Campeche (State / Territory) (Geographic Keyword)
776-800 (933 Records)
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...
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...
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...
Social and Geographic Associations of Cotton-sized Spindle Whorls in South-central Veracruz, Mexico (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Textile Tools and Technologies as Evidence for the Fiber Arts in Precolumbian Societies" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The western lower Papaloapan basin in south-central Veracruz was subject to systematic survey and surface collection in several blocks of terrain. An initial analysis of spindle whorls from one survey block showed cotton-sized whorls were relatively abundant during the Classic and Postclassic...
Social Complexity of Peripheral Settlements on the Regional Capital of Ichkaansihoo (2018)
In the last decade, research done by "Proyecto Arquelogico Region de Merida" (PARME) on peripheral settlements of the Ichkaantijo area has had as a main objective to recognize and interpret the social organization of these ancient communities, that according to literature have been defined as rural settlements. Therefore, how is this area and the sites that constitute it characterized? What role did they play in the political and economic system? And, which cultural elements have witnessed...
The Social Transformation of the Terminal Classic Maya to Postclassic Maya in Northern Belize (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Terminal Classic (AD 800-1000) and Postclassic (AD 1000-1500) periods of Maya civilization in northern Belize were times of significant change and social transformation. Changes and developments during the Terminal Class are visible archaeological at several northern Belizean communities including Colha, Lamanai, and La Milpa. We evaluate changes at...
Societal Cycling Influenced by Climatic Variability Among Early Agricultural Communities: Comparative Perspectives from Belize and Croatia (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Global Perspectives on Climate-Human Population Dynamics During the Late Holocene" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Archaeological studies continue to highlight the extreme variability in sociopolitical responses to prehistoric fluctuations in climate, from the emergence to complete breakdown of hierarchical societies. These processes were likely more volatile among early farming communities with high degrees of...
Society in Flux: Migration and Kinship during Sociopolitical Change in the Southern Lowlands (2019)
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. In the midst of conflict and change people are instigators, bystanders, or unwilling victims of larger sociopolitical machinations. Those living in the Southern Lowlands in the prehistoric and historic periods were familiar with the results of fluctuations in the social...
Soil and Water Chemistry: Aguada Fenix, Tabasco and Northern Belize (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. Most of the Yucatan has no vestige of rivers; humans and ecosystems rely on rainwater catchment and soil and ground water. Along the southern margins of the Peninsula, however, lie rivers in Belize and Quintana Roo to the southeast and Tabasco and Campeche to the southwest. This paper...
Soil Carbon Persistence and Influence in the Early Anthropocene of the Maya Lowlands (2023)
This is an abstract from the "2023 Fryxell Award Symposium: Papers in Honor of Timothy Beach Part I" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Coupled studies of Maya Lowlands soils and geoarchaeological exploration provide insight into neotropical soil and atmospheric carbon cycle dynamics in space and time, and soil carbon’s role in defining the Early Anthropocene. This paper tests the hypothesis that soil carbon persistence differs in time, space, and...
Soil Differences and Their Implications for Plaza Function and Site Organization at Maax Na, Belize (2019)
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. In 2016 the Maax Na Archaeology Project systematically tested the soils of two major plazas at Maax Na, a large prehispanic site located in the Three Rivers Region of Belize. Tests in the West Plaza sought to determine whether phosphorus levels there supported its identification as a marketplace during the Late Classic (C.E....
Some Temporal Markers in Olmec Pottery from Los Soldados (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Los Soldados has been considered by many to be a secondary center with respect to La Venta due to its proximity to the capital; however, in the absence of a tuned ceramic chronology for the Middle Preclassic, this cannot be corroborated. Over a number of seasons, the Arroyo Pesquero Archaeological Project has carried out excavations at Los Soldados, and among...
Something Different or More of the Same? Lowland Maya Polities and Regimes as Viewed from El Perú-Waka’, Guatemala (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Regimes of the Ancient Maya" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Classic period (250–900 CE) politics of the Lowland Maya have been the subject of intense debate among scholars for decades. Having long ago moved beyond unsupported models of peaceful theocracies and vacant ceremonial centers, investigators nevertheless continue to wrestle with characterizing the nature of Classic political structure. This paper will...
Source Analysis of Obsidian from the Late Olmec Site of Los Soldados (2018)
Recent compositional analyses of obsidian from Formative Period Mesoamerican sites have been used to trace obsidian to a number of Highland Mexican and Guatemalan sources, and documented shifts in sources through time. In this presentation, we report the results of a study that analyzed 401 obsidian samples excavated from the Middle/Late Formative period habitation site of Los Soldados, located 11 km from the Olmec capital of La Venta. Using three high precision techniques (LA-ICP-MS, XRF, and...
Sourcing Stones: PXRF Use at Pacbitun (2018)
The Maya site of Pacbitun in Belize has produced large amounts of granite ground stone tools, debitage, and debris. Determining provenance is integral to reconstructing the chaîne opératoire of ground stone tool production at the site. Portable X-Ray fluorescence (pXRF) is becoming widely used in the field for quick and accurate geochemical assessments. Most prior archaeological work has focused on fine-grained materials, rather than coarse-grained rocks like granite. This project used geologic...
Space and Time for the Milpa-Forest Garden Cycle: A Model of the Ancient Maya Landscape of El Pilar (2021)
This is an abstract from the "Landscapes: Archaeological, Historic, and Ethnographic Perspectives from the New World / Paisajes: Perspectivas arqueológicas, históricas y etnográficas desde el Nuevo Mundo" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. As a critique of the temperate prejudice of the tropics, we embrace the hypothesis that the Maya forest represents a domesticated landscape to examine the settlement and environmental patterns of the ancient Maya of...
The Space of Liminality: Between Ritual and Theater in Late Classic Ancient Maya Cave Rites (2018)
Performance theory recognizes that the boundaries between ritual and theatrical performances are often quite blurred, allowing shared methods of analysis between the two. While many have argued for a theater-state among the ancient Maya, few have ventured beyond the large ceremonies conducted in great plazas to consider the more esoteric nature of public, semi-public, and private rites taking place in the natural landscape. Ancient Maya caves were used exclusively as ritual spaces, yet there has...
The Spatial Distribution of Wealth throughout the Neighborhoods of the Late Classic Maya Polity of Lower Dover, Belize (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The formation of neighborhoods and their integration into polities necessarily involves changes to the wealth of their inhabitants, especially as certain economic activities such as craft production intensify. For example, households that were among the first in a community, especially in low-density agricultural communities such as those of the ancient Maya,...
Spindle Whorls and World Creation at Balankanche' Caverns, Yucatan (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This poster examines the implications of imagery identified as relating to Mesaomerican “Flower Worlds” on spindle whorls left in situ in Balankanche’ Caverns by actors who used the caverns in the Terminal Classic period (ninth and tenth centuries) to invoke ritual-mythic time within this underworld space that was seen as the place of human creation and...
The Stable Isotope Ecology of Agriculture in the Eastern Maya Lowlands from the Preclassic through Colonial Periods (2018)
The reconstruction of subsistence strategies using stable isotope analyses is integral to understanding the role of maize agriculture in the development and decline of ancient Maya society. Here we present stable carbon, nitrogen, and sulphur isotope data from over 230 radiocarbon dated human skeletal remains from western Belize dating from the Preclassic through Colonial periods (~1000 BC-AD 1700). Stable isotope data are also compared to paleoclimate proxy records to interpret the climatic...
State of Conservation of the La Venta Stone Sculpture Corpus (2018)
The stone sculpture corpus originally found in La Venta is one of the most important collections of Olmec art in Mexico. It is currently exhibited in five different museums in Tabasco and Mexico City. The state of conservation of the almost 50 sculptures (whole and fragments) at the Parque Museo La Venta in Villahermosa are of particular interest because they have been exhibited in an open air museum for the last six decades. A summary of a recent and detailed study of the state of conservation...
Statecraft, Politics, and Kingship in the Northern Maya Lowlands, with a Focus on the Puuc Region (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Regimes of the Ancient Maya" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This paper examines the nature of northern Maya lowland statecraft, politics, and kingship and how they differ and parallel that of the southern lowlands. In keeping with the goal of the symposium this paper focuses on the concept of “regime” recognizing the Maya, especially when considering the northern and southern areas, created distinct political...
Stephen D. Houston’s Bloody, Courtly, Fiery, and Luxurious Contributions to Exhibitions of Maya Art (2019)
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. As a graduate student, Stephen Houston contributed references as well as two personal communications to the catalogue for The Blood of Kings: Dynasty and Ritual in Maya Art, including drawing Linda Schele and Mary Miller’s attention to key details of an exhibition centerpiece: the Kimbell Art...
Stephen Houston's Impact on Maya Archaeology: Celebrating His Completion of 3 K'atuns (2019)
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. Stephen Douglas Houston was drawn to archaeology and ancient scripts from a young age, fascinated by the rune stones of his mother’s native Sweden. While he is most widely seen as an epigrapher to outsiders, Mayanists recognize that he is, in fact, a world class field archaeologist that knows...