Belize (State / Territory) (Geographic Keyword)
151-175 (1,081 Records)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Late Postclassic Maya Pottery from northern Yucatán sites, including Mayapán, was analyzed using petrographic, chemical, and surface features analyses, seeking patterns in ceramic technology and social interactions. New information was gained (Sánchez Fortoul, C.G , 2018) regarding the selection and processing of raw materials, ceramic production location and...
Charismatic and Religious Aspects of Maya Rulership: An Interpretation of the Coronitas Temple Complex of La Corona (2018)
The Coronitas Group at La Corona presents a unique architectural setting, consisting of five pyramidal temples aligned in a north-south row and several attached structures. Excavations in this group have been carried out since the beginning of the project, providing important data concerning the function of these temples throughout the site’s occupation. A detailed chronological analysis has shown that this architectural complex was one of the main ceremonial areas of the site, evinced by not...
Chemical Analyses of Obsidian from Classic Maya Paynes Creek Salt Works, 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 Paynes Creek Salt Works were an ancient Maya Classic Period (A.D. 300-900) salt industry located in a shallow salt water lagoon in southern Belize. The rise of the Paynes Creek Salt Works mirrored the growth in population at inland communities during the Late Classic Period (A. D. 600-900) where salt—a basic biological necessity—was scarce. The demand for...
Chemical Composition of Maya Slips: Analysis and Interpretation of Preclassic Sherds from Holtun, Guatemala Using pXRF Technology (2018)
Slip, a fluid suspension of clay that is applied to the surface of a piece of ceramic, allows for increased control over the functional and aesthetic properties of the finished vessel. The potter can select a slip to provide a more appealing color, texture, and/or luster to the vessel’s surface, while maintaining the favorable functional qualities of the paste.While slip color has long been used as an attribute for classification in the Maya lowlands, only recently have the raw materials of...
Chemical Indices as a Key to Context: The Use of pXRF to Reassemble Maya Mural Fragments from San Bartolo, Guatemala (2019)
This is an abstract from the "From Materials to Materiality: Analysis and Interpretation of Archaeological and Historical Artifacts Using Non-destructive and Micro/Nano-sampling Scientific Methods" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The dissemination of wall paintings from the Late Preclassic period Maya site of San Bartolo, Guatemala, have focused on the in situ north and west walls of the buried chamber named Sub-1A. In contrast to their excellent...
Chert Extraction and Production in Resource-Rich Regions: Chert Economies among the Late Classic Maya of Western Belize (2018)
Global studies of raw material extraction permit us to examine the methods and involvement of different individuals in the extraction and production of lithic materials. One variable which can influence the organization of extraction and production is the abundance or scarcity of raw materials in a region. This paper addresses the extraction and production of chert materials among the Late Classic Maya (A.D. 600-900) in the lowland Maya region, specifically western Belize, a chert-rich area,...
Chert Tools from the Ta’ab Nuk Na Salt Works (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. Assessment of a lithic assemblage excavated from the coastal Maya site of Ta’ab Nuk Na in southern Belize provides insight on economic and domestic activities. A reliance on imported chert tools from the north helps visualize links in the extensive coastal trade system...
Chichen Itza 3D Atlas (2024)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Chichen Itza is an extensive site containing a vast and distinctive corpus of monumental architecture, carved stone iconography, and painted murals. Since its initial excavation in 1913, artifacts have been collected and distributed widely between collections. In 2014, 2017, and 2022 the National Center for Airborne Laser Mapping (NCALM) conducted aerial...
Chichen Itza and the Early Postclassic International Style (2018)
Chichen Itza has long deserved an approach based on an analysis of the art and iconography of the site for its own merits rather than the continually frustrating analysis that results from attempts to project Late Postclassic religious stories on to the site. Effortlessly blending themes of paradise and militarism, Chichen Itza drew on a wide array of styles that appear in strikingly similar ways indicating the workings of an Early Postclassic International Style that simultaneously integrated...
Chicle and the San Pedro Maya of British Honduras (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. Archaeological evidence suggests sapodilla (Manilkara zapota), constituted an important resource for the ancient Maya. They harvested its fruit, used its wood in construction, and extracted latex—better known as chicle—from the tree for a variety of uses, including as chewing gum. The ancient Maya’s management of the species may...
Childness, Humanness, and Violence among the Precolonial Maya (2024)
This is an abstract from the "The Marking and Making of Social Persons: Embodied Understandings in the Archaeologies of Childhood and Adolescence" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Over the past decade or so, bioarchaeologists working in the Maya area have called attention to how permanent alterations of the body transformed immature bodies into fully realized humans. Among these alterations were cranial and dental modification, painful practices...
Chochkitam: A Classic Maya Kingdom on the Kaanu’l Path to Tikal—An Update (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Chochkitam is a major ceremonial center in northeastern Petén, situated among sites with inscribed monuments such as Xultun, La Honradez, Río Azul in Guatemala, and La Milpa in Belize, giving us a few data points on the shifting political history of the Early and Late Classic periods. Since the discovery in 2021 of a carved frieze with a dedicatory...
The Chocholá Style: Expanding the Corpus, Part 2 (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Chocholá style ceramics were part of a Late Classic northern Maya complex of luxury goods that identified the social status and political affiliation of their owners. Vessels in the style are distinguished by their deeply carved iconographic panels, distinctive formatting, and unique dedicatory formulae. Their recognizability—a necessary component of the...
Chocolate, Manioc, and Maize: Kante’t’u’ul and Chachaklu’um in Motul de San José’s Realm (2021)
This is an abstract from the "Ancient Maya Embedded Economies" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Between 2013 and 2015, the Periphery of Motul de San José Archaeological Project conducted fieldwork at two subsidiary sites, Kante’t’u’ul and Chachaklu’um, located within 5 km of Motul de San José, the primary Late Classic center in this zone along the northern shore of Lake Peten Itza. Paleoethnobotanical and chemical residue analyses have highlighted...
Cities on the Cutting Edge: Urban Research in Belizean Archaeology (2024)
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. Archaeologists’ views of the breadth and depth of precolumbian Maya urbanism, and Mesoamerican urbanism more broadly, have been repeatedly revolutionized by archaeological researchers in Belize. The first National Science Foundation funding for Maya archaeology centered on...
City of the Centipede, Part 1: Context, Boundaries, Community Organization, and Land-Use at El Peru-Waka', Peten, Guatemala (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Part I of II. The Waka’ Archaeological Project (PAW) has conducted over a decade of archaeological investigations documenting the modification, layout, use, and chronology of monumental and residential landscapes of the Classic lowland city of El Perú-Waka’. These papers will evaluate current theoretical and methodological perspectives of ancient Classic Maya...
City of the Centipede, Part 2: Urban Development and Construction Chronologies at El Perú-Waka’, Petén Guatemala (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Part II of II. The Waka’ Archaeological Project (PAW) has conducted over a decade of archaeological investigations documenting the modification, layout, use, and chronology of monumental and residential landscapes of the Classic lowland city of El Perú-Waka’. These papers will evaluate current theoretical and methodological perspectives of ancient Classic Maya...
Classic Maya Agriculture and Traditional Milpa-Cycle Practices in the Upper Belize River Valley (2023)
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. The Classic Maya polities of the Upper Belize River Valley were situated in an especially rich alluvial environment, which may have served as a breadbasket for surrounding regions. The region was also one of the most densely settled regions of the Maya lowlands, showing evidence of...
Classic Maya Cache Vessel Texts and the Stories They Tell (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Ancient Maya artists fashioned ceramic cache vessels that bear a rich array of painted imagery and iconography, making them popular subjects for scholarly investigation. Themes focusing on bloodletting and burning rites are emphasized in many of these discussions, and these themes form the foundations for interpreting the meanings and uses of this class of...
Classic Maya Food Systems and the Sociality of Diet in the Usumacinta 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 ancient Maya utilized a range of landscape modifications for agricultural production, including terraces and raised fields. These agricultural strategies were tied into food systems that also included taxation and tribute, all significant components of a political economy that may have reflected autonomy, exploitation, or both. Using a paleoethnobotanical...
Classic Maya Household Inequality in Southern Belize (2021)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Inequality is present in all forms of human societies, but the degree of inequality within a single city or region varies. Recently in archaeological contexts, inequality has been quantitatively evaluated based on house size using the Gini coefficient and Lorenz Curve, thus enabling the comparison of wealth measures and inequality between ancient cities of...
Classic Maya Material Worlds: Using Cultural Models to Transform Archaeological Practice and Interpretation (WGF - Post PhD Research Grant) (2015)
This resource is an application for the Post PhD Research Grant from the Wenner-Gren Foundation. This project investigated how Classic Maya individuals understood the objects that archaeologists characterize as 'artifacts,' and applied this Maya material perspective to modern archaeological practices in order to transform how we interpret excavations at Classic Maya sites. To accomplish this, the project focused on three activities: reconstructing elements of a Classic Maya perspective on the...
Classic Maya Population Densities as Seen from Río Bec, Campeche, Mexico (2021)
This is an abstract from the "Ancient Mesoamerican Population History: Demography, Social Complexity, and Change" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Ideally every ancient Maya city should be characterized by its population density and its urban agricultural productivity, closely linked parameters that must be explored before tackling the issue of production/exchange relations with hinterlands. Río Bec can be characterized as a low-density urban...
Classic Maya Urban Settlement Dynamics: Planning and Mobility Introduced (2018)
Following decades of debate, most scholars accept Classic Maya cities as the hearts of spatially expansive, low-density urban settlements. This introductory paper will summarize past and current perceptions of Maya urbanism, emphasizing potentially overshadowed considerations of urban planning, mobility, and community dynamics – fundamental cross-cultural features of urbanization – and their detection in lowland settlement patterns. The recent florescence of research deriving insight from urban...
Classic Maya Urbanism at Dzibanche Revealed by Airborne Lidar Mapping (2024)
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. Lidar survey of the city of Dzibanche reveals the city's settlement to be more extensive and populous than previously thought and consistent with its political reach as a hegemonic state. A closer look at the organization of public spaces within its center reveals architectural arrangements that appear to share...