Belize (State / Territory) (Geographic Keyword)
1,026-1,050 (1,081 Records)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The advantages of LiDAR survey applied to the identification of Archaeology under forested areas has been evident since the early 21st century. Most LiDAR studies have been done by placing the laser devices on aircraft, and in more recent years, drones. However, this is still quite an expensive endeavour that relies on several variables to succeed (forest...
The Use of Geospatial Technology to Identify Patterns in the Distribution of Artifacts at the Ancient Maya Site of Pacbitun, Belize (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The archaeological site of Pacbitun is located in west central Belize between the ecozones of the Belize River Valley and the Mountain Pine Ridge. The ancient Maya occupied the site from the beginning of the Middle Preclassic (900 – 300 BC) and continuing through the Terminal Classic (AD 800-900). The use of geographic information systems (GIS) is becoming...
Uses of Different Species of Animals from Vista Alegre: A Zooarchaeological Analysis (2018)
Previous zooarcheological research has focused on knowing the patterns of wildlife exploitation in the different archaeological sites of the Maya area. In this sense, the present work intends to approach the different uses of the different species of animals in activities carried out by the pre-Hispanic Maya people located at the site of Vista Alegre, Quintana Roo, Mexico. The simple has c. 23,000 remains of fauna, coming from three architectural constructions: Structure 9 (Operation 3A),...
Using Architectural Sculpture to Think about Center and Periphery in the Puuc Region (2019)
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...
Using Sediment Chemistry to Define Ancient Activities (2024)
This is an abstract from the "Underwater Maya: Analytical Approaches for Interpreting Ancient Maya Activities at the Paynes Creek Salt Works, Belize" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Soil chemistry is used in the Maya area to evaluate ancient activities not readily identified through architecture and artifact assemblages. We evaluate ancient activities at Ta’ab Nuk Na salt work, one of the largest underwater sites in Paynes Creek National Park, with...
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...
Vessels and Bones: Ritual Offerings from the Grupo Kuche Palace Throne Room (2024)
This is an abstract from the "The Bolonchen Regional Archaeological Project: 25 Years of Research in the Puuc" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. During the PARB project’s 2023 excavations of the Terminal Classic (AD 800–1000) Grupo Kuche palace throne room (N1050E0815) at Kiuic, we unearthed two major and distinct ritual offerings. The first was thought to be a lip-to-lip cache located on the northwest corner near the top of the structure beneath a...
Vessels at War: The Kerr Archive and the Study of Classic Maya Violence (2024)
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. Rollout images of Maya vases and the database developed by Justin and Barbara Kerr allowed unfettered access to Classic Maya depictions of tribute, palace life, and mythic history. The Kerr Archive also brought into focus marching warriors and captured enemies, some of them...
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...
Visualizing Mayapán’s Outlying Centers and Regional Distribution (2024)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. We present the identification and analysis of the outlying minor centers surrounding the Postclassic city of Mayapán in the 44 km2 area of the 2013 Mayapán LiDAR Survey. The centers were identified in the airborne laser scanning (ALS) data, and all were ground-checked. In this presentation, we display the major architectural and environmental features and...
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...
“The Watchers Belonging to the Warriors”: Military Surveillance among the Maya (2024)
This is an abstract from the "Archaeologies of Surveillance: Seeing and Power in the Material World" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Ethnohistoric accounts from highland Guatemala allude to surveillance systems and their personnel forming part of the integrated defense of Maya political territories during the Late Postclassic period, prior to the Spanish arrival in 1524. Recent lidar-driven archaeological research in the Maya Lowlands suggests that...
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...