Belize (State / Territory) (Geographic Keyword)
951-975 (1,081 Records)
Research focused on El Lacandon, a rural community in the outer hinterland of the Late Classic Palenque polity, has allowed the understanding of shifting patterns of relationships between the urban and the rural realms in two specific times: 1) at the end of the Late Preclassic period, when Palenque developed from a rural village into a dynastic capital; and 2) at the end of the Late Classic period, when the ruling dynasty developed new political strategies for hinterland integration.
A Tale of Two Ports: A Preliminary Assessment of Ceramic and Artifactual Assemblages from Conil and Vista Alegre (2018)
Coastal communities in the Maya Lowlands played a myriad of roles in the ebb and flow of political, economic, and social formations over the past 3000 years, yet these roles have remained along the periphery of Maya studies. Though ever present, Maya coastal sites were atypical – perhaps even idiosyncratic – in terms of how they were imagined and lived-in by the Maya. Critical to our understanding of these coastal settlements is the material culture traded and utilized by the occupants of these...
A Tale of Two Types of Cities: The Rise and Decline of Low-Density Urbanism in Champotón, Campeche (2023)
This is an abstract from the "A Session in Memory of William J. Folan: Cities, Settlement, and Climate" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Over his distinguished career William Folan made a substantive contribution to knowledge of the scale, form, and nature of Maya urbanism. Classic Maya cities are often classified as a low-density agrarian-based urban tradition, a cross-cultural concept characterized by expansive settlement zones, lack of...
Taming the Maya Jungle: Decauville Railroads in 19th and Early 20th Century Yucatán (2018)
Starting in the nineteenth century, industries like henequen, chicle, hardwoods and sugarcane required the installation of narrow-gauge railroads across the Yucatán Peninsula. Mules, horses or people pulled low and flat, four-wheeled wooden carts along these rails, which connected haciendas, ports, and remote jungle camps. These rails brought supplies from "civilization" or commodities out of the forest for distribution. This paper will explore the role that railroads played during this period....
Tangled Web: Political Pragmatics in the Mopan River Valley (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Regimes of the Ancient Maya" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. We explore the pragmatics of Classic Maya politics in the Mopan River valley of western Belize during the Classic period. Drawing on Okoshi-Harada’s (2012) reconstruction of sixteenth-century Maya political dynamics and Inomata’s (2006) view of polities created through the interaction among social agents in specific historical and spatial contexts, we see...
Teaching Climate Change in Red States (2018)
Although scientific consensus was reached on the issue of human-made climate change earlier this century, it continues to be a controversial subject in the public sphere. Archaeologists, as scientists interested in a longue durée approach to human society and the environment, have thus been thrust into another ideological battlefield as hard-fought as the theory of evolution by natural selection, but with perhaps graver consequences. As we move fully into the Capitalocene, it is of the utmost...
The Teeth Tell All: Dentition, Demography, and Paleopathology at Early Classical Mayan Site of Tulix Muul, Belize (2018)
In 2013 a rescue mission to salvage and preserve details of the shrine complex at Tulix Muul, a Classic Maya site in northwestern Belize, yielded a Maya mural. While the arrangement of the mural at the shrine echoes notions of nobility, this rare landmark discovery lies in contrast to what we can infer about the social status of exhumed remains from the Tulix Muul archaeological site. This poster will address the multifaceted insights we can glean from certain aspects of the past life histories...
The Temple of the Inscriptions at Palenque: Improving Architectural Analysis, Conservation Assessment, and Public Dissemination via Terrestrial LiDAR and 3-D Mapping (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Temple of the Inscriptions—K’inich Janab Pakal’s funerary building—is an outstanding evidence of Palenque elite’s grandiose architectural programs in the 7th century AD. Are terrestrial LiDAR and drone-based 3-D mapping viable techniques to inform a new architectural analysis on the construction of this iconic temple? Can digital monitoring based on...
Teotihuacan Style in Maya Stone: New Evidence from La Sufricaya (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Teotihuacan Entrada of 378 CE is one of the most archaeologically rich events in the Maya Lowlands. Systematic examination enables archaeologists to measure the resulting impact of Teotihuacan's presence in the Maya area. Recent excavations at the site of La Sufricaya in Petén, Guatemala, provide fresh evidence to support Teotihuacan's influence in the...
Terminal Classic Ancestors and the Eastern Shrine of Chikin Chi’Ha, Belize (2021)
This is an abstract from the "Archaeology and the History of Human-Environment Interaction in the Lower Belize River Watershed" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Investigations of an eastern shrine building in a residential group at Chikin Chi’Ha exposed a complex burial of an adult male and three children under the age of two who were placed near his head and feet. While there is abundant evidence for the construction and use of Classic period...
Terminal Classic Practices Reflected in Diet and Geolocation: The B-4 Peri-abandonment Deposit at Xunantunich, Belize (2021)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This study applies isotopic analyses of carbon (ẟ13Ccoll) and nitrogen (ẟ15Ncoll) from bone collagen, with carbon (ẟ13Cap), oxygen (ẟ18O), and strontium (87Sr/86Sr) to faunal remains excavated from a peri-abandonment deposit at the ancient Maya site of Xunantunich during the Terminal Classic period. Peri-abandonment deposits represent a distinct phenomenon in...
Terminal Classic Residential Groups at Holtun, Guatemala (2018)
Holtun, located in the central lakes region of the Maya lowlands, was occupied from the Preclassic through the Postclassic. To date the Holtun Archaeological Project has mapped approximately 13 groups in the site core and over 30 residential groups in the periphery to the north. The majority of these surface residential structures date to the Terminal Classic and Postclassic. The residential groups excavated to date vary in their proximity to the site core, number of structures, construction...
Terminal Classic Ritual Deposits and Reoccupation at Xunantunich, Belize (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Ritual behavior during the Terminal Classic period (~AD 750-900) in the Belize Valley reflects the ecological and political concerns of the Maya during a time of prolonged drought and balkanization. Following their abandonment, some major regional centers were revisited, often in the context of pilgrimage. These activities left behind expansive deposits,...
Terminal Classic Terminal Deposits at Chan, Belize (2018)
This presentation examines a series of terminal deposits at the ancient Maya farming community of Chan in Belize, Central America. We propose a contextual analysis of terminal deposits to facilitate the development of archaeological interpretations that move beyond the static category of "problematical deposits." The terminal deposits at Chan are located in its community center, primarily in two locations: in the eastern temple and southern range structure of Chan’s central group. The deposits...
Terminal Deposits and Terminal Classic Collapse: An Analysis of the Proportional Distribution of Artifacts from Terminal Deposition Events at the Site of Baking Pot, Belize (2018)
Throughout the Maya Lowlands, archaeologists have identified Terminal Classic deposits associated with the final activities in ceremonial and domestic spaces. These features include concentrations of cultural material deposited in the corners of plazas and courtyards. At the site of Baking Pot, Belize, the Belize Valley Archaeological Reconnaissance (BVAR) project has identified several of these terminal deposits. This presentation will shed light on the types of artifacts that were deposited...
The Terminal Preclassic in Northern Belize Defined (2018)
Joseph Ball has devoted his professional career to masterfully determining how the ceramic complexes at one site related to those at another, generating models for Maya movements and prehistory from the identified similarities or differences between them. Following his example, this paper proposes to take the data from Cerro Maya in Northern Belize and correlate it with other sequences in the region to produce a carefully researched sequence for the region with specific attention to the...
Termination deposits at Aguateca and Ceibal, Guatemala (2018)
Excavations at Aguateca and Ceibal revealed a series of dense deposits associated with the ritual destruction of buildings. At Aguateca, such deposits were found in and around Structures M7-22 and M7-32 of the Palace Group, probable royal administrative-residential buildings. Excavators also unearthed similar deposits around Structures L8-6 and L8-7, temple pyramids in the Main Plaza. These deposits date to c. AD 810 when enemies attacked Aguateca. At Ceibal, dense deposits of broken objects...
Terraces, Quarries, and Berms, Oh My! Evaluating Land Use and Landscape Modification at the Ancient Maya City El Pilar (2021)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Ongoing research at El Pilar—an ancient Maya city located along the Belize/Guatemala frontier—has documented hundreds of landscape-modification features in the area surrounding the monumental civic center. The complexity and variety of these features, which include terraces, berms, quarries, check-dams, and aguadas, indicate the sophistication of Maya...
Territorial Strategies in Western Chiapas. (2024)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This paper explores the different strategies used by a small polity to gain influence in long distance communication routes and access to resources and their changes through time. The research is based on spatial models and an archaeological survey conducted in the southern Mexican state of Chiapas. The survey was performed in an area in between two major...
Testing a Multi-Modal Remote Sensing Approach for Detecting Ancient Maya Sites With Low-Resolution Data (2018)
In the absence of LiDAR and similar high-resolution data products, an alternative approach was developed to model and predict site location information from low-resolution, publicly available datasets such as ASTER, LANDSAT, and aerial photographs. Manipulating and combining the analyses of multiple datasets permits refinement of modeling and detection capabilities. A large database of known sites, in assorted topographic and vegetative conditions and degrees of exposure, was used as a...
Testing Methods of Microbotanical Analysis on Samples from the Copan Valley, Honduras (2018)
The Copan Valley in western Honduras has been the subject of a number of studies concerning human-environmental interaction, with particular emphasis on questions of ancient sustainable practices and whether or not land-use mismanagement contributed to the end of the Maya dynasty at Copan. The current PARAC project seeks to identify the range of foods consumed by the inhabitants of the Copan Valley during the Late Classic to Postclassic period. This paper will describe analyses conducted on...
Testing the Efficacy of Sulfur Isotopes from the Maya Site of Chulub (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Stable isotope analysis of carbon (13C/12C) and nitrogen (15N/14N) are often used to reconstruct ancient Maya diets. While these two isotopes provide us with a broad understanding of past subsistence practices, carbon and nitrogen are limited in their ability to differentiate freshwater and terrestrial based diets. Similar problems exist in other areas of the...
Testing the Stratigraphic Integrity of Shallow Deposits through Zooarchaeology at Lamanai, Belize (2018)
Identifying formation processes of shallow archaeological sites can be difficult. At Lamanai, Belize, the main problem consists of distinguishing between pre- and post-Spanish contact deposits buried at a depth of 10 to 60 cm. Evidence of interaction with the Spanish includes a few European objects and two Christian churches. However, identifying pre-contact deposits is more challenging. Maya archaeologists typically rely on ceramic typology to establish chronology, but the main pottery type in...
There Are Holes in Our Argument: Karst Landforms and Multispecies Flourishing in Northeastern Yucatan, Mexico (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Multispecies Frameworks in Archaeological Interpretation: Human-Nonhuman Interactions in the Past, Part I" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This paper considers the development of agriculture and society in northeastern Yucatán, Mexico, drawing on evidence from lidar imaging, paleoethnobotany, and isotopic studies. We focus on geological features known as dolines, sinkholes, or rejolladas—round, low areas that dot the...
Thermal Identification of Groundwater Discharges within Saline Lagoons Surrounding Vista Alegre, Quintana Roo, Mexico (2018)
The Maya port and site of Vista Alegre carried political and trade importance in the Terminal Classic to Early Postclassic periods. Located in the Laguna Yalahau of northern Quintana Roo, Mexico, the site is built on a small and low elevation island surrounded by mangrove. Inland from the site are freshwater wetlands (sabanas), while the near-shore waters of the restricted circulation lagoon are hypersaline. A significant research question is how the inhabitants of Vista Alegre accessed potable...