Cayo (State / Territory) (Geographic Keyword)
326-350 (1,147 Records)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In antiquity, the use of prestige objects and adornment made of jade was a key aspect of Maya elite life which carried over from the Preclassic to the Classic period. The establishment of jade indicating high social status has shown to have begun in Mesoamerica with the Olmec, however the scope of this dissertation will focus only on the 1,800-year span of...
Embodied Identities and Moving Bodies: The Archaeology and Bioarchaeology of Ninth-Century Cultural Contacts from the Perspective of K’anwitznal (Ucanal), Guatemala (2023)
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. Fifty years ago, Maya scholars argued that peoples from the Gulf Coast invaded and settled several sites in the Southern Maya Lowlands in the ninth century, including the site of Ucanal. These invasions were thought to have led to the collapse of Southern...
Embodying the Sun. Pyrotechniques as Part of Human Sacrifice in Ancient Mesoamerica (2018)
In Mesoamerica, sacrificial ceremonies for the sake of religious merit-making tended to bridge polarities between action and symbols. Some of the ritual practices were mediated by mythical narratives surrounding domestic hearths, divine fire, and the sun itself. Among ancient Mesoamericans with their hierophagic cosmic understanding, the fiery protagonists to which sacrifices were destined to were deemed necessary complements of all life and had to be fed. This talk combines graphic and textual...
The Emergence of a Large Community at Aguada Fénix, Tabasco, Mexico, and Its Legacy (2024)
This is an abstract from the "States, Confederacies, and Nations: Reenvisioning Early Large-Scale Collectives." session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The site of Aguada Fénix features an artificial plateau, which measures 1,400 × 400 m horizontally and 10–15 m vertically. Nine causeways and corridors radiate from the plateau. These monumental constructions were built between 1050 and 750 BC. This building, discovered in 2017, turned out to be the largest...
An Empirical Study of the Economy of the Classic Maya Regal Palace of La Corona, Guatemala (2018)
This paper reports on the final results of a multi-facetted study of the northern section of the regal palace of La Corona. This study sampled (n=328) both plaster and soil in three adjacent patios and adjoining middens. The plaster samples underwent a geochemical analysis (ICP-MS), while the soil samples underwent flotation analysis which recovered macro-botanical remains and micro-artifacts. These results were then combined to traditional artifactual data derived from five middens excavated...
Emplacing a Classic Maya Ritual: Locating Deity Impersonation through Space and Time (2023)
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. Michael Coe’s “The Maya Scribe and His World” (1973) and the 1971 Grolier Club exhibition for which it was produced marked the first sustained treatment of scribes and artists in scholarship on Classic Maya civilization. It also highlighted the wealth of information that ceramics and...
Employment and Applications of Airborne and Handheld Lidar Scanning at Calakmul (2024)
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. The archaeological site of Calakmul has a long history of archaeological research and documentation, from the initial sketches and hand-drawn plans to those created using precise topographical instruments, to the recording of the different architectural spaces. Nowadays, the use of innovative...
The End Is Nigh: Applying Regional, Contextual and Ethnographic Approaches for Understanding the Significance of Terminal "Problematic" Deposits in Western Belize (2018)
The discovery of cultural remains on or above the floors of rooms and courtyards at several Maya sites has been interpreted by some archaeologists as problematic deposits, defacto refuse, or as evidence for rapid abandonment. Investigations in the Belize River valley have recorded similar deposits at several surface and subterranean sites. Our regional and contextual approach to the study of these remains, coupled with ethnohistoric and ethnographic information provide limited support for...
End of the line: Tikal’s Final Ceramic Phase (2024)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In the latter half of the nineteenth century the ruins of Tikal were briefly reoccupied. Refugees fleeing the Caste War of Yucatan cohabited with Lacandon Maya from the surrounding jungles and heavily Hispanized Itza Maya from the lakes of central Petén, Guatemala, to form a small multi-ethnic hamlet amongst the hulking ruins of the ancient Maya city....
Entangled: The Shifting Networks that Linked the Classic Maya of Belize’s Mopan Valley to Adjacent Regions (2019)
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. Some Mayanists have eschewed the notion that Classic Maya polities were territorially based, arguing instead that they were constituted through networks of political alliances that were continually reinforced through gifting, diplomacy, and warfare. That idea is our springboard...
Entering Chahk’s Realm: Ancient Cave Use and Ritually Deposited Speleothems in Postclassic Architecture at Punta Laguna, Yucatan, Mexico (2024)
This is an abstract from the "Multidisciplinary Approaches to the Subterranean" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. As rainwater seeps into caves over millions of years, it creates calcium carbonate formations known as speleothems. Ancient Maya peoples associated speleothems with the Earth Monster’s fangs, the Serpent Deity, and caves from which Chahk, the rain god, brings rain. As such, speleothems are animate embodiments of fertility and ritually...
Entre montañas y ríos: La población del sureste de Petén tras el colapso maya (800 aC al 1000 dC) (2023)
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. El sureste del Petén está conformado por una diversidad de paisajes geográficos y ambientales que permitieron el desarrollo de asentamientos prehispánicos claramente jerarquizados desde épocas muy tempranas hasta muy tardías, incluyendo los dos siglos que...
The Environmental and Cultural Context of North American Turkey Domestication (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Questioning the Fundamentals of Plant and Animal Domestication" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The turkey (Meleagris gallopavo) is the only native vertebrate animal domesticated in North America. As such, the history, timing and process of its domestication is critical to our understanding of past human-animal relationships in the ancient Americas. This paper summarizes recent advancements in reconstructing the...
Environmental History of the Petén Campechano (2023)
This is an abstract from the "A Session in Memory of William J. Folan: Cities, Settlement, and Climate" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Paleoenvironmental inferences are based on pollen and geochemical data from sediment cores collected in Lakes Silvituc and Uxul, and Oxpemul Reservoir, near three archaeological sites that supported agricultural activity between ca. 900 BC and AD 750, under the control of the Kaan Dynasty. These sites show patterns...
Environmental Justice and the Water Temple at Cara Blanca, Belize (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Unsettling Infrastructure: Theorizing Infrastructure and Bio-Political Ecologies in a More-Than-Human World" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Nestled between stark white limestone cliffs and freshly burned agricultural fields, the Cara Blanca, Belize, water temple complex sits teetering on the edge of a 60+ m deep cenote. The Ancestral Maya built the structures so as to integrate the structure and the landscape—with...
Environmental Legacy of Precolumbian Maya Mercury: Using the Present to Understand the Past (2023)
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 Mexico and Central American region has a history of mercury use that began at least two millennia before European colonization in the sixteenth century. Archaeologists have reported deposits of cinnabar (HgS) and other mercury materials at Classic period (ca. 250–900 CE) Maya settlements across the region;...
Epigraphy and History at La Corona (2018)
The ancient Maya ruins of La Corona (ancient Saknikte') has an unusually large textual and historical record. The site's inscriptions, despite their highly fragmented and incomplete state, present epigraphers and archaeologists with a detailed account of a royal family that ruled there at least from the 6th to 8th centuries. Excavations in the last several years have revealed many more inscribed sculptures. This paper will focus on the distinctive characteristics of La Corona as a literate...
Epigraphy and the Archaeology of Settlement in the Dolores Region, Peten, Guatemala (2019)
This is an abstract from the "At the Interface the Use of Archaeology and Texts in Research" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This paper summarizes recent research into the timing, distribution, and causes of ancient Maya settlement in the area of Dolores, Peten, Guatemala, in the western Maya Mountains. Integrating evidence from hieroglyphic inscriptions, ceramic studies, and GIS modeling of least-cost pathways and viewsheds, I propose an...
Erasing Borders: Integrating the Settlement Hierarchies of Central Belize and the Petén, Guatemala (2019)
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. Over the last 18 years, the Department of Conservation and Rescue of Prehispanic Archaeological Sites (DECORSIAP) in Guatemala has carried out extensive systematic surveys of the northeast region of Petén, Guatemala in order to better understand the internal and external...
Espacios subterráneos en Yaxchilán: Las cuevas como elementos modeladores del paisaje constructivo (2024)
This is an abstract from the "Recent Archaeological Investigations in Chiapas, Mexico" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. A lo largo de tres temporadas de campo el “Proyecto Investigación Arqueológica en Yaxchilán y su entorno. Área del Meandro en el Usumacinta”, se ha centrado en realizar el reconocimiento de superficie de toda el meandro sobre la que se asienta Yaxchilán. Como parte de este proyecto, se detectaron alrededor de 20 pequeñas cuevas con...
The Esperanza to Middle Marcala Phase Subsistence Practices at El Gigante Rockshelter (11,000–7400 cal B.P.) (2018)
The earliest human occupation of the El Gigante Rockshelter in the highlands of western Honduras dates to the Early Esperanza phase at 11,010 cal B.P. This paper examines the perishable and imperishable remains from the Early Esperanza through Middle Marcala phase occupation from 11,010-7,430 cal B.P. and what they inform about human adaptation and forager subsistence practices in the highlands during this early period of Honduran prehistory.
An Ethno-ecological View of the Evolution of "Solares": A Yucatan Maya Houselot Case Study (2018)
Using a household ecology model, this longitudinal comparison of the flora and fauna of village yards attempts to show how and why solares and their contents have evolved over the last two and one-half decades. Particular emphasis is placed on showing how such changes might be detected in and impact current and future archaeological explorations of Maya farming communities. Changes in water usage, economic activities, family structure and social organization, religious beliefs, evolving house...
Ethnoarchaeology of Water Resources in a Landscape without Rivers: Using Limestone Solution Cavities to Study Settlement and Subsistence Activities in a Yucatec Maya Community, Mexico (2018)
Ethnoarchaeological investigations in the Yucatec Maya community of Xculoc recently included inventorying the location and uses of a range of small-large water sources. This karst landscape has no surface rivers, ponds, or lakes. Currently, the community uses a deep well at the former hacienda in this location. However, at least 60 years ago most families that coalesced into this village were distributed in relation to smaller reliable water sources near the current community location. Field...
Evaluating Prehistoric Migration in Pacific Coastal Nicaragua through the Analysis of Strontium Isotope Ratios (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Strontium isotopes are increasingly used to infer migration amongst ancient populations. The 87Sr/86Sr ratio in tooth enamel is primarily influenced by the underlying geology of the region where an individual resided during tooth formation in childhood or adolescence. Older geological formations tend to present a higher 87Sr/86Sr ratio, while lower ratios...
Evaluating the Food Values of Alternative Crops and Implications for Drought Effects on the Ancient Maya (2021)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Far from being limited to maize, beans, and squash, the ethnographic Maya are known to make use of 497 species of food plants indigenous to the Maya Lowlands. This study presents initial results of determining “food values” based on nutritional content for these plant species, and the methods used to determine the values. The results have significant...