Orange Walk (State / Territory) (Geographic Keyword)

DOCUMENT Citation Only Elizabeth Graham. Francesca Glanville-Wallis. Daniel Evans. Julia Stegemann. Simon Turner.

This is an abstract from the "2023 Fryxell Award Symposium: Papers in Honor of Timothy Beach Part I" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The concept of the Critical Zone makes clear that our future depends on the layer between the atmosphere and bedrock: the earth—which tellingly also serves as the name for our planet. Our Earth’s soils record the past and structure the future. Tim and Sheryl have worked in many places in the world, but I know them...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Mark Brenner.

This is an abstract from the "2023 Fryxell Award Symposium: Papers in Honor of Timothy Beach Part II" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Geologists and biologists work with archaeologists to address compelling questions about cultures of the past. Earth scientists who study tree rings, ice cores, speleothems, and lake sediment cores can provide information about the paleoclimatic and paleoenvironmental contexts in which ancient cultures developed,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Keith Eppich.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Ceramic drums appear in Classic Maya art, being carried in the hand or nestled between the legs of Native American musicians. However, they have received scant, if quite detailed, attention in the scholarly literature. This presentation seeks to expand our knowledge of these ancient musician instruments using a number of complete and partial drums recovered...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Hemmamuthé Goudiaby. Jaqueline García Basto.

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. During most of the Classic era (250–900 CE), Maya funerary practices were locally defined. Particularly in the Maya Lowlands, burial programs would shift from one capital to the next, while remaining well-codified on a local level. The modes of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Wendy Bacon.

Although scholars of Classic Maya art have described certain short-statured figures as dwarves and endowed them with mystical significance, the motif has gone undefined. This contextual analysis identifies the anatomical and cultural attributes of the dwarf motif and interprets its meaning within the ancient Maya conception of time and their ideological integration of the natural and supernatural. A spatial analysis of 45 depictions of short-statured individuals on archaeologically provenienced...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jaroslaw Zralka.

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 I" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Terminal Classic period (ca. AD 800–950) brings important sociopolitical and cultural changes to the Maya lowlands. Some of these changes are seen in iconography and architecture, and may reflect the migration of new people as well as the spread of new...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kristin Landau.

In the early 2000s, Mesoamerican archaeologists adopted the "dynamic" model of state organization, positing that political centralization strengthened and diminished over time. Such fluctuations are due primarily to the inherent tension between the institutions of kinship and kingship, and consequent struggle for power in political, economic, and religious spheres. I argue that the intermediate scale of the neighborhood is best suited for analyzing how local- and state-level power structures...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Francisco Estrada-Belli. Sandra Balanzario.

This is an abstract from the "New Light on Dzibanché and on the Rise of the Snake Kingdom’s Hegemony in the Maya Lowlands" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Dzibanché is an archaeological zone in southern Quintana Roo encompassing several large ceremonial complexes, Dzibanché, Tutil, Kinichna and Lamay connected by causeways. According to contemporary texts, it was the early capital of the Kaanul (Snake) kingdom with vast hegemonic influence across...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Benjamin Baaske. Joshua J. Kwoka.

This is an abstract from the "Ancient Maya Landscapes in Northwestern Belize, Part I" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Maya E-groups served as foci of political and ritual practices from the Preclassic through Terminal Classic. In addition to the hallmark western pyramidal and eastern range structures, these groups are often populated by a number of ancillary structures. This paper details recent investigations of one such structure located at the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Cecelia Klein.

This is an abstract from the "Animal Symbolism in Postclassic Mesoamerica: Papers in Honor of Cecelia Klein" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. All sixteen birds carved on the sides of the Platform of the Eagles and Jaguars at Chichen Itza have been traditionally identified as eagles. Because each pair of birds flanks a large relief of a seated jaguar holding a heart, it has been assumed in the past that the platform celebrated military orders like...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Morgan Clark.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. More than mere accessories, the earflares that ancient Maya peoples donned were essential. Nothing indicates this more than the fact that their ornamental use was not limited ears; indeed, elite bodies dripped with them. Stelae from Tikal and Cobá depict rulers with long strings of them around their necks. Some earflares, as with an example from Pomona, are...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Keith M. Prufer. Mark Robinson. Douglas J. Kennett.

Renewed focus on Paleoamerican and archaic peoples across Mesoamerica have broadened our understanding of those time periods.  However, few stratified sites have been documented.  We present new data from two multi-component rockshelters located in the Bladen Nature Reserve in the Maya Mountains of Belize.  We document persistent use of these rockshelters from the late Pleistocene through the Maya collapse and suggest these spaces were used for animal processing, tool reduction, and as...

DOCUMENT Citation Only José Bustamante.

Over the past decade, the La Corona Archeological Project has been investigating the site’s palace complex, focusing primarily on its final construction phases. The focus is common in lowland Maya archaeology because of the relative ease of conducting extensive excavations on terminal phase architecture. However, at La Corona, major tunneling efforts have also explored the earlier architectural phases of the palace. As a result, the project has identified three construction phases that date to...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kelsey Sullivan. Jaime Awe.

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. Though identified at sites throughout Mesoamerica and the Maya Lowlands, eccentric lithics remain poorly understood and understudied. These esoteric artifacts, however, are very important to understanding the ritual expression of...

DOCUMENT Full-Text thomas guderjan.

Intensive agriculture supported large ancient Maya populations. However, there have been few attempts to understand how agriculture was integrated with the political economy of a Maya city and that city’s interaction with other polities. The site of Blue Creek in northern Belize offers the opportunity to begin to assess these relationships. Blue Creek had access to enormous agricultural resources and direct access to the riverine coastal trade system. The combination of these factors enabled...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Max Seidita. Charles Golden.

More than half a century of archaeological and epigraphic research at Piedras Negras has produced one of the best understood epigraphic corpus in the Maya region and provided archaeologists with a plethora of information related to the nature of rulership, courtly life, and the regional political landscape of the Classic Period. Despite this work, questions persist about the economic structure of Piedras Negras households. Here we present the results of recent investigations undertaken at...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Diane Chase. Arlen Chase.

This is an abstract from the "Ancient Maya Embedded Economies" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Maya economic systems were neither static nor simplistic. Research at Caracol, Belize, has shown that the site’s Late Classic inhabitants received the bulk of their goods and services from markets that were embedded within the city. Whereas some researchers have postulated the existence of a dual economic system for the Maya in which quotidian and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Luis Pacheco-Cobos. Amy E. Thompson. Carmen Cortez. Bruce Winterhalder. Keith M. Prufer.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Cooperation is essential to labor networks in low-density agricultural societies. Household or neighborhood heads must learn to identify, select, and monitor raw materials, and estimate harvest times and transport costs. In addition, kin related groups must nurture allegiances to attract and reciprocate for labor to build houses, farm, and for other communal...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Luke Auld-Thomas.

This paper presents research carried out by members of the Proyecto Regional Arqueologico La Corona at the site of El Achiotal since 2009, with emphasis on new findings since 2015. Occupation at the site spans the Late Preclassic and Early Classic periods (roughly the 1st to 5th Centuries AD, with the possibility of some earlier occupation). An inscribed stela discovered in 2015 provides critical insight into the geopolitics of the Early Classic period and establishes greater time-depth for some...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Geiser Martín Medina. José Trinidad Escalante Kuk. Luis Daniel Domínguez Aguilar.

This is an abstract from the "La Práctica Arqueológica en México en Tiempos de Crisis: Escenarios, Problemáticas Claves, Actores, Acciones y Propuestas" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. A partir de 1970, la expansión de Mérida, propició una demanda de proyectos a partir de rescates y salvamentos arqueológicos. Esto permitió demostrar la ocupación prehispánica por medio de monumentos arqueológicos restaurados en espacios destinados a infraestructura...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Lilia Lizama Aranda. Israel Herrera. Mariza Carrillo. Cecilia Medina. Dalia Paz.

This is an abstract from the "La Práctica Arqueológica en México en Tiempos de Crisis: Escenarios, Problemáticas Claves, Actores, Acciones y Propuestas" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. En esta presentación se plantean tres cosas: (1) las problemáticas que se relacionan con la disciplina arqueológica en la península de Yucatán; (2) los grupos y sectores que participan en la búsqueda de su solución; (3) las alternativas y soluciones asi como el...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jocelyne Ponce. Francisco Pérez.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Some significant social and spatial units of organization and analysis include neighborhoods, wards and zones. These intermediate scale units are important to understand Maya social organization and integration, especially in dispersed or sparsely populated regions such as La Corona’s in northwest Petén, Guatemala. This paper assesses criteria regarding the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Laureano Gonzalez. Lilia Lizama.

This is an abstract from the "La Práctica Arqueológica en México en Tiempos de Crisis: Escenarios, Problemáticas Claves, Actores, Acciones y Propuestas" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. En esta presentación realzamos la importancia que tienen los sitios arqueológicos de menor tamaño que yacen en ruinas, que por la falta del recurso y políticas del sector público representan un nicho de inversión para la iniciativa privada. De aquí que, la...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Gabriela Dziki. Martin Menz.

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. This paper examines an elite household, Group 48, at the site of Aventura, Belize. Group 48 is located east and adjacent to Group C, one of the six adjoining plaza groups that form Aventura’s city center. It is also situated at the north end of an intersite causeway and adjacent and south of the proposed salt...

DOCUMENT Citation Only David Hyde.

Social identification is the perception of oneness with, or belongingness to, some human aggregate. The definition of others and self is largely relational and comparative. Archaeologists demonstrate Maya elite identity by comparing them to non-elites in terms of energy expenditure in burial preparation, house and platform construction, access to luxury items, and cranial and dental modifications. Although non-elites include some urban residents and all hinterland residents, this study proposes...