Republic of Guatemala (Country) (Geographic Keyword)

DOCUMENT Citation Only Guy Duke. Sarah Rowe. Sara Juengst.

This is an abstract from the "Finding Community in the Past and Present through the 2022 PARCC Field School at Buen Suceso, Ecuador" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In many ways, Buen Suceso is a unique archaeological site. Not only is it a multicomponent site, with evidence for occupation throughout almost the entirety of the ~2,200-year Valdivia sequence and specialized use by the much later Manteño culture, but it exhibits an occupational...

DOCUMENT Citation Only A. L. van Gijn. Valerio Gentile.

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 Kerry Sagebiel. Helen Haines.

Maya archaeologists commonly discover "smash-and-trash" deposits, collections consisting of large quantities of broken sherds, lithics, faunal materials, and other remains, in varying contexts on Maya sites. Interpretations of these deposits vary from simple trash or midden deposits, to remains of feasting, to termination and other rituals. These interpretations are often strongly influenced by the theoretical and analytical approaches taken by the excavators. At Ka’Kabish, Belize, a series of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kyle Riordan. Julie Field.

This is an abstract from the "Geospatial Studies in the Archaeology of Oceania" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The concept of landscapes of movement establishes the theoretical basis for understanding meaning behind the creation and use of roads, trails, and pathways. This meaning can be categorized by "prioritized relationships" (i.e., social, political, religious, economic) which ultimately stimulate the existence of landscapes of movement. This...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Steve Kosiba. Bruce Mannheim.

This is an abstract from the "Beyond the Round House: Spatial Logic and Settlement Organization across the Late Andean Highlands" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Scholars of the Andes often assume that the social units they study—residence, community, and region—are monotonically scaled, nested from smaller to larger. This suggests universal correspondences between the analytical and observational objects through which social units are known; hence...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Claudia Leon Romero.

Cacao had a transcendental role in the life of prehistoric people of Mesoamerica, becoming part of their economic, ideological and social system. Due to the morphological and environmental characteristics necessary for the growth of cacao tree, the main producers were concentrated in places like southern Mexico and Central America. However, written sources of the first colonizers in Yucatan disclose that the indigenous nobility of that time had at their disposal cacao orchards in different...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Rissa Trachman.

Investigations at the ancient Maya city of Dos Hombres have been guided by an interest in social, political and economic organization, based on architecture and material culture remains. Excavations in the civic ceremonial center of Dos Hombres have been focused in the northern plaza, a very public space that likely was a place of commerce, public ritual and sacred space, thereby the prime backdrop for publicly legitimizing authority. Newly excavated data, especially architectural exposures as...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Nathan Nakatsuka. Vera Tiesler. Jakob Sedig. David Reich.

This is an abstract from the "Increasing the Accessibility of Ancient DNA within Archaeology" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The colonial period in Mexico was an unprecedented time when previously disparate populations began living together under Hispanic leadership and Catholic faith, often unwillingly. Immediately after the conquest, Spanish colonists established urban strongholds, often bringing African slaves and servants with them. In these...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Juan Melendez.

To date, nine greenstone mosaic masks (GMM), recovered in eight royal and one elite interment, have been found in association with other grave goods belonging to ancient Maya individuals from Tikal, El Zotz, and El Perú-Waka’. Nearly 1,000 tesserae compose these nine GMM, however to date it is unknown what the mosaic masks originally looked like as these were found unassembled. Nonetheless, prior to carrying out preliminary reintegration and restoration projects, a manufacturing study was deemed...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Theresa Heindel.

Recent studies on ancient Maya agriculture address differences in farming methods used within the Maya area, and the implications these differences have for larger issues within Maya studies. Excavations conducted during the Actuncan Archaeological Project 2015/2016 field seasons examined GPR anomalies in the Northern Neighborhood region of the Actuncan, Belize site; the proposed poster will discuss evidence of terracing obtained from these excavations, including how these probable terraces were...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Erin Thornton. Richard Hansen. Edgar Suyuc.

El Mirador (Peten, Guatemala) is among the largest Preclassic settlements in the Maya lowlands. The site has attracted attention due to its size and antiquity, but also for its location within a region containing few permanent or perennial water sources. This study presents a preliminary analysis of the site’s faunal remains to assess diet, ritual, habitat use and exchange. Comparison of the El Mirador data with other Preclassic faunal assemblages allows us to assess the degree to which animal...

DOCUMENT Citation Only E. Cory Sills. Heather McKillop. Christian Wells.

Underwater excavations at Early Classic Chan b’i (A.D. 300-600) and Late Classic Atz’aam Na (A.D. 600-900) ancient Maya salt works in Paynes Creek National Park, Belize, reveal activity areas associated with a substantial salt industry for distribution to the southern Maya inland inhabitants. At these sites, wooden architecture and salt making artifacts are abundantly preserved in a peat bog composed of red mangrove. We describe the excavation methods at this shallow, submerged underwater site,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Pete Demarte. Scott Macrae. Gyles Iannone.

The Classic Maya, with their towering jungle temples and sprawling cities have been the focus of archaeological studies since the mid-1800s. Although numerous investigations have fostered considerable insights, important questions remain regarding the circumstances in which these settlements originated, interacted, developed, and were ultimately abandoned. The organization of Maya settlements is best conceptualized as a continuum consisting of three basic, but variable types, including:...

DOCUMENT Citation Only E R Littmann.

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 Stephanie Lozano.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Cloud iconography has been present on Mesoamerican material culture since the Formative Period and often appears with iconography that is associated with water rituals and rain entities. This paper will present new perspectives on the relationships between ancient Mesoamerican rain deities through a study of rain cloud iconography. I trace the appearance...

DOCUMENT Citation Only José Luis Punzo. Cesar Valentín Hernández. Lissandra González. Mijaely Castañón.

At the Tarascan Señorío, all the metal work aspects were controlled by the uacúsecha (most important clan) leaders, from their central cities of Pátzcuaro, Ihuatzio and specially Tzintzuntzan by the Pátzcuaro Lake in central Michoacán. In this paper we present the different aspects of the metal work, and the control that the uacúsecha nobles imposed, expressed in the architecture and their most relevant adornments like metal earplugs and lip-plugs, from the mining sites in the Tierra Caliente,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Geoffrey Braswell.

This is an abstract from the "A Session in Memory of William J. Folan: Cities, Settlement, and Climate" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Those of us who were fortunate enough to work with Willie Folan all know that he was generous to a fault. I was invited first to study obsidian artifacts excavated by his team at the great Preclassic to Classic Maya city of Calakmul, and then to continue that work with later projects, including Postclassic...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Rodrigo Liendo.

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. The Proyecto Regional Palenque (PREP) has recorded a total of 653 sites within an area of 650 km2. Regional population ranges from 28,000 to 32,000 inhabitants. Mapping efforts and household excavations undertaken as part of the Proyecto Especial Palenque during the seasons of 1992–1994 identified 1,480...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Melissa Burham.

Recent investigations of minor temple groups at Ceibal, Guatemala shed light on the social and spatial organization of ancient Maya cities. Many researchers suggest that minor temples were important integrative hubs in lowland Maya settlements. Because minor temples were constructed at regular intervals around the urban epicenter of Ceibal, it appears that they were integral to city planning, and likely the centers of localized communities. Although they may have been discrete social units, the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Sonia Archila Montanez. Mónica Berón. Gabriela Musaubach. Martha Mejía. Eliana Lucero.

Empirical evidence of ancient ritual practices is not often found in many archaeological sites. This complex ideological aspect of past human societies has usually been reported in association with the presence of monuments such as sculptures, tombs, funeral mounds, temples and shrines and also with particular artefacts used during ceremonies and rituals such as ceramic, stone or metal vessels, musical instruments and so on. Archaeobotanical evidence could contribute enormously to the study of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Adam Sellen.

While the growth of the Internet market in pre-Columbian antiquities is of great concern to the countries of origin and law enforcement, we should also recognize that the Internet is a crucial tool in the fight to protect cultural materials. In particular, online databases that were once created for purely scholarly purposes, can be effectively used to track stolen, lost or exchanged artefacts. This talk will focus on my own experience, for over a decade now, of managing a database that...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Liz Quinlan.

This is an abstract from the "Sins of Our Ancestors (and of Ourselves): Confronting Archaeological Legacies" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Often mentioned as an afterthought in sentences about her more famous husband, Sally R. Binford has long been a topic of discussion for those interested in 20th century female archaeologists. Her foundational work in the early endeavors of the ‘New Archaeology’ set the stage for an academic revolution,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Bryan Núñez Aparcana. Jorge Rodríguez Morales. Raúl Zambrano Anaya.

One of the characteristics of ritual practices in the Andean Society is the presence of shrines in top of mountains related to local deities. These shrines formed part of ancient cultural landscapes that involved settlements, farmlands, cemeteries, and even complex road systems. Most of these ritual spaces are not regularly present in the archaeological record, yet they are frequently mentioned in etno-historical accounts. This study presents a preliminary analysis of a shrine located in the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Cosimo Posth. Thiseas Lamnidis. Stephan Schiffels. Kurt Rademaker. Johannes Krause.

Present-day Andean human populations harbor a relatively high genetic diversity but a minimal population structure and differentiation among them. Moreover, mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) and Y chromosome studies on pre-contact human remains suggest that both modern and ancient Andean populations derive from a single ancestral origin. However, nuclear ancient DNA (aDNA) data from the Andes in particular and South America in general are still too scarce to fully address questions on genetic continuity...

DOCUMENT Citation Only George Mentore.

In honor of the innovative contribution by Peter Roe to the ethno-archaeological research on Amazonia, my paper will focus on the indigenous knowledge forms which invert our own logics about material objects. Roe’s early willingness to allow indigenous thought to impact our scientific interpretations was well ahead of its time. Today, we on the ethnographic side of Amazonian scholarship, have little difficulty speaking in terms of the "social life of things." Yet, even beyond, the legitimacy...