Belize (State / Territory) (Geographic Keyword)

DOCUMENT Citation Only Luisa Aebersold. Fred Valdez. Brittany Mitchell.

The archaeological site of Colha, located within the northern Belize chert-bearing zone, is well-known for being one of the largest Maya lithic production sites in Mesoamerica. The site has occupation dating to the Archaic Period as well as the Middle Preclassic through the Early Postclassic. Pollen and geomorphologic evidence suggest intensive forest clearance, wetland soil manipulation, swamp margin, and upland manipulation dating as early as the Archaic Period. Evidence for intensive blade...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Ryan Collins.

Recent investigations of Yaxuná, Yucatan, Mexico have provided evidence to suggest that the earliest permanent spaces, by way of the site’s E-group complex, in the Northern Lowlands were roughly contemporaneous with the early developments observed at Central Lowland sites. On the one hand, this data provides an outlet to better explore the large scale social processes impacting the early macro-region of the Maya area. However, material analysis of recovered shell, lithic, and ceramic artifacts...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Ryan Collins.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This paper explores methodological opportunities for comparative settlement survey by applying ground-penetrating radar (GPR) as an augmentative remote sensing lens. In the last decade, remote sensing in Mesoamerica has undergone a renaissance through the application of Lidar to survey the landscape, providing immense quantities of data on new potential...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Aubree Marshall. Gabriela Murphy. Gabriel Wrobel.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Caves Branch Rockshelter (CBR) is a large cemetery site in Central Belize used for burial by a rural Maya community during the Late Preclassic and Early Classic periods (~300 BC–AD 400). The CBR skeletal series is unusual in the region as it is large and appears to comprise a relatively complete mortality profile. However, due to poor preservation,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Dmitri Beliaev. Simon Martin. Sergei Vepretskii.

This is an abstract from the "The Rise and Apogee of the Classic Maya Kaanu’l Hegemonic State at Dzibanche" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In 2017 previously unknown mid-sixth-century Kanul king K’ahk’ Ti’ Ch’ich’ Aj Saakil was identified in Classic Maya hieroglyphic inscriptions. He acceded as “high king” (kalomte) in AD 550 and was responsible for the defeat of Tikal in AD 562 and the expansion of Dzibanche hegemony through the Southern...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Dmitri Beliaev. Simon Martin.

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. Recent studies of the inscriptions related to the Kaanul dynasty has revealed a new ruler named K’ahk’ Ti’ Ch’ich’. He is mentioned in various Maya sites (El Peru, Uaxactun, Naranjo) as a high king and overlord with a wide dominion. His accession in 550 CE is recorded on the wooden Lintel 3 from...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jessica Munson. Andrés Mejía Ramón. Lorena Paiz. Jill Onken. Jonathan Scholnick.

This is an abstract from the "To Have and Have Not: A Progress Report on the Global Dynamics of Wealth Inequality (GINI) Project" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Decades of settlement pattern research in the Maya lowlands has produced unparalleled datasets for studying processes of urbanization in tropical landscapes. Recent comparative studies support a view of ancient Maya cities as low-density urban systems, which may have created different...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Michael Stowe.

This poster presents the results of five field seasons of intensive survey and total station mapping at the Medicinal Trail Community, a Maya hinterland settlement in northwestern Belize. Mapping during the summer of 2017 has further refined our understanding of the size and distribution of households and numerous landscape features that have been, or continue to be, the focus of excavations. Refinements to the topographical mapping within the area has revealed several complex household groups...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Melvin Rodrigo Guzman Piedrasanta. .

This is an abstract from the "Provisioning Ancient Maya Cities: Modeling Food Production and Land Use in Tropical Urban Environments" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In Maya archaeology, agricultural cycles are the cornerstone of multiple research topics that intertwine daily life, ideology, political economy, and settlement systems. In archaeological research, land-use can be indicative of social organization and provisioning strategies. In this...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Philippe Nondédéo. Eva Lemonnier. Julien Hiquet. Louise Purdue. Cyril Castanet.

The classic Maya site of Naachtun is actually composed by a monumental and public core zone of 35 hectares surrounded by an extensive residential area of about 175 hectares. The study of its settlement pattern along with geoarchaeological works focused on agrarian strategies specifically have shown the role of vacant spaces in shaping the settlement as an agrarian town. Mainly dedicated to agriculture since the beginning of Naachtun’s occupation in the Early Classic period and maintained until...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Felix Kupprat. Debra Walker. Verónica Vázquez López. Joshuah Lockett-Harris. Fernando Flores Esquivel.

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. Calakmul is the largest site on the northern edge of the Bajo el Laberinto and has been investigated intensively since the 1980s. Previous research has produced valuable data regarding the general urban extent and the Late Preclassic monumental architecture surrounding the main plaza, as well as...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Verna Gentil.

The ancient Maya port site of Conil is located in the modern community of Chiquilá on the north coast of Quintana Roo, Mexico. In 1528 Francisco de Montejo, a Spanish conquistador, reported that Conil was a large town consisting of 5,000 houses. William Sanders was the first archaeologist to work at the site in 1954, but the site core was not formally mapped until 2005 by Glover. Further work was conducted in 2014, 2016, and 2017 as part of El Projecto Costa Escondida (PCE). Data collection and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Diane Chase. Elizabeth Graham. Melissa Badillo.

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. Without Belizean archaeological data, we would know very little about the Maya Postclassic period (CE 950–1530). While viewed as a period of lesser cultural development by earlier researchers, Postclassic archaeological research in Belize was published as early as 1898 but...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Michael Biggie. John Walden. Jaime Awe. Rafael Guerra. Julie Hoggarth.

The plaza held special significance to the ancient Maya, and across ancient Mesoamerica. In a reflection of Maya cosmological beliefs, the plaza was seen as a representation of, and a portal to the primordial sea, the watery underworld from which all things originate. This connection is evident in various ways throughout the region, from special dedicatory deposits to decorative architecture and iconography. This presentation explores that cosmological salience through the recent excavations at...

DOCUMENT Citation Only William Nolan. Jerald Ek.

With regional occupational continuity from the Middle Formative through Postclassic Periods, the Río Champotón drainage provides an ideal case study to examine long-term change in ancient Maya subsistence strategies and human/environmental interactions during two and a half millennia of human occupation. This poster presents the results of analysis of an assemblage of over 13,000 shell artifacts generated by the Champotón Regional Settlement Survey during seven seasons of research in the Río...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Maxine Oland.

This is an abstract from the "After Cortés: Archaeological Legacies of the European Invasion in Mesoamerica" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. There is no question that colonialism in the Americas brought huge and unanticipated changes for both European and Indigenous peoples. Yet Indigenous people often contextualized colonial efforts within their own worldview, or ontology, even as they interacted with European people, things, and colonial...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Ashley Sharpe.

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 Usumacinta River and its tributaries played an integral role in the survival and growth of Maya communities in the southern lowlands of Mexico and Guatemala. Early human settlements relied on the river as a source of food and transportation. Examining the animal bones and shell remains...

DOCUMENT Citation Only M. Kathryn Brown. Jason Yaeger.

The Mopan River valley of Belize is home to five closely spaced Lowland Maya ceremonial centers with extensive settlement occupying the landscape between. From south to north, the ceremonial centers are Arenal, Early Xunantunich, Classic Xunantunich, Actuncan, and Buenavista del Cayo. Archaeological evidence suggests that each of these centers was initially occupied by the Middle Preclassic, but they had distinct histories, evolving into ceremonial/political centers at different times, from...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Tomas Barrientos. Marcello Canuto.

This is an abstract from the "Regimes of the Ancient Maya" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Data from investigations at the archaeological site of La Corona reflect the role that secondary sites had for political integration in the Maya lowlands. Comparing what the hieroglyphic texts suggest with what the material culture of the secondary sites indicates, it is possibly to assess the nature of La Corona political regime before, during, and after its...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Marilyn Masson.

Debt was important to late Maya societies in religious and political terms. This paper explores the many facets of debt that tied together household and regional economies, including bottom-up mechanisms employed by families and communities, as well as top-down institutions that garnered support for religious and political bureaucracies. Graeber’s distinction between moral and impersonal economies outlines a comparative continuum with profound implications for issues of human rights in the past....

DOCUMENT Citation Only Margaret Nelson.

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...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Zoe Rawski.

This is an abstract from the "The Preclassic Landscape in the Mopan Valley, Belize" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Over the last five years, intensive investigations of Structure F1 at Early Xunantunich, Belize, have shed light on a dynamic and important time in the site’s early history. The monumental platform structure played an important role in the early ceremonial center, creating the site’s northern boundary, hosting large public rituals,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Helen Haines. Anabel Ford. Thomas Guderjan. Sherman Horn.

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. Nearly 60 years ago Gordon Willey’s team published "Prehistoric Maya Settlements in the Belize Valley," initiating the study of ancient Maya communities with a focus at Barton Ramie in Belize. The lead continues to this day with the first archaeological application of lidar by the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Johann Begel. Julien Hiquet.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Skull offerings among the ancient populations of Mesoamerica are well documented by archaeological, ethnohistorical and iconographic sources. New finds in 2017, in the Lowland Maya Classic site of Naachtun (Guatemala) required intersite comparisons beyond the few well-known cases such as Uaxactun E-Group’s deposits. The association of a cached human skull and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Holley Moyes. Dominique Rissolo.

This is an abstract from the "The Subterranean in Mesoamerican Cultural Landscapes" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Mapping is one of the most fundamental and important enterprises for cave archaeologists not only for research but also integral to cave management and heritage preservation. Using traditional cartography techniques is often a tedious and long-term project involving numerous field seasons and thousands of measurements. Capturing 3D...