Yucatan (State / Territory) (Geographic Keyword)

DOCUMENT Citation Only David Burns. Luisa Aebersold. Fred Valdez. Samantha Krause. Anastasia Kotsoglou.

Colha, an ancient Maya site located in northern Belize, has undergone archaeological research interests since the 1970s. Previous investigations demonstrate a long occupational history at the site that spans from the Late Archaic (ca. 3400 BC) to the Early Postclassic (AD 1200). Building upon previous research, a primary goal of the 2017 season was to explore the transition between the Archaic (3400 BC) and Preclassic (1000 BC) periods while focusing on technological and social continuity. This...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Phoebe Fairbairn. Zachary Stanyard. David M. Hyde. Annie Riegert.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. During the 2018 field season, a burial was exposed and recovered during exploratory test-pitting of Group L, a small residential complex within the Medicinal Trail Community located in northwestern Belize. Designated Burial L-1, the burial is secondary in nature as evidenced by the disarticulated remains placed directly on top of bedrock and below a...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Alanna Ossa.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Incensarios or incense burners are ritual items used in a variety of settings, some in households and some in more formal ritual contexts within Mesoamerica. I analyze residential inventories from the center of Sauce and its hinterland to describe the structure of exchange and consumption of incensarios during the Middle Postclassic period (AD 1200-1350)...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Sharon Hankins. Megan Skillern.

We have been very fortunate this year to have Dr. Fred Valdez, Luisa Aebersold and their team graciously contribute to our research program in ceramic technology. They took time during their extremely busy field season to bring clay for our team to prepare and attempt to build pottery at Programme for Belize Archaeological Field School. We have two different types of clay to research. The first clay is yellow clay CH4444. The second clay is iron-rich, red clay CH2222. Our first task was to...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Andrew Snetsinger. Maxime Lamoureux-St-Hilaire.

Settlement abandonment studies are crucial for understanding the archaeological record, as they yield the key to decipher the context of on-floor deposits, or assemblages. We advocate the use of a behavioral-contextual method for studying on-floor assemblages for ascribing them to one of several categories of abandonment. This behavioral-contextual approach examines the vertical and horizontal architectural contexts of artifacts, the relative completeness of vessels, and the represented vessel...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Eleanor King. John Cross. Michael Brennan. Christine Taylor. Darcie Flanagan.

This is an abstract from the "Prehispanic Maya Marketplace Investigations in the Three Rivers Region of Belize: First Results" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The 2023–2024 field seasons witnessed the beginning of an ambitious NSF-funded project to investigate the possible existence of marketplaces in the Three Rivers Region of northwestern Belize. This project is innovative in leveraging information from long-running, independent research...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Juan Melendez. Emiliano Melgar.

This is an abstract from the "Ancient Maya Embedded Economies" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. With the aim of exploring the economic system surrounding prestige Maya items during precolumbian times, we present research focused on greenstone mosaic masks (GMM) found in funerary precincts of high elite individuals in the Guatemalan Maya Lowlands. Through microarchaeological analyses of a select number of tesserae (n = 249) that form sections of 13...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Scott Fedick. Gerald Islebe. Louis Santiago.

A review of 28 ethnographic, ethnobotanical, and botanical studies published since the 1930s identified 497 species of indigenous food plants used by the Maya in the lowlands of southeastern Mexico and upper Central America. This consideration of the Maya cornucopia focuses on the relative food values of the plants and the visibility of the species in the archaeological record. The diversity of food plants has significant implications for the reconstruction of ancient foodways, agricultural...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Sara Eshleman. Juan Carlos Fernandez Diaz. Ben Snider.

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. Airborne laser scanning (ALS), also referred to as lidar, has enabled archaeologists, geologists, geomorphologists, and many others to identify and map ancient modifications of the landscape under dense forest canopies. The impact of ALS in archaeological settlement research has been profound and, to some, even...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Christopher Carr. Nicolaus Seefeld. Nicholas Dunning. Shane Montgomery.

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. Investigations over the past decades have shown that the Classic Maya conducted monumental landscape modifications in order to both avoid inundations of settlement areas and to capture and store rainfall. In the initial stages, these modifications involved the sealing of reservoirs, which...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Camilla Speller. Erin Thornton. Aurélie Manin. Kitty Emery.

This is an abstract from the "Current Research on Turkey (Meleagris gallopavo) Domestication, Husbandry and Management in North America and Beyond" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. As one of the few intensively managed species in Mesoamerica, the turkey plays a key role in understanding cultural interactions and subsistence, particularly in the Mayan lowlands. Two populations of turkeys were exploited in this region: the local, wild ocellated turkey...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Marcie Venter. Lourdes Budar Jimenez. Philip Arnold.

This is an abstract from the "Los Rituales del Juego de Pelota en la Costa del Golfo / Ballgame Rituals in the Gulf Lowlands" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In this presentation, we consider the accumulated evidence for ballgame ritual participation throughout the Classic period center, Matacanela, located in the south-central Tuxtla Mountains. We also account for related symbols from settlements in the immediate outskirts and incorporate them...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jon Spenard. Michael Mirro. Javier Mai. Konane Martinez. Franklin Quiros.

This is an abstract from the "Recent Advances in Ground Stone Studies in the Eastern Maya Lowlands" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Sourcing studies have consistently pointed to the plutons of the Mountain Pine Ridge (MPR), Belize, as the preferred source of granitic rock for making ground stone objects used by precolumbian Maya communities throughout the eastern lowlands. Nonetheless, questions about how the raw material was extracted remain...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Sara Ladron De Guevara.

The deities of El Tajin seem to share a characteristic scroll eyebrow in bas reliefs as well as in mural paintings. I will follow the representation of such an icon, trying to recognize posible origins, the outreach of the element and the symbolic associations in Mesoamerican time and space.

DOCUMENT Citation Only Mary Pohl. J. M. Adovasio. Christopher von Nagy.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Despite over a century of intense research, little has been published on the non-durable technology of the Olmecs. This is due to the "tyranny" of preservation, which strongly biases the archaeological record in most areas toward durable artifacts. Recent analysis of a probably accidentally impressed potsherd from San Andrés, within the urban polity of La...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jemima Georges.

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 Petén Lakes region of Petén, Guatemala, sits on karst bedrock and is home to a series of lake chains, the largest of which is Lake Petén Itzá. Nixtun-Ch’ich’ lies on the lake’s western arm. The lowland’s limestone topography allows for high drainability of water resulting in scarce surface hydrology. Aside from the few...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Mario Zimmermann. Gabriel Ortiz A la triste.

This is an abstract from the "Advancing Public Perceptions of Sustainability through Archaeology" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Food security and food adequacy are at the core of many sustainability debates. Growing urban populations and a simultaneous decline in staple crops are severe threats to both. While the relation between rising demographics and subsistence has been a focus of scholarly debate in anthropology, crop diversity in ancient...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Yesenia Landa. Sheryl Luzzadder-Beach. Thomas Garrison. Timothy Beach. Byron Smith.

This is an abstract from the "La Cuernavilla, Guatemala: A Maya Fortress and Its Environs" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. La Cuernavilla is an ancient Maya site situated in the El Zotz Biotope in the central Petén of Guatemala. This study focuses on the paleoenvironmental changes, agricultural subsistence, and occupational trajectories of La Cuernavilla, based on data gathered from across the larger landscape between 2009 and 2017 on the Proyecto...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Yuko Shiratori. Ángel González López.

This is an abstract from the "Sculpture of the Ancient Mexican Gulf Coast, Part 2" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Large-scale female terracotta sculptures were extensively produced in the Mixtequilla region of Veracruz during the Late Classic period. It is likely that numbers of these sculptures were looted and smuggled into the United States prior to the 1970 UNESCO Convention on Cultural Property. This paper focuses the female terracotta...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Philip Arnold.

Great is the conflation of Ehecatl Quetzalcoatl and Topiltzin Quetzalcoatl: a mythical player in the world creation of Mesoamerican groups vs. a semi-historical personage who presaged the arrival of Hernán Cortés. Veracruz, a region implicated via the activities of both avatars, is particularly enmeshed in this duality. The Postclassic narrative whereby Quetzalcoatl journeyed to the Gulf lowlands appears to be foreshadowed in the desacralization of Teotihuacan’s Feathered Serpent Pyramid at the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Damien Marken. Matthew Ricker. Robert Austin.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. One of the limiting factors to settlement aggregation in the Maya lowlands is the availability of potable water. With few perennial surface rivers and lakes, the ancient Maya collected water from rainfall for consumption. In areas with high population densities, such as Classic period cities, this required engineering the built landscape to funnel water for...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Evan Parker. Kenneth E. Seligson.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Proyecto Arqueológico de Sitios de Pesqueña Escala en el Puuc Oriental (PASPEPO) recently completed an intensive mapping and surface collection program at three small-scale sites in the eastern Puuc Region of the northern Maya lowlands. Using lidar-derived digital terrain models (DTMs) as a baseline for settlement pattern identification, we identified...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Annick J. E. Daneels.

This is an abstract from the "Sculpture of the Ancient Mexican Gulf Coast, Part 2" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The god Xipe Totec has been mostly analyzed from Postclassic evidence (Toltec and Aztec). He is recognized by the representations of a person wearing the skin of a flayed victim or the victim himself. While both types of figures appear in several regions of Mesoamerica, their contexts vary. In this paper I will review Classic and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Owen Stoker. Cynthia Hannold. Jonas Posey. Nathan Patty. Kendall Holland.

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...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Alan Sandstrom.

This is an abstract from the "The Flower World: Religion, Aesthetics, and Ideology in Mesoamerica and the American Southwest" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Flowers are a central feature of religious rituals among today's Nahua of the southern Huasteca. They are associated with the sun, growing corn, life-giving water, the bounty of the living cosmos, and ancestors who visit their relatives during Day of the Dead. For the Nahua, flowers are far...