Cayo (State / Territory) (Geographic Keyword)

DOCUMENT Citation Only Georganne Deen. John Pohl.

This is an abstract from the "The Flower World: Religion, Aesthetics, and Ideology in Mesoamerica and the American Southwest" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Xochipilli, the Flower Prince, was widely revered through various manifestations as the patron god of the noble classes throughout southern Mexico. As such he was credited with patronage over palaces, royal marriages, feasts, wealth finance, and belief in an exclusive elite afterlife and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Rissa Trachman.

This is an abstract from the "Prehispanic Maya Marketplace Investigations in the Three Rivers Region of Belize: First Results" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Evidence from the site of Dos Hombres in northwestern Belize is presented from multiple contexts revealing the cultural collaborations with ritual, economic, and social expression/s as they are manifest in and necessarily tied to material aspects of everyday life. Ongoing previous research...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Rodrigo Guzman.

This is an abstract from the "Holtun: Investigations at a Preclassic Maya Center" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Water management is intrinsically associated with the development and support of complex societies. Water was a significant source of power among the ancient Maya. Although traditional research characterizes water management as homogeneous and monolithic, recent studies show that it was highly variable and adapted accordingly. The case...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Cristina Vidal-Lorenzo. Gaspar Muñoz Cosme.

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. In the Late Preclassic, certain buildings in the Petén region began to incorporate complex iconographic programs on their façades. The friezes with central masks, carved in limestone and covered with layers of stucco, are particularly striking examples of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Dana Moot. Alexandre Tokovinine.

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. Distinct regional styles are a hallmark of Lowland Maya elite polychrome ceramic vessels during the Late Classic period (550–820 CE). However, our understanding of the phenomenon has not advanced beyond its mechanics - the presence of attached craft workshops at the courts of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Anna Novotny.

This is an abstract from the "Embodied Essence: Anthropological, Historical, and Archaeological Perspectives on the Use of Body Parts and Bodily Substances in Religious Beliefs and Practices" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The archaeological record of the ancient Maya reveals many examples of the living returning to human interments to exhume skeletal elements, expose the elements to fire or smoke, or to paint them with red pigment. At the ancient...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Thomas Guderjan. Alexander Parmington. Colleen Hanratty.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Surrounding the ancient Maya site of Xnoha in northwestern Belize are residential areas with houselots delineated by Linear Stone Boundary Markers (LSBMs). Lidar from 2016 revealed hundreds of such houselots. However, until now, we had no understanding of the dates of construction of the LSBMs. In 2023, backhoe testing was undertaken to determine that...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Julie Hoggarth. Jaime Awe. Brendan Culleton. John Walden. Douglas Kennett.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Gordon Willey’s pioneering work in the Upper Belize River Valley presented some of the first perspectives on household and community archaeology in the Maya Lowlands. Beginning with that work, scholars came to identify Postclassic occupation at sites along the Belize River, primarily at Barton Ramie and later at Baking Pot. However, the Barton Ramie...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Sandra Balanzario Granados.

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. El asentamiento prehispánico de Dzibanché, se localiza en el Sur de Quintana Roo, tiene una extensión aproximada de 60 km2, superficie que incluye las áreas destinadas a la producción de alimentos y áreas habitacionales. Dzibanché fue el asiento de la dinastía Kaanu’l, durante el periodo del...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Michael Petrozza. Jason Yaeger. M. Kathryn Brown. Kit Nelson. Rachel Horowitz.

Archaeologists working in the Maya area frequently find dense deposits of artifacts that are classified ‘terminal deposits,’ ‘final deposits,’ or ‘problematical deposits’. These classifications may accurately reflect a deposit’s stratigraphic placement, but ultimately mask or even misrepresent the diverse social behaviors which led to the creation of such deposits. Excavations in the courtyard in front of Structure B-6 at Xunantunich, Belize, exposed a dense deposit of artifacts. Through...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Ana García Barrios.

This is an abstract from the "A Celebration and Critical Assessment of "The Maya Scribe and His World" on its Fiftieth Anniversary" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Grolier exhibition commissioned by M. Coe in 1973 came to researchers as an inescapable reference that remains today. His studies on codex-style vessels, so defined by him, opened the door to new studies from different perspectives and approaches that are reviewed here. This study...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Andrew Scherer.

This is an abstract from the "Decipherment, Digs, and Discourse: Honoring Stephen Houston's Contributions to Maya Archaeology" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Houston’s "The Life Within" is among the most perceptive and nuanced statements on Classic Maya materials and the animate quality of things. Here, I draw inspiration from this future-classic work to more deeply probe Maya understandings of bone – a material most generally treated by...

DOCUMENT Citation Only George Kollias.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The notion of debt pervades anthropological discussion of political economy and exchange. Often used as a descriptor of unequal relationships it also embodies notions of reciprocity, expectation, and mutuality. Debt carries with it a charged negativity in many contexts, conveying experiences of precarity and violence, pressure and visibility. However, debt can...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Eva Lemonnier. Charlotte Arnauld.

Based on the study of two Classic Maya Lowland sites, La Joyanca and Naachtun (Guatemala), this paper explores the topic of rurality through the parameters of potential land use, visible architectural variation, and plausible population mobility. La Joyanca was a medium-sized settlement surrounded by villages and hamlets all of which were recorded by means of conventional surface mapping, whereas Naachtun was a regional capital located amidst extended communities linked by causeways that have...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Xin Lin. Guopeng Chen.

This is an abstract from the "Misinformation and Misrepresentation Part 1: Reconsidering “Human Sacrifice,” Religion, Slavery, Modernity, and Other European-Derived Concepts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The procurement and consumption of jade are conventionally thought to have been under the control of Maya elites. Through cross-cultural comparison with ancient China as a representative jade-using culture, we argue that the multidimensional...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jessica Ratcliffe.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The ancient Maya of the Belize River Valley maintained a strong, spiritual connection with nature, one that can be explored through the layers of religious symbolism imbued into their built environments. In Xunantunich during the Late Classic period, the Maya created a sacred space by incorporating symbols—such as stelae, altars, and cache deposits—into...

DOCUMENT Citation Only David Webster.

This is an abstract from the "Decipherment, Digs, and Discourse: Honoring Stephen Houston's Contributions to Maya Archaeology" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Recent projects in the Buenavista region, some 25 km to the east at Tikal, reveal a landscape of probable Early Classic conflict. What seem to be large defensive features are positioned on a frontier between El Zotz and the Tikal polity. Despite the impressive size of these features, which...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jessica Leonard. Hannah Plumer-Moodie. Thomas Guderjan. Colleen Hanratty.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The osteological analysis of skeletal remains provides a unique lens for viewing social behaviors within ancient complex societies at the level of the individual as well as the population. The dentition from skeletal remains can be especially useful for answering questions regarding dietary practices as the consumption of specific foods leave identifiable...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Joshua Schnell.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Intentional dental modification for aesthetic purposes relating to personal ornamentation and social identity have been widely documented in the Maya region in the form of dental filing and labial drilling for dental inlays. Dental modifications for therapeutic purposes, however, are rarely documented. Though rare, evidence for chipping, scraping, and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Eric Fries.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Large-scale surveys using lidar and other remote sensing technologies have revealed that Maya urban centers were much larger in both settlement area and number of features than previously thought, while also incorporating various forms of large-scale anthropogenic landscape modification for the purposes of intensive agricultural production. These findings...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Manda Adam. Zachary Stanyard. Fred Valdez.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In 2016, the PfBAP (Programme for Belize Archeological Project) employed airborne LiDAR (light detection and ranging) remote sensing technology to map the project area in northwestern Belize. The PfBAP has used LiDAR data to detect and analyze anthropogenic modifications created by the ancient Maya. With this data in hand, we have generated a map with which to...

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

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Burial practices can offer important insights into gender roles within ancient Maya society. We present the results of a diachronic analysis of osteology, grave goods, burial architecture, and contextual data from 108 burials from the Belize River Valley polities of Baking Pot, Blackman Eddy, Cahal Pech, Lower Barton Creek, and Lower Dover. Analyses of grave...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Erin Ray. Nadia Neff. Viorel Atudorei. Keith Prufer.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The agricultural-demographic transition highlights a positive correlation between increasing consumption of agricultural products and population. However, this correlation varies regionally. In Eurasia, agriculture and population growth coincide with increasing sedentism hypothesized to drive population change. In the Amazon, agriculture and sedentism...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Juan Manuel Palomo Mijangos.

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 Ceibal-Petexbatun Archaeological Project uncovered 43 burials with a minimum number of 58 individuals that date from the Middle Preclassic to the Protoclassic period (ca. 700 BC-AD 200). These remains have the potential to provide valuable insight into the processes of political...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Michelle Rich. Erin Sears. Ronald Bishop. Dorie Reents-Budet.

This is an abstract from the "Mesoamerican Figurines in Context. New Insights on Tridimensional Representations from Archaeology" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The ancient Maya resurrection ritual depicted by the 23 ceramic figurines methodically arranged by mourners at the feet of the deceased ruler interred in El Perú-Waka’ Burial 39 continues to be a source of intriguing information about the Classic Maya. More recently, extensive examination...