Orange Walk (State / Territory) (Geographic Keyword)
576-600 (1,085 Records)
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. Over the past 30 years archaeologists have made large strides in understanding the function and meaning of ancient Maya ritual caves sites. Ethnographic analyses have made major contributions to interpretive efforts and advanced the field in innumerable ways. Throughout Mesoamerica, there have been many long-term sustained...
Low-Density Maya Urbanism in the Dynamic Fluvial Landscape of the Upper Usumacinta Confluence Zone (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Proximity to aquatic resources, rich soils, and transportation corridors can make riverine landscapes attractive settings for human occupation. Floodplains, however, are dynamic environments subject to flooding, erosion, and channel migration, which can dramatically transform the surrounding landscapes and create challenges for sedentary communities. The...
Magic Soul Containers of the Classic Maya in Archaeological Context (2024)
This is an abstract from the "Magic, Spirits, Shamanism, and Trance" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Classic Maya (CE 250–800) texts include a phrase k’a’ay u sak nikte’, faded his white flower, as a reference to the ending of the sweet breath of rulers and as a metaphor of their death. The breath—allegory of white flower—is evidently an allusion to soul force. Scholars identified on Tikal Stela 5 a reference for a White Flower Soul Container,...
Magnentic Gradiometry Surveys of the Upper and Lower Plazas at La Sufricaya, Guatemala (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Shallow geophysical prospecting methods have been underutilized in the Lowland Mayan regions due, in part, to the densely forested environment. Recent research at La Sufricaya, a Classic Maya site in the Homul region, has produced promising results using magnetic gradiometry to identify features buried below the plaza surface. Despite copious foliage and...
Making an Ancestor at Actuncan: Exploring the Origins, Health, Burial Treatment and Taphonomy of a Late Classic Maya Residential Eastern Structure (2018)
The patio adjacent to the eastern structure of Group 1 at the site of Actuncan served as a burial ground for generations. At least twelve individuals in more than seven graves were buried at one of the oldest residential groups at the site during the Late Classic period (AD 600-900). Eastern structures were used to bury revered ancestors in the Belize River Valley, but nearly all of the Actuncan Group 1 burials were disturbed by later burials. When was it acceptable to disturb an ancestor, and...
Making Change: Currency Use and Social Transformation among the Classic Maya (2018)
At the time of Spanish contact, the Mesoamerican commercial economy was highly elaborated, with an interconnected system of marketplaces, a large variety of goods bought and sold as commodities, and the widespread use of currency in the form of cacao and woven textiles. While much of what we know of this economic system is provided by written records, the presence of large-scale marketplaces and currency can be traced into earlier periods using archaeological evidence. This evidence suggests...
Making Choices in the Maya Hinterlands: An Analysis of Terminal Classic Households at Floodplain North, Western Belize (2021)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Investigations at Floodplain North of the San Lorenzo Survey Area, located in the hinterlands of Xunantunich, examined the political and economic behaviors of a community as the navigated major transformations of the Terminal Classic (780-950 AD) period. While causes of the Maya collapse, the abandonment of large centers, and the changes in elite culture...
Making Place: A View from Northwestern Belize (2019)
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. Ancient Maya places were dynamic assemblages of people, the things that they made and used, and myriad material and immaterial affordances. Unfortunately, a simple enumeration of their components cannot account for the historical valence carried by places. In northwestern Belize, the multi-scalar operation of ritual may help clarify...
Making Sense and Divining Senses: Maya Royal Courts and Communities (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Decipherment, Digs, and Discourse: Honoring Stephen Houston's Contributions to Maya Archaeology" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Throughout his decades of scholarship, Stephen Houston has fundamentally changed our understanding of Maya courtly life and community. He synergistically weaves results from groundbreaking decipherment and archaeological excavations like no other scholar in the field. His many publications...
The Map Results of an Integrated UAV-Based Remote Sensing Platform in the Northern Yucatán (2018)
We report the results of testing a UAV-borne LiDAR and multispectral mapping system for archaeological mapping and modeling at the city of Mayapán, Mexico, located 40km south of modern Mérida. Mayapán was the largest Postclassic political capital and was one of the most densely nucleated of all Maya cities. The initial test is in an area adjacent to the south side of Mayapán’s monumental center. Previous research indicates the existence of a dense and complex system of residential and public...
Mapping Seasonally Inundated Wetlands within the Ancient Maya Center of El Pilar (2021)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The ancient Maya center of El Pilar is a mid-sized settlement nestled on the ecotone dividing the central Peten and Belize river valley. With nearly half of the site consisting of seasonally inundated wetlands, defining the extent and nature of these areas is essential before interpreting El Pilar’s settlement patterns. Remotely sensed lidar and...
Mapping Structural Vulnerability through Nutritional Deficiencies, Infection, and Burial Location at the Colonial Maya site of Tipu (AD 1543–1707) (2024)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Structural vulnerability, an individual or population's risk for adverse health outcomes, is the product of various financial, environmental, biological, and social variables. Factors including disease, food security, exposure to trauma, and social status all contribute to any individual's level of structural vulnerability. While clinicians make modern...
Mapping the Ancient City of Chichen Itza, Yucatan, Mexico (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Regional and Intensive Site Survey: Case Studies from Mesoamerica" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. A systematic mapping program conducted at Chichen Itza, Yucatan, Mexico, revealed a considerable amount of archaeological as well as non-archaeological features distributed over the surface of several areas located in the site’s periphery. This program relied upon the traditional mapping method consisting in clearing the...
Mapping the Maya Hinterlands: A LiDAR-Derived Approach to Identify Small-Scale Features in Northwestern 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 will discuss the processes and methods of relief visualization of LiDAR-derived digital elevation models (DEM’s) and classification of secondary data to identify archaeological remains on the Maya landscape in northwestern Belize. The basis of the research explores various GIS and cartographic techniques to visualize topographical relief. Graphic...
Marco Gonzalez, Ambergris Caye, Belize - Evidence for Salt Production (2018)
Investigations carried out at Marco Gonzalez, a Maya site on Ambergris Caye in Belize, were aimed at examining site formation processes, particularly the dynamics that led to dark surface and subsurface soils (Maya Dark Earths), which have a higher nutrient capacity than would be possible under natural conditions. Sediments of critical interest in soil formation were those deposited in the Late Classic period and associated with intensive processing. Features of the ceramics in the deposits as...
The Marketplace Next Door: Socioeconomics at Ximbal Che’, an Intermediate-Elite Maya Household at Yaxnohcah (Campeche, Mexico) (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This paper presents new data from excavations at Ximbal Che’, an intermediate-elite residential group at the ancient Maya city of Yaxnohcah, located in southern Campeche, Mexico. Households have for decades been recognized as important loci for production, consumption, and social reproduction in ancient Maya societies. In recent years, studies of...
Material Signatures for Idolatry in Sixteenth- to Eighteenth-Century Viceregal Yucatan (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Rampant idolatry and Mayan resistance to the religious conquest, narrated in Early Viceregal Yucatan documents, bespeaks an underlying visual component for continuing traditional religious practices. Franciscan rural chapels, churches, and convents interior mural paintings and architectural facade sculptural details provide the material signatures to...
Materializing the Maya Collapse and Shifting Alliances during the Ninth and Tenth Centuries: Circular Shrines and Other “Mexicanized” Traits in Belize and Beyond (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 I" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Across the Maya Lowlands, circular shrines have been reported that resemble smaller versions of the Caracol building at Chichen Itza. According to Ringle and colleagues (1998), Chichen Itza was one of many centers in a shrine network extending along the...
The MAUP and the Milpa: Analytical Scale and the Problem of Lowland Maya Sustainability (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Provisioning Ancient Maya Cities: Modeling Food Production and Land Use in Tropical Urban Environments" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Researchers assess sustainability using spatial bounds, be they for a single community or the entire planet. But the specific boundaries we use matter greatly, because practices (and populations) that are unsustainable at one scale may be sustainable at another depending on a host of...
Maya Archaeological Heritage: Ethical and Methodological Challenges from the Mexican Practice of the Discipline (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The practice of Mexican and Maya archaeology is yet to be affected by the postcolonial dialogues in the anglophone world that have discussed the terms of engagement between archaeologists and indigenous communities. Mexico is constitutionally conceived of as a multicultural nation, but the collective rights of indigenous communities are obscured under the...
The Maya are a People of Movement: An Isotopic Assessment at Chactemal (Santa Rita Corozal), Northern Belize (2024)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Located in Corozal District in northern Belize, the coastal Maya archaeological site of Santa Rita Corozal, hereafter Chactemal, was continuously occupied from the Middle Preclassic (BCE 800–300) through the Late Postclassic (CE 1250–1532). While many sites in the Southern Lowlands experienced decline and abandonment in the Terminal Classic (CE 800–900),...
The Maya at Spanish Contact in the Lower Belize River Watershed (2021)
This is an abstract from the "Archaeology and the History of Human-Environment Interaction in the Lower Belize River Watershed" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Throughout the colonial period the Mérida-based Spanish administration organized and launched multiple entradas headed south into the Petén. These entradas ranged from relatively small groups of religious missionaries and their envoys, to private armies funded by opportunists seeking a...
Maya Ceramic Technologies for Avoiding the Catastrophic Failure of Cooking Pots (2018)
Maya potters in the towns of Muna, Mama, and Ticul have historically used a calcite crystal to temper cooking pots due to its perceived role in mitigating the negative effects of thermal shock. When a clay cooking pot begins to be used it is exposed to extreme temperature variations which lead it to experience catastrophic failure are a higher rate than many ceramic vessels used for other activities. In this paper we discuss the results of experimental archaeology using calcite crystals in...
The Maya Cranial Photogrammetry Project (2018)
The Maya Cranial Photogrammetry Project aims to create a large digital repository for the purpose of comparative shape analyses to test hypotheses relating to ethnic and political distinctions among ancient Maya groups. The shape of skeletons reflects a combination of genetic and environmental influences on development and thus comparison of skeletal variability provides an important means to reconstruct microevolutionary processes. In particular, because of its complex morphology the skull has...
The Maya Cranial Photogrammetry Project: A Look at Ethics and Best Practices (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Towards a Standardization of Photogrammetric Methods in Archaeology: A Conversation about 'Best Practices' in An Emerging Methodology" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Maya Cranial Photogrammetry Project consists of a database of digitized crania that can be used to investigate questions related to biological and cultural histories. The shape of human remains reflects a complex interplay between the environment and...