Republic of Guatemala (Country) (Geographic Keyword)
2,376-2,400 (2,898 Records)
This is an abstract from the "Prehispanic Maya Marketplace Investigations in the Three Rivers Region of Belize: First Results" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Marketplaces are a vital component for the economic interdependence of ancient Maya kingdoms. In our view, marketplaces were also definitional components of Maya central places of power as much as the presence of ostentatious presentations of architecture were. The Blue Creek Archaeological...
Searching for the lost Marines of Guadalcanal (2017)
In early 2016, Garcia & Associates conducted forensic archaeological investigations for the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency (DPAA) on Guadalcanal, Solomon Islands. DPAA (formerly JPAC) is the Department of Defense agency tasked with providing the fullest possible accounting for missing American service personnel from past wars. During World War II, the Battle for Guadalcanal lasted from 7 August 1942 to 9 February 1943 and included intense ground fighting to secure the airstrip known as...
Seasonal Rhythms and Quotidian Duties: Insights into the Impact of Environment on Structuring Daily Life Using El Eden Wetland, Quintana Roo, Mexico as a Case Study (2017)
All cultural groups must respond to and adapt within their surrounding environment, as was the case for the ancient Maya. The Maya area consists of various distinct ecological zones, from volcanic highlands through swampy bajos and across a dry karstic plain punctuated by wetlands, each providing distinct adaptation opportunities. Seasonal fluctuations provide further texture to the flow of each landscape. This paper explores and attempts to characterize the temporality of the ancient Maya...
Second-hand? Paint chemistry and the age, authenticity and conservation/management of hand stencils from the Sunshine Coast, Qld, Australia. (2017)
The materials used to created rock art preserve information regarding how, and in some instances when, it was made. Here we outline the field based, geochemical study of three white hand stencils on the Sunshine Coast of Queensland, Australia. Portable X-Ray Fluorescence analysis determined that the stencils were made using a titanium dioxide pigment, almost certainly commercially produced white paint. Significantly, this helped us assign a chronology as the rock art must have been produced...
The Secret Life of Cacao in the Ecuadorian Upper Amazon (2017)
Genetic studies suggest that cacao (Theobroma cacao L.) domestication occurred in the Upper Amazon of southeastern Ecuador and northeastern Peru and was then transported by humans northwards to Central America and Mexico. As such, we should expect to find the earliest archaeological evidence of cacao use in the tropical forests of South America. This paper presents starch granule evidence for the early use of cacao from the Upper Amazon site of Santa Ana-La Florida during the Ecuadorian Early...
Sedentism and plant domestication: North west Amazonia (2017)
Two different scenarios have been proposed to explain sedentarization and the transition from foraging to sedentary societies. In the first a key resource or a combination of resources allows the stability of the population giving rise, over time, to sedentarization; in the second, a population concentration caused by an external change such as drastic climatic fluctuation or regional population increase with its concomitant social problems force the adoption of a sedentary way of life. In these...
Sedimentary and Taphonomic Contexts of Quaternary Vertebrate Fossils in the Northern Rocky Mountains (2018)
Quaternary vertebrate assemblages from the northern Rocky Mountains can be used to understand the biogeographic consequences of climate change. Some localities contain strata from before the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM), while others consist mostly of Late Glacial and Holocene deposits. The Merrell Local Fauna is from a stratigraphic sequence in Centennial Valley. Radiocarbon dates range from >52,000 to 19,000 BP and fossils are in lacustrine deposits, fluvial sediments, and a debris flow. The...
Seeds for the gods: chía (Salvia hispanica) in Teotihuacan ritual offerings (2017)
Over the last decades, as a result of archaeological research inside of the Sun and the Moon pyramids in Teotihuacan, significant concentrations of chía (Salvia hispanica) seeds have been recovered in association with ritual contexts. This is particularly true in Offering 2, pit 59 of the Sun Pyramid and in Burial 6 of the Moon Pyramid. The archaeological artifacts were similar in both contexts, for example Tlaloc vessels, projectile points, pyrite disks and faunal remains, among others. In this...
seibalSim: toward modeling communities (not populations) of Early Formative Mesoamerica (2021)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In "The Forms of Capital," Pierre Bourdieu writes: “[t]he social world is accumulated history, and if it is not to be reduced to a discontinuous series of instantaneous mechanical equilibria between agents who are treated as interchangeable particles, one must reintroduce into it the notion of capital and with it, accumulation and all its effects.” His attempt...
Selection-Driven Range Expansion Explains Lapita Colonisation of Remote Oceania (2017)
Archaeological explanations of colonization often focus on presumed human motivations. What drives humans when faced with the potentially risky and rewarding colonization of unoccupied island regions: curiosity, wanderlust, opportunity, escape? At best, human motivation is only a partial explanation for colonization and one that is difficult to evaluate with archaeological data. In contrast, archaeologically visible, population-scale patterns of human colonization are explicable by the natural...
Semetabaj and Its Role in Commercial and Ideological Interaction in the Guatemalan Highlands and Beyond (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Semetabaj site in the Guatemalan Highlands is one of the earliest sites in the region and the largest. Research carried out by E. Shook in 1978 revealed an interesting pattern of interaction with the northern Highlands and the south coast of Guatemala. The new research offers a review of the data and new proposals, which include its role as an economic...
The Seraglio of the Great Turk: Ethnosexual and Engendered Violences in the Mariana Islands (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. After the arrival of a group of Hispanic Jesuits to the Mariana Islands in 1668, an ethnosexual conflict emerged between the colonists and the local communities (the Chamorros). After that conflict, Chamorro communities were relocated in new villages, the so-called reducciones, under the close surveillance of the Spanish colonial powers. This reduction brought...
A Seriation of Local Ceramics from Cosmapa Oriental, Department of Chinandega, Nicaragua (2017)
Many local ceramic wares in northwestern Nicaragua are, as of yet, undescribed. Excavations at the site of Cosmapa Oriental in the municipality of Chichigalpa, Department of Chinandega, Nicaragua were conducted by Dr. Clifford Brown of Florida Atlantic University in 2013. Analysis of the ceramic sample in 2015 revealed two occupational periods at the site: a Late Preclassic occupation related to cultures in El Salvador; and a Classic to Early Postclassic occupation, which include Las Vegas and...
Setting the Agenda for the Next Phase in Obsidian Studies in Aotearoa (New Zealand) (2019)
This is an abstract from the "2019 Fryxell Award Symposium: Papers in Honor of M. Steven Shackley" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Studies of obsidian artifacts from sites across Aotearoa (New Zealand) in the 1960s-80s, were critical to identifying a major decrease in mobility, just prior to the onset of endemic warfare, marked by the construction of thousands of fortifications by the ancestors of Māori. Unfortunately, initial enthusiasm was...
Setting the Axis of the World: Investigations of World Tree Raising Ceremonies Throughout the Chronology of Mesoamerica. (2024)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The ideological concept of the World Tree can be found in ancient and living cultures throughout the world. Many cultures located in Mexico and Mesoamerica have incorporated this tradition in their ancient indigenous art, ceremonies, and recorded oral histories. The ideology of a culture may evolve or transform due to internal and external factors over...
Setting the Context of Equity and Harassment Issues: They Are NOT Only Women’s Issues (2021)
This is an abstract from the "Presidential Session: What Is at Stake? The Impacts of Inequity and Harassment on the Practice of Archaeology" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Social sciences within the United States, like US society in general, are facing serious ramifications regarding issues related to equality and harassment. Gender equity, pay equity, and funding equity are all part of the problems being faced by professionals employed in...
Settlement and Mobility in Early Colonial Tabasco, Mexico (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. One of the most pervasive changes in Mesoamerican early colonial period was the new form of urban and town configuration and their relations with the surrounding landscape. Native settlement abandonment, forced congregations, and changes in communication and trade routes profoundly...
Settlement and Political Ecology in the Lower Lacantun River Landscape (2024)
This is an abstract from the "Recent Archaeological Investigations in Chiapas, Mexico" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Over three field seasons, the Lower Lacantun Archaeological Project has examined the political organization and settlement of the region surrounding the confluence of the Lacantun and Usumacinta Rivers in Chiapas, Mexico. This riverine landscape is unique in the Western Lowlands, presenting risks and opportunities related to...
Settlement Archaeology at Quiriguá, Guatemala
This monograph reports the results of the Quiriguá Project Site Periphery Program, five seasons (1975-1979) of archaeological survey and excavation in the 96 square kilometers immediately adjoining the classic Maya site of Quiriguá. Ashmore identifies and helps us understand where and how the people of Quiriguá lived. She presents detailed material evidence in two data catalogues, for the floodplain settlement adjoining Quiriguá and for sites in the wider periphery. The work situates Quiriguá...
Settlement Archaeology at Quiriguá, Guatemala (2007)
This monograph reports the results of the Quiriguá Project Site Periphery Program, five seasons (1975-1979) of archaeological survey and excavation in the 96 square kilometers immediately adjoining the classic Maya site of Quiriguá. Ashmore identifies and helps us understand where and how the people of Quiriguá lived. She presents detailed material evidence in two data catalogues, for the floodplain settlement adjoining Quiriguá and for sites in the wider periphery. The work situates Quiriguá...
Settlement Beyond the Alluvial Plains: Recent Findings from the 2016 Río Verde Settlement Project (RVSP), Coastal Oaxaca, Mexico (2017)
From January-June of 2016, an interdisciplinary dissertation study was conducted in the lower Río Verde Valley, Oaxaca, Mexico which was designed to investigate how prehispanic settlement patterning was affected by environmental productivity. The Río Verde Settlement Project (RVSP) included a continuation of the regional full-coverage survey as well as a systematic sedimentological sampling program to examine regional variation in soil fertility. This paper focuses on the initial results of the...
Settlement Development and Social Landscapes at the Classic Period Maya center Uxbenká (2017)
Using a Human Behavioral Ecology (HBE) framework, the social and environmental factors that influenced community development have been modeled at Uxbenká, a Classic period Maya center located in the southern foothills of the Maya Mountains. This study focuses on settlement decision making dynamics using a chronological assessment of the expansion of settlements based on radiocarbon dating and ceramic typologies in conjunction with statistical analyses to test which factors influenced patch...
Settlement Ecology in the Tula Region of Mesoamerica: A Local Landscape Perspective (2017)
Based on seminal contributions by Suzy and Paul Fish associated with full-coverage surveys and agave cultivation, this paper explores changes in regional settlement patterns in relation to land-surface morphology in the Tula region in Mesoamerica during the Classic to Postclassic periods (200 CE–1500 CE). Drawing on our field surveys, independent settlement data from the Tula Region, and landform segmentation and classification in Geographic Information Systems (GIS), this paper illustrates that...
Settlement Fission in the Western Guatemala Highlands (2019)
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. This paper examines dynamic changes in Maya settlement patterns through a comparison of expansion and contraction of settlement patterns during the pre-Columbian, historic, and contemporary periods. In particular, it looks at when and why settlements are formed, within what is generally considered to be a single...
Settlement Locations and Soil Fertility in the Volcán Barú Region of Panama (2018)
Analyses of settlement locations (such as hamlets and farmsteads) within the Volcán Barú region of Panama and their associated periods of occupation suggest that during certain times, such as the Chiriquí Period, soil fertility was an important factor in determining the location. However, during other periods, it does not seem to have been significant. There also is a centralization of the population during the late formative, or Late Bugaga Phase, which correlates with previous findings of...