Peten (State / Territory) (Geographic Keyword)
576-600 (1,039 Records)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Late Preclassic (400 B.C. – A.D. 200) site of Noh K’uh is located in the Mensäbäk basin, over 30 kilometers west of the Usumacinta. Within this understudied region, the site of Noh K’uh was an important ceremonial center during the Late Preclassic, and was composed of several hilltop aggregates that clustered around a moderate monumental core. The site’s...
The Late Preclassic Monumental Foundation of Nixtun-Ch’ich’, 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 archaeological site of Nixtun-Ch’ich’, Petén, Guatemala, exhibits urban planning different from “typical” Maya cities. In addition to its urban density and gridded layout, it possesses large monumental architecture along its central axis that distinguished it as a prominent city during the Preclassic period. This axis...
The Late Terminal Classic in the Cochuah Region: Neither Classic, Nor Postclassic (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Over the course of three field seasons, eight round foundation braces supporting perishable pole-and-thatch buildings were excavated in the Cochuah region of west-central Quintana Roo, Mexico. Dating to the period immediately after the region was largely abandoned during what is known as the “Maya collapse,” the structures reveal small populations living...
Late-Terminal Classic Community Mobility and Migration at El Perú-Waka’ (2018)
Recent archaeology at the Classic Maya city of El Perú-Waka’ has revealed a number of distinct communities making up the urban occupation. These communities possess their own cycles of settlement, florescence, and abandonment. Taken together, these cycles seem to show two distinct aspects that directly pertain to Classic Maya urbanism. One, it shows the urban landscape to be in a continuously changing state. The urban ruins encountered by researchers are the end product of centuries of such...
Lead Isotopic Evidence for Foreign-Born Burials in the Classic Maya City of Holmul, Petén, Guatemala (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. La Sufricaya, a Classic Period Maya civic-ceremonial complex in the city of Holmul, Petén, Guatemala, has several epigraphic elements that potentially link it to the Maya city of Tikal and the central Mexican metropolis of Teotihuacan. The La Sufricaya area boasts elaborate elite residential buildings, plazas, a ball court, and carved stelae; rulers from...
Lend Me Your Ears: Modeling Traditional Maize Production at Las Cuevas, 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. The Las Cuevas region, situated on the southeastern edge of the Vaca Plateau in western Belize, consists of several medium-sized centers dispersed between low hills, steep ridges, and small seasonal swamps. Although occupied only briefly during the Late Classic period (700–900 CE),...
"Les Niveaux Céramiques au Honduras" Revisited: The Gulf of Fonseca in Regional Context (2018)
In 1966, Claude Baudez published a first attempt to compare ceramic typologies between different archeological areas of Honduras, published as Les niveaux céramiques au Honduras: une reconsidération de l'évolution culturelle (Baudez 1966). This article encompassed his research in the Gulf of Fonseca, where he spent a field season surveying and excavating sites in 1964-65. Fifty-three years later, this article still constitutes one of the most extensive descriptions of the ceramic assemblage of...
Let the Crops Speak for Themselves: How to Avoid Imposing Agroecological Assumptions at Altar de Sacrificios (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. Any sizable population must be sustained by an adequate food supply. As such, estimates for high population densities in the Maya Lowlands must be met with an equal or greater productive capacity. The “Provisioning Ancient Maya Cities” symposium seeks to understand this on a...
Lidar as a Tool to Estimate Late Classic Population in the Central Maya Lowlands (2021)
This is an abstract from the "Ancient Mesoamerican Population History: Demography, Social Complexity, and Change" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In 2016, the Pacunam Lidar Initiative surveyed 2,100 km2 of the Maya Biosphere Reserve in the Department of Petén, Guatemala. This lidar survey provided an unprecedented scale of settlement data that attest to elevated population levels throughout the southern Maya lowlands, especially for the Late...
Lidar Reconnaissance of the Calakmul Urban Landscape (2023)
This is an abstract from the "A Session in Memory of William J. Folan: Cities, Settlement, and Climate" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Building on the work of William J. Folan, the Bajo Laberinto Archaeological Project, initiated in 2022, is focused on investigations of urbanism centered on the city of Calakmul in southern Campeche. An initial 100 km2 lidar survey along the northern rim of the Bajo Laberinto has revealed large, elaborate...
Lidar Vegetation Analysis and Ground Truthing Efficacy at the Maya Archaeological Site of El Palmar, Mexico (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. An essential component of analyzing lidar data is adapting them to the researcher’s specific environmental situation, including the effects of local vegetation types on the identification of archaeological features. Doing so, can refine estimates of existing structures in non-surveyed areas and inform improved ground survey strategies in the future. At the...
Lidar: Guided Archaeological Surveys in the Hinterlands of Northwestern Belize (2021)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In the last decade airborne mapping lidar has become an extremely valuable tool for archaeologists studying ancient settlement patterns. It has proven especially useful in regions covered by dense forests on which prospection with other remote sensing techniques is not possible. This paper contributes to the growing international dialogue regarding the use of...
Lies the Spaniards Told (2019)
This is an abstract from the "After Cortés: Archaeological Legacies of the European Invasion in Mesoamerica" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Spaniards characterized the northeast corner of Yucatán state as being demographically depleted and possessed of unhealthy terrain and a lack of exploitable minerals. This picture has been perpetuated by historians, who lack independent lines of evidence against which to check it. Yet archaeological...
Life and Death of Lakam Elites at the Maya Center of El Palmar, Campeche, Mexico (2018)
During the Late Classic period (A.D. 600-800), Maya non-royal elites frequently appeared in courtly scenes, which are depicted on polychrome vessels and carved monuments. While epigraphic studies over the last two decades have gradually shed light on their political and ritual roles, little is known about their life histories and mortuary practices. One group of these elites held the title of lakam, which has been reported only at three archaeological sites. We detected tangible evidence of...
Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR) of San Gervasio, Isla Cozumel, Quintana Roo, Mexico (2018)
The use of Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR) in Mesoamerican archaeological research been steadily increasing. Building on this knowledge, LiDAR was conducted during the summer of 2017 over a 6km2 area of the prehispanic site of San Gervasio, Isla Cozumel, Quintana Roo, Yucatan, Mexico. This was part of a larger survey and mapping project conducted by the Proyecto de Interacción Política del Centro de Yucatán (PIPCY) spearheaded by Dr. Travis Stanton. The proposed poster will discuss LiDAR...
Limited Territorial Control and Incomplete Political Economies in Small States: A Look at the Classic Maya and Classic Greek (2018)
The limited territorial control of small states, here the Classic Maya, has hindered the development of political economies in several cases. This paper looks at the issue of non-ruling elite interstate economic and political networks, and their effect on the evolution of internal political economies for the Classic Maya. Examples will be drawn from such polities as Copan, El Palmar, and Caracol. A further window into the dynamics of the effect of limited territorial control on political...
Linking Landscapes and Resources to Settlement Decisions in Ancient Low-Density Cities in the Southeastern Maya Lowlands (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 compares the developmental trajectories of two Classic Period (AD 300 – 800) Maya centers, Ix Kuku’il and Uxbenká, located in the southern foothills of the Maya Mountains, Toledo District, Belize. High-precision radiocarbon dates and ceramic sequences from household contexts inform the chronological development within these communities. Initial...
Links between Maya Green and Maya Blue at Mayapán, Yucatan, Mexico (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Elaborately decorated and painted objects, most typically murals and incense burners, were a central part of the religious and cultural life at the Postclassic period Maya capital of Mayapán. These objects required great skill to produce and requisite control over a variety of materials, including plaster, pottery, and the pigments used as colorants. One...
Lithic studies among the contemporary highland Maya (1987)
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 EXARC Bibliography, originally compiled by Roeland Paardekooper, and updated. Most of these 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 using the...
Lithic Technological Changes from the Paleoindian to the Late Archaic: A Pilot Study (2018)
How do subsistence-related changes impact lithic technology over the course of thousands of years? Three stratified rockshelters in Belize contain evidence of Paleoindian through Classic Maya period occupations. This span of time witnessed the initial hunting and gathering subsistence economy of the Paleoindian period, the introduction of horticulture and increasing reliance on cultivars in the Early Archaic, and the emergence of full-scale agriculture in the Late Archaic. Explaining variations...
Lithic Tool Use and Production in an Ancient Maya Neighborhood (2018)
The use and production of lithic tools offers an avenue into the behavior and activities conducted in ancient residential and ritual contexts. We explore variability in the lithic assemblages of various contexts in the ancient Maya neighborhood of Tutu Uitz Na in the Late-Terminal Classic period (AD 700-900). Tutu Uitz Na is one of several neighborhoods surrounding the Lower Dover political center in the Belize River Valley. Variation in household lithic assemblages might vary based on the...
Living and Dying on the Fringes of the Sea. The Bioarchaeology and Archaeothanatology of the People of Vista Alegre, Quintana Roo, Mexico (2018)
In this paper, we provide a sinopsis of the two dozen burial findings from the archaeological site of Vista Alegre, Quintana Roo, recovered during a decade (2008 to 2017). Most of the mortuary contexts from Vista Alegre were documented using detailed in situ recording (archaeothanatology), followed by macroscopic and isotopic research in a collaborative effort between the Georgia State University and the Bioarchaeology Lab of the University of Yucatan. Put in context with other burial series...
Living in a Contested Landscape: Adapting Settlement Decisions in the Buenavista Valley, Peten, Guatemala (2018)
Conflict pervaded the civilizations of ancient Mesoamerica from an early time. In the Maya lowlands, the physical vestiges of defensive fortifications date to the Late Preclassic period, while textual evidence of conflict comes from the subsequent Early Classic period. This paper examines settlement changes within the context of a contested landscape. The Buenavista Valley, largely controlled during the Classic period by the kingdom of El Zotz, extends out west from the great city of Tikal....
Living in the City of Naachtun (Guatemala): A Perspective from Urban Neighborhoods (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 investigations carried out since 2011 at the site of Naachtun provide series of data useful to draw with sufficient details, the historical trajectory of this Maya Classic regional capital located between Tikal and Calakmul. Starting its development with the construction of...
Living on the Edge: Alternative Network Models for Socio-spatial Analysis in Archaeology (2021)
This is an abstract from the "People and Space: Defining Communities and Neighborhoods with Social Network Analysis" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Recent studies using network analysis in archaeology seek to understand the interactions and structures that defined past societies. Such approaches are based on graph theoretic models that are simplifications of reality used to conceptualize and describe relationships, either qualitatively or...