Yucatan (State / Territory) (Geographic Keyword)
901-925 (1,211 Records)
This paper presents a synthesis of current results from the 2016 - 2017 research seasons at Piedras Negras, Guatemala with implications for understanding warfare, economy, politics, and population dynamics throughout the ancient kingdom. First, while project members had identified a series of fortified centers and palisades in the region’s hinterlands, the recent identification of fortifications in the near periphery of Piedras Negras makes it one of the rare polity capitals in the southern...
Recent Remote Sensing and Digital Documentation at Chichen Itza, 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. In this poster, we present the results of a program of remote sensing and the digital documentation of the art and architecture of the Maya site of Chichen Itza, Yucatan, Mexico. An aerial lidar survey performed in 2014 has aided in creating a more accurate map of the site. Detailed photogrammetry and ground-based liar, performed in the area open for tourism,...
Recent Research on the Formative and Early Classic Periods in the Yaxhom Valley, Yucatán (2018)
Previous investigations by the Bolonchen Regional Archaeological Project demonstrated that the Valle de Yaxhom, in the Puuc region of Yucatan, was a significant locus of monumental construction during the latter Middle Formative and early Late Formative. Two large acropoli, the Acropolis Yaxhom and the Acropolis Lakin, were previously mapped and tested, but the nature of accompanying residential construction remained unknown. Two other sites with megalithic architecture, Nucuchtunich and Nohoch...
Reconceptualizing Chichen Itza: The Gran Acuífero Maya Project (2018)
During the summer of 2017, the Gran Aquífero Maya (GAM) project initiated an investigation at Chichen Itza designed to define the site around its aquatic resources. The project is based on my previous work at Cenote Holtun, located 1.6 miles west of Chichen Itza, which found that a line drawn between Holtun and Cenote Kanjuyum on the east pasted through the center of El Castillo. It has long been known that El Castillo is bisected by a line drawn between the Sacred Cenote on the north and the...
Reconfiguring Communities in the Postclassic at Aventura (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Households at Aventura: Life and Community Longevity at an Ancient Maya City" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Recent excavations have revealed that Postclassic Aventura was a very different place: both reverentially remembered and a home. In this paper, we review the evidence for human activity during the Postclassic period at Aventura. From identifications of Late Postclassic incensario fragments in surface material...
Reconsidering Kingship Among the Gulf Olmec (2024)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. For decades debate among Formative scholars has raged over whether to classify Gulf Olmec societies as archaic states or chiefdoms; yet scholars on both sides have assumed that these societies were governed by elites under the jurisdiction of a single hereditary ruler. Stone monuments in the form of altar-thrones, stelae, and—most particularly—colossal...
Reconsidering the Terminal Classic in the Northern Lowlands – A Boom or the Start of a Bust? (2024)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. After many sites in the Southern Maya Lowlands were abandoned during the major societal transformation known as the “Maya Collapse,” settlements in the North grew markedly in size. In the Cochuah region of the Yucatan peninsula, and elsewhere, some of the largest architecture ever built was constructed. More residences than had been seen before, or since,...
Reconstructing and Testing Ancient Neighborhoods at Caracol, Belize (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. Neighborhoods in the past formed in urban contexts from the bottom-up through repeated face-to-face interactions. Through these shared social experiences and relational identity, neighborhood groups would possess a high potential for collective action, facilitating local solutions to issues facing...
Reconstructing Diachronic Changes in Subsistence, Wealth, and Economic and Ritual Practices through Animal Use at the Classic Maya Polity of Lower Dover, Belize (2021)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Maya archaeologists have traditionally used faunal analyses to examine questions about subsistence and ritual practices. We chart diachronic changes in patterns of faunal usage pertaining to four sociocultural dimensions: consumption, economic productions, wealth, and ritual at three districts surrounding the Late Classic (AD 600–900) Maya political center of...
Reconstructing Population Histories in the Gulf Lowlands: Review and Prospect (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. Over the past three decades the Gulf Lowlands of Mexico have witnessed an explosion of systematically collected archaeological survey data. The Gulf Lowlands, however, present particular challenges for the collection of data, reconstruction of local population histories, and comparison among datasets...
Reconstructing Synchronous Ritual Events in a Central Honduran Chiefdom: An Analysis of Conjoined Artifacts (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Innovations and Transformations in Mesoamerican Research: Recent and Revised Insights of Ancestral Lifeways" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Reconstructing past ritual events is always a challenge under the best of archaeological conditions. Between cal AD 238 and 352 the ancient residents of the site of Salitrón Viejo accumulated an assemblage of carved jade and marble artifacts that were used in a series of ritual...
Reconstructing the Ancient Maya Wetland Fields of the Central Rio Bravo, Belize (2023)
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. Lidar acquired in 2016 in northwest Belize revealed an expanse of ~7 km2 of ancient Maya raised fields and canals along the Rio Bravo floodplain near the ancient Maya site of Wari Camp. This is half of all the wetland field area found from lidar in this region. Excavations and multiproxy data provide the first...
Recuperando el rompecabeza: Un análisis de la escalera jeroglífica de El Resbalón (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. El asentamiento prehispánico de El Resbalón está ubicado en el sur de Quintana Roo y alberga la segunda escalera jeroglífica más grande conocida en el área Maya. El proyecto “Levantamiento digital de los bienes muebles e inmuebles de los sitios arqueológicos de Dzibanché, Ichkabal y El Resbalón”, en colaboración con el Instituto Nacional de Antropología e...
Redefining the Relationship Between the Surface and the Subterranean at Mul Ch'en Witz, La Milpa, Belize (2018)
One of the many unsettled issues in chultun research is the relationship of chultunes to surface architecture. At Mul Ch’en Witz, located within the large Maya site of La Milpa in northwestern Belize, the chultunes are covered by low, rectangular rubble core platforms so that each is an architectural complex with both a surface and a subterranean component. This degree of formalization of the surface space had not been previously reported until recently at RB-25-A5, a collapsed chultun also...
Rediscovering Ancient Maya Blue Pigments / Redescubriendo los antiguos pigmentos maya (2021)
This is an abstract from the "Current Dynamics of Heritage Values in the Americas" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. El Azul Maya-Maya Ch´oj. Inicié con mi investigación hace aproximadamente dos años atrás tratando de pigmentar mis esculturas y cerámica con el Azul Maya. Tras cuatro meses de buscar la planta Ch´oj (Indigófera suffruticosa mil) al fin dí con ella. Cuando la encontré estaba en su período de floración y fruto, tuve que esperar a que los...
Rediscovering the San Martín Pajapan Volcano in the Gulf Coast of México: An Analysis of its Archaeological Context (2018)
San Martín Pajapan is one of the most important and prominent volcanos that constitute Los Tuxtlas mountain system of the Gulf Coast of México. From the Preshipanic period to the present time the San Martín Pajapan volcano has been considered a natural place of the landscape with cultural significance, which is indicated by the presence of archaeological remains on its summit. The most remarkable archaeological element of this volcano is a monumental Olmec sculpture, which iconographic...
Reduce, Reuse, Recycle: Small Finds in the Collections of Maya Archaeological Assemblages of the BREA Project in Belize. (2024)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This presentation addresses data from the Maya “small finds” category in the laboratory assemblage of collected and excavated materials of the Belize River East Archaeology (BREA) Project, which beginning in 2011 has been documenting and researching the cultural and environmental history of the Belize River drainage, comprising Preceramic period land- and...
The Reemergence of Balamku as a First Order Sacred Landmark at Chichen Itza (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Studies in Mesoamerican Subterranean Archaeology" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. During the 2018 season, the Gran Aquífero Maya project began exploration of the cave of Balamku, located some 2.4 km east of Chichen Itza's site center. The cave is noteworthy in containing incensarios, manos and metates, and other artifacts identical to those in the back passage of Balankanche, only in greater numbers. The similarity...
A Reexamination of Postclassic Maya Cave Altars along the Central Coast of Quintana Roo (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Studies in Mesoamerican Subterranean Archaeology" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The construction and ceremonial use of miniature temples, or shrines, in caves across the central coastal zone of Quintana Roo, Mexico is a well-documented tradition and one that has received recent scholarly attention. Also common in caves throughout the region was the siting of unenclosed altars in a range of different forms and styles....
Reexamining the Chacmool, One More Time (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 II" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The striking recumbent stone figure known as a chacmool is a defining feature of the Mesoamerican Terminal Classic and Postclassic, occurring not only at Chichen Itza and Tula, where the largest number of figures is documented, but also in later Mexica...
Refining Airborne Laser Scanning Data to See Through Mayapán's Dense Vegetation (2024)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. I present a workflow for optimizing the classification of airborne laser scanning point data and the selection of appropriate surface visualization techniques to improve the identification of archaeological and environmental features at the Postclassic city of Mayapán. The initial 2013 digital elevation model enabled the identification of thousands of...
Refugios y rituales: Conflicto en el Fortín Preclásico de Macabilero, Guatemala (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Entre los grupos mayas; fortalezas, armas, y sistemas de murallas defensivas nos indican lo común que era el conflicto en las relaciones sociopolíticas de estas comunidades. En las Tierras Bajas occidentales, fueron pocos los sitios que alcanzaron un alto grado de desarrollo convirtiéndose en grandes centros urbanos para el Clásico. Dentro de la región, una...
Regimes and the Classic Maya Market Economy “Writ Large” (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Regimes of the Ancient Maya" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The concept of regimes can be critical to the ongoing transformation of understandings of the Classic Maya economy. Currently, many scholars continue to refer to anthropomorphized mythical agents, e.g., exchange between “Tikal” and “Holmul” or between “Cancuen” and “the highlands,” as simply black boxes inhibiting economic research. With populations in the...
Regional Agricultural Potential at the Aguacate Sites, Western 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 ancient Maya settlements of the Aguacate region of western Belize feature a dispersed settlement pattern spread across a highly varied landscape. Both soil and water resources are unevenly distributed across the region, interspersed with karst outcrops and ridges. Nonetheless,...
Regional Integration during the Late Preclassic in Ucí, Yucatán (2018)
Regional integration as materialized by the connections created through sacbeob can widely transform political, economic and social institutions in the participant communities. Perceiving the process through dichotomies such as center-periphery or paramount-subordinate clouds the agency of the multiple stakeholders involved in the matter. Active manipulation of social systems by intermediate elites and the commoner population seems to have had a great influence on the general process of...