Orange Walk (State / Territory) (Geographic Keyword)

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jessica MacLellan.

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...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Cady Rutherford. Marisol Cortes-Rincon. Jonathan Roldan. Spencer Mitchell.

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...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Julien Hiquet. Julien Sion. Divina Perla-Barrera.

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...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Justin Bracken.

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...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Nicholas Dunning. Jeffrey Brewer. Christopher Carr. Kathryn Reese-Taylor. Armando Anaya Hernández.

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...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kat Fitzgerald. Kacey Grauer. Zachary Nissen. Cynthia Robin.

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,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only John Chuchiak IV.

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...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Gabriela Saldaña. Tia Watkins. Emma Messinger. Rosamund Fitzmaurice. Jaime Awe.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Classic Maya graffiti (AD 300–800) provides a unique perspective of individual experiences, with figures etched onto plastered surfaces that were added as secondary elements within existing architecture. In the Maya lowlands, graffiti is typically found within monumental architecture, as these contexts favor preservation in tropical environments. The...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Ramon Folch.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Research on the Postclassic period at Lake Miramar in the southern Lacandon Jungle of Chiapas permits identifying the fortified island of Lakam-Tun. The site was destroyed in 1586 by Juan de Morales Villavicencio in his attempt to conquer the Cholti'-Lacandon, who then sheltered deeper in the jungle until 1695. Earlier research failed to locate important...

DOCUMENT Citation Only George J. Micheletti. Sheldon Skaggs. Terry G. Powis.

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. For the ancient Maya of Pacbitun, the onset of the Late Classic period (AD 550-800) signifies a time of exponential site growth and heightened prosperity. While this florescence is evident in the archaeological record, recent studies have begun to demonstrate that this affluence...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Victoria Izzo. John P. Walden. Olivia P. Ellis. Kirsten Green Mink. Jaime J. Awe.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Classic period (AD 300-900) Belize River Valley was a complex political landscape of numerous semi-autonomous Maya polities. Many began their emergence at the end of the Early Preclassic period (1200-900 BC), consolidated their political power in the Late Preclassic, and subsequently underwent collapse in the Terminal Classic period (AD 750-900/1000). The...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Yijia Qiu. Julie Hoggarth. Claire Ebert. John Walden.

Archaeologists have had a long-standing interest in domestic economy because households are often considered to be the primary social unit of production, consumption, and reproduction in most agrarian societies and occupy an important place in the study of ancient state economies. A relatively novel avenue for exploring broader patterns in the domestic economies of ancient Maya polities involves compositional analysis of ceramics. Variability in the compositional makeup of the ceramics can show...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Heather McKillop.

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. Production of salt cakes for trade in modern and historic communities provides three testable hypotheses for identifying ancient Maya trade of this commodity. If salt cakes were transported in pots as in the Philippines, briquetage would be found at consumer communities, as suggested for Aventura, Belize. Only non-vessel...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Terry Powis. George Micheletti. Matthew Tarleton. Gary Owenby. Nicaela Cartagena.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Investigations in Plazas A and B of the site core at Pacbitun indicate that initial occupation began in the early Middle Preclassic period (900–600 BC). At this time, a small agricultural community was established in Plaza B beginning with a few domestic structures built just above bedrock. These early domiciles would also function as workshops for the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Takeshi Inomata.

This is an abstract from the "Warfare and the Origins of Political Control " session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Recent investigations have revealed substantial evidence of fortifications and physical conflicts in the Maya lowlands. Nonetheless, warfare in Maya society never led to the development of stable conquest states or empires. Factors affecting this process may have included the ideological and material conditions of this region. The ideology...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Garrett Toombs.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Lithic artifact functions are often determined by the form of an artifact rather than by an analysis of functional characteristics. Some ways in which artifact function can be determined include experimental archaeology, use wear, and paleoethnobotanical analyses. Determining artifact function provides information about the types of tasks people performed,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kong Cheong. Linda Howie. Terry Powis.

The Classic Maya crafted a wide variety of music instruments from clay and other materials. Numerous depictions of musicians on vase paintings and murals attest to the important role of music in ceremonial occasions. Music instruments were also interred with the deceased during funerary ceremonies; although their comparative rarity in burials suggests that their inclusion was not a common practice. At the site of Pacbitun, music instruments have been recovered from multiple Classic period...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Anais Levin. John Walden. Lauren Garcia. Julie Hogarth. Jaime Awe.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Lithic tool production and use offers a way to understand domestic activities and how they developed in relation to broader socio-political changes. The Late Classic (AD 600-900) Maya polity of Lower Dover, Belize emerged in the midst of a densely occupied landscape, and this transition saw the incorporation of three autonomous communities – Tutu Uitz Na,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Erin Patterson.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Ancient Maya settlement patterns and density have come into focus thanks to site survey and, more recently, extensive lidar mapping. Settlement density zones suggested by recent investigations in northwest Petén, Guatemala, allow for interpretation of areas of higher and lesser settlement density and the comparison of those groups between sites of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only W. James Stemp. Jaime Awe. Christophe Helmke.

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. Large, finely made laurel-leaf chert bifaces have been recovered from the ancient Maya cave sites of Actun Chapat, Actun Tunichil Mucnal, Actun Yaxteel Ahau, and Je’reftheel, which are located in central Belize. By considering these laurel-leaf bifaces from the perspectives of lithic raw material, production techniques,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Andrea Cucina.

This is an abstract from the "Approaches to Cultural and Biological Complexity in Mexico at the Time of Spanish Conquest" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Dental morphology among the Prehispanic Maya population has been characterized by a certain degree of stability. Isolation-by-distance models do not fit well into Mesoamerican populations, due to a relatively homogeneous dental structure. This was true also in the Yucatan peninsula, despite the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Francisco Estrada-Belli. Marcello Canuto. Thomas Garrison. Ramesh Shrestha. Marianne Hernandez.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Since 2009, lidar technology has been revolutionizing lowland Maya archaeology. Lidar data are most effective, however, when collected broadly and studied collaboratively. Recently, the Pacunam Lidar Initiative adopted this approach, uniting seven different research projects to analyze over 2100 km2 of forest cover of the Maya Biosphere Reserve in northern...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jerald Ek.

This is an abstract from the "Central Mexico after Teotihuacan: Everyday Life and the (Re)Making of Epiclassic Communities" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The nature of Teotihuacan influence in the Maya Area has been a topic of enduring controversy. A growing corpus of evidence indicates direct political intervention by Teotihuacan across the Maya Lowlands starting in 378 CE facilitated through links with the Mutal Dynasty of Tikal. Emulation was...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Carlos Morales-Aguilar. Christophe Helmke.

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. Since the archaeologist Michael Coe dubbed "Codex-style" ceramics to a group of polychrome vessels coming from northern Guatemala and southern Campeche, many scholars have given attention to study this pottery produced during the Late Classic period. However, little is still known about the archaeological context of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jerald Ek.

This is an abstract from the "Tales of the Feathered Serpent: Refining Our Understanding of an Enigmatic Mesoamerican Being" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The personage and deity of Kukulkan/Quetzalcoatl plays a central role in indigenous historical accounts regarding the prehispanic city of Chakanputun (Champotón). However, extensive disturbances resulting from continuous occupation of Champotón from the Preclassic period into modern times has...