Quintana Roo (State / Territory) (Geographic Keyword)

26-50 (937 Records)

Analysis of the Built Environment of the Group B Acropolis at Baking Pot: Results of the 2019 Field Season (2021)
DOCUMENT Citation Only Gabriela Saldaña. Tia Watkins. Rosamund Fitzmaurice. Adam Jurský. Julie Hoggarth.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The ceremonial center of Baking Pot, Belize is one of the longest occupied sites in the Belize River Valley, starting in the Late Middle Preclassic (600–300 BC) and spanning through the Terminal Classic (AD 750–900/1000) period, with some evidence of reoccupation during the Late Postclassic (AD 1200–1521) period. Considerable research efforts over the past...


Analyzing Periphery Ritual Practice through Time to Identify Intra-polity Relationships at the Ancient Maya Center of Pacbitun (2023)
DOCUMENT Citation Only George J. Micheletti.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Ritual and its practice were essential mechanisms for negotiating social identity, status, and political involvement for all members of ancient Maya society. Yet, changes to ritual practices through time are often framed around the legitimization of royal elite, reifying traditional models of dominant ideology. Identifying how ritual of periphery...


Analyzing the Relationship between Peri-abandonment Deposits and the Eastern Shrine of Xunantunich, Group B (2019)
DOCUMENT Citation Only Aimee Alvarado.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Peri-abandonment deposits in the Maya region have been a source of contention in recent years given the varied artifact assemblages and the lack of clear understanding for their purpose. This research describes peri-abandonment deposits at Xunantunich, Group B, an elite residential plazuela group located approximately 150 meters from the site core. Excavations...


Ancestor Veneration, Termination and Renewal: New Considerations of Construction Fill (2018)
DOCUMENT Citation Only Lisa DeLance. Jaime Awe.

Archaeologists working in Mesoamerica frequently encounter construction fill within architecture. Construction fill has been variously used as a tool for determining architectural construction sequences, as a resource for seriation dating, and occasionally as a context for radiocarbon deposits. Although much information can be gleaned from examining construction fill, material culture found within such fill is frequently mentioned in passing as little more than refuse, if it is mentioned at...


The Ancestors You Choose: The Role of Predecessors at Xunantunich, Belize Group D (2021)
DOCUMENT Citation Only Whitney Lytle.

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. Ancestor veneration was a cornerstone for Maya social organization and vital to the maintenance of hierarchy. As the Maya became more politically and socially complex, ritual practices involving ancestors also rose in complexity. Critical to the concept of ancestors is the recognition of the bond between ancestors and spaces. This...


Ancient and Contemporary Maya Ruins as Living Landscapes (2023)
DOCUMENT Citation Only Christina Halperin.

This is an abstract from the "The Vibrancy of Ruins: Ruination Studies in Ancient Mesoamerica" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Ruination studies allow one to see the past not as a fixed “thing” but as living landscapes that emerge from, enliven, and incorporate temporal dimensions, ancestors, and animating forces young and old, near and far. Furthermore, over the past two decades Mesoamerican scholars have increasingly recognized that ruins were an...


Ancient Demography in Northwest Yucatán, Mexico (2021)
DOCUMENT Citation Only Scott Hutson.

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. Research in northwest Yucatán, Mexico, has played a large role in the development of demographic archaeology in the Maya area, beginning with Edward Thompson’s nineteenth-century investigations of housemounds at Labna and reaching a mid-twentieth-century pinnacle with maps of Mayapan and Dzibilchaltun. In...


Ancient Maya Dentistry: New Evidence for Therapeutic Dental Interventions and Dental Care Practices (2021)
DOCUMENT Citation Only Joshua Schnell.

This is an abstract from the "Approaches to the Archaeology of Health: Sewers, Snakebites, and Skeletons" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The ancient Maya are often highly regarded for their skill in dentistry—evidenced by longstanding traditions of filing and inlaying teeth. These procedures had a considerable success rate suggesting a pervasive knowledge of dental anatomy among practitioners. However, this study of aesthetic practices has...


Ancient Maya Diet, Environment, Animal Use and Exchange at El Mirador: The Zooarchaeological Evidence (2018)
DOCUMENT Citation Only Erin Thornton. Richard Hansen. Edgar Suyuc-Ley.

The site of El Mirador (Petén, Guatemala) is among the largest Preclassic settlements in the Maya lowlands. The site has attracted attention due to its size and antiquity, but also for its location within a region containing few permanent or perennial water sources. This study summarizes current zooarchaeological evidence from the site to assess past diet, habitat use, environment, and exchange. Comparative analysis demonstrates that the inhabitants of El Mirador conformed to certain widespread...


Ancient Maya Inequality and Oral Microbiome Ecologies from Classic Period Maya Contexts in Southern Belize (2023)
DOCUMENT Citation Only Horvey Palacios. Tanvi P. Honap. Douglas J. Kennett. Keith M. Prufer. Cecil M. Lewis, Jr..

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Oral microbial ecologies are shaped by an interaction among environmental and cultural factors, including wealth and status inequalities, which were pervasive throughout ancient Maya society. Few studies have directly integrated the oral microbiome of ancient individuals with a detailed analysis of their status from archaeological contexts. To interrogate...


Ancient Maya Land Use: Water Management and Agricultural Production at Actuncan, Belize (2018)
DOCUMENT Citation Only Theresa Heindel.

Research conducted during the 2015-2017 Actuncan Archaeological Project field seasons revealed several land use strategies utilized during the Late and Terminal Classic periods, including terracing, agricultural plots, and cobble mounds. Excavations conducted in the Northern Neighborhood of Actuncan exposed two terracing methods: 1) terraforming, in which earthen berms created to facilitate water drainage and 2) two small agricultural plot systems filled with a large amount of redeposited...


Ancient Maya Mobility: Hinterlands Sacbe Systems (2019)
DOCUMENT Citation Only Marisol Cortes-Rincon. Jeremy McFarland. Jonathan Roldan. Cady Rutherford. Spencer Mitchell.

This is an abstract from the "Ancient Maya Landscapes in Northwestern Belize, Part I" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This paper will discuss investigations of two sacbeob in the hinterlands in northwestern Belize. These features connect ancient Maya household groups, aguadas, quarries, terraces and ritual features. The study of ancient causeway systems is crucial to the understanding of mobility, sociopolitical, and economic networks in the...


Ancient Maya Placemaking: An Isotopic Assessment of Ancestry, Memory, and Body Partibility (2023)
DOCUMENT Citation Only Angelina Locker.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Migrations are a key feature of human populations past and present, and people moved across landscapes regardless of cultural affiliation, hierarchical structures, or place of birth. But, what does it mean when individuals and/or pieces of their remains are moved elsewhere posthumously? This paper builds upon discourse centered around social memory and...


Ancient Maya Quarries: Limestone, Chert and Lidar (2019)
DOCUMENT Citation Only Christopher Carr. Jeffrey Brewer. Nicholas Dunning. Kathryn Reese-Taylor. Armando Anaya Hernández.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Lidar has dramatically expanded our view of the ancient Maya landscape. We have used lidar to study the key natural resources of limestone and chert- their location, extent, and relationship to other ancient Maya features. Limestone was a key building material and chert was the source for most chipped stone tools. Lidar-derived imagery and hydrological...


Ancient Maya Sustainability at Caracol, Belize: Implications for Past and Future (2019)
DOCUMENT Citation Only Arlen Chase. Diane Chase. Adrian Chase.

This is an abstract from the "Advancing Public Perceptions of Sustainability through Archaeology" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Long-term archaeological research at Caracol, Belize has revealed a sizeable city with over 100,000 inhabitants at A.D. 650 that practiced intensive agriculture within its urban boundaries. Over 160 square kilometers of the landscape within Caracol was anthropogenic, having been rebuilt to both provide agricultural...


Ancient Maya Use of Fauna from the Wetlands and Beyond (2021)
DOCUMENT Citation Only Lori Phillips. Erin Thornton. Eleanor Harrison-Buck.

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. Understanding how the ancient Maya interacted with wetland environments has been a topic of research for roughly 50 years. Previous studies suggest these resource-rich environments provided a diverse assortment of flora and fauna for the ancient Maya to utilize. Wetlands provide an ideal...


Ancient Maya Water Control, Wetlands, and the Fiery Pool (2019)
DOCUMENT Citation Only Timothy Beach. Sheryl Luzzadder-Beach. Nicholas Dunning.

This is an abstract from the "Decipherment, Digs, and Discourse: Honoring Stephen Houston's Contributions to Maya Archaeology" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. One of Steve Houston’s sublime volumes is The Fiery Pool, which was also a groundbreaking exhibit. These explored the themes of the Maya and their relationships with water. Here we consider the themes from The Fiery Pool from the perspectives of ancient Maya Wetland fields, "creatures", and...


And here’s the NEWS from Xnoha! Understanding Maya settlement and Early Anthropocene Landscape Modifications at a small Maya center. (2019)
DOCUMENT Citation Only Thomas Guderjan. Joshua Kwoka. Colleen Hanratty.

This is an abstract from the "Ancient Maya Landscapes in Northwestern Belize, Part I" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Xnoha is a small Maya center in northwestern Belize that has seen two phases of investigation since it was recorded in 1990. While current research is largely focused on the Central Precinct or kawik, we have also invested much energy in the outlying groups of monumental architecture and settlement. Xnoha is located in a heavily...


An Animal Kingdom at Chichen Itza, Yucatan, Mexico (2019)
DOCUMENT Citation Only Cynthia Kristan-Graham.

This is an abstract from the "Animal Symbolism in Postclassic Mesoamerica: Papers in Honor of Cecelia Klein" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. At the Postclassic Maya city of Chichen Itza, buildings, planned spaces, and imagery blend with the landscape to form meta-narratives. One instance is the Sacred Cenote, a limestone sinkhole that was a major focus of rituals. The cenote rim features frogs/toads carved from the living rock, and at one time...


Animal Management of the Late Classic Maya at Copán, Honduras, Using Stable Isotope Analysis (2023)
DOCUMENT Citation Only Nour Khachemoune. Aurora Allshouse. Kristine Richter. Christina Warinner.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In the late nineteenth century, Harvard Peabody Museum excavations at the Classic Maya site of Copán, Honduras, identified a large deposit of animal bones in structure 10L-36, a platform located in the El Cementerio area of Copán’s Late Classic Palace Complex. Primarily associated with the eighth–ninth-century CE reign of Yax Pahsaj, 10L-36 is thought to...


Animal Manifestations of the Creator Deities in the Maya Codices and the Popol Vuh (2019)
DOCUMENT Citation Only Gabrielle Vail. Allen Christenson.

This is an abstract from the "Animal Symbolism in Postclassic Mesoamerica: Papers in Honor of Cecelia Klein" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Scholars have long recognized that certain Mesoamerican deities appear in animal as well as anthropomorphic form. The Maya creator Itzamna, for example, has aspects corresponding to a bird, a turtle, and an alligator, while the aged "God L" may be linked to the opossum in its anthropomorphic form (Pawah-Ooch),...


Animal Use in the Last Maya Kingdom (2018)
DOCUMENT Citation Only Dominic Bush.

The archaeological site of Flores is a small, lacustrine island located in Northern Guatemala. Despite lacking in physical size, the island has a lengthy occupational history, dating from the Preclassic Maya period through the present. Flores, which became a provincial capital during the late Postclassic, was able to resist Spanish rule until 1697 AD, making it the last Maya holdout. Given this distinction, the island has been under much archaeological scrutiny and the subject of many...


Animal, Human, and Crafted Bone from the S-Sector of Piedras Negras (2018)
DOCUMENT Citation Only Joshua Schnell. Sarah Newman. Andrew Scherer.

Excavations within the S-Sector at Piedras Negras in 2016 yielded an assemblage of lithic and bone artifacts consistent with evidence of craft production. The Proyecto Paisaje Piedras Negras – Yaxchilan returned to the S-Sector during the 2017 field season to conduct more extensive excavations in an attempt to understand production and exchange at this Maya polity capital. Between the 2016 and 2017 seasons, over 4,300 fragments of worked and unworked bone, both human and animal, were excavated...


The Anthropogenic Wetlands of Northwestern Belize: Decades of Research and New Horizons for Study (2023)
DOCUMENT Citation Only Samantha Krause. Tripti Bhattacharya. Sheryl Luzzadder-Beach. Timothy Beach.

This is an abstract from the "2023 Fryxell Award Symposium: Papers in Honor of Timothy Beach Part II" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. It is now clear that wetlands were critical resources for populations throughout human history in the Maya Lowlands of Belize and adjacent regions, and that these wetlands serve as important ecosystems and cultural heritage zones today. In northwestern Belize, decades of research have transformed our understanding of...


Application of the Geospatial Method to On-Floor Assemblages: A Case Study from the Classic Maya City of El Palmar, Mexico (2021)
DOCUMENT Citation Only Alexandra Jonassen. Kenichiro Tsukamoto.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. On-floor assemblages provide clues as to how complex administrative and domestic activities interplayed within a structure. By combining photogrammetry, total station and GIS, we developed a geospatial method that plotted each on-floor remain accurately on a GIS map. This poster presents its application to horizontal excavations that took place at the Guzmán...