Tabasco (State / Territory) (Geographic Keyword)
176-200 (1,122 Records)
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. The Classic Maya polities of the Upper Belize River Valley were situated in an especially rich alluvial environment, which may have served as a breadbasket for surrounding regions. The region was also one of the most densely settled regions of the Maya lowlands, showing evidence of...
Classic Maya Cache Vessel Texts and the Stories They Tell (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Ancient Maya artists fashioned ceramic cache vessels that bear a rich array of painted imagery and iconography, making them popular subjects for scholarly investigation. Themes focusing on bloodletting and burning rites are emphasized in many of these discussions, and these themes form the foundations for interpreting the meanings and uses of this class of...
Classic Maya Food Systems and the Sociality of Diet in the Usumacinta Region (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The ancient Maya utilized a range of landscape modifications for agricultural production, including terraces and raised fields. These agricultural strategies were tied into food systems that also included taxation and tribute, all significant components of a political economy that may have reflected autonomy, exploitation, or both. Using a paleoethnobotanical...
Classic Maya Household Inequality in Southern Belize (2021)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Inequality is present in all forms of human societies, but the degree of inequality within a single city or region varies. Recently in archaeological contexts, inequality has been quantitatively evaluated based on house size using the Gini coefficient and Lorenz Curve, thus enabling the comparison of wealth measures and inequality between ancient cities of...
Classic Maya Population Densities as Seen from Río Bec, Campeche, Mexico (2021)
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. Ideally every ancient Maya city should be characterized by its population density and its urban agricultural productivity, closely linked parameters that must be explored before tackling the issue of production/exchange relations with hinterlands. Río Bec can be characterized as a low-density urban...
Classic Maya Urban Settlement Dynamics: Planning and Mobility Introduced (2018)
Following decades of debate, most scholars accept Classic Maya cities as the hearts of spatially expansive, low-density urban settlements. This introductory paper will summarize past and current perceptions of Maya urbanism, emphasizing potentially overshadowed considerations of urban planning, mobility, and community dynamics – fundamental cross-cultural features of urbanization – and their detection in lowland settlement patterns. The recent florescence of research deriving insight from urban...
Classic Maya Urbanism at Dzibanche Revealed by Airborne Lidar Mapping (2024)
This is an abstract from the "The Rise and Apogee of the Classic Maya Kaanu’l Hegemonic State at Dzibanche" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Lidar survey of the city of Dzibanche reveals the city's settlement to be more extensive and populous than previously thought and consistent with its political reach as a hegemonic state. A closer look at the organization of public spaces within its center reveals architectural arrangements that appear to share...
Classic Maya Wahys: What, Who, Where, and Why? (2024)
This is an abstract from the "The Rollout Keepers: Papers on Maya Ceramic Texts, Scenes, and Styles in Honor of Justin and Barbara Kerr" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Kerr cataloging project at Dumbarton Oaks is creating opportunities to re-examine iconographic motifs and hieroglyphic texts on Maya pottery. One avenue in which this has been fruitful is the analysis of vessels depicting wahy creatures. In modern communities, ways are powerful...
Classic Period Integration at Yaxnohcah: A “Bottom-Up” Perspective from Ximbal Che (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. Recent investigations at the Ximbal Che group at Yaxnohcah have documented intriguing new data with implications for understanding sociopolitical and economic integration in the Bajo el Laberinto region. These data include diverse cultural assemblages that show radical changes to the built...
Climate Adaptations in Persistent Places: Relational Solutions in Yucatán, Mexico (2024)
This is an abstract from the "Rethinking Persistent Places: Relationships, Atmospheres, and Affects" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This paper focuses on the past 500 years of nearly continual human presence on the lands held today by residents of Tahcabo, Yucatán, Mexico. Previous work addressed why town residents continued to persist in this area despite the violence of colonialism. One answer pointed to significant human relationships with...
Climate and Cultural Responses in Belizean Prehistory (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. Over the past 25 years, numerous paleoclimate studies have been published across the Maya Lowlands, providing the climatic context for cultural change from Preclassic through modern times. Increasing archaeological studies have followed suit by documenting cultural...
A Closer Look at the Use of Cueva de Sangre through Skeletal Remains (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Studies in Mesoamerican Subterranean Archaeology" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The use of caves is a part of an essential role in Maya cosmology and ideology. The Petexbatún Regional Cave Survey identified 22 caves and over 11 kilometers of cave passages between 1990 through 1993 at Dos Pilas, Guatemala. This study reexamines 205 human remains collected from Cueva de Sangre. Previous studies (Minjares, 2003) of the...
Coastal Hydrogeological Context of Potable Water Sources of the Vista Alegre Maya Port Site, Yucatan Peninsula, Mexico (2018)
Ongoing investigation at the ancient Maya port site of Vista Alegre has revealed a multi-phased and significant occupation spanning the Preclassic to Postclassic periods. However, the vital source of potable water that would have supported this coastal settlement remains unknown. We present a hydrogeological assessment of the region to understand changing water sources over the last 2 millennia. Potential groundwater foci at the intersections of conjugate fracture sets are presently either...
Coastal Trade: The Ancient Maya of 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, Part II" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The sea was important to the ancient Maya as a source of ritual paraphernalia and seafood, as a transportation and trade route, and as a desirable place of settlement. The coast of Belize includes hundreds of cays within the second longest barrier reef in the world and a...
Coastlines, Mountains, Linguistic Diversity, or Subaltern Trade Networks: Hypothesizing Sources of Language Isolates in the Isthmus of Oaxaca (2024)
This is an abstract from the "Bringing the Past to Life, Part 1: Papers in Honor of John M. D. Pohl" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. As a linguist and specialist in the languages and cultures of the Isthmus of Tehuantepec and Oaxaca, I have long considered that one of the most intriguing hypotheses Dr. Pohl has presented has been on potential maritime networks which might explain the presence of language isolates (Chontal and Huave) in the Isthmus...
Coba's Periphery and Rethinking Site Boundaries (2018)
Time and again the application of new technologies has allowed archaeologists to rethink their understandings of ancient cultural landscapes. Lidar, in particular, is one technology that has rapidly transformed our analytical capabilities by simultaneously providing wide regional and finely localized views of archaeological sites. In this paper, we present new lidar data that is reshaping our understanding of the Northern Maya Lowland metropolis of Coba. In particular we discuss features on...
Colha, Northern Belize: A History and Record of Research (2018)
The northern Belize prehistoric Maya site of Colha was first archaeologically documented by the Corozal Project in the early 1970s. The most significant archaeological research at the site was conducted as The Colha Project (1979-1983), with subsequent projects of specialized interests (1994-2017). Though known primarily for its lithic dimension as a major production and distribution center of stone tools, many other aspects of Maya society have been identified from the numerous seasons of...
Collective Biographies: Ancient Maya Objects in Collections, Past and Present (2018)
This paper explores the collecting, repositioning, and separating of ancient Maya objects, both in the ancient past and the twentieth century. Archaeological context provides evidence of ancient Maya aggregation of disparate objects in tombs, caches, or sculptural tableaux as well as evidence of repositioning or separating things. These changes are fundamental aspects of objects’ life histories. Yet in the twentieth century, ancient monuments and object sets also have been divided -- and new...
Colonial and Caste War Continuities in the Beneficios Altos Province of Yucatán (2019)
This is an abstract from the "The Archaeologies of Contact, Colony, and Resistance" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Caste War of Yucatán has been referred to as "the most successful Indian revolt in New World history." Scholars have attributed the origins of this important conflict to a variety of causes, including circumstances that arose as Mexico established its independence from Spain; late colonial period political reforms; policies in...
The Colonial Peten: An Ethnohistory of Indigenous Sovereignty and a Failed Spanish Colonial Project (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Disentanglement: Reimagining Early Colonial Trajectories in the Americas" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Colonialism—to speak generally—can be characterized as endeavors that aim not just to entangle, but to wholly incorporate, disparate regions under the control of a foreign body. Indigenous disentanglement from these exploitative projects has taken many forms—daily negotiations, subtle refusals, outright rebellions....
The Columbian Exchange in the Maya/Spanish Borderlands: A Zooarchaeological and Isotopic Tale of Resistance and Repurposing (2024)
This is an abstract from the "The Columbian Exchange Revisited: Archaeological and Anthropological Perspectives on Eurasian Domesticates in the Americas" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The introduction of Eurasian domesticates in the Americas significantly changed the Maya domestic economy during the early colonial period (AD 1535–1700). However, this change was heterogenous in scale across the Maya world. While areas under Spanish control quickly...
Comalcalco
Photos 304-326, 879-884, 1994-2000, 11241-11248
Commemorating the Preclassic Monumental Construction at Tayasal, Guatemala (2018)
Research into the Main Group at Tayasal, Guatemala, revealed that the Postclassic inhabitants re-occupied areas and buildings that were constructed during the Preclassic period. Most of those buildings in the Main Group stand on a massive elevated platform, which was also constructed during the Preclassic period. The Preclassic period was the period during which the construction of monumental architecture such as E-groups and Triadic Group occurred at numerous sites including Tayasal. It was...
Commoner Agency, Hinterland Complexity, and Evidence for a Late Classic Commoner Marketplace in the Rio Bravo Basin, Northwestern Belize (2024)
This is an abstract from the "Prehispanic Maya Marketplace Investigations in the Three Rivers Region of Belize: First Results" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This paper considers preliminary evidence for a Late Classic period marketplace at the site of Chawak But’o’ob, Belize. Group E, one of the largest settlement groups at this eighth-century agrarian site, is characterized by a well-bounded, spacious plaza that is larger and otherwise unlike...
Communing with the Gods: The Paleoethnobotany of Fire Rituals (2018)
The importance of fire in Maya rituals is well-known, both archaeologically and ethnographically. Fire, which is symbolic of the life cycle in Maya ideology, has been used as a means of communicating with the supernatural world in order to manage specific aspects of everyday life, such as the success of the agricultural season. In the archaeological record, we find evidence for ancient fires as features consisting mostly of burnt plant remains, some of which resemble modern Maya fire altars both...