Yucatan (State / Territory) (Geographic Keyword)

DOCUMENT Citation Only David Lentz. Atasta Flores Esquivel. Kathryn Reese-Taylor. Armando Anaya Hernández. Nicholas Dunning.

This is an abstract from the "2023 Fryxell Award Symposium: Papers in Honor of Timothy Beach Part I" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. A dark-stained feature near the base of a 1 m thick platform in the Helena complex of the Ancient Maya city of Yaxnohcah was found to contain remains of medicinal plants, a plant containing hallucinogens (likely used for divination), and a plant used in the manufacture of weaponry (spears and bows). The feature was...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Virginia Miller.

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. The ritual use and display of skulls, digits, and femurs is well documented in Mesoamerica. But except for the heart, few sources describe how organs and soft body tissues were curated during the brief time they could been have been viable for manipulation or display. Nevertheless, there is rich...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Eric Fries.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The sites of Zibal and Kich’pan Uitz in western Belize, recorded as minor Maya centers by the Aguacate Regional Archaeology Project, have recently been investigated via remote sensing, survey and test excavation. As a result, we see that these two clusters of monumental structures, along with their secondary nodes, are located in a continuous fabric of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Richard Wood. Christine Wittich. Luis Tuarez. Heather Richards-Rissetto. Melvin Elisandro Garza Roldan.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. At the Classic Maya city of Copán, Temple 16 is one of the most prominent structures; however, it is rapidly deteriorating along with other buried structures and archaeological tunnels. Inside Temple 16 are various structures and tombs including Rosalila, a uniquely preserved temple, as well as Oropendola, Clarinero, and Tortola, all of which cover earlier...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Loa Traxler. William L. Fash. Ricardo Agurcia Fasquelle. Amy E. Thompson. Christopher Ploetz.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Investigations within the Copan Acropolis have provided an unprecedented source of data bearing on Copan’s origins as the capital of a Classic period Maya kingdom. The excavations conducted over years by multiple research programs in partnership with the Honduran Institute of Anthropology and History resulted in extensive tunnel exposures of stratified...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Claire Ebert. John Walden. Victor Gonzales Avendano. Rafael Guerra. Jaime Awe.

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. Households composed the most basic unit of economic production and consumption in ancient Maya societies, and articulated directly with broader social and political processes. In addition to organizing daily tasks and agricultural production, households served as a point of engagement in the domestic economy for the acquisition...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Gertrude Kilgore. Claire Novotny. Alyssa Farmer.

Households represent a foundational element of any society. The everyday activities that occur within domestic spaces construct and reinforce the social, economic, and political framework upon which societies are built. The 2017 field season of the Chan Chich Archaeological Project saw the first explicit study of domesticity and everyday life at the ancient Maya site of Chan Chich with investigations of final phase domestic activity areas in Courtyard D-4. This Late Classic residential group...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Dawn Crawford. Brigitte Kovacevich. Zachary Hruby.

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. While most ceremonial lithic items, or eccentrics, are found in elite burial and ritual caches, others are found in more mundane contexts, such as fill and household middens. We examine artifacts recovered from households at the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Mark Robinson. Keith Prufer. Nadia Neff. Richard George. Douglas Kennett.

This is an abstract from the "The Archaeobotany of Early Peopling: Plant Experimentation and Cultural Inheritance" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Discussions on the peopling of the tropics have tended to characterize tropical forests as barriers to early human foragers due to the difficulties in obtaining sufficient nutrition from hunting and foraging activities. New research on these pioneering settlers is transforming our understanding of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kim Richter. María Eugenia Maldonado Vite.

Pre-Columbian Huastec stone sculptures and clay figurines for the most part have been interpreted as deities and assumed to belong to the same religious cult. They also have typically been interpreted through a central Mexican lens and been identified as and associated with Late Postclassic central Mexican deities. Female figures in particular have been interpreted as Tlazolteotl, the central Mexican goddess of parturition, sexuality, and purification—a deity thought to be closely related to the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Lydie Dussol. Louise Purdue. Eva Lemonnier. Dominique Michelet. Philippe Nondédéo.

What can be drawn from anthracological data to infer long-term socio-environmental dynamics among ancient Mayas is a question that has received little attention. At Naachtun (Northern Peten, Guatemala), we studied charcoal remains from archaeological contexts in relation with pedological data to reconstruct forest resources and land management through time. Since the beginning of Naachtun's occupation at the end of the Preclassic period (≈ AD 150), domestic firewood economy seems to have been...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Evelyn Chan. Timothy Pugh. Kevin Schwarz.

This is an abstract from the "Hydro-Ecological System of the Maya in Petén, Guatemala" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. A recent lidar survey of the Petén Lakes in Petén, Guatemala, has confirmed landscape modifications suggested by previous research and revealed new evidence of water management and settlement placement. Influenced by Joel Palka’s recent work among the Lacandon Maya, we consider domesticated waterscape features such as canals and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Samuel Hemsley.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This paper focuses on the use of lidar technology, in combination with traditional pedestrian ground survey methods, to compare ancient settlement patterns and activity areas in contrasting environmental zones, alluvial floodplains and karstic hills, in the upper Belize River Valley. The paper also describes the capabilities and accuracy of LiDAR technology...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Elizabeth Graham. Francesca Glanville-Wallis. Daniel Evans. Julia Stegemann. Simon Turner.

This is an abstract from the "2023 Fryxell Award Symposium: Papers in Honor of Timothy Beach Part I" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The concept of the Critical Zone makes clear that our future depends on the layer between the atmosphere and bedrock: the earth—which tellingly also serves as the name for our planet. Our Earth’s soils record the past and structure the future. Tim and Sheryl have worked in many places in the world, but I know them...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Mark Brenner.

This is an abstract from the "2023 Fryxell Award Symposium: Papers in Honor of Timothy Beach Part II" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Geologists and biologists work with archaeologists to address compelling questions about cultures of the past. Earth scientists who study tree rings, ice cores, speleothems, and lake sediment cores can provide information about the paleoclimatic and paleoenvironmental contexts in which ancient cultures developed,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Keith Eppich.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Ceramic drums appear in Classic Maya art, being carried in the hand or nestled between the legs of Native American musicians. However, they have received scant, if quite detailed, attention in the scholarly literature. This presentation seeks to expand our knowledge of these ancient musician instruments using a number of complete and partial drums recovered...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Hemmamuthé Goudiaby. Jaqueline García Basto.

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 II" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. During most of the Classic era (250–900 CE), Maya funerary practices were locally defined. Particularly in the Maya Lowlands, burial programs would shift from one capital to the next, while remaining well-codified on a local level. The modes of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Wendy Bacon.

Although scholars of Classic Maya art have described certain short-statured figures as dwarves and endowed them with mystical significance, the motif has gone undefined. This contextual analysis identifies the anatomical and cultural attributes of the dwarf motif and interprets its meaning within the ancient Maya conception of time and their ideological integration of the natural and supernatural. A spatial analysis of 45 depictions of short-statured individuals on archaeologically provenienced...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Diane Slocum. Patricia McAnany. Iván Batún-Alpuche.

This is an abstract from the "Democratizing Heritage Creation: How-To and When" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The focus of archaeological work has shifted in recent decades to collaborative frameworks that allow for sharing of knowledge production among local and descendent communities. Drawing on the work of Laurajane Smith, we argue that recognizing heritage as a dynamic social process rather than exclusively an artifact or archaeological site...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jaroslaw Zralka.

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. The Terminal Classic period (ca. AD 800–950) brings important sociopolitical and cultural changes to the Maya lowlands. Some of these changes are seen in iconography and architecture, and may reflect the migration of new people as well as the spread of new...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kristin Landau.

In the early 2000s, Mesoamerican archaeologists adopted the "dynamic" model of state organization, positing that political centralization strengthened and diminished over time. Such fluctuations are due primarily to the inherent tension between the institutions of kinship and kingship, and consequent struggle for power in political, economic, and religious spheres. I argue that the intermediate scale of the neighborhood is best suited for analyzing how local- and state-level power structures...

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DOCUMENT Citation Only Francisco Estrada-Belli. Sandra Balanzario.

This is an abstract from the "New Light on Dzibanché and on the Rise of the Snake Kingdom’s Hegemony in the Maya Lowlands" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Dzibanché is an archaeological zone in southern Quintana Roo encompassing several large ceremonial complexes, Dzibanché, Tutil, Kinichna and Lamay connected by causeways. According to contemporary texts, it was the early capital of the Kaanul (Snake) kingdom with vast hegemonic influence across...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Benjamin Baaske. Joshua J. Kwoka.

This is an abstract from the "Ancient Maya Landscapes in Northwestern Belize, Part I" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Maya E-groups served as foci of political and ritual practices from the Preclassic through Terminal Classic. In addition to the hallmark western pyramidal and eastern range structures, these groups are often populated by a number of ancillary structures. This paper details recent investigations of one such structure located at the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Cecelia Klein.

This is an abstract from the "Animal Symbolism in Postclassic Mesoamerica: Papers in Honor of Cecelia Klein" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. All sixteen birds carved on the sides of the Platform of the Eagles and Jaguars at Chichen Itza have been traditionally identified as eagles. Because each pair of birds flanks a large relief of a seated jaguar holding a heart, it has been assumed in the past that the platform celebrated military orders like...