Republic of Guatemala (Country) (Geographic Keyword)
476-500 (2,898 Records)
Located at the headwaters of the Usumacinta and the confluence of the Salinas and Pasión Rivers, Altar de Sacrificios is uniquely positioned with strategic access to points far beyond its sandy shores. Despite the geopolitical importance of this site, Altar has not featured prominently in recent narratives about the political history of Classic Maya society. After more than fifty years, a new phase of archaeological investigations seeks to bring Altar out of the shadows and reevaluate this...
Ceramics and Political Dynamics of the Manteño Culture on the Coast of Manabí, Ecuador (2024)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. An association between the intricacies of sociopolitical complexity and the diversity in pottery production has been discerned within pre-Columbian societies. To illuminate the facets of the Manteño sociopolitical framework, this study undertakes a comparative analysis of pottery assemblages across Manteño Julcuy, Cabo Pasado, Nuevo Manta, Puerto Cabuyal,...
Ceramics and Polity at Motul de San José and its Periphery (2017)
Motul de San Jose entered its Golden Age during the Late Classic. It was located at a critical crossroads in the Central Peten Lakes region, sitting between the east-west San Pedro Martir River that connected it to the Western Peten kingdoms all the way to Yaxchilan, and a north-south route that tied it with Tikal in the north and Dos Pilas and the other Petexbatun centers in the south. The political alliances between Motul and these kingdoms were materialized through the gifting of Ik’ Style...
Ceramics and Society within the Late Classic Motul de San José Polity: A Multidisciplinary Perspective (2017)
Over the past 15 years, Late Classic ceramics from Motul de San José and surrounding sites in the Central Petén Lakes area have been subjected to a variety of technical analyses. Modal and petrographic analyses of ceramics from sites throughout the Motul area have been used to explore intra-polity patterns of production and exchange for both elite and mundane vessels. At the same time, Instrumental Neutron Activation Analysis (INAA) has been conducted on sherds from Motul to define production...
Ceramics from Q’umarkaj: Heritage Collection and Instrumental Neutron Activation Analysis (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. Research on the ceramic collections from Q’umarkaj housed at the Middle American Research Institute, Tulane University, provides an opportunity to apply Instrumental Neutron Activation Analysis to pottery from the site. This research has the potential to delimit areas of ceramic production and trade in the Terminal...
Ceramics Inside and Out: Food, Style, and Identity in Coastal Northeastern Honduras during the Selin Period (AD 300–1000) (2018)
Prehispanic populations of northeastern Honduras were positioned at the border of Mesoamerica and Lower Central America. Previous research on ceramic style suggests local affiliation shifted over time from north to south as part of an adept strategy to navigate the complex political and social landscape of the region through the promotion of an inclusive group identity. This study explores the actual implementation of that strategy by investigating communal feasting contexts where symbolically...
The Ceramics of Cihuatan, El Salvador: Between Two Worlds (2024)
This is an abstract from the "Centralizing Central America: New Evidence, Fresh Perspectives, and Working on New Paradigms" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Cihuatan, El Salvador, appears to have been the southeasternmost Maya city. Dating to the Early Postclassic, it shows clearly the internationalizing tendencies of the time period in its ceramics. Although most are local versions of widespread Early Postclassic Mesoamerican types (or actually...
Ceramics of La Florida-Namaan: a Preliminary Report (2017)
The Guatemalan archaeological site of La Florida, located on the San Pedro River near the Mexican border, was home to the Classic Maya polity known as Namaan. Hieroglyphic inscriptions from La Florida and elsewhere reveal the polity’s widespread political contacts with sites in western Peten, Tabasco, and beyond, as well as a dynastic history spanning three centuries. While known to archaeologists since 1943, the site has only recently been the subject of a multi-year research project. In this...
Ceramics of the Middle Usumacinta Region: Relationships over Time (2024)
This is an abstract from the "Aguada Fénix and the Middle Usumacinta Region: Interregional Interactions and Social Transformations in the Middle Preclassic Period" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Since the beginning of the Middle Usumacinta Archaeological Project, researchers have observed that ceramics from several archaeological sites in the region share similarities with those from the site of Ceibal, located in Petén, Guatemala. After...
Ceremonial and Psychotropic Plants of the Tiwanaku (AD 500-1000): New Evidence for Erythroxylum Coca and Anadenanthera Colubrina from the Omo Temple in Moquegua, Peru. (2017)
The consumption of psychotropic substances is a ceremonial practice widespread worldwide since antiquity, however, archaeological evidence for the role of plants in rituals is scarce and interpretations are mostly derived from ethnographies and iconography. Among other methods of analysis, Paleoethnobotany is one of the most indicated for the finding of micro and macro remains involved in ceremonies. This paper presents the results of a Paleoethnobotanical analysis conducted at the site of Omo...
Cerro Coroban: A Contact Period Lenca Site in Eastern El Salvador (2021)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Coroban site, located on a highly-defensible summit in Morazán, El Salvador, was occupied by the Poton Lenca. The Lenca inhabited most of eastern El Salvador and western and central Honduras during the early sixteenth century Spanish Conquest. They spoke two or more languages with multiple dialects and belonged to distinct, albeit related, cultures. The...
Cerro de Oro and the Year A.D. 600: Changing Settlement Patterns in the Lower Cañete Valley (2017)
The year AD. 600 seems to be an important turning point in the settlement pattern of the lower Cañete valley. While settlements prior to this date tend to be small sized and located close to the river margin, the period after AD 600 shows settlements tend to be placed a few kilometers away from the river margin. The largest of these is Cerro de Oro, a 150ha densely populated settlement located on top of a mound, 13km away from the river margin. The construction and use of Cerro de Oro seems to...
Cerro Jazmin and its changing regional context: building upon regional survey data (2015)
Current work at the Mixtec urban site of Cerro Jazmín stems from a regional survey of the Central Mixteca Alta led by Stephen Kowalewski. As we refine Cerro Jazmin’s chronology and know more about its history of occupation, we are building upon and sometimes correcting initial understandings of the site gained from that regional survey. We are able to contextualize the new information in relation to the entire Nochixtlan Valley and nearby areas thanks to the work and perspective offered by...
Cerámica mayólica en un sitio posclásico del Valle intermontano de Maltrata, Veracruz (2017)
El valle de Maltrata, enclavado en la Sierra Madre Oriental, al centro-oeste del estado de Veracruz, ha tenido una remota y continua ocupación humana, que data desde la época prehispánica hasta nuestros días. Este valle es importante por formar parte de una de las principales rutas de comunicación y comercio entre la Costa del Golfo y el Altiplano Central, con evidencias olmecas, zapotecas, teotihuacanas, cholultecas, aztecas. El asentamiento del periodo Posclásico, ocupó principalmente la parte...
Chacmool or Not Chacmool? Was a Mesoamerican Monumental Stone Sculptural Tradition Adopted in Eastern Costa Rica? (2018)
The unique monumental stone sculptural form known as a "Chacmool" —a reclining human with an offeratory bowl on its abdomen— first appeared in the late Epiclassic period in Mesoamerica, most notably at the Toltec site of Tula in Central Mexico and the Maya site of Chichen Itza in the Yucatan. The form is known across Mesoamerica in archaeological contexts from Michoacán, Mexico to Guatamala and El Salvador. It persisted in Central Mexico to the time of the Aztec empire and European Contact, when...
Chacras in the Clouds: Documenting High-Altitude Agricultural Landscapes in the Tambillo Valley of Chachapoyas, Peru (2017)
Here we present preliminary results from targeted prospection and an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) flight over the relic agricultural landscapes of the Tambillo Valley in northeastern Peru. This work was carried out as part of the first phase of Proyecto Arqueológico Tambillo (PATA), a project investigating the organization of political landscapes in the montane forest region of Chachapoyas. Specifically, PATA aims to determine whether the densely-clustered Late Intermediate Period settlements...
Chajul and the Ixil Region during Prehispanic Times (2023)
This is an abstract from the "The Maya Wall Paintings of Chajul (Guatemala)" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Archaeological, epigraphic, and ethnohistoric data indicate that Chajul was an important precolumbian center of the Ixil Maya. In this paper we present an overview of archaeological investigations conducted in the Ixil region sites. Moreover, we present the results of archaeological excavations conducted at Chajul in the 2021 season. This...
Challenges and opportunities to the lidar mapping of the Tres Zapotes region (2017)
The Olmec polity of Tres Zapotes, which developed on the southern gulf lowlands of the present day state of Veracruz in Mexico, is nestled between the Papaloapan river delta and the Tuxla Mountains. Topographic, geological, ecological and cultural context of the region presents unique challenges and opportunities to archeological prospecting using airborne lidar mapping due to extensive cultivation of sugar cane which can hinder the capability of the lidar to map the ground beneath it; cultural...
Challenges in Assisting Removal Tribes in the Reburial Stage of the NAGPRA Process (2024)
This is an abstract from the "In Search of Solutions: Exploring Pathways to Repatriation for NAGPRA Practitioners (Part IV): NAGPRA in Policy, Protocol, and Practice" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. For over 100 years, large museums, universities, and institutions in the United States have amassed extensive collections of Native American remains and sacred objects from archaeological sites. The outcries of Native American communities who sought to...
The Challenges of Bioarchaeological Research in Peru: Archaeological Field-School Project "Pachacamac Valley" (1991-) (2017)
The archeological study of human burials presents many special challenges. Deterioration begins or accelerates with the exposure to new environmental conditions after recovery. In many cases, the context has to be analyzed in situ by bioanthropologists to record information before the removal of the materials to the laboratory and storage area. Continuous participation of bioarchaeologists is also vital for subsequent analysis of the funerary context many months or years after the end of the...
The Challenges of Co-authoring a Background Chapter for an Open Textbook (2018)
As we move towards increasing open access to archaeological knowledge, textbooks are an integral part of that transition. Unfortunately, open access textbooks are not a well established form of knowledge dissemination amongst archaeologists and currently do not hold as much credibility as traditionally published works such as peer reviewed journals or printed textbooks. In hopes of contributing a chapter to an open access textbook, what are the keys to making such a background chapter...
Challenges of Using NGS to Detect T. cruzi in Human Remains from Pre-Columbian South America (2017)
The trypanosomatid parasites are responsible for devastating human disease worldwide. In the Americas, Trypanosoma cruzi is the causative agent of Chagas Disease (CD), the most epidemic zoonosis in Latin America today. The clinical manifestations of CD, however, have been recognized in archaeological human remains from South America as early as 9,000 years ago. We present preliminary results of a project that applies paleogenomic methods, including targeted enrichment and next-generation...
Challenges on the Road from 9th Avenue to Professional Archaeology (2024)
This is an abstract from the "Hood Archaeologies: Impacts of the School-to-Prison Pipeline on Archaeological Practice and Pedagogy" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. While the recent uptick in the amount and frequency of contemporarily, socially relevant sessions and symposia held at SAA annual meetings can certainly be said to be commendable—truly, a much-needed and beneficial pursuit/meta-analysis—I think that a significant intersectional aspect...
Challenges, Opportunities, and Kuleana: Historic Preservation in Hawaii (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Braiding Knowledge: Opportunities and Challenges for Collaborative Approaches to Archaeological Heritage and Conservation" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Working and consulting with the community is built into Hawaii’s historic preservation laws and statutes. I work for the History and Culture branch of the State Historic Preservation Division, and my main role is mitigating effects to human skeletal remains, iwi...
Chamá Vessels Revisited: Advances and Questions on a Northern Maya Highland Painting Style (2023)
This is an abstract from the "A Celebration and Critical Assessment of "The Maya Scribe and His World" on its Fiftieth Anniversary" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. During the Late Classic period, a distinct painting style in ceramics emerged in the northern Maya highlands of Guatemala, revealing both the mastery of artisans and the worldview of the Maya. The Chamá style, whose vessels were manufactured on the banks of the Chixoy River, shows clear...