Belize (State / Territory) (Geographic Keyword)

DOCUMENT Citation Only Maia Dedrick. Carly Pope. Morgan Russell.

In Tahcabo, Yucatán, 5% of the town’s municipal land is contained within rejolladas. Rejolladas, like cenotes, are sinkholes formed in the karstic bedrock of Yucatán, although they do not reach to the level of the water table. They make for ideal gardens when located within settlements, as their low elevation allows for the collection of deep and moisture-rich soil that provides an advantage for the cultivation of almost any plant. At the nearby site of Kulubá it has also been shown that...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jessica Munson. Matthew Looper. Jonathan Scholnick.

This is an abstract from the "Archaeological Applications of Network Analysis" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Ritual and performance play important integrative functions in the creation, maintenance, and negotiation of social ties that bind communities together. The shared experience of these public displays establishes strong bonds between individuals, defining their membership in certain social groups while reinforcing cultural norms and values....

DOCUMENT Citation Only Alejandro Garay Herrera.

This is an abstract from the "The Role of Women in Mesoamerican Ritual" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Classic Maya period inscriptions provide us with extensive documentation of the rituals and ceremonies that Maya elites performed as part of their royal duties. Throughout this paper we will discuss those that were overseen by women belonging to the royal houses of the polities of the Maya lowlands, which have been recorded through the images and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Tomás Gallareta Cervera. Anna Novotny. Brett A. Houk.

This is an abstract from the "Ancient Maya Landscapes in Northwestern Belize, Part II" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Research on ancient Maya cities is generally focused on large paramount sites that had written records of the rulers’ activities. However, these large cities are the exception, rather than the norm, since the majority of the urban sites consist of smaller settlements. Research at the archaeological site of Chan Chich recovered...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Brett Meyer. Claire Ebert. Julie Hoggarth. John Walden. Jaime Awe.

This is an abstract from the "Stability and Resilience in Zooarchaeology" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Debate has surrounded the Terminal Classic (AD 750–900/1000) Maya “collapse,” a period when the Classic period political structure deteriorated and parts of the southern lowlands were depopulated. While these changes were the result of various developments including warfare, social unrest, environmental degradation, and climate change, one...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Marilyn Bueno.

Because of Maya religion’s heavy focus on the sacred Earth, subterranean spaces tend to be seen as sacred landmarks. Caves in particular have been shown to be the most promising context for the archaeological study of Maya religion (Brady and Prufer 2005). Rockshelters, however, have received less attention and appear to have identities and meanings that are negotiable across the lowlands. Recent rockshelter excavations have uncovered skeletal remains (Bonor 1995; Glassman et al. 2005; Saul et...

DOCUMENT Citation Only James Doyle.

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. While Justin Kerr might be best known for pioneering the rollout photographic technique specific to three-dimensional drinking cups and serving vessels, some of his still photographs of painted plates also proved pivotal to the understanding of Classic Maya religion and history....

DOCUMENT Citation Only Annabeth Headrick.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The city of Chichen Itza has defied attempts to identify individuals who ruled the city and its basic political organization. Scholars once argued for a shared governance system called multepal, basing this assertion on glyphic references to a series of people who apparently jointly held power. Subsequent scholarship challenged this assertion, as revised...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Benoît Baconnet.

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. Located on the border between the central and northern lowlands, the Río Bec region developed a singular architecture and iconography from the sixth century. In the eighth century, the Central Lowlands underwent major sociopolitical transformations, such as the gradual fall of the Kaan dynasty and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jeffrey B. Glover. Dominique Rissolo. Daniel Leonard.

The Yalahau region of northern Quintana Roo, Mexico is one of the few regions in the Maya Lowlands where a robust Preclassic population was not followed by the emergence of Classic period polities. For that reason it is an important area when trying to understand the unique characteristics of the Preclassic period in the Northern Lowlands. The Yalahau region is defined physiographically by freshwater wetlands (sabanas), which stand in stark contrast the rest of the Northern Lowlands. These...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Justine Shaw.

During the Terminal Classic, sacbeob were built at three Maya sites in the Cochuah region of west-central Quintana Roo, Mexico. The roads provided a physical connection between portions of Ichmul, San Felipe, and Yo’okop, running between important structures, out to outlying groups, and even to what had likely been separate settlements. Although they would have been used for processions between termini and may have had numerous symbolic meanings, the impact of some the roadways on the lives of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only M. Kathryn Brown. Jason Yaeger.

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. Early Maya communities centered themselves within a broader sacred landscape imbued with meaning through ritual practices. Centuries of movement through the landscape converted spaces into places that were deeply rooted in cosmology and social memory. Ritual practices at the center of the community and important places in...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Brent Woodfill.

The Northern Transversal Region in central Guatemala is one of the most fertile regions of the Maya world in addition to being a key strategic point in the past and present. The rivers flowing out of the highlands provide fertile, volcanic soil in addition to natural communication routes. As a result, it has been subject to multiple waves of colonization over the past two millennia, from Classic period Tikal and Calakmul to contemporary narcotraffickers and transnational corporations. In this...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Mallory Matsumoto.

This is an abstract from the "Beyond Maize and Cacao: Reflections on Visual and Textual Representation and Archaeological Evidence of Other Plants in Precolumbian Mesoamerica" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Archaeological, ethnohistorical, art historical, and ethnographic evidence attests to extensive use of reed mats over millennia across the Maya region. In addition to being used for sleeping or sitting atop benches or floors, mats partitioned...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Nathan Parrott. Armando Anaya Hernández. Kathryn Reese-Taylor.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Ancient marketplaces serve as invaluable sources of information regarding the political-economic organization of archaeological sites. Marketplaces were important locations within ancient cities serving as nexuses of social, economic, and political interaction. There is a rich collection of ethnohistoric, linguistic, and pictorial evidence indicating the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Nicholas Dunning. Christopher Carr. Timothy Beach.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This poster documents the discovery in 2018 of a large ancient Maya gypsum quarry in southern Campeche, Mexico. The quarry extensively mined a regionally prominent hill (witz), likely making it a white beacon within the ancient landscape. Nearby sites appear to include gypsum workshops. Gypsum mines have also been recently discovered near El Zotz, Peten. We...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Victoria Ingalls. Mara De Gregori. Brett Houk.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In 2023, the Belize Estates Archaeological Survey Team (BEAST) field assessed recently acquired LiDAR data. This effort included documenting a previously unknown large ceremonial center, Ayiin Winik, located between the La Lucha Escarpment and the Rio Bravo in northwestern Belize. Exploration of the site identified a rare double ball court, a parapet-lined...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Brett A. Houk. Brooke Bonorden.

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. Having fled the violence of the Caste War in Mexico, the San Pedro Maya occupied nearly two dozen small villages in the forests of western British Honduras and northeastern Petén from the 1850s to the 1930s. Archaeological and archival information attest to the fact that the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Diane Chase. Arlen Chase.

This is an abstract from the "Regimes of the Ancient Maya" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Interpretations of ancient Maya society may be cast in different ways based on the bodies of data that are used and on the frame of analysis considered. New data and syntheses are changing what sometimes have been polarized perspectives. Excavation, survey, and particularly lidar data show both scalar relationships and regional variability on all levels,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Christophe Helmke. Bruce Love. Arlen Chase.

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. The epigraphic corpus of Belize is often considered as being limited in scope, with few monuments and few contributions to the historical sources of the Classic Maya. Yet, discoveries in recent years have considerably changed this picture. Some of the more spectacular discoveries...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Alex Kara.

The Classic Maya collapse remains as both relevant and controversial a topic as ever. For over a century, dozens of researchers have proposed different causes that may have driven this complex process. The last few decades have witnessed the academic community’s opinion converge on the notion that many different social and environmental factors, operating at likewise diverse scales, somehow contributed to a temporally gradual and spatially heterogeneous disruption of the demographic, political,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Cheryl Foster. Heather McKillop. E. Cory Sills.

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. Excavations in the spring and summer of 2022 were carried out at the underwater ancient Maya salt work of Ek Way Nal in Punta Ycacos Lagoon in Paynes Creek National Park, Belize. Ek Way Nal provided salt to the ancient Maya during the Late and Terminal Classic periods...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Conner Flynt.

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. The ancient Maya created a culture with writing, religion, and vast trade networks. These trade networks are evident on the southern coast of Belize, where archaeologists have found sites dedicated to salt making. This paper will discuss Ta’ab Nuk Na, one of these...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Christina Iglesias. James Brady. Guillermo de Anda.

This is an abstract from the "The Subterranean in Mesoamerican Cultural Landscapes" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In June 2022, the Gran Acuífero Maya resumed investigations initiated in 2018 of Las Monjas Sascabera 2 (LMS2), one of 11 sascaberas located south and west of the Las Monjas complex at Chichén Itzá. In the intervening years, rain washed out accumulated soil that had blocked access to the circular, constructed entrance and exposed...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Tawny Tibbits. Marieka Brouwer Burg. Eleanor Harrison-Buck.

This is an abstract from the "Recent Advances in Ground Stone Studies in the Eastern Maya Lowlands" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Granite was a preferred raw material for ground stone tool production in many parts of the Maya Lowlands. However, granite outcrops are spatially restricted within the Maya Mountains of Belize, and access to this material was limited. The movement of raw and/or finished tools would have required various mechanisms of...