Mesoamerica (Geographic Keyword)

DOCUMENT Citation Only Daniela Triadan. Takeshi Inomata.

The rich data from elite households at the Classic site of Aguateca indicate that each household was a relatively autonomous economic unit of production and consumption of staples and utilitarian goods. While individual households were also specializing in the production of a variety of prestige items, there is little evidence for central control of any sphere of the economy by the royal court or elites. Individual households also seem to have maintained their own long-distance relationships...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Chip Foarde.

This paper explores the nature and possible implications of graffiti identified inside presumably abandoned Maya architecture. There exists a wealth of ancient iconographic graffiti scattered throughout the Maya world. It has been argued that such graffiti was, in many cases, created after the spaces in which it is found had ceased to be used for their original purposes. Therefore, graffiti in this context is a possible example of the repurposing of Maya architecture by members of a society with...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Hannah Plumer.

This presentation will examine paleopathology among the ancient Maya through the analysis of the skeletal remains from three different medium Maya sites in northwestern Belize. Osteological health indicators such as trauma, porotic hyperostosis, cribra orbitalia, osteoarthritis, and various dental health issues will be assessed both within and between the three sites. The sites to be discussed are Blue Creek, Nojol Nah, and Xnoha all of which are located along the Bravo Escarpment in...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Scott Simmons. Bryan Cockrell.

Investigations at the southern Maya Lowland sites of Lamanai and Tipu, Belize have yielded diverse assemblages of metal artifacts. These metals are from the Postclassic and Colonial (12th to 17th century) occupations at Lamanai and Colonial (mid-16th to early 18th century) contexts at Tipu. As a rare occasion to look at the similarities and differences between artifacts made of the same material from different sites, this research compares the forms, contexts, and technologies of metal artifacts...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Emmett Nahil. Mary Clarke.

Analyses of sculptural practices of the Ancient Maya have centered on the final stages of production, namely the identities of sculptors, the locations of production, and the techne of sculptural practice. While the contributions of these analyses cannot be contested, there remains a poorly resolved understanding of when in the process of sculpture limestone gains its cultural significance. This paper presents data from recent excavations at a quarry workshop at Xultun where a stela still...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Leah McCurdy.

Inspired by the important development of architectural energetics methodologies in Maya studies, I explore current research concerning monumental construction practices and labor at the ancient Maya site of Xunantunich, Belize. I discuss the foundational energetics principles applied to the major acropolis of Xunantunich, known as the Castillo, and highlight how virtual reconstruction plays a role in developing such energetics studies. Most importantly, I discuss how the scale of monumentality...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kirsten Green.

Mortuary practices are created to convey something about the deceased individual, as well as their surviving relatives, but can also give insight into the religious, social, and political structure of the community. This paper focuses on Maya mortuary practices in Belize, and how/why those practices changed over the transition from the Formative period (2000 BC – AD 300) to the Classic Maya florescence (AD 300-800). Comparing differences of mortuary characteristics within and between...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Tiffany Lindley.

My research examines the responses of Maya hinterland households to Terminal Classic (AD 780-900) socioeconomic transformations. My fieldwork focuses on Floodplain North, one of five settlement clusters in the Rancho San Lorenzo Survey Area in Belize’s Mopan valley. While adjoining settlement clusters have been intensively studied, my excavations are the first at Floodplain North. To date I have completed 25 test excavations, sampling all of the mounds in the settlement cluster. Preliminary...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Takeshi Inomata.

Royal palaces at the medium-sized centers of Aguateca and Ceibal appear to represent a basic template for the spatial and functional configurations of Maya palaces. They exhibit simple square forms resembling smaller residential groups of lower status, indicating their primary function as residential complexes of the royal families. Administrative and ceremonial functions were likely merged with domestic ones. These palaces also provide information on the degree of spatial mobility. While the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only William J. Folan. Maria del Rosario Dominguez C.. Joel D. Gunn.

The Palaces of the Peten Campechano and the remainder of the Yucatan Peninsula represent single and composite, royal multipurpose households of varying shapes and sizes often associated with triadic relationships representing religious, civic, and military responsibilities. These relationships are manifest in structures at Calakmul, Oxpemul, Becan, Santa Rosa Xtampak, the triadic Monjas Quadrangle of Uxmal, Structure #385 of Dzibilchaltun, the triad of Noh Cah Chan Santa Cruz, El Palacio de...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Mario Zimmermann.

For several years, peasant communities on the Yucatan Peninsula, Mexico, have not produced high enough maize-yields to sustain populations in the area. This is despite the fact that modern-day demographics are considerably lower than population estimates for the heights of Maya cultural development during the pre-Columbian era. Some scholars have argued that maize was not the sole staple for the ancient Maya. Root and tree crops are among the candidates for alternative staples given their...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Philippe Bezy.

For the ancient Maya, the use of music was often depicted as central to ritual activity.  One of the longest lasting instruments, the shell trumpet, provides ample material for analysis.  My three-pronged interpretive approach is made possible by the shell’s use in ancient ritual contexts, its appearance in Classic era iconography, and its organic origins. Archeologically provenanced trumpets, for example, yield deposition data, while art historical methods address both unprovenanced trumpets...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Lori Phillips. Erin Thornton. Carlos Peraza Lope.

It has been largely assumed within Maya archaeological research that the native ocellated turkey (Meleagris ocellata) was consumed but not managed, and the domesticated Mexican turkey (Meleagris gallopavo) wasn’t introduced to the Maya region until 1000-1500 AD. Recent investigations have begun to question these assumptions and our research aims to further illuminate this complex topic. Through morphometric and stable isotope analyses of zooarchaeological remains of both species, we investigated...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Timothy Beach. Sheryl Luzzadder-Beach. Samantha Krause. Melisa Bishop. Duncan Cook.

This paper has two main goals: first to present our latest findings for wetland field formation from a series of 2014 palustrine, floodplain, and lacustrine cores, and second to consider the relative strengths and weaknesses of the different approaches to coring: piston-, soil-, and vibra-coring compared with excavation in these environments. We first present how the new cores from 2014 at Akab Muclil and Laguna Verde compare with previous coring and excavation data toward understanding ancient...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Charles Gallenkamp.

This resource is a citation record only, the Center for Digital Antiquity does not have a copy of this document. The information in this record has been migrated into tDAR from the National Archaeological Database Reports Module (NADB-R) and updated. Most NADB-R records consist of a document citation and other metadata but do not have the documents themselves uploaded. If you have a digital copy of the document and would like to have it curated in tDAR, please contact us at comments@tdar.org.

DOCUMENT Citation Only Emiliano Melgar. Reyna Solís.

Across Mesoamerica and outside the Maya Region, archaeologists have found different greenstone lapidary objects with glossy appearance and particular iconography and aesthetics that were considered as jadeite and crafted by the Maya. Unfortunately, their detailed analysis to confirm these assumptions is scarce. In this paper, we will show the study of Mayan style lapidary items from different sites, like Teotihuacan, Monte Albán, Teteles, Tula, Tamtoc, and Tenochtitlan. We employed Micro-Raman...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Edward Deevey. D. Rice. P. Rice. H. Vaughan. M. Brenner. M. Flannery.

This resource is a citation record only, the Center for Digital Antiquity does not have a copy of this document. The information in this record has been migrated into tDAR from the National Archaeological Database Reports Module (NADB-R) and updated. Most NADB-R records consist of a document citation and other metadata but do not have the documents themselves uploaded. If you have a digital copy of the document and would like to have it curated in tDAR, please contact us at comments@tdar.org.

DOCUMENT Citation Only Laura Ortíz. Julia Perez. Ximena Chávez. Emilio Ibarra.

Each offer in the Tenochtitlan Sacred Enclosure is the representation of a microcosmos that can be understood through the analysis and interpretation of each one of its compounds. An important part of them are the vegetal microremains, floral remains that did not endure trough the pass of the time for its own organic nature but that in the Aztec period had multiple meanings that allowed them to be an frequent material of offering. The Offer 149 is an exceptional case up to the moment, not only...

DOCUMENT Citation Only David Mora-Marin.

Language serves to enact and commemorate ritual behavior. And ritual behavior, while embedded in tradition, is adaptive, and can serve to mediate and implement social and cultural change. This paper examines epigraphic evidence of relevance to ritual practices and their contextualization and recontextualization, with the goal of tracing the correlation between linguistic practices, on the one hand, and social and cultural change, on the other. The goal is to document and account for...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Bianca Gentil.

In an area where most of the written record is destroyed, modeling political interactions through spatial relationships with the environment and other political centers along with exchange relationships, can provide insight into regional intra-site relationships. This poster displays a theoretical model using Geographic Information Systems technology of regional heterarchical relationships between sites in the Northeastern Petén. The model is formulated by implementing hierarchical political...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Heather Lapham. Ronald Faulseit.

Cerro Danush is located in the Valley of Oaxaca, Mexico, within the Dainzú-Macuilxóchitl region—an area that underwent significant sociopolitical reorganization as the Zapotec state centered at nearby Monte Albán weakened and its regional power declined during the Classic to Postclassic transition. Comparing and contrasting zooarchaeological assemblages from a commoner household, an elite residence, and a ceremonial complex at Cerro Danush provides new insights into differential patterns of meat...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Duncan Cook. Timothy Beach. Sheryl Luzzadder-Beach. Thomas Guderjan.

Multi-element inorganic geochemical studies across the Maya lowlands have revealed elevated levels of mercury (Hg) in soils and sediments that date mainly from the Classic period (c. 250-900 AD). Mercury pollution has now been recorded at a range of archaeological sites despite the absence of metallurgy until the Postclassic Period (after 1000 AD), or any other industry capable of significant heavy metal pollution of the environment. This paper presents the first detailed analysis of the extent...

DOCUMENT Citation Only James B. Griffin.

This resource is a citation record only, the Center for Digital Antiquity does not have a copy of this document. The information in this record has been migrated into tDAR from the National Archaeological Database Reports Module (NADB-R) and updated. Most NADB-R records consist of a document citation and other metadata but do not have the documents themselves uploaded. If you have a digital copy of the document and would like to have it curated in tDAR, please contact us at comments@tdar.org.

DOCUMENT Citation Only James B. Griffin.

This resource is a citation record only, the Center for Digital Antiquity does not have a copy of this document. The information in this record has been migrated into tDAR from the National Archaeological Database Reports Module (NADB-R) and updated. Most NADB-R records consist of a document citation and other metadata but do not have the documents themselves uploaded. If you have a digital copy of the document and would like to have it curated in tDAR, please contact us at comments@tdar.org.

DOCUMENT Full-Text Viola Koenig.

The Ethnologisches Museum Berlin, Germany will move into a new building called Humboldt Forum in the center of Berlin. The opening is scheduled 2019. The concept and planning for the new exhibition of the collections from Meosamerica will be presented and discussed.