Peten (State / Territory) (Geographic Keyword)
401-425 (1,157 Records)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Use-wear studies have proven invaluable for understanding human interaction with lithic materials and organic materials that have not survived the archaeological record. Though recent investigations have begun to address gaps in Maya user-wear studies, archaeologists have not sufficiently explored stone tool use in the Maya area. This study includes an...
Flows of Value, Debt, and Goods in the Usumacinta River Basin (2018)
Scholars considering Classic period Maya economies have long viewed acquisition, production, and trade primarily through the dual lenses of tribute to royal courts and barter among the populace. Recent archaeological discoveries and theoretical models have broadened our perspective to allow the Classic Maya the marketplaces and market economies that were once believed to be innovations of Postclassic Mesoamerica. Yet, we still know little about notions of currency, value, and debt – well...
Following the Path of Dead in Chichen Itza through a Unique Modified Skull (2024)
This is an abstract from the "Multidisciplinary Approaches to the Subterranean" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. During the Terminal Classic and Postclassic periods, Chichen Itza became an important pilgrimage center. People from all over Mesoamerica came to the Maya Lowlands to make special offerings to Chichen Itza's sacred well. Paleoclimate studies indicate that a severe drought occurred during that period of time. This may have lasted a decade...
Forager Mobility Patterns in Southern Belize: Preliminary Results from a Holocene-Length Record (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Advances in Interdisciplinary Isotopic Research" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Despite considerable research on mobility patterns of the Classic Lowland Maya, the mobility of pre-ceramic foragers is understudied. Elsewhere, logistical mobility strategies have been documented for archaeological and ethnographic forager populations in tropical forest biomes. Most often these strategies are related to seasonally...
Foreign Intimacies: Terminal Classic Shells, Novel Identities, and Gathered Elites (2023)
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 I" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. For close to a century, a remarkable set of shells have been found archaeologically across the Maya region and beyond. Most likely shaped and incised in a single workshop, they present a decided paradox, depicting specific warriors and elites yet, on these...
Forest Resources at Calakmul based on Modern Forest Surveys and Lidar Assessment (2024)
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. Forest resources supported a sizeable population at the Maya city of Calakmul for centuries. This study addresses questions about maximum potential carrying capacity based on aboveground biomass (AGB) production and the diversity of ethnobotanically significant forest species. AGB of the modern...
Forging International Archaeological Research Collaborations and Mentorship Opportunities at Lower Dover, Belize (2024)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Our poster presents ongoing efforts at creating a collaborative research environment between international and Belizean early career scholars at the Classic Maya center of Lower Dover, Belize. Rather than incorporating Belizean collaborators in pre-existing research projects, our current goal has been to collaborate with Belizean early career scholars to...
Formative Period Mesoamerican Cities and Low Density Urbanism (2024)
This is an abstract from the "Theorizing Prehistoric Large Low-Density Settlements beyond Urbanism and Other Conventional Classificatory Conventions" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Mesoamerica is one of only a handful of places in the ancient world where first-generation cities developed independently, and the lowland Maya cities of the Classic period are frequently cited as prime examples of low-density urbanism. Scholars now recognize that the...
Fortified Capitals: Understanding Defensive Systems at Piedras Negras and Yaxchilan (2018)
Prior reconnaissance efforts in the Middle Usumacinta River region have identified a series of low walls associated with Tecolote, La Pasadita, and other border sites in the Yaxchilan kingdom. Similar defensive features have also been identified at the Piedras Negras secondary center of La Mar. These walls are interpreted as the foundations for wooden palisades, and served to protect not only immediate communities, but also the kingdom at large. However, this paper presents the first evidence...
Fragmentary Ceramic Assemblages as a Record of Ritual Practice at Las Cuevas, Belize (2018)
The most common artifacts found in Maya caves are unslipped and monochrome slipped ceramic sherds. The smashing of ceramic vessels as an element of ritual practice is recorded ethnographically among some twentieth-century Maya groups. Other Maya groups have been documented collecting sherds from domestic middens and depositing them at sacred sites. If caves were venues for the former type of behavior in antiquity, one would expect to find a high percentage of refitting sherds in their...
Frayed at the Edges: Insights into Classic Period (250–900 CE) Maya Political Organization from the Southeast Maya Kingdom of Copan, Honduras (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Regimes of the Ancient Maya" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. While ongoing research has clarified much about the strategies Classic period (250–900 CE) Maya rulers used to establish, integrate, and administer their Lowland Maya kingdoms, studies of frontier zones, such as the southeast edge of the Maya area, both provide insights into Maya political organization and highlight local challenges not faced by rulers in the...
From Buried Preclassic Villages to the Lexicon for Maya Architecture: The Impact of Architectural Studies in Belize on Maya Scholarship (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. In 1984, Stanley Loten and David Pendergast published “A Lexicon for Maya Architecture” based to a large degree on their observations during excavations at Lamanai and Altun Ha, both major Maya centers in Belize. At 16 brief pages of text and nine of figures, this...
From Chichen Itza to Tulum: The Late Postclassic Maya Feathered Serpent of the Northern Maya Lowlands (2019)
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. Most representations of the feathered serpent at Chichen Itza depict a plumed rattlesnake, a being of wind and carrier of rain, with Central Mexican origins dating back to Early Classic Teotihuacan. In Classic Maya art, feathered serpents are not rattlesnakes and lack plumage aside from a...
From Marginalized to Impactful: Belizean Archaeology and the Classic Period Maya (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. The impact of Belizean centers and settlement on ancient Maya civilization of the Classic period (CE 250–900) has been recognized in the last 50 years of research. Before 1975 Belize was seen as being on the fringes of the Maya world and portrayed as a backwater. Most...
From One Jar, Many Selves (2024)
This is an abstract from the "Ceramics and Archaeological Sciences 2024" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Red-on-Natural jars, characterized by nearly identical forms and decorations, were used by people of all ranks who lived in the adjoining Naco, middle Chamelecon, and lower Cacaulapa valleys of northwest Honduras from CE 600–1000. These vessels’ ubiquity suggests that those who used them participated in a community of practice that transcended...
From Polity to Regimes: Toward Recognizing Diversity in Ancient Maya Political Communities (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Regimes of the Ancient Maya" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In this paper, we introduce the notion of “regime” to model and interpret ancient Maya political organization. We have long relied on “the polity” as a primary model to explain ancient Maya politics. However, this largely generalist core concept tends to homogenize—both temporally and geographically—the complex ancient political landscape as one populated by...
From Ritual to Domestic in a Shifting Political Landscape: Excavations in the Coronitas Group at La Corona, Guatemala (2018)
Archaeological and epigraphic evidence from the Coronitas Group at La Corona, Guatemala provides an opportunity to examine responses to changing sociopolitical conditions among the Classic Maya (AD 250-900). Architectural and material evidence suggests that the Coronitas Group was a locus of ritual and ceremonial activities by the royal court throughout the Classic period. Burials of important individuals and other ceremonial activities imply that it was a place of significant ancestral ties. At...
From Rural Hinterlands to Urban Centers: Investigating Ancient Maya Settlement in the Lower Belize River Watershed (2021)
This is an abstract from the "Archaeology and the History of Human-Environment Interaction in the Lower Belize River Watershed" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. One of the primary objectives of the Belize River East Archaeology (BREA) project has been to identify and document archaeological sites in a relatively understudied part of north-central Belize that encompasses the lower Belize River Watershed. In this area, which measures roughly 6,000...
From the Coast to the Jungle: Inventory and Record of Archaeological Sites in Puerto Morelos, Quintana Roo, Mexico (2021)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The municipality of Puerto Morelos is located in northern Quintana Roo, Mexico. Beginning in the past century, and continuing through present day, researches have reported numerous archaeological sites in this region. However, many of them do not have a precise location, and we do not know about their conservation status. As a result of this issue and the...
The Function of Ceramic Analysis in the Maya Lowlands (2018)
Why study ceramics at all? What is the point of analyzing hundreds and thousands of small, broken pieces of pottery? This paper explores these, and other questions, within the context of Classic Maya civilization. Too often, it seems, ceramic analysis is used as a loose chronological framework, used solely to construct broad frameworks of relative dating. These frameworks are then applied to archaeological assemblages, placing them within chronologically bounded "ceramic complexes" and...
The Funerary or Nonfunerary Human Assemblages from the Initial Series Group at Chichen Itza (2021)
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. Human skeletal assemblages from Chichen Itza and its surrounding regions are complex, which makes Chichen Itza a prime location to study mortuary practices. The complexity stems most likely from Chichen Itza’s multicultural relationships with other groups not only within the Yucatán Peninsula...
Game On: Investigations of Ballcourts 1 and 2 at Xunantunich, Belize (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 presents the results of recent investigations of the two ballcourts at Xunantunich, Belize. Located on the Mopan branch of the Belize River, Xunantunich is primarily a Late to Terminal Classic regional center. The site’s rapid rise to power in the late 8th to 9th centuries is attributed to its political affiliation with the larger site of Naranjo,...
Games of Chance and Fate: Patolli at the Ancient Maya Site of Gallon Jug, Belize (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In 2019 at the ancient Maya site of Gallon Jug, in northwestern Belize, we documented several patolli boards incised into a plaster floor on a platform in an elite residential group. The patolli from Gallon Jug are in a residential context near the site center and not in monumental religious architecture or a palace, which differs from most known examples...
Games or Prehispanic Rituals? The Ball Courts of the Mirador Basin (2021)
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. The ball game was one of the most widespread in Mesoamerica since the Early and Middle Preclassic periods if not earlier. This presentation will present the different ball courts detected in the Mirador Cultural and Natural zone, also known as Mirador Basin, indicating the chronology, form, contextual associations,...
A Gender Paradox? A Case Study from the Ancient Maya (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Bioarchaeology engages with past behaviors to answer sex and gender roles that are influenced by biological and cultural components leading to social presentation of the individual. The skeletal sample for this study focuses on 55 individuals from Copan, Honduras by incorporating available mortuary data, ceramic phases, dental development, physiological...