ceremonies has been delimited to fertility and dependency stereotypes not only in the historical documents but in the archaeological research. This presentation discusses Maya women’s participation in a multi-regional pilgrimage network having Mensabak as the epicentre.

DOCUMENT Citation Only Thor Heyerdahl.

This resource is a citation record only, the Center for Digital Antiquity does not have a copy of this document. The information in this record has been migrated into tDAR from the EXARC Bibliography, originally compiled by Roeland Paardekooper, and updated. Most of these records consist of a document citation and other metadata but do not have the documents themselves uploaded. If you have a digital copy of the document and would like to have it curated in tDAR, please contact us using the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Thomas Guderjan. Jopshua Kwoka. Colleen Hanratty. Sara Eshleman.

The traditional, but yet poorly-defined, view of Classic Maya (AD 250-850) land tenure was that control was somehow vested in the royal and elite parts of society with "commoners" occupying land at royal pleasure. The exceptions to this pattern were known in "urban" cities such as Coba and Chunchucmil in the northern Yucatan and some coastal locations such as Playa del Carmen and Cozumel. However, the latter instances are commonly thought to date to the Postclassic period and were believed to...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Ted Roberts.

This is an abstract from the "Transformations in Professional Archaeology" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The role of alcohol in the practice and culture of American archaeology has rarely been critically investigated. Although most practicing archaeologists agree a link between alcohol use and archaeology exists, the nature of that dynamic is often left unexamined. There is little doubt that the consumption of alcohol serves some function or...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Nelda Issa Marengo Camacho. Judith Ruiz González. Carlos Serrano Sánchez.

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. Durante las últimas décadas se han documentado varios conjuntos de restos humanos no reverenciales y altamente procesados en diferentes estados de manipulación dentro el territorio de Mesoamérica. En un principio se les apreció como hechos aislados hasta...

DOCUMENT Citation Only James Flexner.

This is an abstract from the "Social Archaeologies and Islands" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The transformation of island environments and settlement patterns resulting from missionisation and Christian conversion is a well-developed theme in the historical archaeology of Oceania. The Mangareva Islands in French Polynesia provide an exemplary case study, featuring dozens of stone structures built by the Catholic Pères des Sacrés Cœurs beginning...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jerald Ek. Ricardo Armijo Torres. William Folan. Hubert Robichaux.

Oxpemul was one of several centers surrounding the city of Calakmul, within the region known as Uxte’tuun. Archaeological research at Oxpemul reflects occupation continuity from the Formative through Classic periods. However, hieroglyphic inscriptions indicate a late fluorescence in the mid to late eighth century. This paper explains this seeming contradiction from the perspective of broader geopolitical dynamics, particularly the rivalry between Calakmul and Tikal. Unlinke other centers in...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Arthur Demarest.

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. Prior to the Vanderbilt projects the Alta Verapaz was one of the least explored regions of the highlands with previous research limited to some test pits and cave explorations. With few known impressive constructions or monuments, the Alta Verapaz was assumed to be peripheral to both highland polities and the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Michael Carrasco.

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. Interpretations of sprouting imagery and phytomorphic deities in Mesoamerican iconography have often turned to maize. Although maize informs Maya art and is personified as the Maya Maize God, imagery from elsewhere in Mesoamerica is often less...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Bradley Russell.

The modern residents of Yucatán, Mexico blend traditional Maya beliefs in a pantheon of ancient gods and other supernatural forces with more recent Catholic traditions flowing from centuries of Spanish colonial influence. This paper compares and contrasts modern rituals from the Yucatec Maya village of Telchaquillo, Yucatán. Each rite was associated with a local cenote, limestone sinkholes that along with caves serve as accesses to the Maya underworld and homes to the gods themselves. My...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Cameron S. Griffith.

This is an abstract from the "Technique and Interpretation in the Archaeology of Rock Art" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Cave archaeologists around the world are increasingly utilizing many new platforms and techniques to document subterranean artwork, including digital imaging and scanning technologies. In this presentation I "throw shade" at these high-tech approaches by revisiting and focusing upon the oldest of the old-school technologies...

DOCUMENT Citation Only David Thulman. Michael Shott. Justin Williams. Alan Slade.

This is an abstract from the "Geometric Morphometrics in Archaeology" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Most landmark-based geometric morphometric statistical analyses of stone tools are lifted from biological applications. The concepts are not always directly applicable, leading to unfounded interpretations of statistical results. Sometimes the problem is an imprecise definition of terms, but often the problem is an imperfect translation of a...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jaime Awe. Christophe Helmke.

This is an abstract from the "Making and Breaking Boundaries in the Maya Lowlands: Alliance and Conflict across the Guatemala–Belize Border" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Investigations at Xunantunich indicate that this important site in the Belize River Valley, rose rapidly to regional prominence during the Late Classic Hats’ Chaak Phase (AD 670 – 780). While the social, political, and economic reasons for this late and rapid rise are still not...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Christian K. Madsen. Jette Arneborg. Ian Simpson. Michael Nielsen. Cameron Turley.

The medieval Norse settlements in Greenland formed the westernmost frontier of Scandinavia, and the Old World, between ca. AD 980-1450. A Norse society of perhaps only some 2500 farmer-hunters settled two subarctic niches: the Eastern Settlement in South Greenland with ca. 550 sites and the smaller Western Settlement 500 km north in the inner parts of the Nuuk fjord region and with only some 90 sites. For still not completely understood reasons, the latter was completely abandoned by AD...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Laura Weyrich. Keith Dobney. Alan Cooper.

Interpreting the evolutionary history of bacterial communities within the human body (microbiota) is key to understanding the origin of many modern diseases. The link between humans and their microbiota can also be exploited to examine and track the extent and severity of human adaptation to the environment and impacts on health. Here, we utilize a shotgun sequencing approach to examine ancient DNA preserved within dental calculus from a wide range of ancient South Americans (n=162)....

DOCUMENT Citation Only Gelenia Trinidad-Rivera.

Urban archaeology can help us understand the evolution of specific habitational spaces and shed light to investigations related to domestic life and issues related to daily life necessities. This paper will trace the modifications completed to buildings within the walled city of San Juan in the late 19th century. A selection of structures was made based primarily on the permit requests and blueprints submitted to the local government which can be consulted at the Archivo General de Puerto Rico....

DOCUMENT Citation Only Toni Gonzalez.

This is an abstract from the "Archaeology as an Engine or a Camera?" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This paper discusses ongoing archaeological investigations at the Late Classic Period (CE 600-800) Maya site of Mulch’en Witz, La Milpa, Belize. Survey and excavation at the site have revealed an unconventional geographical density of man-made subterranean spaces ("chultuns") in association with provocative architectural and geological features....

DOCUMENT Full-Text Sandra L. Lopez Varela.

“Alternative Mexico” is a mobile application drawing from the need to preserve and promote contemporary heritage resources that are of great value to its citizens. After more than a century of infrastructure building and promotion of urban lifeways to become a modern country, the experience has resulted in the appropriation of modern spaces and behaviors by Mexico’s citizens, with the inevitable creation of new heritage values. These new heritage resources oppose the national definition of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Nadia Johnson. Kenneth Hirth.

Altica’s location, in the Patlachique Range 10 km away from the Otumba obsidian source, suggests a potentially significant role in the distribution of Otumba obsidian. Altica may have served as an important middleman and processing site in Formative obsidian exchange, but a greater understanding of the nature of these exchange relationships is required to define this role. This paper combines geochemical sourcing and technological data from obsidian from nine Early and Middle Formative sites,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jennifer Carballo. Oralia Cabrera.

Craft specialization and exchange feature prominently in explanations for the development of the first complex societies in Mesoamerica. It is clear from analyses of surface collections at Altica that during the Early and early Middle Formative periods (c. 1300-850 B.C.) its inhabitants exported obsidian tools and imported pottery from long distances, including the southern Gulf Coast. Altica is one of the few early agricultural settlements located in the northern Basin of Mexico from which we...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Wesley Stoner. Deborah Nichols.

The Altica Project, that began in 2014, is an important step in addressing the limited problem-oriented research at Formative sites in the Basin of Mexico for over two decades. Altica is the earliest-known settled village in the Teotihuacan Valley and one of the only first-farming village sites in the Basin of Mexico that has not been engulfed by the urban sprawl of Mexico City. Despite its small size and remote location, Altica was an important piece in Early and Middle Formative exchange...

DOCUMENT Citation Only E Seler.

This resource is a citation record only, the Center for Digital Antiquity does not have a copy of this document. The information in this record has been migrated into tDAR from the EXARC Bibliography, originally compiled by Roeland Paardekooper, and updated. Most of these records consist of a document citation and other metadata but do not have the documents themselves uploaded. If you have a digital copy of the document and would like to have it curated in tDAR, please contact us using the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Edgar Carpio.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In recent years the rescues carried out in Guatemala City, specifically between zones 7 and 11, have uncovered several deposits containing huge amounts of obsidian artifacts. During the excavations of the Lake Miraflores project located on the San Juan causeway, zone 7, a huge deposit containing thousands of obsidian artifacts was uncovered. This deposit...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kia Taylor Riccio.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This paper underscores “ambiguity” and duality as pervasive factors in archaeological research through a case study of coarse earthenware from La Soye, Dominica. Within this framework, I concentrate my approach on syncretic foodways and ceramic productions, which blend, confound, and subvert straight-forward interpretations. Using the material culture as a...