Cayo (State / Territory) (Geographic Keyword)

101-125 (892 Records)

Bringing Two Halves Together: Combining Modern Phylogenetics and Zooarchaeological Analysis to Understand Past and Present Trends of Freshwater Mussels (Unionidae) in Mesoamerica (2018)
DOCUMENT Citation Only Ashley Sharpe. Kitty Emery. John Pfeiffer.

For over a century, the taxonomy of the Central American freshwater mussels (family Unionidae) has been the subject of numerous classifications and reclassifications, with naturalists identifying morphologically identical taxa as different genera or species, while at the same time classifying obviously distinct taxa under the same name. Zooarchaeologists at the mercy of these erratic classification schemes have been unable to effectively compare datasets. This study uses a combined...


Broken Molds, Burned Wealth, and Scattered Monuments: Defining the Terminal Classic Period at Pacbitun (2018)
DOCUMENT Citation Only Norbert Stanchly. Jon Spenard. Terry Powis. Christophe Helmke.

The Terminal Classic period in the southern Maya Lowlands was one of great social transition, witnessing the disruption of long-standing economic systems, and the downfall of divine kingship. The manifestation of this "collapse" in the artifactual record has been well documented at many sites throughout the Belize Valley, yet how it does so at the site of Pacbitun, on the southern rim of the Belize Valley, remains poorly understood, in spite of nearly three decades of archaeological research...


Building a Frontier? Preliminary Investigations into a Late Preclassic Maya Triadic Temple Group (2019)
DOCUMENT Citation Only David Mixter.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. For the ancient Maya, the second century B.C. was a period of growth and consolidation; populations boomed, and a common set of cultural ideas spread across the Maya Lowlands. This expansion of ideas is evident in the widespread presence of chicanel ceramics, the spread of a unified Late Preclassic figural style found on mural and carved monuments, and in the...


Building a High-Resolution Chronology: A Case from the Maya Archaeological Site of El Palmar, Mexico (2018)
DOCUMENT Citation Only Kenichiro Tsukamoto. Fuyuki Tokanai. Toru Moriya.

This paper aims to refine the Maya chronology during the Classic period (A.D. 250-950) through the development of Bayesian models. In so doing, we combined radiocarbon dates with stratigraphic information, ceramic data, burials, and calendric dates from stone monuments. At the Center for Accelerator Mass Spectrometry of Yamagata University, we ran 78 radiocarbon samples recovered from the Guzmán Group, an outlying group located 1.3km north of El Palmar in southeastern Campeche, Mexico. To...


Building an Empire: Spanish Colonial Encounters with Maya Houses and Housebuilding (2018)
DOCUMENT Citation Only Alyce De Carteret.

In the late sixteenth century, King Philip II of Spain sent out a request to the local administrators of his overseas colonies, asking that they complete a questionnaire designed to collect information about the lands he had conquered. The responses to this questionnaire, completed primarily between 1578-1586, form a set of documents now known as the Relaciones Geográficas. Question 31 asked respondents to describe the form and construction of the local houses and the materials used to build...


Buildings from the Ground Up: Early Maya Architectural and Settlement Practices at the Belize Valley Site of Pacbitun, Belize (2018)
DOCUMENT Citation Only Terry Powis. George J. Micheletti. Kaitlin Crow. Sheldon Skaggs. Peter Cherico.

Archaeological research in the Upper Belize River Valley has recently produced information that dramatically improves our knowledge of the earliest Maya. Investigations, particularly at the site of Pacbitun, has revealed evidence of radiometrically and ceramically dated cultural stratigraphic deposits for the early and late Middle Preclassic subperiods (900-300 BC). Excavations were undertaken in the site core, principally Plazas A and B, to determine the nature and extent of these communities...


Bundled Time: An Analysis of an Intrasite Sac-Be Assemblage at Punta Laguna, Yucatan, Mexico (2023)
DOCUMENT Citation Only Nicholas Puente. Sarah Kurnick.

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. After Mexico declared its independence from Spain in 1821, foreign explorers began traveling throughout the Maya area and documenting sites, structures, and monuments then unknown in the United States and Europe. In photographs, drawings, and written reports, these explorers depicted Maya ruins as deserted and lifeless, and...


Bundles and Bloodletting: An Analysis of Women's Ceremonial Roles in Classic Maya Art (2019)
DOCUMENT Citation Only L. Renee Hendricks.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This paper addresses the inclusion of women within Classic Maya works of art, consisting of, for this purpose, private-consumption ceramic vessels and large scale public monuments. Through the use of Feminist and Gender Theory, Performance Theory, and Iconographic Theory, the roles of women in iconographically depicted ceremonial performance is assessed. A...


Caches, Memory, and Ritual at the Maya City of Cival (2023)
DOCUMENT Citation Only Kaitlin Ahern.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In 2013 and 2014, a series of excavations were conducted on Structure 9 at the Preclassic period center of Cival. Structure 9 is the western radial pyramid associated with the site’s central E-Group complex. These excavations uncovered a series of caches, termination rituals, and deliberate destruction of architectural features across five major phases of...


Callar Creek Quarry, Belize Lithic Dataset (2015)
DATASET Rachel Horowitz.

Lithic Analysis from Callar Creek Quarry


Cash Potting in Soconusco: The Case of Tohil Plumbate (2018)
DOCUMENT Citation Only Hector Neff.

Tohil Plumbate, defined by distinctive technology and distinctive decorative style, is found throughout Mesoamerica, with peak frequencies in the central and western highlands of Guatemala and strong representation at Terminal Classic Maya centers like Chichen Itza. INAA-based source determination and recent fieldwork link the technology to the Pacific coastal zone of eastern Soconusco, near the Chiapas-Guatemala border. Curiously, however, key stylistic features, especially effigies and fancy,...


Casting the Net: Evidence of Fishing and Fish Farming in Palenque, Chiapas, Mexico (2021)
DOCUMENT Citation Only Carlos Varela.

This is an abstract from the "Cultivating Cities: Perspectives from the New and Old Worlds on Wild Foods, Agriculture, and Urban Subsistence Economies" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Mesoamerica is a region with highly biodiverse ecosystems, from temperate forests to tropical jungles, and where civilizations impacted the landscape in different ways. In several Mesoamerican cities, zooarchaeologists have found evidence for animal management and...


Cataloging Cave Features in the Southern Pacbitun Regional Archaeological Project using Virtual Reality and 3D Modeling (2018)
DOCUMENT Citation Only Michael Mirro. Jon Spenard.

Since 2010, a major focus of the Pacbitun Regional Archaeological project has been a regional ritual landscape survey surrounding. In 2016, Phase II of that subproject commenced, with significant efforts geared towards experimenting with digital mapping and documentation of surface archaeological features in four poorly understood caves, Crystal Palace, Slate Cave, Tzul’s Cave, and Actun Tokbe. In this paper, we discuss our work and offer some results from our Phase II investigations. In 2016,...


The Cave and the Cross: Agricultural Subsistence, Rainfall Prediction, and Ritual in the Sixteenth-Century Mixteca-Puebla Region (2023)
DOCUMENT Citation Only Carlos Rincon Mautner.

This is an abstract from the "The Subterranean in Mesoamerican Cultural Landscapes" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The inhabitants across the Northern Mixteca and the drier sectors of the Tehuacan Valley developed technological innovations to counter the effects of recurrent drought on subsistence. Among measures implemented to conserve soil and water there are terraces, dams, reservoirs, and canals, as well as seed selection and cultivation...


The Cave-Pyramid Complex: An Assessment of Its Impact after 25 Years (2023)
DOCUMENT Citation Only James Brady.

This is an abstract from the "The Subterranean in Mesoamerican Cultural Landscapes" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In the 25 years since the publication of “Settlement Configuration and Cosmology: The Role of Caves at Dos Pilas,” a number of significant discoveries of architecture constructed in relation to caves have been made. The discovery of the man-made cave constructed beneath the Pyramid of the Plumed Serpent at Teotihuacan is perhaps the...


Caves, Ancestors, and the Underworld: Bedrock Manipulation as a Strategy in the Development of Middle Formative Period Maya Socio-Political Complexity, Based on Evidence from Ka’Kabish, Northern Belize (2018)
DOCUMENT Citation Only Joshuah Lockett-Harris.

Growing evidence suggests the ancient Maya conceptualized caves, as well as small crevices in the karstic bedrock (both natural and artificial), as sacred ch’een – portals of shamanic communication, which existed in a liminal realm between the physical world and the ancestral powers of the cave-riddled Underworld. Ch’een represented important ritual foci for the ancient Maya, as well as receptacles for sacred offerings. The interment of prominent ancestors and symbolically valuable materials...


Caves, Copper, and Pilgrimage: Reinterpretation of Quimistan Bell Cave in Northwestern Honduras (2018)
DOCUMENT Citation Only Jocelyn Acosta.

In 1910, A. Hooton Blackiston discovered a cave 25 miles from Naco containing a cache of 800 copper bells, a possible mosaic mask of turquoise, and other materials. Blackiston interpreted the cave as a place of worship dedicated to the bat god. Copper, however, has very rarely been reported from caves in Honduras. Metals enter Mesoamerican late in its history but quickly assume an importance equal to jade in the native value system. The only other cave known to have held copper bells is...


Cavetuns: Unexplored Theoretical Implications of a Discovery at Mul Ch’en Witz, La Milpa, Belize (2018)
DOCUMENT Citation Only Wendy Layco. Jessica Strayer. Samantha Lorenz. Toni Gonzalez.

In June of 2017, the Contested Caves Archaeological Project (CCAP), explored what was thought to be a partially capped chultun at the site of La Milpa, Belize. On entering, however, it became clear that the feature was actually a small, natural cave with a classic chultun-style entrance carved into it. Two of the cave’s three chambers contained small pools of water, which receded into the porous limestone, within days of their discovery. The pools make any possibility of storage infeasible...


Celebrity Chefs and the Long View of Sustainable Agriculture in Yaxunah, Yucatán (2019)
DOCUMENT Citation Only Chelsea Fisher.

This is an abstract from the "Advancing Public Perceptions of Sustainability through Archaeology" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The ejido (collective agricultural landholding) of Yaxunah, Yucatán, Mexico is known among archaeologists for its pre-Hispanic archaeological sites. But among a growing contingent of food aficionados, Yaxunah is known for its cooking. Having attracted the interest of celebrity chefs like René Redzepi (Noma, Copenhagen),...


Ceramic Production during the Terminal Classic at Holtun, Guatemala (2021)
DOCUMENT Citation Only Dawn Crawford. Michael Callaghan. Daniel Pierce. William Gilstrap. Brigitte Kovacevich.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The use of provenance studies to answer anthropological questions related to the production and access of ceramics is well documented for the Maya region. Mineralogical and chemical compositional analyses are often used to identify the material origins, or provenance, of ceramics. In this paper, the authors report on Neutron Activation Analysis (INAA) and...


Ceramic Technological Trends in the Three Rivers Region: A Late Classic Maya Overview (2019)
DOCUMENT Citation Only Sarah Boudreaux.

This is an abstract from the "Ancient Maya Landscapes in Northwestern Belize, Part I" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. It is now well recognized that Late Classic Maya communities were highly variable politically, economically, and environmentally. Researchers often assume that community and household variation are corollary with the broader political climate— and this remains under problematized. Thus, research that explores differences in...


Ceremonial Spaces and Public Events at the Preclassic Maya Centers of Ceibal, Guatemala, and Aguada Fénix, Mexico (2023)
DOCUMENT Citation Only Maria Belen Mendez Bauer. Takeshi Inomata.

This is an abstract from the "Humble Houses to Magnificent Monuments: Papers in Honor of Jerry D. Moore" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Dr. Jerry Moore’s work has been highly influential not only in Andean archaeology but also in the archaeology of Mesoamerica and other parts of the world. Dr. Moore’s pioneering analysis of the lived experience of the built environment has inspired us to examine ceremonial spaces at Maya sites, including plazas...


Cerro Coroban: A Contact Period Lenca Site in Eastern El Salvador (2021)
DOCUMENT Citation Only Brian McKee. Fernando Zuleta. Katherine M. Cera. Christopher D. Taylor.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Coroban site, located on a highly-defensible summit in Morazán, El Salvador, was occupied by the Poton Lenca. The Lenca inhabited most of eastern El Salvador and western and central Honduras during the early sixteenth century Spanish Conquest. They spoke two or more languages with multiple dialects and belonged to distinct, albeit related, cultures. The...


The Ch'ulel of Architecture of Power: Preclassic Ritual Behavior in the Northern Maya Lowlands (2018)
DOCUMENT Citation Only Nancy Peniche May. Lilia Fernandez Souza.

How does a building become architecture of power? How can this power be release or lost? There are many ways in which a building can be imbued with certain attributes that allow expressing and regulating unequal power relations. Along with the form and style of buildings, ritual is perhaps one of the most important means. Through ritual performance, actors imbue the building with the ch'ulel, ensouling and animating it; obliged the ch'ulel to leave the building, killing the animate construction,...


Challenges in the Identification of Fresh Volcanic Glass Shards in Ancient Maya Pottery Sherds (2023)
DOCUMENT Citation Only Anabel Ford. Frank Speraq.

This is an abstract from the "Ceramics and Archaeological Sciences" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The major components of ceramics consist of clay and temper. It is assumed that these components are local. The Maya lowlands are dominated by limestone, and its use as temper is ubiquitous. Therefore, the distinct presence of fresh volcanic ash in the Late Classic period pottery is noteworthy. Efforts to identify a local volcanic source closer than...