Cayo (State / Territory) (Geographic Keyword)
851-875 (892 Records)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Puuc region of Yucatán is distinguished by its architectural style, composed primarily of low, range-type structures with limestone veneers. These building surfaces, elaborately carved with iconographic content, also served as backdrops for stucco and stone sculptures, which were placed in niches, on projecting platforms, and incorporated directly into the...
Using Bayesian Radiocarbon Chronologies in Conjunction with Artifact Inventories to Reconstruct the Timing and Formation of Peri-abandonment Deposits at Baking Pot, Belize (2018)
A variety of functions have been proposed for ‘problematic deposits’ across the Maya lowlands. All of the explanations have archaeological and temporal implications that have rarely been operationalized together to gain better insights into the nature of these deposits. In this presentation, we describe these features as ‘peri-abandonment deposits’, as all proposed explanations imply that the events that led to the formation of the deposits occurred around the time (or after) ceremonial centers...
Using Event History Methods to Analyze the Diffusion of Dynastic Rituals in Classic Maya Society (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Novel Statistical Techniques in Archaeology I (QUANTARCH I)" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Diffusion of innovation describes the way novel cultural traits or information spread in a population. Understanding the specific factors that account for the spread of these innovations calls for a multivariate approach. Event history analysis provides a set of statistical methods to explain and predict the occurrence of...
Using Landscape to Unbuild Binaries: Human-Environment Relationships at Aventura, Belize (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Dividing the landscape into the categories of natural and cultural clouds an understanding of the relationship between humans and their ecological environment. Humans are not separate from or above the landscape they inhabit, and landscape archaeology is well-situated to address arbitrary binaries that reinforce problematic notions about human-environment...
Utilitarian Lithics as Commodities: Comparing Classic Period Specialized and Multi-craft Producers in the Maya Lowlands (2023)
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. Economic studies in the Maya region have illustrated that the Classic period Maya utilized a variety of exchange networks to circulate commodities such as market exchange, redistribution, and gifting. The study of specific types of goods provides information on how different materials circulated through these exchange mechanisms...
Variation in Obsidian Source Consumption within the Kingdom of Piedras Negras (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Advances in Obsidian Studies of the Old and New Worlds" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. More than a decade of archaeological research has characterized the political landscape of the middle Usumacinta river valley as a tense political rivalry between the Classic period Maya (250 – 900 C.E.) kingdoms. Recent archaeological work in the kingdoms of Piedras Negras and Yaxchilan has sought to unravel how the internal...
Vegetative Agency and Social Memory in Houselots of Ancient Cobá (2018)
It is difficult to pin down the objective definition of a weed; rather, the idea of a weed is constructed through a set of characteristics that are, for the most part, dependent on context and relative interactions. Doody et al (2014) use Judith Butler’s (1990) concept of performativity to describe this dynamic, ongoing construction as a product of the agency of both people and plants. Here we interpret studies on ancient Maya agricultural techniques through the lens of plant agency and...
Venerating Death and Fertility: Implications of Late Terminal Classic Maya Use of Monuments with Skeletal Imagery (2021)
This is an abstract from the "New Perspectives on Ritual Violence and Related Human Body Treatments in Ancient Mesoamerica" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This paper focuses on specific attestations found on Maya monuments featuring human skeletal iconography and to the concave round depressions used in place of their skulls. Such characteristic representation on monuments is mostly limited to the Maya Puuc region of the western Yucatán Peninsula...
Veneration and Pilgrimage at a Hinterland Shrine: Evidence from the Medicinal Trail Community, Northwestern Belize (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Manifesting Movement Materially: Broadening the Mesoamerican View" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Data recovered from excavation of the residential Tapir Group at the Maya hinterland site of Medicinal Trail provides evidence for ancestor veneration and pilgrimage. For veneration, the Maya incorporated ancestors into their built environment through the ritual practice of physically including them in the architecture as...
The View from Below: Plaza Spaces at Actuncan, Belize (2018)
Formal plazas constitute the majority of public space in Maya centers and yet, until quite recently, plazas have not received the same investigative attention as the impressive pyramids and palaces that surround them. This neglect is largely due to the difficulty of investigating public plazas, which typically contain few artifactual or structural indications of their ancient use. Although the identification of activity in ancient plazas is technically challenging, a dedicated investigation of...
The View from the Ground: How Geochemistry Informs Our Understanding of the Regal, Ritual, and Residential Character of Actuncan (2018)
The archaeological investigation of Actuncan in western Belize included the geochemical analysis of one of the largest and most diverse sets of activity surfaces in the Maya world. Over 1200 soil, sediment, and plaster samples from four major architectural complexes representing regal, ritual, and residential locations were assayed using ICP-MS. The results allow a uniquely "atomic" perspective on the changing use of urban space over roughly 900 years, ca. AD 100-1000. This research identifies...
Vista Alegre: The Architecture of a Coastal Site in Northern Quintana Roo, México (2018)
El Proyecto Costa Escondida, dirigido por Jeffrey Glover y Dominique Rissolo, ha realizado investigaciones en la costa norte de Quintana Roo, México desde el año 2005. El sitio de Vista Alegre está ubicado en una pequeña isla dentro de la laguna de Yalahau, formó parte de los asentamientos costeros que, a lo largo del litoral de la Península de Yucatán, mantuvieron una circulación de bienes durante la época prehispánica. Estos sitios presentaron y compartieron algunas características...
Walking through Mayapán (2018)
I present a preliminary analysis of movement through the Postclassic political capital of Mayapán. The architectural features at Mayapán are some of the most densely concentrated of sites in ancient Mesoamerica, but its organizational principles defy explanation. Almost two decades of fieldwork, including using electronic total stations, RTK survey-grade GNSS, UAV-based aerial photography, and an aircraft-borne LiDAR survey of a 40 sq km area centered on Mayapán's defensive wall, allows mapping...
Warfare, Fortifications, and Archaeological Formation Processes: The Case of Mensabak, Chiapas, Mexico (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This paper musters archaeological, ethnohistoric, and ethnographic data to highlight that a greater focus on formation processes and sampling bias is necessary in the archaeology of warfare and study of martial architecture. Fortifications are some of the most important archaeological indicators of past warfare. For example, the myth of a peaceful Maya...
Warriors and Violence in the Iconography of Chichén Itzá (2018)
En Mesoamérica las representaciones gráficas sobre guerra, violencia y conflicto, son una constante que se encuentran en diversos sitios y en diferentes periodos. Para el Epiclásico (650-900 A.D) en el centro de México, y para el Clásico Tardío/ Terminal (600-900 A.D) en el área Maya, esta temática comienza a presentar cambios, tiende a ser más explícita y a compartir algunos elementos entre sitios contemporáneos. Chichén Itzá floreció durante este momento de cambios y muestra de ello es la...
Wars of the Western Maya Kings: Military Conflicts in Lacandon Selva at the Turn of the Seventh to Eighth Centuries (2021)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The last quarter of the seventh century was marked by the intensification of military and political struggle in the Ususmasinta Basin. Loss of control over the Western Lowlands by Kaanu’l power at this time led to wars between the largest political centers of the region—Piedras Negras, Palenque, Yaxchilan, Tonina, and Saktz’i. The Lacandon Selva (Chiapas...
Water for the Keep: Hydrological Flow and Accumulation (2023)
This is an abstract from the "La Cuernavilla, Guatemala: A Maya Fortress and Its Environs" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This paper will present the final results and interpretations of data collected from La Cuernavilla’s aguada. Special emphasis is placed on new data collected through several types of soil and geoarchaeological analyses that crucially supplement the data that have already been presented. Previous presentations on this topic...
Water Insititutional Response to Social-Envrionmental Change: A Maya Case Study
This project looks specifically at how the choices of Maya royalty and farmers in the face of environmental fluctuation affected their water control institutions. More generally this project looks how people in water institutions/systems respond to change.
The Ways of the Maya: Salt Production in Sacapulas, Guatemala (1981)
This resource is a citation record only, the Center for Digital Antiquity does not have a copy of this document. The information in this record has been migrated into tDAR from the EXARC Bibliography, originally compiled by Roeland Paardekooper, and updated. Most of these records consist of a document citation and other metadata but do not have the documents themselves uploaded. If you have a digital copy of the document and would like to have it curated in tDAR, please contact us using the...
The Weaknesses of a Colonial Mindset: A Study of Indigenous Spirituality during the Maya Caste War (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. A major feature of colonization of the Americas was the weaponization of the Christian faith. In colonial Latin America it was distorted and weaponized to push a political agenda of forced conversion upon Indigenous peoples. In the instance of the Maya Caste War, however, this idea was flipped on its head by Indigenous peoples who used their spirituality...
Weapons of the Sun: Centipedes and Fire Serpents in the Art and Symbolism of Ancient Mesoamerica (2018)
In a myth that provided a charter for Mexica domination of Central Mexico, the deity Huitzilopochtli defeated his foes with a spear-thrower in the form of a fire serpent, or Xiuhcoatl. While Huitzilopochtli was a being unique to the Mexica, the Xiuhcoatl is generally considered to derive from an earlier entity referred to as the Teotihuacan War Serpent. Although the influence of Teotihuacan symbolism on later cultures of Central Mexico is undeniable, the portrayal of solar deities with...
Wetland Maize Farming by 6000 BP Gave Way to Upland Farming with the Rise of Ancient Maya Settlements and Political Centers (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. Recent research in the American neotropics suggests that cultivation of plants for food began early in the Middle Holocene (ca. 7500 BP) and continued for millennia prior to the adoption of surplus agricultural production of domesticated staple foods by 5000 BP in South America and 4000 BP in the Maya lowlands. Data...
What the Shell? Taphonomic and Cultural Modifications of Freshwater and Marine Shell from the Upper Belize River Valley (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Zooarchaeological analysis of both freshwater and marine shells from the Upper Belize River Valley is important to interpreting Ancient Maya daily lives. Shell analysis allows us to examine dietary practices and understand economy and trade between Belize Valley sites. This poster presents the results of an analysis of over 42,000 freshwater and 1,200 marine...
What's in That Incense Burner? A Study of Residues at Balamku (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Studies in Mesoamerican Subterranean Archaeology" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. It is so widely accepted that the Maya burned copal incense in their rituals that the assumption has gone unquestioned. During the 2018 season, the Gran Acuífero Maya Project began a multi-year investigation of the cave of Balamku near Chichen Itza. The cave contains a large number of incense burners filled with burned material that...
What’s in a Name: Caches, Offerings, and Problematic Deposits from the Medicinal Trail Hinterland Community, Belize (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Excavations between 2004 and 2019 at the Medicinal Trail Hinterland Community in northwestern Belize have uncovered numerous special deposits from a variety of contexts including caches, termination offerings, exposed offerings, and problematic deposits (PDs). Caches and the offerings have been reported on extensively and are generally understood to have...