Peten (State / Territory) (Geographic Keyword)
776-800 (1,294 Records)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Although Hirth’s (1998) distributional approach has been recently applied to identifying markets at Classic Maya centers, much research still has yet to be done on the diversity and origins of Classic Maya modes of exchange. This picture is even less clear at small Late Classic (AD 600-900) Maya centers such as Lower Dover, Belize, where evidence for Hirth’s...
Media and Meaning in “The Maya Scribe and His World” (2023)
This is an abstract from the "A Celebration and Critical Assessment of "The Maya Scribe and His World" on its Fiftieth Anniversary" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Among Michael Coe’s many contributions to Maya studies with his landmark show and publication “The Maya Scribe and His World” was the observation that imagery on Classic Maya ceramics is different from imagery on carved stone monuments. Coe notes this gap between ceramic and stone...
Meeting Needs in the Ancient Maya Forest: A Model of Food and Shelter at El Pilar (2024)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Maya land-use strategies, based on traditional agricultural methods documented by the Spanish conquerors and oppressed during the colonial period, have demonstrated a staunch resilience into the modern age. The milpa forest garden cycle demonstrates dynamic regeneration via an asynchronous cycling of open fields with annual crops, perennial succession...
Memory, Pilgrimage, and Social Life in an Ancient Maya City: Waka’s City Temple as a Compendium of Political History (2023)
This is an abstract from the "The Vibrancy of Ruins: Ruination Studies in Ancient Mesoamerica" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Long-term research at Waka’s City temple (Structure M13-1) demonstrates it was an important locale for ritual commemoration by local people as well and those from afar. Extensive and diversely constituted deposits throughout the building’s surface demonstrate it was venerated publicly by non-elites throughout Waka’s final...
Metabolomic Residue Studies of Foodways in the Motul de San José Polity, Petén, Guatemala (2023)
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 subject of ancient Maya cuisine continues to fascinate researchers, but little is known about the “recipes” that may have been used by different people at different times across the Maya world. This study takes a metabolomic approach to residue analysis to compare flavors and preparation methods during the occupation of...
Metabolomics in the Study of Ground Stone Tools (2021)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Archaeological ground stone tools used for food processing have proven to be rich sources of residues, in particular microbotanicals such as pollen, phytoliths, and starch grains. This data adds to the studies of tool function, foodways, and other lines of archaeological inquiry. To date, ground stone has not been the target of chemical residue analysis,...
Methods for High-Resolution Visualization Of 3D Surfaces (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Modern methods of 3D characterization, like photogrammetry and structured light scanning, can capture high-resolution models of inscribed surfaces. Visualization and enhancement of surface details on these models can be limited by the computational requirements for manipulating high face and vertex counts. We present several methods for working around...
Microarchaeology and the Production of Urban Life at the Classic Maya City of Palenque (2021)
This is an abstract from the "The Urban Question: Interdisciplinary Approaches to Investigating the Ancient Mesoamerican City" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Archaeological studies of urbanism typically include a consideration of scale, from the household, the neighborhood, ward, and city. These spatial scales are also spheres of interaction and have implications for the kinds of shared material practices we can expect to find archaeologically....
A Microbotanical View of Classic Period Households in Central Yaxuna, Yucatán, Mexico (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The ancient Maya city of Yaxuna was a political and economic center of the northern lowlands in the Middle to Late Preclassic periods (1000 BC–AD 250), and residents continued to occupy the city through the Classic period (AD 250–900) amid geopolitical shifts in the region tied to the rise of Coba and the Late Classic (AD 600–800) construction of a...
Microscopic Fibers and Dental Calculus from Midnight Terror Cave, Belize (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Defining Perishables: The How, What, and Why of Perishables and Their Importance in Understanding the Past" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Midnight Terror Cave human remains collection consists of over 10,000 commingled bone fragments from at least 118 Maya sacrificial victims from the Classic period (250 CE–925 CE). Microscopic examination of dental calculus was carried out on a selection of teeth as part of a...
Middens, Caches, and Burials: Contextualizing the Ceramic Assemblage of La Corona (2018)
Mundane utilitarian ware, finely decorated polychromes, fine paste and epigraphic imports, and plates bearing idiosyncratic local designs characterize La Corona’s ceramic assemblage. The ceramic chronology of La Corona is presented with emphasis on construction phases, middens, caches, burials, and special deposits in an effort to reconcile the ceramic assemblage and the political history of the site. Polychromes bearing place names highlight La Corona’s elite regional relationships while the...
A Middle Classic Horizon? Tracking Calakmul’s Rise in the Ceramics of the Central Karstic Uplands (2018)
Joe Ball’s seminal work on the ceramics of Becan, Campeche, Mexico, anchored two generations of research on the the ancient Maya. His analysis, for the most part, has stood the test of time, and his recent revisions to it reflect the breadth of his knowledge, and his ability to re-conceptualize a problem in light of subsequent research. One aspect of his Becan work that has proved elusive to other researchers is the definition of a Middle Classic. Although some have isolated a Middle Classic...
Middle Preclassic Ceramic Distribution in Western Belize: A Comparative Study from Early Xunantunich (2021)
This is an abstract from the "The Preclassic Landscape in the Mopan Valley, Belize" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The value of ceramic sherds and vessels to the archaeologist extends far beyond the chronology of a site. Ceramic production and distribution data, for example, reveal information about ancient lifeways, ideologies, and movement across a landscape, ultimately telling us more about the people behind the pottery. In this paper, I will...
Middle Preclassic Chipped Stone Caches at Ceibal and Holtun, Guatemala (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Ceremonial Lithics of Mesoamerica: New Understandings of Technology, Distribution, and Symbolism of Eccentrics and Ritual Caches in the Maya World and Beyond" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. During the late Middle Preclassic period (700-350 B.C.) at Ceibal, common objects in ritual deposits in the public plaza shifted from greenstone celt caches to other artifacts, including obsidian prismatic-blade cores. Like...
Middle Preclassic Greenstone Caches from Paso del Macho, Yucatan (2018)
Complex ritual deposits dating to the Middle Preclassic period are rarely encountered in Yucatan, and typically have only been recovered from disturbed contexts. Excavations along the center axes in the plaza of the Middle Preclassic village of Paso del Macho in the Puuc region of Yucatan have yielded a series of offerings spanning from the early Middle Preclassic to the cusp of the Late Preclassic. Three different floor sequences were each associated with several offerings. The forms of the...
Middle Preclassic Marine Shell Production and Ritual Deposition at the Sites of Blackman Eddy and Las Ruinas de Arenal, Belize (2023)
This is an abstract from the "An Exchange of Ideas: Recent Research on Maya Commodities" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Marine shell was a highly valued long-distance trade material for the ancient Maya beginning as early as the Middle Preclassic. Symbolically, marine shell represented the watery underworld and was often used in ritual offerings that reference cosmological ordering of the world. Evidence for Middle Preclassic marine shell bead...
Middle Preclassic Occupation and Architecture of the Mirador Basin, Guatemala (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. Archaeological excavations and technical analyses in the Mirador Basin of northern Guatemala have provided a new perspective of the origins and dynamics of incipient Maya civilization. Data relevant to settlement patterns, sampling strategies, demographic distributions, chronological evaluations, DNA and isotope...
Middle Preclassic Settlements in the Petén Lakes Region of Guatemala (2023)
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. Proyecto Itza has recently resurveyed a large area to the south of Lake Petén Itzá in Petén, Guatemala, extending from Lake Salpeten to Laguna Perdida. The work utilized a variety of methods including total station mapping, photogrammetry, and lidar (conducted by the National Center for Airborne Laser Mapping). The goal of the...
A Millennium of Sociopolitical Transitions in the PRALC Region: The View from La Cariba (2018)
Excavations at minor centers provide us not only with a wealth of information about those sites, but they can also illuminate sociopolitical shifts over time within the broader region. The minor center of La Cariba, located four kilometers southwest of La Corona, has been investigated since 2009. A broad dataset including architectural, epigraphic, osteological, and artifactual evidence has provided a detailed narrative of political and demographic changes over a millennium at La Cariba. The...
Mineralogical and Chemical Properties of Preclassic Maya Ceramics from Colha, 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 examines the question of whether or not Preclassic Maya exploited volcanogenic ceramic raw materials, which have refractory properties such as thermal conductivity, resistance to thermal shock, abrasion, chemical weathering, and thermal decomposition. Scanning electron microscopy, energy dispersive X-rays, energy dispersive X-ray fluorescence, and...
Mineralogy Without Minerals: A Proposed Methodology for Reconstructing the Original Compositions of Highly Altered Ceramic Bodies Using Thin Section Petrography (2018)
The rock and mineral fragments present in archaeological pottery, whether naturally occurring in the clay component or intentionally added as a temper, often serve as the primary geologic basis for provenance ascription in petrographic analysis. In certain contexts, however, the original compositional characteristics of pottery have been highly altered through technological or postdepositional processes. In these situations, accurate characterization and sourcing of original raw material...
Minor Temple Groups, Water Management and Community Formation at Ceibal, Guatemala (2018)
Recent investigations of reservoirs associated with minor temple groups at Ceibal, Guatemala shed light on the role of water management in intermediate-level sociopolitical organization in ancient Maya society. Over the course of the Late and Terminal Preclassic periods (ca. 350BC-AD200), as Ceibal grew into an urban center, minor temples were built at regular intervals around the site core. These temples were the centers of local communities that were integrated primarily through ritual...
Mirador Mountain, Ritual Landscapes, and the Protohistoric Maya Community at Mensabak, Chiapas, Mexico (2021)
This is an abstract from the "Place-Making in Indigenous Mesoamerican Communities Past and Present" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Mirador Mountain, or Chak Aktun for contemporary Lacandon Maya, dominates the landscape at Lake Mensabak, Chiapas, Mexico. The mountain, which has a natural red stain on its east side, rises from an island. Late Preclassic Maya (ca. 200 BCE–200 CE) created temples, platforms, and plazas on the island Mountain for an...
Modeling Agricultural Production in the Mopan Valley, Belize (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Provisioning Ancient Maya Cities: Modeling Food Production and Land Use in Tropical Urban Environments" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Modeling agricultural yields provides one way to examine questions of Classic Maya agricultural practices and land management, with follow-on implications regarding intensification, household sustainability, and exchange practices. In this paper, we use models to examine whether milpa...
Modeling of the Impacts and Sustainability of Ancient Maya Hunting: An Interdisciplinary Ecological and Archaeological Study (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The environmental impact of sizable Late Classic ancient Maya populations remains a persistent question in archaeology. To date, studies of ancient Maya environmental impacts have focused primarily on land-cover change and the conversion of forest to agricultural fields, orchards, and habitation areas. In contrast, few empirical studies have focused on the...