Toledo (State / Territory) (Geographic Keyword)
376-400 (1,140 Records)
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. Airborne laser scanning (ALS), also referred to as lidar, has enabled archaeologists, geologists, geomorphologists, and many others to identify and map ancient modifications of the landscape under dense forest canopies. The impact of ALS in archaeological settlement research has been profound and, to some, even...
Exploring the Function and Evolution of Intensive Stream Modifications in the Southern Escarpment of Calakmul (2024)
This is an abstract from the "New and Emerging Perspectives on the Bajo el Laberinto Region of the Maya Lowlands, Part 1" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Investigations over the past decades have shown that the Classic Maya conducted monumental landscape modifications in order to both avoid inundations of settlement areas and to capture and store rainfall. In the initial stages, these modifications involved the sealing of reservoirs, which...
Exploring Turkey Exploitation and Management in the Maya Lowlands (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Current Research on Turkey (Meleagris gallopavo) Domestication, Husbandry and Management in North America and Beyond" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. As one of the few intensively managed species in Mesoamerica, the turkey plays a key role in understanding cultural interactions and subsistence, particularly in the Mayan lowlands. Two populations of turkeys were exploited in this region: the local, wild ocellated turkey...
Extracting the Proverbial Bedrock of Society: A Report Precolumbian Maya Granitic Rock Quarries in the Mountain Pine Ride, Belize (2023)
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. Sourcing studies have consistently pointed to the plutons of the Mountain Pine Ridge (MPR), Belize, as the preferred source of granitic rock for making ground stone objects used by precolumbian Maya communities throughout the eastern lowlands. Nonetheless, questions about how the raw material was extracted remain...
Fauna from Sinkholes at the Site of Nixtun-Ch’ich’ (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Recent Research in the Petén Lakes Region, Petén, Guatemala" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Petén Lakes region of Petén, Guatemala, sits on karst bedrock and is home to a series of lake chains, the largest of which is Lake Petén Itzá. Nixtun-Ch’ich’ lies on the lake’s western arm. The lowland’s limestone topography allows for high drainability of water resulting in scarce surface hydrology. Aside from the few...
Feasts for the People, Crumbs for the Bird: Communicating Archaeological Data on Ancient Crop Diversity (2019)
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. Food security and food adequacy are at the core of many sustainability debates. Growing urban populations and a simultaneous decline in staple crops are severe threats to both. While the relation between rising demographics and subsistence has been a focus of scholarly debate in anthropology, crop diversity in ancient...
Feeding a Citadel: Subsistence Practices (2023)
This is an abstract from the "La Cuernavilla, Guatemala: A Maya Fortress and Its Environs" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. La Cuernavilla is an ancient Maya site situated in the El Zotz Biotope in the central Petén of Guatemala. This study focuses on the paleoenvironmental changes, agricultural subsistence, and occupational trajectories of La Cuernavilla, based on data gathered from across the larger landscape between 2009 and 2017 on the Proyecto...
Filled to the Brim: Estimating Lowland Maya Reservoir Capacities by Combining Survey, Soil Cores, and GIS (2021)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. One of the limiting factors to settlement aggregation in the Maya lowlands is the availability of potable water. With few perennial surface rivers and lakes, the ancient Maya collected water from rainfall for consumption. In areas with high population densities, such as Classic period cities, this required engineering the built landscape to funnel water for...
Filling in the Gaps: Lidar-Aided Mapping of the Smallest-Scale Sites in the Northern Lowlands (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Proyecto Arqueológico de Sitios de Pesqueña Escala en el Puuc Oriental (PASPEPO) recently completed an intensive mapping and surface collection program at three small-scale sites in the eastern Puuc Region of the northern Maya lowlands. Using lidar-derived digital terrain models (DTMs) as a baseline for settlement pattern identification, we identified...
Flint on Flesh: Creating an Experimental Comparative Collection for Use Wear Analysis of Holmul Region Lithics, 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. Use-wear studies have proven invaluable for understanding human interaction with lithic materials and organic materials that have not survived the archaeological record. Though recent investigations have begun to address gaps in Maya user-wear studies, archaeologists have not sufficiently explored stone tool use in the Maya area. This study includes an...
Flows of Value, Debt, and Goods in the Usumacinta River Basin (2018)
Scholars considering Classic period Maya economies have long viewed acquisition, production, and trade primarily through the dual lenses of tribute to royal courts and barter among the populace. Recent archaeological discoveries and theoretical models have broadened our perspective to allow the Classic Maya the marketplaces and market economies that were once believed to be innovations of Postclassic Mesoamerica. Yet, we still know little about notions of currency, value, and debt – well...
Following the Path of Dead in Chichen Itza through a Unique Modified Skull (2024)
This is an abstract from the "Multidisciplinary Approaches to the Subterranean" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. During the Terminal Classic and Postclassic periods, Chichen Itza became an important pilgrimage center. People from all over Mesoamerica came to the Maya Lowlands to make special offerings to Chichen Itza's sacred well. Paleoclimate studies indicate that a severe drought occurred during that period of time. This may have lasted a decade...
Forager Mobility Patterns in Southern Belize: Preliminary Results from a Holocene-Length Record (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Advances in Interdisciplinary Isotopic Research" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Despite considerable research on mobility patterns of the Classic Lowland Maya, the mobility of pre-ceramic foragers is understudied. Elsewhere, logistical mobility strategies have been documented for archaeological and ethnographic forager populations in tropical forest biomes. Most often these strategies are related to seasonally...
Foreign Intimacies: Terminal Classic Shells, Novel Identities, and Gathered Elites (2023)
This is an abstract from the "The Movement of People and Ideas in Eastern Mesoamerica during the Ninth and Tenth Centuries CE: A Multidisciplinary Approach Part I" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. For close to a century, a remarkable set of shells have been found archaeologically across the Maya region and beyond. Most likely shaped and incised in a single workshop, they present a decided paradox, depicting specific warriors and elites yet, on these...
Forest Resources at Calakmul based on Modern Forest Surveys and Lidar Assessment (2024)
This is an abstract from the "New and Emerging Perspectives on the Bajo el Laberinto Region of the Maya Lowlands, Part 1" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Forest resources supported a sizeable population at the Maya city of Calakmul for centuries. This study addresses questions about maximum potential carrying capacity based on aboveground biomass (AGB) production and the diversity of ethnobotanically significant forest species. AGB of the modern...
Forging International Archaeological Research Collaborations and Mentorship Opportunities at Lower Dover, Belize (2024)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Our poster presents ongoing efforts at creating a collaborative research environment between international and Belizean early career scholars at the Classic Maya center of Lower Dover, Belize. Rather than incorporating Belizean collaborators in pre-existing research projects, our current goal has been to collaborate with Belizean early career scholars to...
Formative Period Mesoamerican Cities and Low Density Urbanism (2024)
This is an abstract from the "Theorizing Prehistoric Large Low-Density Settlements beyond Urbanism and Other Conventional Classificatory Conventions" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Mesoamerica is one of only a handful of places in the ancient world where first-generation cities developed independently, and the lowland Maya cities of the Classic period are frequently cited as prime examples of low-density urbanism. Scholars now recognize that the...
Fortified Capitals: Understanding Defensive Systems at Piedras Negras and Yaxchilan (2018)
Prior reconnaissance efforts in the Middle Usumacinta River region have identified a series of low walls associated with Tecolote, La Pasadita, and other border sites in the Yaxchilan kingdom. Similar defensive features have also been identified at the Piedras Negras secondary center of La Mar. These walls are interpreted as the foundations for wooden palisades, and served to protect not only immediate communities, but also the kingdom at large. However, this paper presents the first evidence...
Fragmentary Ceramic Assemblages as a Record of Ritual Practice at Las Cuevas, Belize (2018)
The most common artifacts found in Maya caves are unslipped and monochrome slipped ceramic sherds. The smashing of ceramic vessels as an element of ritual practice is recorded ethnographically among some twentieth-century Maya groups. Other Maya groups have been documented collecting sherds from domestic middens and depositing them at sacred sites. If caves were venues for the former type of behavior in antiquity, one would expect to find a high percentage of refitting sherds in their...
Frayed at the Edges: Insights into Classic Period (250–900 CE) Maya Political Organization from the Southeast Maya Kingdom of Copan, Honduras (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Regimes of the Ancient Maya" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. While ongoing research has clarified much about the strategies Classic period (250–900 CE) Maya rulers used to establish, integrate, and administer their Lowland Maya kingdoms, studies of frontier zones, such as the southeast edge of the Maya area, both provide insights into Maya political organization and highlight local challenges not faced by rulers in the...
From Buried Preclassic Villages to the Lexicon for Maya Architecture: The Impact of Architectural Studies in Belize on Maya Scholarship (2024)
This is an abstract from the "“The Center and the Edge”: How the Archaeology of Belize Is Foundational for Understanding the Ancient Maya, Part II" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In 1984, Stanley Loten and David Pendergast published “A Lexicon for Maya Architecture” based to a large degree on their observations during excavations at Lamanai and Altun Ha, both major Maya centers in Belize. At 16 brief pages of text and nine of figures, this...
From Chichen Itza to Tulum: The Late Postclassic Maya Feathered Serpent of the Northern Maya Lowlands (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Tales of the Feathered Serpent: Refining Our Understanding of an Enigmatic Mesoamerican Being" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Most representations of the feathered serpent at Chichen Itza depict a plumed rattlesnake, a being of wind and carrier of rain, with Central Mexican origins dating back to Early Classic Teotihuacan. In Classic Maya art, feathered serpents are not rattlesnakes and lack plumage aside from a...
From Marginalized to Impactful: Belizean Archaeology and the Classic Period Maya (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. The impact of Belizean centers and settlement on ancient Maya civilization of the Classic period (CE 250–900) has been recognized in the last 50 years of research. Before 1975 Belize was seen as being on the fringes of the Maya world and portrayed as a backwater. Most...
From One Jar, Many Selves (2024)
This is an abstract from the "Ceramics and Archaeological Sciences 2024" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Red-on-Natural jars, characterized by nearly identical forms and decorations, were used by people of all ranks who lived in the adjoining Naco, middle Chamelecon, and lower Cacaulapa valleys of northwest Honduras from CE 600–1000. These vessels’ ubiquity suggests that those who used them participated in a community of practice that transcended...
From Polity to Regimes: Toward Recognizing Diversity in Ancient Maya Political Communities (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Regimes of the Ancient Maya" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In this paper, we introduce the notion of “regime” to model and interpret ancient Maya political organization. We have long relied on “the polity” as a primary model to explain ancient Maya politics. However, this largely generalist core concept tends to homogenize—both temporally and geographically—the complex ancient political landscape as one populated by...