Tabasco (State / Territory) (Geographic Keyword)

DOCUMENT Citation Only John Walden. Michael Biggie. Victoria Izzo. Julie Hoggarth. Rafael Guerra.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Traditionally anthropologists envisioned ritual as playing a functional role in the formation and ongoing cohesion of ancient complex societies. More recent perspectives consider ritual to represent a powerful tool of resistance, and therefore pivotal not just to the integration, but also the disintegration of polities. Situations in which a higher order...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Cady Rutherford. Marisol Cortes-Rincon.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Economic integration of households outside of site cores has often been under theorized in Maya scholarship. In this paper I explore the evidence of craft production and spatial relationships in several of these residential groups as well as the implications for connections with social, political, and economic institutions. These groups make decisions...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Mario Zimmermann.

The Puuc mountains in the northwestern Maya lowlands have proven themselves to be double-faced in regard to pre-Columbian human settlement. On one side, the valleys exhibit the region's most fertile soils. On the other hand, rainfall is scarce and access to the underground water table is comparatively difficult. Nonetheless, authors such as Smyth (1991) have long suggested that the Puuc represented some of the bread-basket for the wider northwestern lowlands. As part of a broader study, in this...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Lisa LeCount.

Here, I summarize the major research questions and results from the Actuncan Archaeological Project, which has been on-going since 2001. The project was initially designed to examine the ways Preclassic Maya leaders institutionalized political authority from the perspective of household archaeology, but has expanded to include excavation of civic architecture and remote sensing in open spaces. My research is informed by collective action theory, and the degree to which leaders engaged in...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jakob Sedig. Esther Brielle. Roslyn Curry. David Reich. Vera Tiesler.

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 II" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Scholars have examined the causes and impacts of the Maya collapse for over a century, using every available line of evidence. In the last decade ancient DNA (aDNA) has proven to be a powerful tool in understanding large-scale population transformations...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Yijia Qiu. John P. P. Walden. Anaïs Levin. Kyle Shaw-Müller. Rafael A. Guerra.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Traditionally scholars envisaged Classic Maya economic centralization and commercialization as being poorly developed. However, the discovery of markets at several Maya political centers has begun to shift these perspectives. One important question which remains was how much did centralized markets affect the redistribution of items within hinterland...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Lorena González.

This is an abstract from the "Recent Multidisciplinary Investigations in the Mirador Basin, Guatemala" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. El Grupo Saraguate, está localizado sobre la segunda plataforma del Complejo La Danta que había sido fechado para el Clásico Tardío 600-900 dC. El Grupo Saraguate se caracteriza por contar por varios edificios de baja altura, que se distribuyen en aglutinadas plazas y patios, la presencia de entierros, y piedras de...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Melina García Hernández. Takeshi Inomata. Daniela Triadan.

This is an abstract from the "Aguada Fénix and the Middle Usumacinta Region: Interregional Interactions and Social Transformations in the Middle Preclassic Period" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Aguada Fénix is a major ceremonial complex from the Middle Formative Usumacinta (MFU) assemblage that was discovered in Tabasco, Mexico, through lidar technology. The construction of this complex indicates the importance of communal labor, and there is no...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Ernesto Arredondo.

The archaeological site of El Achiotal is located on the southwestern fringe of the region known as the Mirador Basin. During the Late Preclassic period (300 BC – 250 AD), it participated in mainstream architectonic traditions of the Central Maya Lowlands, exemplified by its main building, Structure 5C-01. With the advent of Early Classic times (ca. 250 AD), changes appeared in the architecture of Structure 5C-01 and at the adjacent Structure 5C-08. These later changes express the political...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Griffin Larson. Zachary Stanyard. David M. Hyde. Michael Stowe.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Group I of the Medicinal Trail Community is a small residential household in the Rio Bravo Conservation and Management Area of northwestern Belize and consists of an eastern shrine and two house mounds on the south and west sides of the courtyard, all situated on an artificial plaza platform. This group is located directly east of the larger and more formally...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Victoria Poston. Maria Belen Mendez Bauer.

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 site of Tiradero is located next to the San Pedro River, a distributary of the Usumacinta River, in Tabasco, Mexico and contains evidence of occupation during the Late Preclassic and Terminal Classic periods. At the site, a Middle Formative Chiapas E-Group pattern is consistent with those...

DOCUMENT Citation Only David Burns. Luisa Aebersold. Fred Valdez. Samantha Krause. Anastasia Kotsoglou.

Colha, an ancient Maya site located in northern Belize, has undergone archaeological research interests since the 1970s. Previous investigations demonstrate a long occupational history at the site that spans from the Late Archaic (ca. 3400 BC) to the Early Postclassic (AD 1200). Building upon previous research, a primary goal of the 2017 season was to explore the transition between the Archaic (3400 BC) and Preclassic (1000 BC) periods while focusing on technological and social continuity. This...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Phoebe Fairbairn. Zachary Stanyard. David M. Hyde. Annie Riegert.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. During the 2018 field season, a burial was exposed and recovered during exploratory test-pitting of Group L, a small residential complex within the Medicinal Trail Community located in northwestern Belize. Designated Burial L-1, the burial is secondary in nature as evidenced by the disarticulated remains placed directly on top of bedrock and below a...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Sharon Hankins. Megan Skillern.

We have been very fortunate this year to have Dr. Fred Valdez, Luisa Aebersold and their team graciously contribute to our research program in ceramic technology. They took time during their extremely busy field season to bring clay for our team to prepare and attempt to build pottery at Programme for Belize Archaeological Field School. We have two different types of clay to research. The first clay is yellow clay CH4444. The second clay is iron-rich, red clay CH2222. Our first task was to...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Andrew Snetsinger. Maxime Lamoureux-St-Hilaire.

Settlement abandonment studies are crucial for understanding the archaeological record, as they yield the key to decipher the context of on-floor deposits, or assemblages. We advocate the use of a behavioral-contextual method for studying on-floor assemblages for ascribing them to one of several categories of abandonment. This behavioral-contextual approach examines the vertical and horizontal architectural contexts of artifacts, the relative completeness of vessels, and the represented vessel...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Eleanor King. John Cross. Michael Brennan. Christine Taylor. Darcie Flanagan.

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. The 2023–2024 field seasons witnessed the beginning of an ambitious NSF-funded project to investigate the possible existence of marketplaces in the Three Rivers Region of northwestern Belize. This project is innovative in leveraging information from long-running, independent research...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Juan Melendez. Emiliano Melgar.

This is an abstract from the "Ancient Maya Embedded Economies" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. With the aim of exploring the economic system surrounding prestige Maya items during precolumbian times, we present research focused on greenstone mosaic masks (GMM) found in funerary precincts of high elite individuals in the Guatemalan Maya Lowlands. Through microarchaeological analyses of a select number of tesserae (n = 249) that form sections of 13...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Scott Fedick. Gerald Islebe. Louis Santiago.

A review of 28 ethnographic, ethnobotanical, and botanical studies published since the 1930s identified 497 species of indigenous food plants used by the Maya in the lowlands of southeastern Mexico and upper Central America. This consideration of the Maya cornucopia focuses on the relative food values of the plants and the visibility of the species in the archaeological record. The diversity of food plants has significant implications for the reconstruction of ancient foodways, agricultural...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Sara Eshleman. Juan Carlos Fernandez Diaz. Ben Snider.

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...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Christopher Carr. Nicolaus Seefeld. Nicholas Dunning. Shane Montgomery.

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...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Camilla Speller. Erin Thornton. Aurélie Manin. Kitty Emery.

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...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jon Spenard. Michael Mirro. Javier Mai. Konane Martinez. Franklin Quiros.

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...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jemima Georges.

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...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Mario Zimmermann. Gabriel Ortiz A la triste.

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...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Yesenia Landa. Sheryl Luzzadder-Beach. Thomas Garrison. Timothy Beach. Byron Smith.

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...