Belize (Country) (Geographic Keyword)
3,226-3,250 (3,437 Records)
Since 2014, the project of underwater archaeology in Lake Titicaca (ULB), gives priority to the study of the Yampupata strait between the Island of the Sun and the Copacabana Peninsula. This research strategy was chosen because of different elements: First of all, the Island is a homogenous insular territory whose affordable dimensions (14,3 Km2) allow underwater activities. Secondly, one of the main characteristics of this territory is its dense, complex and continuous occupation which has been...
Underwater Cultural Heritage Protection and Management in Pacific Island States (2018)
The waters of the Pacific Ocean contains a wealth of Underwater Cultural Heritage (UCH) encompassing the history of humanity from the Stone Age to the Atomic Age and witnessing climate change. This paper presents a summary of the outcomes of the UCH Programme in Pacific Small Island Developing States (SIDS). Notable progress includes the reference to the UNESCO Convention on the Protection of the UCH in SAMOA Pathway outcome document (2014), national and regional capacity building workshops, and...
Underwater Investigations of Mass Burials in Two Cenotes at Mayapán, Yucatán, Mexico (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. With support from The National Geographic Society and The Waitt Foundation, the Mayapán Taboo Cenote Project conducted investigations at Cenote Sac Uayum, a sacred, water-bearing sinkhole located at the Postclassic Maya political capital of Mayapán, Yucatán, Mexico (AD 1150-1450). The work brought together an international collaboration of researchers from the...
Underwater Transect Excavations, Sediment Coring, Remoting Sensing at the Paynes Creek Salt Works (2017)
Following the discovery and mapping of over 100 salt works in a shallow, salt-water lagoon system, a collaborative, interdisciplinary research project was initiated with funding from NSF to examine the ancient landscape, sea-level rise, use of the wooden buildings for salt production and as residences, and reconstruct the underwater sites using 3D GIS. Sediment coring across the lagoon system identified red mangrove peat, an indicator of actual sea-level rise, as well as a plethora of pollen...
Unearthing the Deep Roots of the Long-term Human History and Environmental Interaction in the Atacama Desert (2017)
New archaeological evidence demonstrates that by 12,800 years ago, bands of hunter-gatherers effectively occupied the hyperarid basins of the Atacama Desert. The selection of the habitats they exploited and the location of their activity areas were constrained by specific environmental circumstances that coincide with positive moisture anomalies that provided abundant resources. The distributions and properties of which were likely managed by these people to create complex landscapes using...
Unleashing the Beast: Exploring Peri-abandonment Deposits in the Maya Lowlands (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The BVAR project has been investigating peri-abandonment deposits, also known as problematic or terminal deposits, at sites located along the Belize River in Western Belize. These investigations have focused on understanding the formation of such deposits as well as their significance across sites in the Belize Valley region. The project has employed a new...
Unleashing the Beast: New Methodologies in Exploring Peri-Abandonment Deposits in the Maya Lowlands (2018)
The BVAR project recently renewed its investigations of peri-abandonment deposits at several sites along the Belize River in Western Belize. Also referred to as de facto refuse and problematic or sheet-like deposits, these cultural remains are predominantly recovered in palace rooms and courtyards in site cores across the Maya lowlands. The purpose of the BVAR investigations is to better understand the formation of such deposits as well as their temporal and spatial significance across sites in...
Unprecedented Times Lead to New Internship Strategies (2021)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, the North American Archaeology Lab at the American Museum of Natural History transitioned a long running internship program to a remote micro-internship. We had to consider if offering a remote internship was feasible, what it would require on our end, what projects could be done remotely, what the interns would get out of...
Unraveling Global and Local Ceramic Production Networks: An LA-ICP-MS Analysis of Ceramics from Barbados, Jamaica, and Great Britain (2017)
A wide variety of ceramics are recovered in plantation contexts on Barbados and Jamaica, from hand-built coarse earthenwares to refined tablewares, as well as industrial wares for sugar production. The origins for these ceramics are often uncertain. In addition to the importation of ceramics from Great Britain and elsewhere in the Americas, many potters and workshops existed on the islands to produce both quintessentially Caribbean pots as well as European-style vessels. To better understand...
Unravelling the Social Determinants of Lead Exposure in 19th Century British Royal Navy Stationed in Antigua, W.I. (2018)
An exploration into various aspects of lead exposure in the British Royal Navy stationed in 19th Century Antigua, West Indies has contributed to some unexpected insights. This research was facilitated by study of human remains mitigated from a Naval Hospital cemetery in response to modern development. The interred at the site were lower ranking naval personnel including enslaved individuals. Other work on lead exposure in the region focused on enslaved plantation laborers revealed high levels of...
Unresolved Questions in the Study of *Mopa Mopa: History, Geography, and Chemistry (2021)
This is an abstract from the "Plant Exudates and Other Binders, Adhesives, and Coatings in the Americas" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. *Mopa mopa is the collective name given to the resin from species of the plant genus *Elaeagia (family Rubiaceae) that grows in regions of Peru, Ecuador, and Colombia. The resin has been used from prehispanic times to the present day to decorate a range of objects from colonial Inka *qeros to highly decorated and...
Unsettling Settler-Colonial Archaeology: Constructing Indigenous Futurities at Puʻukoholā Heiau (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Often thought of as a discipline that concerns itself with ruins—that which is in the past—archaeology also serves the settler-colonial project, in the present and the future. For that reason, archaeology inherently functions as a political tool, even if typically imagined as an apolitical means of “preserving” the past. In other words, archaeology offers...
Unsettling the Classroom: Teaching Archaeology’s Ties with Settler-Colonialism (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Pedagogy in the Undergraduate Archaeology Classroom" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. For well over a decade, archaeologists such as Pyburn (2005) and Arnold (2005) have highlighted the need for teaching to engage with the larger, core issues that shape our research. Nevertheless, high-profile archaeological conversations about decolonization have tended to focus exclusively on research theory and practice. Yet Atalay...
Untangling Wari Colonization, Trade, and Administration in Coastal Arequipa from the Site of Quilcapampa, Siguas Valley. (2017)
The seventh century AD marked a period of great social change in the coastal valleys of Arequipa, Perú. During this time, an increase in violence, population growth, and social complexity was met with foreign influences from the Wari state of the central highlands. While scholars have long asserted that Arequipa fell under Wari control at this time, the evidence for direct state control has never been demonstrated conclusively in the region. This presentation reports the results of our...
Urban Carnivores, Rural Vegetarians? Faunal discrepancies over time and space at Mayapan (2017)
A usually predictable attribute of Postclassic Maya settlements (in Belize and Yucatan) is the abundance of faunal remains relative to preceding Classic Period contexts. This discrepancy is not attributable to taphonomy or bone age, given the recovery of human bone from both periods and the abundance of fauna in even earlier Preclassic deposits. Robust forest environments, balanced human predation levels, and variable animal husbandry practices represent the best explanations for the wealth of...
Urban Commoner Households: (In)Equality and Daily Life at Aventura (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Households at Aventura: Life and Community Longevity at an Ancient Maya City" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Cities are locations of diverse human interaction where persons from different families and social affiliations can gather, exchange goods, and participate in community events. However, the management of these diverse interactions and activities requires social and political systems that do not value the...
Urban Form and Social Dimension at the Classic Maya City of Palenque (2021)
This is an abstract from the "The Urban Question: Interdisciplinary Approaches to Investigating the Ancient Mesoamerican City" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In this paper I will explore the extent of planning and its social dimension at the ancient Maya city of Palenque, Chiapas, Mexico. Between the seventh and ninth centuries, during the Classic period, the plateau where Palenque is located was extensively modified resulting in a prosperous,...
Urban Reworking as Political Action at the Ancient Maya City of Actuncan, Belize (2018)
This paper begins with a question: What does it mean to live amongst ruins? The literature on ancient Maya urbanism focuses to a large extent on how urban spaces are arranged and what this says about social and political organization. However, the long occupations of many Maya centers resulted in urban centers that reflect a palimpsest of decision-making over centuries rather than a single grand plan. Indeed, evidence at many Maya sites suggests that urban plans were reworked as buildings were...
Urbanization, Minor Temple Construction, and Local Community Formation at Ceibal, Guatemala (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Preclassic Maya Social Transformations along the Usumacinta: Views from Ceibal and Aguada Fénix" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Excavations and geospatial analyses of outlying residential settlement at Ceibal, Guatemala, shed light on the relationships between ritual and urbanization during the Preclassic period. The site epicenter, which consists of an E-Group assemblage carved out of bedrock, was established around...
Us and Them: Regional Integration and Social Differentiation during the Terminal Preclassic at Ucanha, Yucatán, Mexico (2018)
Often overshadowed by the splendor of massive monumentality to the south, Late Preclassic life in the Northern Maya Lowlands is a period of material and social experimentation, a balancing act between emerging social differentiation and an ideology of communal integration. During the latter half of this period, the secondary site of Ucanha in Yucatán was physically integrated into a micropolity via an 18-km long sacbe and experienced the creation of integrative civic spaces, a population apogee,...
Usability of LiDAR data for archaeological survey in the Uaxactun area, North Peten, Guatemala. (2017)
The paper deals with validation and quality estimation of spatial data acquired in the focus area of the project "Proyecto arquelogico regional – Uaxactun" as a part of a LIDAR project supported by the PACUNAM. The project has 2 high-quality 3D models of the pre-classical city of Uaxactun and the site of Dos Torres acquired by detailed topographical survey of the focus area at its disposal. The DEMs serve as basis for the evaluation of spatial accuracy of the LiDAR DSM and an etalon for...
Use and Symbolism of Copper Axes in Tarascan Society during the Late Post-Classic Period in modern day Michoacán, México (2017)
The cultural core of the Tarascan society settled in the region of what is now Michoacán, western Mexico. For the Tarascans, gathering firewood was a sacred activity, and the maintenance of a never-ending fire within their temples or "cues" was an essential part of their religion. This sacred element was an offering for their most venerated god, Curicaueri. Collecting wood was an activity so sacred that even the tools used to retrieve it were transformed into consecrated objects sharing the same...
The Use of Forensic Anthropology Methods in Historic Cases (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. "Historic" is a term commonly used in archaeology and bioarcheology but is not typically associated with forensic anthropology. However, historic cases have been brought to forensic anthropology labs, where biological profiles are built using forensic anthropological methods. These osteological methods used within forensic anthropology can be applied to...
The Use of Geospatial Technology to Identify Patterns in the Distribution of Artifacts at the Ancient Maya Site of Pacbitun, Belize (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The archaeological site of Pacbitun is located in west central Belize between the ecozones of the Belize River Valley and the Mountain Pine Ridge. The ancient Maya occupied the site from the beginning of the Middle Preclassic (900 – 300 BC) and continuing through the Terminal Classic (AD 800-900). The use of geographic information systems (GIS) is becoming...
The Use of Primary Sources in Plantation Archaeology: the Case Study of Hacienda La Esperanza. (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Primary Sources and the Design of Research Projects" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Research at Hacienda La Esperanza, a nineteenth century sugar plantation in the municipality of Manatí, Puerto Rico, was conducted to study the material culture of its enslaved population and document their unwritten experiences. The use of primary sources proved indispensable during the early research design stages of the project....