Cayo (State / Territory) (Geographic Keyword)

DOCUMENT Citation Only Wendy Bacon.

Although scholars of Classic Maya art have described certain short-statured figures as dwarves and endowed them with mystical significance, the motif has gone undefined. This contextual analysis identifies the anatomical and cultural attributes of the dwarf motif and interprets its meaning within the ancient Maya conception of time and their ideological integration of the natural and supernatural. A spatial analysis of 45 depictions of short-statured individuals on archaeologically provenienced...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Diane Slocum. Patricia McAnany. Iván Batún-Alpuche.

This is an abstract from the "Democratizing Heritage Creation: How-To and When" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The focus of archaeological work has shifted in recent decades to collaborative frameworks that allow for sharing of knowledge production among local and descendent communities. Drawing on the work of Laurajane Smith, we argue that recognizing heritage as a dynamic social process rather than exclusively an artifact or archaeological site...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jaroslaw Zralka.

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. The Terminal Classic period (ca. AD 800–950) brings important sociopolitical and cultural changes to the Maya lowlands. Some of these changes are seen in iconography and architecture, and may reflect the migration of new people as well as the spread of new...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kristin Landau.

In the early 2000s, Mesoamerican archaeologists adopted the "dynamic" model of state organization, positing that political centralization strengthened and diminished over time. Such fluctuations are due primarily to the inherent tension between the institutions of kinship and kingship, and consequent struggle for power in political, economic, and religious spheres. I argue that the intermediate scale of the neighborhood is best suited for analyzing how local- and state-level power structures...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Francisco Estrada-Belli. Sandra Balanzario.

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. Dzibanché is an archaeological zone in southern Quintana Roo encompassing several large ceremonial complexes, Dzibanché, Tutil, Kinichna and Lamay connected by causeways. According to contemporary texts, it was the early capital of the Kaanul (Snake) kingdom with vast hegemonic influence across...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Benjamin Baaske. Joshua J. Kwoka.

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. Maya E-groups served as foci of political and ritual practices from the Preclassic through Terminal Classic. In addition to the hallmark western pyramidal and eastern range structures, these groups are often populated by a number of ancillary structures. This paper details recent investigations of one such structure located at the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Cecelia Klein.

This is an abstract from the "Animal Symbolism in Postclassic Mesoamerica: Papers in Honor of Cecelia Klein" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. All sixteen birds carved on the sides of the Platform of the Eagles and Jaguars at Chichen Itza have been traditionally identified as eagles. Because each pair of birds flanks a large relief of a seated jaguar holding a heart, it has been assumed in the past that the platform celebrated military orders like...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Morgan Clark.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. More than mere accessories, the earflares that ancient Maya peoples donned were essential. Nothing indicates this more than the fact that their ornamental use was not limited ears; indeed, elite bodies dripped with them. Stelae from Tikal and Cobá depict rulers with long strings of them around their necks. Some earflares, as with an example from Pomona, are...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Keith M. Prufer. Mark Robinson. Douglas J. Kennett.

Renewed focus on Paleoamerican and archaic peoples across Mesoamerica have broadened our understanding of those time periods.  However, few stratified sites have been documented.  We present new data from two multi-component rockshelters located in the Bladen Nature Reserve in the Maya Mountains of Belize.  We document persistent use of these rockshelters from the late Pleistocene through the Maya collapse and suggest these spaces were used for animal processing, tool reduction, and as...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kenichiro Tsukamoto. Octavio Esparza Olguín. Daniel Salazar Lama. Luz Evelia Campaña Valenzuela. Adriana Velázquez Morlet.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. El Palmar has garnered considerable attention from researchers, primarily due to its numerous carved monuments. In 1936, Sir Eric Thompson’s exploration initially reported 44 stelae and several altars at its Main Group. However, despite sporadic studies conducted by Tatiana Proskouriakoff and others in subsequent decades, systematic research was lacking,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only José Bustamante.

Over the past decade, the La Corona Archeological Project has been investigating the site’s palace complex, focusing primarily on its final construction phases. The focus is common in lowland Maya archaeology because of the relative ease of conducting extensive excavations on terminal phase architecture. However, at La Corona, major tunneling efforts have also explored the earlier architectural phases of the palace. As a result, the project has identified three construction phases that date to...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kelsey Sullivan. Jaime Awe.

This is an abstract from the "Ceremonial Lithics of Mesoamerica: New Understandings of Technology, Distribution, and Symbolism of Eccentrics and Ritual Caches in the Maya World and Beyond" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Though identified at sites throughout Mesoamerica and the Maya Lowlands, eccentric lithics remain poorly understood and understudied. These esoteric artifacts, however, are very important to understanding the ritual expression of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Max Seidita. Charles Golden.

More than half a century of archaeological and epigraphic research at Piedras Negras has produced one of the best understood epigraphic corpus in the Maya region and provided archaeologists with a plethora of information related to the nature of rulership, courtly life, and the regional political landscape of the Classic Period. Despite this work, questions persist about the economic structure of Piedras Negras households. Here we present the results of recent investigations undertaken at...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Diane Chase. Arlen Chase.

This is an abstract from the "Ancient Maya Embedded Economies" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Maya economic systems were neither static nor simplistic. Research at Caracol, Belize, has shown that the site’s Late Classic inhabitants received the bulk of their goods and services from markets that were embedded within the city. Whereas some researchers have postulated the existence of a dual economic system for the Maya in which quotidian and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Luis Pacheco-Cobos. Amy E. Thompson. Carmen Cortez. Bruce Winterhalder. Keith M. Prufer.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Cooperation is essential to labor networks in low-density agricultural societies. Household or neighborhood heads must learn to identify, select, and monitor raw materials, and estimate harvest times and transport costs. In addition, kin related groups must nurture allegiances to attract and reciprocate for labor to build houses, farm, and for other communal...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Luke Auld-Thomas.

This paper presents research carried out by members of the Proyecto Regional Arqueologico La Corona at the site of El Achiotal since 2009, with emphasis on new findings since 2015. Occupation at the site spans the Late Preclassic and Early Classic periods (roughly the 1st to 5th Centuries AD, with the possibility of some earlier occupation). An inscribed stela discovered in 2015 provides critical insight into the geopolitics of the Early Classic period and establishes greater time-depth for some...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Geiser Martín Medina. José Trinidad Escalante Kuk. Luis Daniel Domínguez Aguilar.

This is an abstract from the "La Práctica Arqueológica en México en Tiempos de Crisis: Escenarios, Problemáticas Claves, Actores, Acciones y Propuestas" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. A partir de 1970, la expansión de Mérida, propició una demanda de proyectos a partir de rescates y salvamentos arqueológicos. Esto permitió demostrar la ocupación prehispánica por medio de monumentos arqueológicos restaurados en espacios destinados a infraestructura...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Lilia Lizama Aranda. Israel Herrera. Mariza Carrillo. Cecilia Medina. Dalia Paz.

This is an abstract from the "La Práctica Arqueológica en México en Tiempos de Crisis: Escenarios, Problemáticas Claves, Actores, Acciones y Propuestas" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. En esta presentación se plantean tres cosas: (1) las problemáticas que se relacionan con la disciplina arqueológica en la península de Yucatán; (2) los grupos y sectores que participan en la búsqueda de su solución; (3) las alternativas y soluciones asi como el...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jocelyne Ponce. Francisco Pérez.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Some significant social and spatial units of organization and analysis include neighborhoods, wards and zones. These intermediate scale units are important to understand Maya social organization and integration, especially in dispersed or sparsely populated regions such as La Corona’s in northwest Petén, Guatemala. This paper assesses criteria regarding the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only G. Van Kollias.

This is an abstract from the "Recent Archaeological Investigations in Chiapas, Mexico" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The borders and frontiers of ancient communities provide a rich opportunity to examine the effects of social and political change. These interstitial spaces are often conceptualized as part of a polity body but may be better understood as spaces of continual change and reorganization, positioning these communities as active rather...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Laureano Gonzalez. Lilia Lizama.

This is an abstract from the "La Práctica Arqueológica en México en Tiempos de Crisis: Escenarios, Problemáticas Claves, Actores, Acciones y Propuestas" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. En esta presentación realzamos la importancia que tienen los sitios arqueológicos de menor tamaño que yacen en ruinas, que por la falta del recurso y políticas del sector público representan un nicho de inversión para la iniciativa privada. De aquí que, la...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Julio Cesar Hoil Gutiérrez.

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. La meliponicultura yucateca actual experimenta dos realidades contrastantes: por un lado, enfrenta un escenario crítico que poco tiene que ver con el auge del que gozó en el pasado, y por el por el otro, es objeto de algunos esfuerzos por rescatarlo y preservarlo con el fin de evitar su...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Gabriela Dziki. Martin Menz.

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. This paper examines an elite household, Group 48, at the site of Aventura, Belize. Group 48 is located east and adjacent to Group C, one of the six adjoining plaza groups that form Aventura’s city center. It is also situated at the north end of an intersite causeway and adjacent and south of the proposed salt...

DOCUMENT Citation Only David Hyde.

Social identification is the perception of oneness with, or belongingness to, some human aggregate. The definition of others and self is largely relational and comparative. Archaeologists demonstrate Maya elite identity by comparing them to non-elites in terms of energy expenditure in burial preparation, house and platform construction, access to luxury items, and cranial and dental modifications. Although non-elites include some urban residents and all hinterland residents, this study proposes...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Bernadette Cap. Rachel Horwitz.

This is an abstract from the "Ancient Maya Embedded Economies" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Ancient economies are intertwined with aspects of the daily life of individuals in both market and premarket economies. To more fully understand these relationships, we must explore the ways in which economic actions are embedded and entangled within social, political, and religious practices. We briefly discuss the history of the term and how we utilize...