Quintana Roo (State / Territory) (Geographic Keyword)
976-1,000 (1,195 Records)
This is an abstract from the "New Light on Dzibanché and on the Rise of the Snake Kingdom’s Hegemony in the Maya Lowlands" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Recent studies of the inscriptions related to the Kaanul dynasty has revealed a new ruler named K’ahk’ Ti’ Ch’ich’. He is mentioned in various Maya sites (El Peru, Uaxactun, Naranjo) as a high king and overlord with a wide dominion. His accession in 550 CE is recorded on the wooden Lintel 3 from...
Settlement Density, Household Inequality, and Social Interaction in the Western Maya Lowlands (2023)
This is an abstract from the "To Have and Have Not: A Progress Report on the Global Dynamics of Wealth Inequality (GINI) Project" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Decades of settlement pattern research in the Maya lowlands has produced unparalleled datasets for studying processes of urbanization in tropical landscapes. Recent comparative studies support a view of ancient Maya cities as low-density urban systems, which may have created different...
Settlement Pattern Analysis at the Medicinal Trail Community, Northwestern Belize: Results of Topographic Mapping from 2013- (2018)
This poster presents the results of five field seasons of intensive survey and total station mapping at the Medicinal Trail Community, a Maya hinterland settlement in northwestern Belize. Mapping during the summer of 2017 has further refined our understanding of the size and distribution of households and numerous landscape features that have been, or continue to be, the focus of excavations. Refinements to the topographical mapping within the area has revealed several complex household groups...
Settlement Pattern and Land Use at Holtun, Guatemala (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. In Maya archaeology, agricultural cycles are the cornerstone of multiple research topics that intertwine daily life, ideology, political economy, and settlement systems. In archaeological research, land-use can be indicative of social organization and provisioning strategies. In this...
Settlement Pattern and Land Use Dynamics at Naachtun: Shaping an Agrarian Maya Town (2018)
The classic Maya site of Naachtun is actually composed by a monumental and public core zone of 35 hectares surrounded by an extensive residential area of about 175 hectares. The study of its settlement pattern along with geoarchaeological works focused on agrarian strategies specifically have shown the role of vacant spaces in shaping the settlement as an agrarian town. Mainly dedicated to agriculture since the beginning of Naachtun’s occupation in the Early Classic period and maintained until...
Settlement Patterns and Chronology in Calakmul and Its Surroundings (2024)
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. Calakmul is the largest site on the northern edge of the Bajo el Laberinto and has been investigated intensively since the 1980s. Previous research has produced valuable data regarding the general urban extent and the Late Preclassic monumental architecture surrounding the main plaza, as well as...
Settlement Patterns at the Ancient Maya Port site of Conil (2018)
The ancient Maya port site of Conil is located in the modern community of Chiquilá on the north coast of Quintana Roo, Mexico. In 1528 Francisco de Montejo, a Spanish conquistador, reported that Conil was a large town consisting of 5,000 houses. William Sanders was the first archaeologist to work at the site in 1954, but the site core was not formally mapped until 2005 by Glover. Further work was conducted in 2014, 2016, and 2017 as part of El Projecto Costa Escondida (PCE). Data collection and...
The Shadow Realm: How Belizean Archaeology Has Illuminated the Maya Postclassic Era (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. Without Belizean archaeological data, we would know very little about the Maya Postclassic period (CE 950–1530). While viewed as a period of lesser cultural development by earlier researchers, Postclassic archaeological research in Belize was published as early as 1898 but...
The Shell Game: Maya Cosmology as Reflected in Recent Discoveries at Tutu Uitz Na (2018)
The plaza held special significance to the ancient Maya, and across ancient Mesoamerica. In a reflection of Maya cosmological beliefs, the plaza was seen as a representation of, and a portal to the primordial sea, the watery underworld from which all things originate. This connection is evident in various ways throughout the region, from special dedicatory deposits to decorative architecture and iconography. This presentation explores that cosmological salience through the recent excavations at...
Shellfish Harvesting, Subsistence Strategies, and Human/Environmental Interactions in the Río Champotón Drainage, Campeche, Mexico (2018)
With regional occupational continuity from the Middle Formative through Postclassic Periods, the Río Champotón drainage provides an ideal case study to examine long-term change in ancient Maya subsistence strategies and human/environmental interactions during two and a half millennia of human occupation. This poster presents the results of analysis of an assemblage of over 13,000 shell artifacts generated by the Champotón Regional Settlement Survey during seven seasons of research in the Río...
Shifting Colonial Narratives at the Edge of the Spanish Colony: 15th-17th Century Maya Archaeology at Progresso Lagoon, Belize (2019)
This is an abstract from the "After Cortés: Archaeological Legacies of the European Invasion in Mesoamerica" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. There is no question that colonialism in the Americas brought huge and unanticipated changes for both European and Indigenous peoples. Yet Indigenous people often contextualized colonial efforts within their own worldview, or ontology, even as they interacted with European people, things, and colonial...
Shifting Course: Change as the Norm in the Preclassic Usumacinta Faunal Record (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Preclassic Maya Social Transformations along the Usumacinta: Views from Ceibal and Aguada Fénix" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Usumacinta River and its tributaries played an integral role in the survival and growth of Maya communities in the southern lowlands of Mexico and Guatemala. Early human settlements relied on the river as a source of food and transportation. Examining the animal bones and shell remains...
The Shifting Political Landscape of the Mopan Valley: A Diachronic Perspective (2018)
The Mopan River valley of Belize is home to five closely spaced Lowland Maya ceremonial centers with extensive settlement occupying the landscape between. From south to north, the ceremonial centers are Arenal, Early Xunantunich, Classic Xunantunich, Actuncan, and Buenavista del Cayo. Archaeological evidence suggests that each of these centers was initially occupied by the Middle Preclassic, but they had distinct histories, evolving into ceremonial/political centers at different times, from...
Shifting Regimes at La Corona: Political Resilience of Classic Maya “Secondary” Center (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Regimes of the Ancient Maya" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Data from investigations at the archaeological site of La Corona reflect the role that secondary sites had for political integration in the Maya lowlands. Comparing what the hieroglyphic texts suggest with what the material culture of the secondary sites indicates, it is possibly to assess the nature of La Corona political regime before, during, and after its...
The Significance of Debt to Household and Political Economies of Postclassic and Contact Period Maya Societies (2018)
Debt was important to late Maya societies in religious and political terms. This paper explores the many facets of debt that tied together household and regional economies, including bottom-up mechanisms employed by families and communities, as well as top-down institutions that garnered support for religious and political bureaucracies. Graeber’s distinction between moral and impersonal economies outlines a comparative continuum with profound implications for issues of human rights in the past....
Situating a Cached Ballgame Yoke from Matacanela, Veracruz (2021)
This is an abstract from the "Sculpture of the Ancient Mexican Gulf Coast, Part 2" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The ballgame complex was an important component of the Classic Veracruz style that spanned the Late or Epiclassic period (AD 600–900) and that was concentrated along the Mesoamerican Gulf lowlands and extended into adjacent regions. The ballgame, however, has early roots, both in Mesoamerica in general and in Veracruz in particular. In...
Situating Early Xunantunich, Belize, in the Preclassic Landscape: A Synthetic Perspective from Structure F1 (2021)
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. Over the last five years, intensive investigations of Structure F1 at Early Xunantunich, Belize, have shed light on a dynamic and important time in the site’s early history. The monumental platform structure played an important role in the early ceremonial center, creating the site’s northern boundary, hosting large public rituals,...
Six Decades of Research into Ancient Maya Settlement in Belize (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. Nearly 60 years ago Gordon Willey’s team published "Prehistoric Maya Settlements in the Belize Valley," initiating the study of ancient Maya communities with a focus at Barton Ramie in Belize. The lead continues to this day with the first archaeological application of lidar by the...
Skull Offerings: The Koxol Offertory Assemblage in the Maya Area (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Skull offerings among the ancient populations of Mesoamerica are well documented by archaeological, ethnohistorical and iconographic sources. New finds in 2017, in the Lowland Maya Classic site of Naachtun (Guatemala) required intersite comparisons beyond the few well-known cases such as Uaxactun E-Group’s deposits. The association of a cached human skull and...
Slam Dunk: 3D Imaging in Belizean Cave Sites Using Hovermap System (2023)
This is an abstract from the "The Subterranean in Mesoamerican Cultural Landscapes" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Mapping is one of the most fundamental and important enterprises for cave archaeologists not only for research but also integral to cave management and heritage preservation. Using traditional cartography techniques is often a tedious and long-term project involving numerous field seasons and thousands of measurements. Capturing 3D...
The Sloppy Science of Ancient Maya E-Groups (2024)
This is an abstract from the "Misinformation and Misrepresentation Part 1: Reconsidering “Human Sacrifice,” Religion, Slavery, Modernity, and Other European-Derived Concepts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Ancient Maya E-Groups have been a subject of archaeological fascination for nearly a century, resulting in extensive literature on E-Groups. However, consistency in that literature is hard to find. In this paper, we review some problems with...
Slow Archaeology, Community Engagement, and Collaborative Knowledge Production in the Maya World (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Archaeological endeavors around the world have begun to emphasize ethical project design and community engagement. Several projects in Latin America are adopting Community-Based Participatory Research (CBPR) but the pace of adoption of recommendations from the Indigenous Critique and Black Feminist Anthropology remains slow. Parachute archaeology is still...
Slowing Down the Archaeological Process in Dolores, Petén, Guatemala (2024)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Maya archaeology has always relied on the labor and expertise of field technicians hired from heritage communities across the modern nations of Guatemala, Mexico, Belize, Honduras, and El Salvador. Some of these communities, like Dolores, Guatemala, have been continuously engaged with archaeological projects for several decades, granting its members...
The Snake Dynasty: What We Know and What We Don’t (2021)
This is an abstract from the "New Light on Dzibanché and on the Rise of the Snake Kingdom’s Hegemony in the Maya Lowlands" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Epigraphic discoveries of the last few years now make possible a fresh engagement with questions about the origins and development of the Snake dynasty, of its external political influences during both the Early and Late Classic periods, and of the multiple physical centers from which the dynasty...
Snake Queens and Political Consolidation: How Royal Women Helped Create Kaanul—A View from Waka’ (2021)
This is an abstract from the "New Light on Dzibanché and on the Rise of the Snake Kingdom’s Hegemony in the Maya Lowlands" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Our paper demonstrates the key role played by royal women of the Kaanul realm in fortifying and consolidating that realm’s power and hegemony in the seventh to eighth centuries CE. We draw upon archaeological, visual, and textual evidence from Waka’, including preliminary analysis of recently...