Orange Walk (State / Territory) (Geographic Keyword)
276-300 (1,092 Records)
Digital tools, such as photogrammetry and virtual environments have been around for decades. However, it was not until the past decade that the academic community introduced such tools into their work and have taken such discipline seriously. For this reason, the practice, management, teaching and potential of digital archaeology has remained a lagging field. As a response, this paper will provide a guide for traditional archaeologists to assist in the transition to the digital medium. An...
Digital Technologies in the Periphery of the Ancient Maya site of Lamanai, Belize (2024)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Threats to ancient Maya cultural heritage sites – from modern construction, looting, agricultural intensification, and burgeoning tourism – are an ongoing challenge in Belize. This is especially true of the northwest region of Belize, in the periphery of the well-known site of Lamanai, which has been hard-hit by looting and a growing community of farmers...
Digitizing Archaeological Data from the Dos Hombres to Gran Cacao Archaeology Project (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. A wealth of digital data is produced during an archaeological excavation and because so much of the fieldwork is unrepeatable, once the site is fully excavated, the digital records must be archived in a manner that best facilitates reuse. This paper presents the ongoing undertaking of digitizing data for the Dos Hombres to Gran Cacao Archaeology Project...
Digitizing Previously-Recorded Archaeological Survey Areas on a Budget: How Technical Illustrations in Inkscape Are Advancing the Field (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This research aims to examine nuances between site ranking, placement, and correlations to environmental zones in northwestern Belize. This study used a variety of technological tools such as Inkscape, a Scalable Vector Graphics (.svg) software and ArcGIS to provide in-depth analyses of the dynamic interactions of the ancient Maya at the household level....
Directed Movement at Ancient Maya Centers (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. Is there a right way to enter a Maya center? A correct order to the viewing and experiencing of the place? How did the physical act of moving through a center inform the understanding of that place, its leaders, oneself? This paper presents the results of several seasons of fieldwork at the Belizean sites of Xunantunich...
Discovery of a Late Preclassic Ceremonial Bundle at the Ancient Maya Center of Yaxnohcah Using Environmental DNA Analysis (2023)
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. A dark-stained feature near the base of a 1 m thick platform in the Helena complex of the Ancient Maya city of Yaxnohcah was found to contain remains of medicinal plants, a plant containing hallucinogens (likely used for divination), and a plant used in the manufacture of weaponry (spears and bows). The feature was...
The Disembodied Eye in Maya Art and Ritual Practice (2021)
This is an abstract from the "New Perspectives on Ritual Violence and Related Human Body Treatments in Ancient Mesoamerica" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The ritual use and display of skulls, digits, and femurs is well documented in Mesoamerica. But except for the heart, few sources describe how organs and soft body tissues were curated during the brief time they could been have been viable for manipulation or display. Nevertheless, there is rich...
Distributed Site Cores and Low-Density Urban Settlement at the Site of Zibal, Belize (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The sites of Zibal and Kich’pan Uitz in western Belize, recorded as minor Maya centers by the Aguacate Regional Archaeology Project, have recently been investigated via remote sensing, survey and test excavation. As a result, we see that these two clusters of monumental structures, along with their secondary nodes, are located in a continuous fabric of...
Documenting Archaeological Tunnels within the Copan Acropolis, Part 2: Geospatial Data and Structural Modeling of Temple 16 (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. At the Classic Maya city of Copán, Temple 16 is one of the most prominent structures; however, it is rapidly deteriorating along with other buried structures and archaeological tunnels. Inside Temple 16 are various structures and tombs including Rosalila, a uniquely preserved temple, as well as Oropendola, Clarinero, and Tortola, all of which cover earlier...
Documenting Archaeological Tunnels within the Copan Acropolis: Advances in Architectural and Geospatial Recording for Conservation (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Investigations within the Copan Acropolis have provided an unprecedented source of data bearing on Copan’s origins as the capital of a Classic period Maya kingdom. The excavations conducted over years by multiple research programs in partnership with the Honduran Institute of Anthropology and History resulted in extensive tunnel exposures of stratified...
Documenting Domestic Economies in the Eastern Maya Lowlands through Obsidian Exchange (2023)
This is an abstract from the "An Exchange of Ideas: Recent Research on Maya Commodities" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Households composed the most basic unit of economic production and consumption in ancient Maya societies, and articulated directly with broader social and political processes. In addition to organizing daily tasks and agricultural production, households served as a point of engagement in the domestic economy for the acquisition...
Domestic Activity Areas in a Late Classic Residential Courtyard Group at Chan Chich, Belize (2018)
Households represent a foundational element of any society. The everyday activities that occur within domestic spaces construct and reinforce the social, economic, and political framework upon which societies are built. The 2017 field season of the Chan Chich Archaeological Project saw the first explicit study of domesticity and everyday life at the ancient Maya site of Chan Chich with investigations of final phase domestic activity areas in Courtyard D-4. This Late Classic residential group...
Domestic Contexts for Chipped Stone Eccentrics in the Maya World (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. While most ceremonial lithic items, or eccentrics, are found in elite burial and ritual caches, others are found in more mundane contexts, such as fill and household middens. We examine artifacts recovered from households at the...
Domestic Space and Food Production in the Mesoamerican Neotropics During the Early Holocene (2024)
This is an abstract from the "The Archaeobotany of Early Peopling: Plant Experimentation and Cultural Inheritance" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Discussions on the peopling of the tropics have tended to characterize tropical forests as barriers to early human foragers due to the difficulties in obtaining sufficient nutrition from hunting and foraging activities. New research on these pioneering settlers is transforming our understanding of...
Domesticated Forests? Interpreting Agroforestry Practices from Diachronic Trends in Firewood Collection at the Classic Maya City of Naachtun (2018)
What can be drawn from anthracological data to infer long-term socio-environmental dynamics among ancient Mayas is a question that has received little attention. At Naachtun (Northern Peten, Guatemala), we studied charcoal remains from archaeological contexts in relation with pedological data to reconstruct forest resources and land management through time. Since the beginning of Naachtun's occupation at the end of the Preclassic period (≈ AD 150), domestic firewood economy seems to have been...
“Domesticated Waterscapes” in the Petén Lakes Region, Petén, Guatemala (2024)
This is an abstract from the "Hydro-Ecological System of the Maya in Petén, Guatemala" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. A recent lidar survey of the Petén Lakes in Petén, Guatemala, has confirmed landscape modifications suggested by previous research and revealed new evidence of water management and settlement placement. Influenced by Joel Palka’s recent work among the Lacandon Maya, we consider domesticated waterscape features such as canals and...
Down By the River Side: A LiDAR-Based Settlement Survey in the Belize River Valley (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 focuses on the use of lidar technology, in combination with traditional pedestrian ground survey methods, to compare ancient settlement patterns and activity areas in contrasting environmental zones, alluvial floodplains and karstic hills, in the upper Belize River Valley. The paper also describes the capabilities and accuracy of LiDAR technology...
"Down to Earth": The Primacy of the Terrestrial (2023)
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...
Drought and Cultural Instability (2023)
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,...
Drums in the Deep: Archaeological Context and Contemporary Acoustics of Ceramic Drums Recovered from Late Classic El Perú-Waka’, Guatemala (2021)
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...
Dusk and Dawn: Change and Continuity in Funerary Programs in the Maya Lowlands during the Ninth and Tenth centuries CE (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. 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...
The Dwarf Motif in Classic Maya Monumental Iconography: A Spatial Analysis (2018)
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...
Dynamic Heritage as a Path to Collaborative Knowledge Production in Tahcabo, Yucatán, Mexico (2024)
This is an abstract from the "Democratizing Heritage Creation: How-To and When" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The focus of archaeological work has shifted in recent decades to collaborative frameworks that allow for sharing of knowledge production among local and descendent communities. Drawing on the work of Laurajane Smith, we argue that recognizing heritage as a dynamic social process rather than exclusively an artifact or archaeological site...
Dynamics of Growth and Transformation during the Terminal Classic: An Archaeological View from Nakum, Petén, Guatemala (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. 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...
The Dynamics of State Integration: A Neighborhood Perspective from San Lucas, Copán, Honduras (2018)
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...