Orange Walk (State / Territory) (Geographic Keyword)
151-175 (855 Records)
The northern Belize prehistoric Maya site of Colha was first archaeologically documented by the Corozal Project in the early 1970s. The most significant archaeological research at the site was conducted as The Colha Project (1979-1983), with subsequent projects of specialized interests (1994-2017). Though known primarily for its lithic dimension as a major production and distribution center of stone tools, many other aspects of Maya society have been identified from the numerous seasons of...
Collective Biographies: Ancient Maya Objects in Collections, Past and Present (2018)
This paper explores the collecting, repositioning, and separating of ancient Maya objects, both in the ancient past and the twentieth century. Archaeological context provides evidence of ancient Maya aggregation of disparate objects in tombs, caches, or sculptural tableaux as well as evidence of repositioning or separating things. These changes are fundamental aspects of objects’ life histories. Yet in the twentieth century, ancient monuments and object sets also have been divided -- and new...
Colonial and Caste War Continuities in the Beneficios Altos Province of Yucatán (2019)
This is an abstract from the "The Archaeologies of Contact, Colony, and Resistance" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Caste War of Yucatán has been referred to as "the most successful Indian revolt in New World history." Scholars have attributed the origins of this important conflict to a variety of causes, including circumstances that arose as Mexico established its independence from Spain; late colonial period political reforms; policies in...
The Colonial Peten: An Ethnohistory of Indigenous Sovereignty and a Failed Spanish Colonial Project (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Disentanglement: Reimagining Early Colonial Trajectories in the Americas" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Colonialism—to speak generally—can be characterized as endeavors that aim not just to entangle, but to wholly incorporate, disparate regions under the control of a foreign body. Indigenous disentanglement from these exploitative projects has taken many forms—daily negotiations, subtle refusals, outright rebellions....
Commemorating the Preclassic Monumental Construction at Tayasal, Guatemala (2018)
Research into the Main Group at Tayasal, Guatemala, revealed that the Postclassic inhabitants re-occupied areas and buildings that were constructed during the Preclassic period. Most of those buildings in the Main Group stand on a massive elevated platform, which was also constructed during the Preclassic period. The Preclassic period was the period during which the construction of monumental architecture such as E-groups and Triadic Group occurred at numerous sites including Tayasal. It was...
Communing with the Gods: The Paleoethnobotany of Fire Rituals (2018)
The importance of fire in Maya rituals is well-known, both archaeologically and ethnographically. Fire, which is symbolic of the life cycle in Maya ideology, has been used as a means of communicating with the supernatural world in order to manage specific aspects of everyday life, such as the success of the agricultural season. In the archaeological record, we find evidence for ancient fires as features consisting mostly of burnt plant remains, some of which resemble modern Maya fire altars both...
Community and Collaboration 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. With a five millennia history spanning forager-horticulturalist, precolumbian Maya, historic, and contemporary periods, Aventura is a community with a long history. The Aventura Archaeology Project addresses community at many levels, in its study of the past and in its collaboration with local cultural heritage...
Community Archaeology and (Post)Colonial Identities in Northernmost Belize (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This paper investigates the "who/what" that constitutes "the local community" in engaged community archaeologies. It will do so by discussing community events organized by the Aventura Archaeology Project, as well as preliminary ethnographic and oral historical work I have conducted in the San Joaquin Village and Corozal Town areas of northernmost Belize. This...
Community Archaeology and the Production of Space at Punta Laguna, Yucatan, Mexico (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Archaeologists have considered the relationships between the production of space and the production of social inequality in past societies. Those practicing community and other forms of engaged archaeology have also examined the relationships between the production of space and inequality in the present, including at archaeological sites developed for tourism....
Community Building and Engagement through Maya Archaeology: Challenges, Successes, and Future Goals for the Belize Valley Archaeological Reconnaissance (BVAR) Project (2021)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Community building through education and public outreach has been a central component of the Belize Valley Archaeological Reconnaissance (BVAR) Project since its inception over 30 years ago. One of our primary goals is to actively engage with local communities and students in archaeological heritage management in western Belize since they are the most impacted...
Community Engagement in Archaeology through Photogrammetry (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Photogrammetry is a rapidly-evolving technology that is applicable to a wide array of archaeological contexts and reconstructions. Researchers affiliated with the Proyecto Arqueológico Waka’ (PAW) at the site of El Perú-Waka’, Petén, Guatemala, initiated a program of photogrammetric recording of stelae during the 2018 season. In this process, a series of...
Community Formation through Movement: Focal Nodes and Community Landscapes of the Mopan River Valley, Belize (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Manifesting Movement Materially: Broadening the Mesoamerican View" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Movement is often implicitly assumed when exploring the ancient makeup of communities. We conceptualize movement at different scales of interaction – at the hyperlocal through households, as well as between and across communities, polities, and landscapes. Here, I will explore how movement to/from focal nodes on a...
A Comparative Bioarchaeology of Health and Status in Pre-Classical K’axob and Cuello (2018)
This paper explores whether there is a statistical difference in rates of non-specific infection between two Maya pre-classic villages, K’axob and Cuello, and whether these findings can be correlated to social status within and between the two villages. Using representative skeletal samples from these populations, an osteological analysis is performed to determine the presence of non-specific infection markers in the form of periosteal reactions. Any signs of reaction are scored by level of...
Comparative Stable Isotopic Analyses between Dental Enamel and Bone Collagen among Central American Archaeological Samples Spanning 8,000 Years (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Advances in Interdisciplinary Isotopic Research" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Carbon, Nitrogen and Oxygen stable isotope analyses are popular tools within the field of archaeology. Applications for stable isotope analyses of human and faunal bone collagen and dental enamel include environmental reconstructions, modeling subsistence patterns, and investigating human-animal relationships, as well as potential to...
Comparing Demographic Shifts versus Permanence across the Maya Lowlands: A Multiproxy Approach to the Centuries Surrounding the “Maya Collapse” (2023)
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. he so-called Maya collapse has been seen as an entelechy of the depopulation and emigration of the great Maya cities of the lowlands during the ninth and tenth centuries AD. However, proper paleodemographic and archaeodemographic works that support this...
A Comparison of Lithic Caches from Ucanal and Xunantunich: Is It Possible to Identify Eccentric Traditions as Communities of Practice at the Regional Level? (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Ceremonial Lithics of Mesoamerica: New Understandings of Technology, Distribution, and Symbolism of Eccentrics and Ritual Caches in the Maya World and Beyond" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Two recently discovered ritual deposits from the eastern Maya Lowlands seem to reveal similarities in the kinds of eccentrics used in Late Classic Maya caches from different political centers. Upon closer examination, however, they...
Connecting Ceremonial Groups across the Terminal Classic and Postclassic Constructed Landscapes in the Mayapán Region (2021)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. I present an analysis of the landscape connecting shifting ceremonial groups and settlement distributed across the Terminal Classic and Postclassic landscapes in the Mayapán region. Mayapán is the largest Postclassic urban center in the Maya Lowlands and has been the focus of previous research in the area. Traditional and lidar surveys at Mayapán reveal a...
Connecting Communities: Materiality of Everyday Life along the Sacbe (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This poster offers an introduction to the Proyecto Sacbe Yaxuna-Coba, which is concerned with understanding how social and material life changed for people living along the longest causeway in the ancient Maya world. Up until now, much of the research on Maya sacbeob has focused on the morphology and spatial layout of these monumental features. This project,...
The Constructed Subterranean Confronts Archaeology: Reviewing a Half Century of Ambivalence (2021)
This is an abstract from the "The Subterranean in Mesoamerican Indigenous Culture and Beyond" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Archaeology has had an ambivalent relationship with the constructed subterranean dating back more than a half century. In the late 1960s, Good and Obermeyer investigated the cave at Oxtotipac, recognized it as man-made, and documented the fact that the material removed in the creation of the cave was used to construct a...
Constructing Hierarchy through Entitlement: Inequality in Lithic Resource Access among the Ancient Maya of Blue Creek, Belize. (2004)
ABSTRACT Constructing Hierarchy through Entitlement: Inequality in Lithic Resource Access among the Ancient Maya of Blue Creek, Belize. (December 2004) Jason Wallace Barrett, B.A., Rhode Island College; M.A., Texas A&M University Chair of Advisory Committee: Dr. Harry J. Shafer This dissertation tests the theory that lithic raw materials were a strategic resource among the ancient Maya of Blue Creek, Belize that markedly influenced the development of socio-economic hierarchies...
The Construction and Activation of Place at the Maya Port of Isla Cerritos (2021)
This is an abstract from the "Place-Making in Indigenous Mesoamerican Communities Past and Present" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Mesoamerican ports were not only settings for exchange but also communities with residential populations and dynamic shared identities that contributed to both coastal and inland cultural landscapes. Ancient ports commonly incorporated a variety of sacred architecture and symbolism to accommodate visitors from distant...
The Construction of Interpolity Sociopolitical Identity Through Architecture at the Ancient Maya Site of Blue Creek, Belize (2008)
This dissertation examines the design variation present in the ritual and domestic architecture of the Maya site of Blue Creek, Belize, in an attempt to understand how differences in architectural style may have been linked to the construction of local, intra-community sociopolitical identities within this ancient Maya community. The study employs a practice-based, technological style theoretical perspective which views all material culture style, including that of architecture and the built...
The Contested Mosaic: Landscape and Livelihood in the Lacandon Rainforest (2021)
This is an abstract from the "Landscapes: Archaeological, Historic, and Ethnographic Perspectives from the New World / Paisajes: Perspectivas arqueológicas, históricas y etnográficas desde el Nuevo Mundo" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In this paper I explore the complex regional agroecological history of interaction of global and local social and biophysical forces that shape the landscape of an important tropical forest region of Mexico. This...
Contextos y Narraciones del Clásico: Las Figurillas de Tabasco, México (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Mesoamerican Figurines in Context. New Insights on Tridimensional Representations from Archaeology" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. En territorio tabasqueño se han identificado tres tradiciones de figurillas desarrolladas a lo largo del período prehispánico. A partir de las colecciones de sitios excavados en las llanuras aluviales tales como Jonuta o Comalcalco y sus alrededores, la evidencia sugiere que durante el...
Contextualizing Xunantunich in the Late Classic Belize Valley through Investigations of Structure A9 (2018)
Xunantunich, an ancient Maya site in the Belize Valley, rose rapidly from a minor political center to a powerful regional polity during the Late Classic period (AD 600-900). Previous researchers suggested that this rapid rise was influenced by Xunantunich’s relationship with the more powerful polity of Naranjo in the nearby Petén Province of Guatemala. Their argument was based in part on a Late Classic period building program at Xunantunich resulting in a site layout that resembles that of sites...