Cayo (State / Territory) (Geographic Keyword)

1-25 (892 Records)

350 Years after the Conquest: British Influences on a Multiethnic Refugee Maya Community (2019)
DOCUMENT Citation Only James Meierhoff.

This is an abstract from the "After Cortés: Archaeological Legacies of the European Invasion in Mesoamerica" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In the late-nineteenth century, Maya refugees fleeing the violence of the Caste War of Yucatan (1847-1901) briefly reoccupied the ancient Maya ruins of Tikal. Unlike the numerous Yucatec refugee communities established to the east in British Honduras, those who settled at Tikal combined with Lacandon Maya, and...


3D Models of Small Artifacts: A Visual Workflow of the Structure-from-Motion Photography of Pottery Sherds and Vessels (2023)
DOCUMENT Citation Only Luke Stroth.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This presentation consists of video demonstrations with live commentary in which the author describes how to create 3D models of small ceramic artifacts using structure-from-motion photography (photogrammetry). In particular, the focus will be on troubleshooting common issues that arise during model generation of sherds and fragmentary and complete...


3D Reconstruction of Early Spanish Colonial Hybrid Ceramics from Ciudad Vieja, El Salvador (2019)
DOCUMENT Citation Only Jeb Card. Salem Arvin.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The primary serving vessel at the sixteenth-century Spanish colonial site of Ciudad Vieja, El Salvador, is an indigenously produced brimmed plate made in the form of Italianate majolica. These vessels were produced in a Mesoamerican technological tradition and were painted with a modified version of designs found on pre-Hispanic Pipil pottery in southeastern...


3D Scanning the Virgin Mary in the Toast: Using Handheld Digital Imaging Technologies to Explode the Myth of Pareidolic Illusions in the Ancient Maya Underworld (2018)
DOCUMENT Citation Only Cameron S. Griffith.

Cave archaeologists around the world are increasingly utilizing many new platforms and techniques to document subterranean artwork, including digital imaging and scanning technologies. In this presentation I demonstrate a portable and cost-effective approach to digital imaging of parietal art. To this end, I used an Occipital Structure Sensor 3D scanner, mounted on an iPhone 6, to document various monumental modified speleothem sculptures in the subterranean realm of the ancient Maya of Belize,...


3D Visualization of Cultural and Archaeological Features in the Dos Hombres to Gran Cacao Archaeology Project (2023)
DOCUMENT Citation Only Hannah Vizcarra. Amanda Zetz. Marisol Cortes-Rincon, Ph.D.. Raylene Borrego. Kristen Harrison.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The development of digital technologies and the use of advanced photogrammetry programs for modeling archaeological excavations and sites have opened new possibilities for spatial analysis in archaeology and the reconstruction of archaeological contexts. Among its main objectives, the Dos Hombres to Gran Cacao Archaeology Project investigates the...


A 5,000-Year History of Landscape Evolution in the Rio Blanco Valley of Uxbenká, Belize (2021)
DOCUMENT Citation Only Marina Lemly. Keith Prufer.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Archaic people and Classic Period Maya played important roles in shaping their environments. Through early deforestation and later agricultural erosion humans have modified the world they lived in. This study aims to show the role the Maya had in the environmental change in their region. We report results of analysis of a 5,500-year-long profiles soil from...


86Sr/87Sr Evidence for the Role of Animals in Ritual Economies among the Ancient Maya in the Belize River Valley (2023)
DOCUMENT Citation Only Ian Roa. Ashley Sharpe. Claire Ebert. Julie Hoggarth.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Traditional zooarchaeological methods studying trade rely on the identification of animals found outside their natural habitat ranges. More recently, strontium isotope (86Sr/87Sr) analyses have proven to be a powerful tool for studying the movement of animals found in archaeological contexts. Strontium isotopic evidence from the Maya lowlands has...


An Account of the Kings of Kanu’l as Recorded on the Hieroglyphic Stair of K’an II of Caracol (2021)
DOCUMENT Citation Only Christophe Helmke. Sergei Vepretskii.

This is an abstract from the "New Light on Dzibanché and on the Rise of the Snake Kingdom’s Hegemony in the Maya Lowlands" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Much remains unknown as to the hieroglyphic stair dedicated by 642 AD by K’an II, the great king of Caracol. Constituent panels were discovered at a number of different sites, including Caracol, Ucanal, Naranjo, and Xunantunich. The most recently discovered panels contribute greatly to our...


Accuracy, Precision, and Efficiency: Comparing Mapping Techniques in Nixtun-Ch’ich’, Petén, Guatemala (2023)
DOCUMENT Citation Only Gabriela Zygadlo.

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. New archaeological survey technologies have transformed the way in which sites are mapped. Nixtun-Ch’ich’ in Petén, Guatemala, has been surveyed in a variety of ways including a theodolite with an electronic distance measurement (EDM), total station, lidar, and photogrammetry. This paper aims to compare various mapping...


Acoustic Effects at Las Cuevas Cave (Western Belize): An Archaeoacoustic Analysis of a Maya Cave (2018)
DOCUMENT Citation Only Margarita Diaz-Andreu. Tommaso Mattioli.

The site of Las Cuevas (western Belize) has been identified as a mid-sized, Late Classic ceremonial and administrative center. Interestingly, given the importance of caves in Maya religion, the underneath part of the site has a large cave system. Research so far on this cave has focused on aspects that are common in cave archaeology: 1/ structures - in this case on the one hand the series of platforms built around a central, sunk cenote and on the other the walls subdiving the narrow part of...


Acting, Reacting, and Entangling at the Edge of the Spanish Colony: Maya Life at Progresso Lagoon, Belize in the Context of Colonization (2018)
DOCUMENT Citation Only Maxine Oland.

The Maya of northern Belize were located at the edge of the Spanish colony, far from the Spanish capital at Merida, and visited only occasionally by encomenderos and priests. How much of Maya life then was a reaction to Spanish colonization? The archaeological data from Progresso Lagoon, Belize suggest that most contact and colonial period material culture at the Maya community was shaped by ongoing Maya political and economic processes, rather than by Spanish intervention. In addition, Maya...


After the Crisis: Epigraphic Data on Political and Cultural Developments in the Maya Lowlands 800–1000 CE (2023)
DOCUMENT Citation Only Simon Martin.

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. Maya inscriptions have long been considered an impoverished source on the momentous changes that gripped society at the close of the Classic era. Not only do we see a steep decline in quantity as major centers fall silent, but the texts that were produced...


The Afterlife of the Discovery of a Lifetime: Preservation of the Maya Murals of San Bartolo, Guatemala (2019)
DOCUMENT Citation Only Angelyn Bass. Heather Hurst.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In 2001, rarely preserved Maya murals were discovered at the site of San Bartolo, Guatemala. Subsequent archaeological excavations revealed an elaborate artistic program of wall paintings and numerous hieroglyphic texts buried in successive architectural phases dating from ca. 400-100 B.C. The corpus of paintings found within the Las Pinturas pyramid includes...


Agency and Pilgrimage in a Living Landscape: Contemporary Lacandon Maya Visits to Ancient Ruins (2023)
DOCUMENT Citation Only Josuhé Lozada. Joel Palka. Alice Balsanelli.

This is an abstract from the "The Vibrancy of Ruins: Ruination Studies in Ancient Mesoamerica" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In this presentation, we analyze Lacandon Maya communication with nonhuman forces through pilgrimages to ritual landscapes, particularly ancient Maya ruins in the lowlands of Chiapas, Mexico, and Petén, Guatemala. Through archaeological and ethnographic evidence we examine these spaces where Lacandon Maya have undertaken...


Agricultural Strategies and Intensification: A Study of Risk Management in the Southern Maya Lowlands (2018)
DOCUMENT Citation Only Scott Macrae.

The decisions and consequences behind the intensification of agricultural strategies among past societies has long been a topic of debate among archaeologists. These discussions are often dominated by factors of population dynamics and production capacity. This paper will explore the less discussed factor of risk management. Controlling the variation of production in regard to fluctuating natural and social pressures was critical to past agrarian societies and undoubtedly played a role in the...


An agricultural study of the Southern Maya lowlands (1962)
DOCUMENT Citation Only U M Cowgill.

This resource is a citation record only, the Center for Digital Antiquity does not have a copy of this document. The information in this record has been migrated into tDAR from the EXARC Bibliography, originally compiled by Roeland Paardekooper, and updated. Most of these records consist of a document citation and other metadata but do not have the documents themselves uploaded. If you have a digital copy of the document and would like to have it curated in tDAR, please contact us using the...


Agriculture, Land Management and Expressions of Elite Control at the Ancient Maya City of Tikal (2018)
DOCUMENT Citation Only David L. Lentz. Nicholas Dunning. Vernon Scarborough.

While it seems evident that the elites and royal personages at Tikal influenced at least some aspects of day-to-day activities of the Maya inhabitants, it has not been clear how this influence became manifest, particularly in regard to agriculture and other aspects of land management decisions. Recent paleoethnobotanical and archaeological studies at Tikal, however, bring some insight to this cultural black box. Three examples from the paleoethnobotanical record provide empirical evidence that...


Aguada Fénix: An Early Middle Preclassic Monumental Site in the Middle Usumacinta Region (2019)
DOCUMENT Citation Only Verónica Vázquez López. Daniela Triadan.

This is an abstract from the "Preclassic Maya Social Transformations along the Usumacinta: Views from Ceibal and Aguada Fénix" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The site of Aguada Fénix, located on the San Pedro River in northeastern Tabasco, Mexico, was recently discovered by the Middle Usumacinta Archaeological Project through LiDAR mapping. The site layout corresponds to what the project has defined as the Middle Formative Usumacinta Pattern...


Albarradas, Solarés, and Classic Maya Land Tenure in Northwestern Belize (2018)
DOCUMENT Citation Only Thomas Guderjan. Jopshua Kwoka. Colleen Hanratty. Sara Eshleman.

The traditional, but yet poorly-defined, view of Classic Maya (AD 250-850) land tenure was that control was somehow vested in the royal and elite parts of society with "commoners" occupying land at royal pleasure. The exceptions to this pattern were known in "urban" cities such as Coba and Chunchucmil in the northern Yucatan and some coastal locations such as Playa del Carmen and Cozumel. However, the latter instances are commonly thought to date to the Postclassic period and were believed to...


All Politics Isn’t Local: The Role of Oxpemul in Classic Maya Geopolitics (2018)
DOCUMENT Citation Only Jerald Ek. Ricardo Armijo Torres. William Folan. Hubert Robichaux.

Oxpemul was one of several centers surrounding the city of Calakmul, within the region known as Uxte’tuun. Archaeological research at Oxpemul reflects occupation continuity from the Formative through Classic periods. However, hieroglyphic inscriptions indicate a late fluorescence in the mid to late eighth century. This paper explains this seeming contradiction from the perspective of broader geopolitical dynamics, particularly the rivalry between Calakmul and Tikal. Unlinke other centers in...


The Allegory of Xibalba: Confronting Shadowy Realities in the ancient Maya Underworld (2019)
DOCUMENT Citation Only Cameron S. Griffith.

This is an abstract from the "Technique and Interpretation in the Archaeology of Rock Art" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Cave archaeologists around the world are increasingly utilizing many new platforms and techniques to document subterranean artwork, including digital imaging and scanning technologies. In this presentation I "throw shade" at these high-tech approaches by revisiting and focusing upon the oldest of the old-school technologies...


Ally, Client or Outpost? Examining the Relationship between Xunantunich and Naranjo in the Late Classic Period (2019)
DOCUMENT Citation Only Jaime Awe. Christophe Helmke.

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. Investigations at Xunantunich indicate that this important site in the Belize River Valley, rose rapidly to regional prominence during the Late Classic Hats’ Chaak Phase (AD 670 – 780). While the social, political, and economic reasons for this late and rapid rise are still not...


Alternative Interpretive Lenses for Landscape at Mulch’en Witz, La Milpa, Belize (2019)
DOCUMENT Citation Only Toni Gonzalez.

This is an abstract from the "Archaeology as an Engine or a Camera?" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This paper discusses ongoing archaeological investigations at the Late Classic Period (CE 600-800) Maya site of Mulch’en Witz, La Milpa, Belize. Survey and excavation at the site have revealed an unconventional geographical density of man-made subterranean spaces ("chultuns") in association with provocative architectural and geological features....


An Analysis of Bark Beaters from the Postclassic Site of Mayapán (2018)
DOCUMENT Citation Only Nathan Parrott. Carlos Peraza Lope.

This project examines an assemblage of 37 bark beaters from Northwest Yucatán, principally from the Postclassic Maya site of Mayapán. Bark beaters are stone tools used in the production of bark paper. In Mesoamerica, these tools were important in several specialized craft industries, including the manufacture of codices and clothing for religious and political ceremonies. There is still much that is unknown about pre-Columbian bark paper production, as bark paper rarely survives in the...


Analysis of Culturally Derived Speleothem by INAA: An Analytic Approach to Sourcing (2018)
DOCUMENT Citation Only Humberto Nation. Leah Minc. Holley Moyes. Polly Peterson. James E. Brady.

Recent investigations in various surface and underground cave sites indicate the existence of extensive political, economic, religious and military exchanges between polities in the Maya lowlands of Belize. The occurrence of "foreign" materials at surface and cave sites have become an increasingly well-documented phenomenon (Brady et al. 1997) and are indicative of transport of speleothems during ancient Maya cave visitations. This phenomenon has raise several questions such as the spatial...