Orange Walk (State / Territory) (Geographic Keyword)
426-450 (1,092 Records)
LiDAR imagery is revolutionizing interpretations of ancient Maya demography, land use, and community organization, among other concerns. This paper provides preliminary observations on LiDAR coverage of 200 km2 of the Puuc region of northern Yucatan, Mexico, collected in 2017 by NCALM. The Bolonchen Regional Archaeological Project has been working in this area since 2000,and although we have intensively studied settlement at both the urban and intersite level, LiDAR provides the opportunity to...
Hidden Structures at El Mirador: Challenges and Prospects (2021)
This is an abstract from the "Recent Multidisciplinary Investigations in the Mirador Basin, Guatemala" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Invisible structures present serious and difficult to solve challenges for Mayanists. Despite a generation of research into Classic period invisible structures, we know little about their prevalence, history, or range of uses. We know even less about invisible structures from the Preclassic. Invisible structures are...
Hidden Structures, Ground Penetrating RADAR, and the Demography of El Mirador (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Preclassic El Mirador polity collapsed around 150 C.E. One focus of explanations of El Mirador’s collapse is anthropogenic changes to Basin ecology, centered on 1) population growth and agricultural overexploitation; and 2) conspicuous consumption of stucco for elite construction. Reliable estimates of population are essential for evaluating these...
Hieroglyphs and Hegemony in the Classic Maya Kingdoms of Piedras Negras and Yaxchilan (2021)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The area stretching from the Usumacinta River basin in western Guatemala into the highlands of Chiapas, Mexico, hosted key centers of Classic Maya political and cultural life (ca. 250–850 CE). Scribes and sculptors active across the region produced hundreds of stone monuments inscribed with texts in a common hieroglyphic script. Yet little is known about how...
Historical Archaeology in Belize: Maya Continuity amid Colonial Landscapes (2024)
This is an abstract from the "“The Center and the Edge”: How the Archaeology of Belize Is Foundational for Understanding the Ancient Maya" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. We can trace the roots of historical archaeology in Belize to 1974, when David Pendergast launched a project at a site known locally as Indian Church, not surprisingly owing to the remains there of an early church. Today, the site is known as Lamanai. Identification of Spanish...
The Historical Ecology of the Postclassic Itza Maya in Lake Petén Itzá (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Recent Research in the Petén Lakes Region, Petén, Guatemala" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Petén lakes region, Guatemala, has a rich and diverse ecology and abundant locally available resources including terrestrial, amphibious, and aquatic animals. The Postclassic (1100–1525 CE) sites in this region are mainly located on the lakeshore, suggesting that the Postclassic people were attracted to the lakeshore...
History and Archaeological Heritage and the Modern Maya (2021)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Modern Maya peoples have been denied of their right to appropriate their own history and archaeological heritage. After almost three decades of multiculturalism in Mexican laws and state rhetoric there is still a lot of colonial ideas, practices, and laws that prevent the participation of indigenous communities in the heritage discourses and their involvement...
History in the Round: Painted Cylinder Vases as Sources on Classic Maya Society and Politics (2024)
This is an abstract from the "The Rollout Keepers: Papers on Maya Ceramic Texts, Scenes, and Styles in Honor of Justin and Barbara Kerr" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The cylinder vessel paintings assembled in the Kerr Archive cover a remarkable range of themes, with many of the best-known depicting fantastical beasts and other supernatural actors. But a not insignificant portion of the corpus features scenes of courtly performance and, as a...
Homogeneity, Diversity, and Complexity between Hinterland Communities of NW Belize (2018)
The "hinterland" communities of northwest Belize are among the most diverse and complex across the Maya lowlands. The Rio Bravo Management and Conservation area of NW Belize serves as the region of interest with more than 25 seasons of Maya archaeological research. Utilizing survey and mapping strategies, material culture analyses, and theoretical concerns, the Programme for Belize Archaeological Project (PfBAP) defines new ways of looking at and interpreting ancient Maya interactions for the...
House and City: Ancient Maya Water Management in Belize (2024)
This is an abstract from the "“The Center and the Edge”: How the Archaeology of Belize Is Foundational for Understanding the Ancient Maya" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The rainfall-dependency of the ancestral Maya shaped their daily and seasonal existence in homes, communities, and cities. They adapted quite well to the annual wet and dry seasonal cycles—as well as extreme weather events like hurricanes, tropical storms and severe droughts,...
House of the Boxer, House of the Fire God: Sport and Religion in a Humble Hinterland Household of the Copan Classic Maya, Honduras (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Innovations and Transformations in Mesoamerican Research: Recent and Revised Insights of Ancestral Lifeways" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. A Classic Maya rural household, Site 34C-4-2, yielded two artifacts considered unusual for this nonurban context: a manopla (a 15-pound tuff ball with a handle used in a sport similar to boxing) and a miniature sculpture of a house or altar that resembles those found in Copan’s...
Household Crafting in the Maya City of Palenque, Chiapas, Mexico (2024)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Classic period (250–900 CE) Maya economic systems were diverse with most lowland cities revealing a combination of intensive surplus crafting workshops and more domestic household crafting. Some craft production may have been centralized and occurring under the supervision of the state and others appear to be operating independently at the household level...
Household Distributions and Social Organization of the Ancient Maya in Southern Belize (2018)
This paper examines processes of low-density urban development through geospatial analyses of households at two Classic Period (AD 250-800) Maya communities, Uxbenká and Ix Kuku’il. Located in the southern foothills of the Maya Mountains, Toledo District, Belize, these centers were situated are similar landscapes yet exhibited distinctly different household distributions. Wherein Uxbenká had geospatially discrete districts and neighborhoods while Ix Kuku’il’s houses were more evenly distributed...
Household Diversity in a Palenque Neighborhood: Preliminary Considerations (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Dynamic Frontiers in the Archaeology of Chiapas" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Increasingly, archaeologists working in Classic period Maya cities have focused their attention on defining “neighborhoods” as a means to reconcile both a bottom-up and top-down approach. A consideration of Palenque’s urban form and patterns in the clustering of stone structures along built terraces makes the existence of neighborhoods...
The Household Ecology: Investigating the Household Response to Food Insecurity among the Lacandon Maya (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Starvation and malnutrition have ravaged societies for thousands of years, but the effort to leverage food insecurity has existed just as long. When faced with hunger, humans adapt and respond to the best of their abilities, which may look different according to the resources and options available to them at the time. Maya subsistence literature has a long...
Household Garden Plant Agency in the Creation of Classic Maya Social Identities (2018)
Domestic gardens are a well-established aspect of Classic Maya residential settlement, and they are rightly considered important components of food security and even food sovereignty strategies utilized by the ninety-nine percent. Taking inspiration from the emerging field of human-plant studies, I argue daily interactions with household garden plants exerted a profound influence on not only the daily habits of ancient Maya populations, but also on their memories and sense of social identity. ...
Household Pottery from Aventura, Belize (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. Household pottery from recent excavations at Aventura informs our current understanding of life near Chetumal Bay, its resilient villagers situated within a larger boom-and-bust economy. Although Preclassic pottery has been found near bedrock in some household excavations, construction began in earnest about...
Household Resilience, Political Collapse, and Community Transformation: Late-Terminal Classic Transition of the Ancient Maya Center of Xuenkal (2018)
Across the Maya Lowlands, the Terminal Classic Period (AD 800-1000) represented a time of dramatic sociopolitical transformation. Investigation of the Northern Maya lowland site of Xuenkal, shows an abrupt break in the pattern of steady demographic growth during the Terminal Classic, associated with the center of Chichen Itza 45 km away. Xuenkal presents a unique case to evaluate this transition as it contains discrete households associated with the Late Classic zenith of local political...
Household Ritual and the Development of Complex Societies in Formative Mesoamerica: Comparing the Maya Lowlands and Central Mexico (2018)
Recognizing that households contribute to – rather than simply reflect – broad social changes, scholars working in the Maya lowlands and Central Mexico argue that domestic ritual played a role in the emergence of complex societies in Formative (or Preclassic) Mesoamerica (c. 1000 BC - AD 300). Certain aspects of household-level, ritualized activities are shared across Mesoamerican cultures. However, major differences within and between the two regions show that a variety of social organizations...
Household Variation in the Maya Hinterlands (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Hinterland households are an under-explored aspect of Maya area. Further research in this area will help to build our understanding of variation present within and between regions. This analysis looks at several households in northwestern Belize in order to better understand the variation that exists within this region. I analyze the construction methods, the...
Households, Growth, Contraction, and Mobility at the Classic Maya Center of Naachtun (2018)
At Naachtun, extensive excavation programs carried out in monumental Group B, a compact set of three large elite clusters of residential compounds located in the site epicenter, and intensive test-pitting programs applied to the residential zones which surround the monumental core, have enabled us to understand the site occupation development during the Classic phases. We identify contraction, dispersal and expansion where and when most households units were occupied. We compare these space-time...
How Monumental Architecture Directs Movement: Defensive and Hydrological Features at Muralla de León (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. Tracking patterns of everyday movement by individuals within a local population offers deep insight into the spatialized social structure of the group, providing information such as who interacts with whom, which areas are public and which are private, and the tightness or openness of different social circles. Like most...
How to Build a Better reservoir: Evolving Ancient Maya Strategies (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 ancient inhabitants of the Elevated Interior Region of the Maya Lowlands spent centuries devising ways to capture and store rainwater in this seasonally arid environment devoid of sizeable permanent surface water bodies. Over time, varied methods were created to ensure a sufficient quantity of water to meet the...
A Human Geography of Aventura: Lidar and Settlement Survey (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. A human geography perspective provides our broadest lens to envision the entwined relationships of people, communities, and environments at Aventura. Drawing from an 18 km2 lidar survey and 1 km2 pedestrian survey, this paper presents a human geography of Aventura that links people, settlement, agriculture,...
Human Plunder: The Role of Maya Slavery in Postclassic and Early Conquest Era Yucatán, 1450-1550 (2018)
Upon initial contact with the lowland Yucatec Maya, the Europeans discovered that a significant number of Maya slaves existed within the Maya communities that they encountered. War captives, orphans, and forced and enslaved sexual servants from the lower classes, Maya slaves and their possession became by the late Postclassic and early colonial period the major source of wealth and power of the traditional Maya Nobility. Divorced from control over specified traditional patrimonial landholdings...