Mesoamerica (Geographic Keyword)

DOCUMENT Citation Only Guilhem Olivier. Vera Tiesler.

This is an abstract from the "New Perspectives on Ritual Violence and Related Human Body Treatments in Ancient Mesoamerica" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Beyond the general idea of benefiting society and placating the divine, the polyvalent symbols and meanings of ancient religious sacrifices can be interpreted properly only after combining different disciplinary lenses. In this paper, we scrutinize iconographic and ethnohistorical testimonies of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Rachel Horowitz.

A major topic of recent study about the ancient Maya is the role of elites and non-elites in the ancient Maya economy. Such studies have illustrated that different types of objects operated within varying economic modes; therefore the methods of production and distribution of diverse types of objects should be examined individually. This paper will examine the economic role of utilitarian chert tools in the Late to Terminal Classic Maya economy. This paper will utilize an examination of the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Weiyu Ran. John Walden.

This presentation focuses on intra and inter polity organization of the Late Classic (600-900AD) Maya polities in the Rosario Valley, Mexico. Past approaches have generally used civic-ceremonial architecture to investigate settlement hierarchy, here however, the focus is turned to interaction. This approach explores how the strength of interactions between settlements can be used to explore political hierarchy. To measure the strength of interactions, a formula borrowed from the law of gravity...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Arthur A. Demerest. Robert J. Sharer.

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 Kristin Hoffmeister. Lori Wright.

The lithics production center of Colha in northern Belize provides skeletal evidence relevant to ongoing debates about the role of violence among the Maya of Central America. The Colha Skull Pit (Op. 2011) dates to the Terminal Classic period and consists of thirty individuals, represented only by cranial remains. The skeletal remains include both males and females and range in age from children to old adults. Cranial and dental modifications are prevalent in this feature and many of the skulls...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Hugh C. Cutler.

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 Richard E. W. Adams. School of American Research (Santa Fe, N.M.).

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 Heather Edgar. Corey Ragsdale.

The offerings of human remains made at the Templo Mayor of Tenochtitlán include decapitated skulls, some of them reused as masks or headdresses. It is generally accepted that the sacrificial offerings of the Templo Mayor were obtained through warfare. To test this, we used bioarchaeological analyses to determine where the skull masks came from geographically, and whether the skull masks meet the biological profile of elite warriors. We recorded sex, age, and indicators of disease and nutritional...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Fred Valdez. Debora Trein.

The introduction of a large-scale regional project in northwest Belize began as a more modest endeavor in northeast Guatemala. How the Programme for Belize Archaeological Project (PfBAP) began, how it has modified through several decades, and what we anticipate as its future are discussed. A brief review of select projects within the PfBAP are mentioned as examples of overall program interests. Importantly, the PfBAP relationships with the Belize Government, local communities, and other entities...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Timothy Pugh. Prudence Rice. Evelyn Chan.

Nixtun-Ch’ich’ is a large archaeological site on the western edge of Lake Petén Itza in Petén, Guatemala. Recent remapping of the site revealed that its architecture was largely organized by an orthogonal grid. While most Maya sites exhibit some degree of urban planning, the organization of sakbes (roads) into an orthogonal grid has not been described elsewhere in the Maya world. The grid seems to have developed at Nixtun-Ch’ich’ in the Late Preclassic period. It is not yet known whether it...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Martha Alfaro. Dr. Andrea L. Waters-Rist;. Danny Zborover.

Skeleton Sk-CV-01 is a female around 18 years of age, carefully buried in a stone cist in the Chontal Highlands of southern Oaxaca during the Late Postclassic or Early Colonial period. She is the first and only human skeleton known from controlled excavations in the area, and the archaeological context and historical documentation associate her with the Chontal people who still inhabit the region. In this presentation the results of the archaeological, osteological, and stable isotope analyses...

DOCUMENT Citation Only William Ringle.

This is an abstract from the "Tales of the Feathered Serpent: Refining Our Understanding of an Enigmatic Mesoamerican Being" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. From at least the Epiclassic period onward, the Feathered Serpent was frequently accompanied by a Cloud Serpent. In the mythology of the Nahuas he was known as Mixcoatl or Camaxtli in his anthropomorphic form, and was either the father or half-brother of Quetzalcoatl. A patron of the hunt, he...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Thomas H. Charlton.

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 Maggie Morgan-Smith.

Drawing on recent excavation and oral history data from the site of Rancho Kiuic, this paper will compare information related to two chapels located within the community. Formerly known as San Sebastián, the community functioned from the late Colonial to National periods as a ranching operation occupied by several generations of Maya-speaking landowners and laborers. Though the two chapels (Capillas I and II) share a number of structural and temporal characteristics, their respective locations,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Melissa Burham.

Recent research in outlying residential groups at Ceibal, Guatemala has contributed to our understanding of ritual practices carried out by different segments of society. More specifically, the termination of minor temples located in the peripheries of Ceibal reveals information about ritual destruction and reutilization of ceremonial buildings in the Maya area. At the end of the Protoclassic period (ca. AD 1-225), many temples in outlying residential groups were completely buried and the nearby...

DOCUMENT Full-Text George Cowgill.

This is an article- or manuscript-length description of the ceramics of Teotihucan, Mexico. It covers ceramic wares, decorative methods and motifs, and appendages, with a review of the Basin of Mexico sequence.

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jennifer Kirker.

Surveys in 1997 and 1998 recorded 89 Classic Maya sites with 254 structures in the near periphery of Piedras Negras, Guatemala. Twenty-five sites were test pitted and five were intensively excavated. Recent re-analysis of the ceramic, lithic and architectural data from these sites provides new insights into how the Late Classic Maya (A.D. 625-825) in the near periphery participated in the Piedras Negras kingdom. Population size and implications for conflict are considered. Comparison of material...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Rebecca Hill.

This paper examines the final decades of the Terminal Classic and the beginning of the Postclassic in the Bolonchén district of the Puuc region of the northern Maya lowlands. Archaeological evidence for the decline and abandonment of the Bolonchén district at the close of the Terminal Classic period is presented. Particular attention is given to the material remains of a late Terminal Classic population at Huntichmul, an example of a Puuc center in decline and most likely abandoned by the close...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Matthew Moriarty. Ellen Moriarty.

Although the largest Classic Maya political capitals are frequently assumed to have served as the critical nodes in long-distance trade networks, empirical data from decades of research suggest that ancient Maya trade was more nuanced in its organization. This paper presents a view on Maya trade from the perspective of Trinidad de Nosotros, a port on Guatemala's Lake Petén Itzá. Trinidad's position, astride overland trade routes and intermediate between these routes and a major political...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Antonio Marín Calvo. Diego Matadamas-Gomora.

This is an abstract from the "Sacrificial and Autosacrifice Instruments in Mesoamerica: Symbolism and Technology" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. It is well-known that autosacrifice was a common practice among Mesoamerican societies since at least the Middle Formative period (ca. 900–300 BC). Iconography suggests that elites offered their blood and did penance to contact with the sacred realm. However, ethnohistoric evidence reveals that this...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Rachel Watson. Heather McKillop.

Three partially submerged earthen mounds at Witz Naab and Killer Bee are currently the only known remaining above ground evidence of a once-thriving salt industry in Punta Ycacos Lagoon, a large salt-water system in Paynes Creek National Park, Belize. During 2012, field season, excavations were conducted at two of the mounds. This poster will present findings concerning the stratigraphic development of these mounds. Understanding the stratigraphy of the mounds will aid in interpreting features...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Markus Reindel. Jennifer von Schwerin.

The documentation and analysis of complex archaeological sites constitutes a challenge for modern research. Large amounts of data have to be stored and accessed, normally by different research teams, based on places all over the world. Funded by the German Ministry for Education and Research (BMBF), and in cooperation with partners from Germany, Italy, USA and Honduras, the MayaArch3D project is using data from the Maya site Copan, Honduras, to develop a state-of-the-art, open source, online...

IMAGE Uploaded by: Veronica Perez Rodriguez

Drone photos taken of Cerro Jazmin in the summer of 2018

DOCUMENT Citation Only Bryan Just.

Although no physical examples of paper books are known from the Late Classic period Maya, scholarly considerations of Maya art have consistently considered this form of painting primary: as the inspiration of—if not the direct source for—representations in other media such as murals, finely slipped pottery, or relief-carved stelae. Due to fundamental differences in scale, form, and content, however, these media more likely played rather distinct social roles. Indeed, existing materials indicate...

DOCUMENT Citation Only James Fitzsimmons.

The cities of the western Peten shared a common history and several ceramic traditions. In the northwest along the San Pedro Martir River, archaeological sites like El Peru (Waka’), Zapote Bobal (Hiix Witz), La Joyanca, and La Florida (Namaan) flourished with seemingly few—if any—clashes between them for the entirety of the Classic Period. That being said, we know that this region was greatly affected by the Tikal-Calakmul wars. There was even a ‘road’ or route between the sites allied to the...