Tabasco (State / Territory) (Geographic Keyword)
476-500 (1,122 Records)
Chultunes are ubiquitous throughout the southern Maya lowlands, but their function is still under debate. A central problem in the interpretation of these subterranean features is the paucity of artifacts recovered from within them. Within Chultun 3 at Mul Ch’en Witz, an area located within the larger site of La Milpa in northwestern Belize, several artifacts suggesting ritual activity were encountered. These artifacts include an intact vessel, an incensario, burnt jute, fire-affected limestone,...
Incorporating Vegetation Reconstruction in Computational Landscape Archaeoacoustics: An Ancient Maya Case Study (2021)
This is an abstract from the "Archaeoacoustics: Sound, Hearing, and Experience in Archaeology" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Ancient Maya perceived settlements as *kahkab, or “populated earth”; that is, urban agrarian places where residences intermixed with gardens and orchards. In previous work, we simulated the late eighth- and early ninth-century landscape of the ancient Maya city of Copán to investigate multisensory experience. Building...
Indicators of Skeletal Stress in a Small Skeletal Sample Spanning the Holocene in the Maya Mountains of 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 Bladen Paleoindian and Archaic archaeological Project (BPAAP) is an ongoing research endeavor focused on excavations from two rock shelters in the Maya Mountains of southern Belize: Maya Hak Cab Pek, and Saki Tzul. Continued use of these rocks shelters from the Late Pleistocene to the collapse of Mayan civilization has resulted in a unique perspective on...
Indigenous Interpretations of the Past (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This paper examines indigenous understandings of the archaeological record through the case study of the Mopan Maya of Belize. Among many traditional Mopan Maya, classic era artifacts such as potsherds and stone points are often attributed to the Cheil or "those of the forest." Mopan believe that the Cheil are magical anthropomorphic beings descended from the...
Industrial Heritage and Henequen Landscapes: The Social Spaces along the Conkal-Progreso Railway in Northern Yucatan (1886–1950) (2018)
From the second half of the nineteenth century the Yucatecan henequen industry experienced an extraordinary growth that would result in a "Gilded Age". The most notorious vestiges of this era are the henequen haciendas, which were dispersed across the entire peninsula and whose ruins evoke nostalgia for an era of industrial and commercial splendor. By the end of the century, new developments in communications and construction industries also appeared. Yucatán’s accelerated economic growth, tied...
Inequality in the 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. Assessing inequality using the Gini coefficient based on house size provides a standard metric for studying dynamic societal change across vast spatiotemporal contexts. Within a single geographic region, such as the Maya Lowlands, wealth inequities change over time as political systems...
Inequality, Urban Longevity, and Commoner Households at the Ancient Maya City of Aventura, Belize (2021)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Archaeological studies of urbanism frequently seek to assess the factors which enable some cities to persist over the long-term while others fail after a few generations. This paper continues this line of inquiry by drawing on anthropological scholarship on inequality to examine the relationship between socioeconomic inequality and urban longevity. The paper...
Infrastructures of Moving Water at a Terminal Classic Maya Site in Petén, Guatemala (2018)
What are the temporal dynamics of water infrastructures? Recent research at the Maya site of Ucanal in Petén, Guatemala, has identified several water management features, such as canals, dams, baffles, and roads, many of which drain water away from the site core and towards a nearby river, the Río Mopan. The heavy focus on water drainage rather than water storage is seemingly incongruous with paleoclimate data, which reveal evidence of droughts during the height of the site’s occupation. This...
Infrastructures of Race and War: Tracing Historic Roads in Postwar Quintana Roo (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The last half of the nineteenth century was for Yucatan, like much of the Atlantic World, a time of extreme tumult. Having recently gained its independence from Spain, the fledgling nation found itself plunged into numerous violent, political conflicts. None had so lasting an impact as what has become commonly known as the Caste War of Yucatan. Arguably...
An Inhabitant’s Perspective of Material Urban Structure at Chunchucmil (2018)
Maya urban archaeology is progressively addressing how to ‘people the past’, using data exploration techniques. The Chunchucmil map (Hutson and Magnoni 2017) offers an exemplary spatial data resource. Chunchucmil features here as a testing ground for showcasing the interpretive research advances enabled by Boundary Line Type (BLT) Mapping. BLT Mapping resulted from establishing a common frame of reference to make radical comparisons between Maya and contemporary urban patterns. The anticipation...
Initial Experimental Analysis of Soft Hammer Techniques in the Maya Lowlands (2018)
Lowland Maya lithic studies have traditionally focused on the rise of specialization at large urban centers. While many of these studies have focused on form and function of the tools produced, few focused on the technological means of tool production. Maya lithic studies have been assumed a priori to have been created using traditional means of hard-hammer and billet reduction. This paper reviews current evidence for the use of hardwoods in the production of stone tools, as well as provide an...
Innovation, Not Imitation: The Classic Period Ceramics 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" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Entertaining the initial assessment of Belize as a secondary outpost of ancient Maya culture, Belize’s subordinate role should be reflected in its ceramic record based on conventional archaeological assumption. However, research since the 1980s proves this to be untrue. Our paper...
The Inside/Outside Connection: A Spatial Analysis of Faunal Remains from Contact Period Maya Elite Structures at Lamanai, Belize (2021)
This is an abstract from the "Celebrating 20 Years of Support: Current Work by Recipients of the Dienje Kenyon Memorial Fellowship for Zooarchaeologists" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. During the colonial period, the Maya living in frontier zones retained much of their community-level sociocultural and hierarchical systems. At Lamanai, Belize, recent excavations of three elite residences provide an opportunity to examine the relationship between...
Insights from the Classic to Postclassic Pottery 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" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. For many years, Belize was considered to be peripheral to major social and cultural dynamics in the ancient Maya world. Recent pottery analyses in Belize, however, document that Classic and Postclassic Belize experienced some significant regional changes that inform our current...
An Integrated Heavy-Lift Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) and Remote Sensing Platform (2018)
We describe an integrated heavy-lift unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) and remote sensing platform used to map archaeological features under the forest canopy in the northern Yucatán. We collaborated with Mobile Recon Systems Inc. to construct a UAV-based aerial mapping system that can be used to create high-resolution maps and 3D models of archaeological ruins, excavations, caves, and cenotes for small to medium-sized areas of the forested environment. The system integrates Light Detection and...
The Integration of Island and Mainland Maya Communities: Perspectives from Ambergris Caye, Belize (2018)
After a span of over twenty years archaeological investigations have resumed at the San Pedro site, located in downtown San Pedro, Ambergris Caye. Investigations in the early 1990s revealed portions of a Spanish contact period Maya community that was settled as early as the 14th Century CE. Based on previous as well as ongoing investigations at the San Pedro site and other Maya sites on the island and the mainland, it appears that communities on the caye were linked to one another in various...
Intensification without Modification: Tropical Swidden and the Maya (2021)
This is an abstract from the "Finding Fields: Locating and Interpreting Ancient Agricultural Landscapes" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. As we look at agricultural intensification and the archaeological correlates, we need to understand that capital based investment and arable farming are only one path to intensification. Labor-based economies, especially those of the Americas before European conquest, present an entirely distinct track toward...
Interdisciplinary Research in Maya Archaeology: Interests from the PfBAP (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. The Programme for Belize Archaeological Project (PfBAP) has operated in NW Belize for more than three decades. While much of the research effort has been under what might be described as traditional archaeology, the research program today is significantly informed by geoarchaeology interests and lidar. Initial efforts...
Interdisciplinary Science and Fishers’ Local Ecological Knowledge of Sawfishes in the Yucatán Peninsula (2024)
This is an abstract from the "Past Human-Shark Interactions" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Knowledge of sawfishes is still scant for Latin America. Pristis pristis (largetooth sawfish) and Pristis pectinata (smallthooth sawfish) are critically endangered. In the Yucatán Peninsula (YP) these species populated coastal landscapes. We collected 290 surveys of fishers’ Local Ecological Knowledge (LEK) with a geospatial component and reviewed 74...
Internal Variations among the Elite Classic Maya at El Zotz (2021)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This paper discusses the internal structure of the elite Classic Maya at the site of El Zotz, in the Petén region of Guatemala. By examining the behavior of elites living in different parts of El Zotz at the end of the Late Classic, I will consider whether the aristocracy of the Pa’ka’n court acted as a cohesive unit with shared behaviors, or if they were...
Interpreting a Subterranean Feature at Chichen Itza (2021)
This is an abstract from the "The Subterranean in Mesoamerican Indigenous Culture and Beyond" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. During the 2019 season, a subterranean feature was excavated atop a pyramidal structure in the pueblo of San Felipe Nuevo, 839 m northeast of the El Castillo pyramid at Chichen Itza. The entrance is a round, finely finished, chultun-like entrance 53 cm in diameter. The walls are plastered, which suggests its function as a...
Interpreting Identities: An Ahegemonic Archaeological Approach (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Archaeology as an Engine or a Camera?" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Mulch’en Witz (glossed ‘Hill of Many Caves’) is located in northwestern Belize within the periphery of the ancient Maya site of La Milpa. Preliminary investigations have recorded a high concentration of chultuns associated to architectural features and groups and, thus far, all cultural material dates to the Late Classic period (CE 600-800). Human...
Interpreting the Past: How Transdisciplinary Research Advances the Field of Maya Archaeology (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. Human-nature relationships are key to understanding past societal developments. The value of conducting transdisciplinary research, involving new methods and other investigators, has become increasingly apparent as the field of Maya Studies has matured. While there has continued to be a significant increase in the...
Interwoven Networks: Obsidian Exchange and Overlapping Economies among the Ancient Maya of Western Belize (2024)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Studies of ancient Maya commodities have focused on elite control of economic institutions, yet goods were mobilized at different levels of the social hierarchy to support the growth of broader economic institutions. Here we present the results of portable x-ray fluorescence (pXRF) analyses of over 4000 obsidian artifacts from Preclassic to Terminal...
Introducing The Ancient Maya Kinship Project Consultation, Engagement, and Outreach Program (2024)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. New archaeological aDNA approaches have the potential to dramatically change our understanding of the ancient Maya but it is important that living Maya people are aware of the research, provide their thoughts and input, and give their consent given the involvement of ancestral human remains. This poster presents the ongoing interview based consultation...