Orange Walk (State / Territory) (Geographic Keyword)
101-125 (1,092 Records)
This is an abstract from the "New and Emerging Perspectives on the Bajo el Laberinto Region of the Maya Lowlands, Part 1" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Elevated Interior Region of the Maya Lowlands, including the area surrounding the sprawling Bajo el Laberinto, faced acute water availability issues that necessitated the annual capture and storage of rain water to support urbanization. Two large urban areas dominate ancient Maya settlement...
Bench Please: A Comparative Analysis of Bench Features in Mesoamerica (2018)
Archaeologists have argued for numerous functions of the bench features found throughout the Maya world ranging from utilitarian to ritual. During the 2017 field season at the Late Classic site of La Obra, excavations of a centrally-located structure revealed a bench standing approximately 50 centimeters from the structure floor and extending out approximately 150 centimeters from its northern wall. La Obra is a hilltop production site located approximately one kilometer northwest of the central...
Beneath the Surface: Analyzing the Significance of Maya Cave Taphonomy in the Preservation of a Commingled, Fragmentary, Skeletal Assemblage (2024)
This is an abstract from the "Multidisciplinary Approaches to the Subterranean" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Cueva de Sangre is a 3.5-kilometer cave that is a highly complex, multi-cave system, in Dos Pilas, Petén, Guatemala, that includes riverine environments, seasonally inundated passages as well as dry areas. Use of the cave has been dated ceramically from the Late Preclassic to the Terminal Classic (400 BC – AD 800). This study examines the...
Between Government and Grassroots: Archaeologists and Social Justice in International Contexts (2018)
Working at the community level is a crucial component of an engaged, socially just discipline. Advancing archaeology towards greater inclusivity is an increasingly common conversation within the discipline. The majority of literature on this topic focuses on grassroots efforts to include marginalized descendant communities or other stakeholders in research design, implementation, knowledge dissemination and curation. An ever present and often unanalyzed aspect of research (especially abroad),...
Beyond the Birds of Paradise: A Geoarchaeological Investigation of Large Ancient Maya Linear Wetland Features (2024)
This is an abstract from the "The Archaeology of Wetlands" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Growing scholarship since the 1980s has focused on ancient Maya–wetland interactions after raised field agriculture was revealed in northern Belize. From this, mounting evidence indicates extensive reliance on seasonal and perennial wetlands for ancient Maya farming, aquaculture, and water retention across the region. These systems would have served as major...
Beyond the Kaanul: Setting Some Questions and Initial Thoughts on the Urban Layouts of Calakmul and Its Region (2024)
This is an abstract from the "New and Emerging Perspectives on the Bajo el Laberinto Region of the Maya Lowlands, Part 2" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The ancient city of Calakmul was the locus of important human developments throughout a period of no less than fifteen centuries, during which various social groups, ruling houses and urban palimpsests followed one another, and sometimes coexisted, until its definitive abandonment. Nowadays, lidar...
Beyond the Palace Walls: Daily Life and Domestic Activities during the Late Classic in the Maya Lowlands (600-875 CE) (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This presentation centers on the daily life of Maya commoners from the Classic Maya site of Chinikihá in Chiapas, Mexico. The excavations are part of a regional effort to understand rural communities and social complexity. The presentation will offer an intimate view of the materiality of the daily life of non-elite groups from a domestic context, offering a...
Big, Bigger, Biggest: Investigating Aguadas 1–3 at Calakmul, Campeche, Mexico (2024)
This is an abstract from the "New and Emerging Perspectives on the Bajo el Laberinto Region of the Maya Lowlands, Part 1" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Calakmul is known to be one of the largest ancient Maya urban centers in the Elevated Interior Region of the Maya Lowlands. Thus, it is not surprising that in this water-challenged environment, the population of Calakmul invested in some of the region’s grandest reservoirs. While limited...
The Bioarchaeological and Mortuary Patterns at Holtun, Guatemala: an Analysis of Residential and Plaza Burials (2021)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In the Maya area, bioarchaeological and mortuary analysis can help identify patterns of mortuary ritual and social experience of past peoples. However, there is very little bioarchaeological and mortuary evidence for the developing complexity and social experience of the Preclassic period. Major ceremonial centers like Naranjo, Tikal, and Yaxha surround...
The Bioarchaeology of La Corona, Guatemala (2018)
Analysis of human skeletal remains has made significant contributions to the understanding of the history of La Corona and its interaction with the wider Maya world. The skeletal sample has now grown to include nearly thirty individuals, and includes single and multiples burials, non-burial deposits, and individuals from the site center and outlying sites. The study, one of the most comprehensive in northwest Peten, has focused on establishing demographic information and examining osteological...
A Biological Profile of an Individual from Xultún Using Bioarchaeological, Starch, and Isotopic Analyses (2018)
Micro and macroscopic bioarchaeological analyses enable archaeologists to generate biological profiles of past individuals, including characteristics such as diet, sex, age, occupational stress, pathologies, and social status, among others. In this paper, we discuss the significance of a Maya individual by constructing a biological profile from both micro and macroscopic analyses. The individual of interest was excavated during the 2012 field season at Xultún, Guatemala in a patio situated in...
Biosilicate analysis of residue in Maya dedicatory cache vessels from Blue Creek, Belize (2004)
Residues from nine ancient Maya dedicatory vessels were analyzed for biosilicates. In all cases, the analysis was successful in identifying plant and sponge remains that had been placed in the vessels. This analysis sheds light on ancient Maya plant use as well as ritual and religious practices.
Birthing Dynasties and Raising Suns: Royal Women and Preclassic Maya Ritual (2023)
This is an abstract from the "The Role of Women in Mesoamerican Ritual" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Underneath a Classic Maya palace at Ucanha, builders buried a Terminal Preclassic platform outfitted with monumental portraits of rain gods. Analogous architecture appears throughout the Maya lowlands from the Middle Preclassic to Early Classic periods, and several scholars suggest their role in expediting the apotheosis of royal figures into...
Bits and Pieces: A Contextual Analysis of Portable Material Culture from the Medicinal Trail Community, Belize (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This poster details the findings of a contextual analysis of portable material culture, commonly referred to as “small finds” artifacts, collected from 2004 to 2019 at the hinterland Maya community of Medicinal Trail, located in northwestern Belize. The collection from Medicinal Trail comes from a variety of contexts, such as middens, burials, caches, and...
Blue Creek
Background—The Maya City of Blue Creek Blue Creek is an ancient Maya city (900 BC–AD 1000) in northwestern Belize, just south of the southern Mexican border. Annual investigations of the site have been under way since 1990. Except for four years, these were, and continue to be, directed by Thomas Guderjan. Consequently, we have access to all records and archives of the project and have an excellent relationship with the government of Belize. The ancient city of Blue Creek covers more than 100...
Blue Creek 2009 Report (2009)
This report details the efforts of the 18th consecutive field season of the Blue Creek Archaeological Project. In 2009, we conducted major fieldwork at the Maya centers of Blue Creek, Nojol Nah, and Grey Fox in northwestern Belize. We also conducted continuing investigations of ancient Maya agriculture and related activity at Nojol Nah, Blue Creek and Lamanai.
Blue Creek Central Precinct
Multi-format digital data set that focuses on the central precinct of the Blue Creek site, which is composed of Plaza A and B complexes. These data consist of PDF documents of published and unpublished papers, reports, and manuscripts, Microsoft Excel databases of artifact collections, images of architectural features, artifacts and surrounding landscapes, scanned topographic and survey maps produced by the Blue Creek project, and aerial images. The information contained in BCAP reports and...
Blue Creek Central Precinct Images (2011)
Blue Creek Central Precinct Images consisting of aerials, site core plan map, and architectural reconstruction illustrations
Blue Creek Central Precinct Map (2011)
Map of the Central Precinct at the Blue Creek Site, Belize
Blue Creek Central Precinct Temporal Maps (2011)
Blue Creek Central Precinct Temporal Maps - Preclassic, Early Classic, and Late Classic
Blue Creek Regional Ecology Project: 2001, 2002, and 2003 Research Summaries (2003)
Over the past two seasons, the Blue Creek Regional Political Ecology Project, formerly the Blue Creek Archaeology Project (under the direction of Dr. Tom Guderjan) has shifted its research objectives away from earlier lines of inquiry to encompass both a broader scope of analysis and also embrace alternative though complementary questions regarding ancient Maya society. Important among the objectives that currently comprise our work in the Blue Creek area of northwestern Belize are: (1) better...
Bonampak Will Never Be Finished: Some Remarks in Honor of Steve Houston (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. One might think that the 2013 publication of Miller and Brittenham on Bonampak would have closed discussion of these paintings for a few years. But the complexity and richness of the subject continues to yield both details and to add to the big picture of the three-room program of late 8th...
The Bonds that Bind Us: The Analysis of Terminus Groups in the Belize River Valley (2018)
Previous archaeological investigations of terminus groups in the Maya Lowlands concluded that these architectural complexes served either cosmological, ritual, or economic purposes. In an effort to test these models, we investigated causeway terminus groups at Cahal Pech and Baking Pot. Subsequent comparisons of the Cahal Pech and Baking Pot data with that from other sites in the Belize Valley, Caracol and Tikal, strongly suggest that while there was some regional diversity in the significance...
Bones and Ritual among the Ancient Maya of Calakmul and Champotón, Campeche: Celebrating the Legacy of Dr. William Folan (1931–2022) (2023)
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. The Mayanist community recalls a close colleague and tireless promoter of Maya archaeology, Dr. Folan. The Bioarchaeology Laboratory of the Autonomous University of Yucatan remembers him with great affection and a deep appreciation of a remarkable person, scholar, and student mentor. He ably led the archaeological...
Boundaries of the Past as Viewed through the Fences of Today: Shifting Methods of Archaeological Inquiry in the Southern Maya Lowlands (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Making and Breaking Boundaries in the Maya Lowlands: Alliance and Conflict across the Guatemala–Belize Border" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. An exploration of how modern borders of different kinds have influenced, and sometimes impeded, our understanding of ancient borders and territories. The Guatemala-Belize border has ramifications in terms of the ways in which scholars interact and how the archaeology is...