Cayo (State / Territory) (Geographic Keyword)

DOCUMENT Citation Only Shane Montgomery. Armando Anaya Hernández. Nicholas Dunning. Kathryn Reese-Taylor.

This is an abstract from the "New and Emerging Perspectives on the Bajo el Laberinto Region of the Maya Lowlands, Part 1" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Ongoing archaeological investigations in the Bajo el Laberinto region, bolstered by advances in aerial laser scanning technology, have begun to offer a clearer indication of how the ancient Maya manipulated their environment to manage food, water, and soil insecurities. Multiple lidar campaigns...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Diane Slocum. Jaime Awe.

Xunantunich, an ancient Maya site in the Belize Valley, rose rapidly from a minor political center to a powerful regional polity during the Late Classic period (AD 600-900). Previous researchers suggested that this rapid rise was influenced by Xunantunich’s relationship with the more powerful polity of Naranjo in the nearby Petén Province of Guatemala. Their argument was based in part on a Late Classic period building program at Xunantunich resulting in a site layout that resembles that of sites...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Joshuah Lockett-Harris. Kathryn Reese-Taylor. Felix Kupprat. Armando Anaya Hernández. Debra Walker.

This is an abstract from the "New and Emerging Perspectives on the Bajo el Laberinto Region of the Maya Lowlands, Part 2" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Archaeological investigations at the ancient Maya site of Yaxnohcah, located in the Bajo el Laberinto region of the Maya lowlands, have demonstrated that the construction, maintenance, and elaboration of its central E-Group-style plaza-pyramid complex was integral to the multimillennial...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Sarah Jackson. Joshua Wright. Linda A. Brown.

Archaeologists routinely engage with concepts of space and materiality as we inscribe meanings onto the architecture and objects left behind by past peoples. However, in doing so, we bring explicitly modern sensibilities to our interpretations. In this paper, we consider alternative interpretations of space and materiality as described by Classic Maya people (250-900 CE). We ask: In what ways do categorizations and interpretations of space at Maya archaeological sites change when traditional...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Patricia McAnany.

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. Theory—the workhorse of evidence—is a powerful engine that can revolutionize understanding or create a huge misstep. To theorize the past is to generalize principles and processes of human practice that surpass cultural boundaries. By participating in these larger networks of meaning,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jason Yaeger. Bernadette Cap. M. Kathryn Brown. Rachel Horowitz.

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. Archaeologists working in Belize have made signal contributions to our knowledge of Maya economies and their relationships to political processes and dynamics. In this paper, we examine the ways that archaeological research at Maya sites in Belize has advanced our understanding of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Holley Moyes. Jaime Awe. Christophe Helmke. Jon Spenard.

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. Throughout the Maya area, caves are recognized as unambiguous ritual contexts that provide scholars with a glimpse into the ritual life of ancient people. Religious ritual was not epiphenomenal as some theoretical stances would argue, but was intertwined with the social and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Marc Zender.

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. Paleography (from Greek παλαιό- ‘old’ and γράφε ‘writing’) was long understood as the study of the origins and development of signs (e.g., De Montfaucon, Paleaeografica Graeca, 1708), but since the welcome focus on ductus (i.e., shape, stance, and stroke-order in sign-formation)...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Christina Halperin. Jose Luis Garrido Lopez. Miriam Salas. Jean Baptiste LeMoine.

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. The Maya archaeological site of Ucanal is located in Peten, Guatemala, close to the contemporary border with Belize. In Pre-Columbian times, the site also sat at the borders of some of the largest political centers, such as Caracol (Belize) and Naranjo (Peten, Guatemala)....

DOCUMENT Citation Only Gloria Lara-Pinto.

This is an abstract from the "The Problem of the Monument: Widening Perspectives on Monumentality in the Archaeology of the Isthmo-Colombian Area" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. A couple of years ago some good meaning citizens offered to donate complete ceramic pieces along with other objects they had “collected” from their properties to the regional campus of my university in southern Honduras. These same local citizens declared themselves a...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Anna Novotny.

This is an abstract from the "Cooperative Bodies: Bioarchaeology and Non-ranked Societies" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In ancient complex societies, unique social strata had differential access to food resources and likely relied on different food procurement strategies to meet their needs. This paper explores the extent to which cooperation was part of that strategy for the ancient Maya farmers of the Chan site, located in the Belize River...

DOCUMENT Citation Only James Brady. Ann Scott.

This is an abstract from the "Multidisciplinary Approaches to the Subterranean" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Petexbatun Regional Cave Survey, working for three seasons from 1990 – 1993, was the largest cave project ever conducted in the Maya area. While investigating 22 caves and 11 km of passage, the survey collected a large assemblage of human skeletal material that had the potential for clarifying the nature of human remains in caves....

DOCUMENT Citation Only Estela Martínez. Guillermo Martinez Mora. Patricia Olga Hernandez. Adrián Velazquez.

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. El contexto funerario de una mujer adulta nos muestra que, dentro de las conductas funerarias presentes entre las élites de Tamtoc, era tradicional ataviar al individuo con lujosos bienes procedentes de muy diversas regiones. Las costumbres funerarias y el estudio sobre el origen de los objetos de...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Adolfo Batun-Alpuche.

This is an abstract from the "Adventures in Beekeeping: Recent Studies in Ecology, Archaeology, History, and Ethnography in Yucatán" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Landscape management in Cozumel during the Late Postclassic resulted in a network of stone walls (albarradas) demarcating the entire island resembling the structure of a beehive. This paper presents a comparison of some features of the social ecology of Yucatec stingless bees and the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Cady Rutherford. Marisol Cortes-Rincon.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Economic integration in hinterland communities has often been under theorized in Maya studies. Here I explore the evidence of craft production in several hinterland households as well as the implications for connections with social, political, and economic institutions. Households make decisions about crafting activities and respond to risks and stressors both...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kelsey Sullivan. Kenichiro Tsukamoto. Jaime Awe.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Dispersed urban landscapes are mosaics of individual interactions generated through a range of social and economic processes. Large-scale lithic production provides a lens for understanding the interconnected nature of economies between hinterland communities and central polities, yet it remains relatively underexplored in Classic period Maya society (AD...

DOCUMENT Citation Only J. Gregory Smith. Alejandra Alonso Olvera.

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. This paper discusses chert crafting at the site of Santa Cruz in northern Yucatan. Santa Cruz was a small town located only about 25 km from both Chichen Itza and Ek Balam and occupied almost exclusively during the Late/Terminal Classic period when both these cities were at their height. Surface collections in 2017 and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Dawn Crawford.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The site of Holtun, in the central lakes region of the Maya lowlands, was occupied from the Preclassic through the Postclassic. Over 30 residential groups make up the northern settlement area on the periphery of Holtun where most of these surface residential structures date to the Late Classic and Terminal Classic periods. The non-elite household...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Céline Lamb.

As Maya archaeology has shifted away from urban-centric perspectives, recent research demonstrates that hinterland populations, like urbanites, were involved in diverse and shifting practices enabling them to build and negotiate complex relationships. Using a community approach, this paper examines non-agrarian activities practiced during the late Early and Late Classic (ca. 500 – 850 AD) by residents of Chunhuayum, a small yet socioeconomically diverse farming settlement located in northwest...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Virginia Ochoa-Winemiller. Terance L. Winemiller. William J. Folan. Lynda Florey Folan.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Three-dimensional multi-line laser scanning reproduces highly accurate models that preserve measurable characteristics of portable artifacts such as figurines, whistles, stamps, and molds. Metrological analyses are revealing valuable information about manufacturing techniques, the crafter’s tool kit, the function of these artifacts, and the extent of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only George J. Micheletti.

The Late Classic period (AD 550 – 800) at Pacbitun, Belize brought about heightened prosperity evinced in a surge of architectural development and an increase in precious exotic materials. However, despite continued growth, by the close of the Late Classic Pacbitun’s affluence appears to have diminished considerably. To the north, settlements of the Belize River Valley also seemingly undergo a concomitant florescence and economic decline. Research suggests the pecuniary instability of the Belize...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Daniela Triadan. Takeshi Inomata.

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 recently discovered site of Aguada Fenix in eastern Tabasco, Mexico, is one of the largest monumental constructions in Mesoamerica. It dates to the beginning of the early Middle Preclassic, around 1100 BC. The main complex consists of a rectangular plateau with an E-Group at its center and is delimited by 20 large...

DOCUMENT Citation Only David Mixter.

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. The precolonial Maya city of Actuncan was occupied as a monumental center, then a city, for approximately 2,000 years from its establishment prior to 1000 BC until its abandonment around AD 900. As at any long-occupied urban center, the city grew when it thrived economically and politically, while it contracted and became...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kenichiro Tsukamoto.

This is an abstract from the "Regimes of the Ancient Maya" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Spatial and temporal heterogeneity of office titles and architectural styles in the Maya lowlands suggest that there existed diverse material, textual, and symbolic expressions that created, maintained, and modified regimes during the Classic period (ca. AD 250–900). The variation also signals that authority, power relations, legitimacy, and ideologies were...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Rani Alexander.

Cross markers that consist of a wooden cross supported by a stone cairn (multun) are among the most pervasive landscape features encountered in rural Yucatán. They delimit water sources, features along roadways and paths, agricultural parcels, and the entrances of rural towns. The cross markers show substantial formal variation and are associated with material evidence indicating diverse practices of veneration. Cross markers were first established in the sixteenth century after the Spanish...