Yucatan (State / Territory) (Geographic Keyword)
676-700 (948 Records)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Human-caused environmental changes and their effects on the Classic Maya continue to be topics of vital research importance. Zooarchaeological data can provide valuable inferences about ancient Maya environments but must be assessed with care. In the Maya area, habitat fidelity models use high predator abundances to indicate the local presence of the...
Prehispanic Maya Burnt Lime Production: Previous Studies and Future Directions (2018)
Burnt lime has played a significant role in daily Maya life since at least as far back as 1100 BC, and yet its ephemeral nature has limited archaeological studies of its production and distribution. The application of new surveying and remote sensing technologies in recent decades is now allowing for a more in-depth investigation of the burnt lime industries that existed in different sub-regions of the Maya area. In this talk, we present an overview of the current understanding of Prehispanic...
Preliminary Analysis of Flaked and Ground Stone from Aventura, Belize (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. Household investigations at Aventura recovered several primary stone materials common in northern Belize and elsewhere in the Maya Lowlands. Chert and chalcedony is common as well as a high relative proportion of obsidian indicating households had reliable access to tool stone. Ready and reliable access...
A Preliminary Investigation into the Political Economy of Santa Cruz, an Associated Community with Ichmul de Morley, 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. This paper centers on the analysis of shell, lithics, and ceramics recovered from the ancient Maya community of Santa Cruz, located 3 km south of the secondary site of Ichmul de Morley in northern Yucatán. Ichmul de Morley appears to have had an expansive growth during the Late and Terminal Classic periods that might have encouraged local development of nearby...
Preliminary LiDAR-based Analyses of the La Corona – El Achiotal Corridor (2018)
Located in the northwestern Petén, Guatemala, the Maya sites of La Corona and El Achiotal have been investigated since 2008 by a multi-disciplinary US and Guatemalan research project. While a primary goal of this project has been to reconstruct the region’s political history, we have also investigated the management of local resources and general human impact on the landscape. In 2016, a LIDAR survey, funded by the Pacunam Foundation and operated by NCALM, was undertaken in a 410 square km...
Preliminary Results from La Luna: A Late Classic Residential Group at El Zotz (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 will discuss the preliminary results of excavations at La Luna, a residential group outside of the El Zotz core. Initial investigations from this Late Classic complex yielded a large volume of high-quality polychrome sherds and prestige items that are inconsistent with the simple architecture of the group. The source of these materials and the...
Preliminary Results of Household Excavations at the Lithic Production Community of Took’ Witz at El Palmar, Mexico (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In this paper, we present new research on the lithic production community of Took’ Witz, a hinterland group near the ancient Maya polity of El Palmar in Campeche, Mexico. While previous research at Took’ Witz focused on large-scale utilitarian lithic production, recent investigations provide insight into people’s daily lives. Through excavations at three...
Preparing for Life on the Move: Lithic Platform Characteristics and Forager Mobility (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Lithicists use various attributes of chipped stone tools to characterize hunter-gatherer technological organization, which is thought to be partly determined by mobility patterns of these groups; thus, lithic attributes serve as proxies for the amount and type of mobility practiced. In particular, lithic platform preparation has received attention as an...
Prey Choice and Politics: Modelling Postclassic Maya Wood Selection at La Punta, Chiapas, Mexico (2018)
How did Postclassic Maya communities decide which tree species to harvest for firewood and timber in a diverse forest environment? Most studies of ancient tree selection have used the principles of optimal foraging to construct a baseline of expectations for interpreting archaeological charcoal datasets. This paper will explore the implications of such a model on the interpretation of wood charcoals from the site of La Punta in Chiapas, Mexico, while also considering how the political structure...
Primary or Secondary Deposition: Midnight Terror Cave Operation V (2018)
Two chambers in Midnight Terror Cave, Belize show undeniable evidence of Maya child sacrifice. Operation V and Operation VIII are the deepest darkest chambers of the cave where some of the most important of ancient Maya rites were performed including human sacrifice. In 2009 Ann Scott proposed that sacrifices occurred in Operation VIII and, during ritual cleaning of this public space in preparation for a new ceremony, the bones were taken from their primary deposition site and moved to Operation...
"Problematic Deposits" at Chan Chich, Belize (2018)
The Chan Chich Archaeological Project has documented two types of terminal, above floor "problematic" artifact deposits in a number of different locations and contexts at the site of Chan Chich, Belize. The first type comprises light scatters of "exotic" ceramics and other artifacts on the steps to range buildings in epicentral courtyards. The second type is a dense artifact deposit in an ashy matrix at the base of a platform face in a hilltop, elite courtyard. Compositionally, the second type...
Problematizing Past Human-Landscape Interactions in the Lower Belize River Watershed: An Interdisciplinary Approach (2023)
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. There are many persistent issues that hamper archaeological interpretations of human-landscape interactions, from modern-day disturbances to more distant postdepositional processes and changing environmental conditions. These circumstances often make it a challenge to tease out cultural behaviors and the resulting...
Processes of Collapse, Resilience, and Reorganization at El Infiernito, Chiapas (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Discussions of political collapse in archaeology have shifted recently to approaches that incorporate the adaptive cycles of resilience and reorganization that highlight the continuity of certain cultural practices, belief systems, and worldviews alongside the disintegration of political systems. This approach has garnered support especially in the Maya area...
Processional Architecture at Chan Chich, Belize (2018)
Chan Chich is one of the dozen largest Maya ruins in Belize, reaching its apogee during the Late Classic period, ca. A.D. 750. The site has a number of notable site planning characteristics, including a massive public plaza, and two wide, radial causeways, that show connections to neighboring sites and suggest common ideas about city building. Some of these shared planning ideas reflect top-down design concepts related to specialized political and ritual functions for various buildings and...
Production and Use of Lime for Preclassic Architecture and Causeway Construction in the Mirador Karstic Basin (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. Excavations over several decades in the Mirador Basin of northern Guatemala, combined with detailed experimental data, have revealed extraordinary use of lime products in the construction and maintenance of Maya causeways, architecture, and associated art. This paper will consider both the quantitative utilization...
Provisioning the Household: Exploring Domestic Economic Integration within Two Lowland Maya Communities (2018)
It is now well recognized that Late Classic Maya communities varied politically, economically, and environmentally. The corollary, however, that community and household variation went hand-in-hand in the Maya area often goes unrecognized or under problematized. Research that explores differences in household provisioning practices across a range of communities should help to rectify this situation. Referencing data from two large prehispanic Maya sites in northwestern Belize, this paper asks the...
Public Architecture and Space at Actuncan (2018)
Monumental architecture and public spaces provide primary contexts for community ritual and social action. The process of construction of public architecture involves community cooperation and collective action, with the latter contributing to significant changes in the form and use of structures through time. The public architecture of Actuncan developed from the Preclassic period to constitute a nearly complete set of architectural forms devoted to ritual, administrative and community...
Public Spaces and Polity Making in Maya Hinterland Communities: A Case Study from San Lorenzo, Belize (2018)
Public structures in the Maya region materialize ideologies and define centers of power as they create politically charged sacred landscapes. These locations are nexus points for community and polity making processes, embedding social hierarchies, ideologies, and social memories into the physical landscape. However, archaeologists have historically focused attention on monumental public spaces within large civic-ceremonial centers, and relatively little attention has been given to public spaces...
Quality of Life Changes in an Ancient Maya Community: Longitudinal Perspectives from Altar de Sacrificios, Guatemala (2018)
Inequality is a prominent and persistent feature of all large-scale human societies that has significant impacts on everyday life. Variation in material wealth and social capital as well as differential access to specialized knowledge and other resources directly impacts household quality of life (QOL) within ancient and contemporary communities. For the ancient Maya, the establishment of political institutions centered on divine rulership significantly contributed to QOL changes during the...
Quarrying, Cutting, and Shaping: A Look into the Lives of Ancient Maya Limestone Producers (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The organization of labor in Classic Maya society has long been studied from a top-down approach. The construction of public works is seen as a facet of state economy, while the physical evidence of human effort—monumental constructions—are understood as visible manifestations of labor or service-based taxes. The argument for collective or rotational labor...
The Question of Sacrifice: Examining Maya Mortuary Practices through the Lens of Midnight Terror Cave (2021)
This is an abstract from the "The Subterranean in Mesoamerican Indigenous Culture and Beyond" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. As bioarchaeological interest in the question of ancient Maya ritual violence developed in the 1960s, it was generally recognized that sacrifice and related violent practices occurred within the social context of ritual. It should be expected, then, that caves would produce sacrificial osteological assemblages since they are...
Rags and Riches: Wealth Inequality at Late Classic Uxul, Campeche (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Many recent studies about the distribution of wealth in ancient Mesoamerican cities are revealing new insights into the ways socioeconomic processes were organized. Measures of inequality, like the Gini index, reveal patterns of wealth distribution and socioeconomic stratification, permitting research into the relationships between the rich and the poor. In...
Raised Field Agriculture in the Maya Lowlands: Archaeobotanical Remains from Birds of Paradise (2018)
Up until the late 1990s, researchers believed the Maya were solely reliant on slash and burn agricultural practices. However, discoveries of rectangular canal patterns in the margins of wetlands in the Maya lowlands of Guatemala, Belize, and Mexico shined light on a new agricultural practice: raised wetland fields. One example of wetland fields is found at the site Birds of Paradise (BOP) in the Rio Bravo region of northwestern Belize. The macrobotanicals recovered from the raised fields and...
A Re-evaluation of Yotholin Pattern-Burnished: Evidence of Early Preclassic Ceramics? (2018)
In 1958, Brainerd first described "the earliest deposits yet to come from Yucatan"—composed primarily of narrow-mouthed jar fragments recovered from the lowest strata of excavations at the Mani cenote. This type, classified as Yotholin Pattern-Burnished, has a medium-fine paste and unslipped surfaces that had been smoothed or burnished in decorative patterns. Since then, similar wares have been recovered from Preclassic contexts at a number of other sites. Although Brainerd originally described...
Re-excavating Xno’ha: Aligning Maya Architecture across Seven Years of Archaeological Research (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Ancient Maya Landscapes in Northwestern Belize, Part II" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Maya architecture at Xno’ha has been recorded digitally every field season since 2012 by the Blue Creek Archaeological Project in conjunction with the Center for Heritage Conservation at Texas A&M University. Through the application of preservation technologies such as laser scanning, it is now possible to juxtapose completely...