Yucatan (State / Territory) (Geographic Keyword)
751-775 (948 Records)
This is an abstract from the "Stability and Resilience in Zooarchaeology" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Debate has surrounded the Terminal Classic (AD 750–900/1000) Maya “collapse,” a period when the Classic period political structure deteriorated and parts of the southern lowlands were depopulated. While these changes were the result of various developments including warfare, social unrest, environmental degradation, and climate change, one...
The Role of Rockshelters among the Lowland Maya (2018)
Because of Maya religion’s heavy focus on the sacred Earth, subterranean spaces tend to be seen as sacred landmarks. Caves in particular have been shown to be the most promising context for the archaeological study of Maya religion (Brady and Prufer 2005). Rockshelters, however, have received less attention and appear to have identities and meanings that are negotiable across the lowlands. Recent rockshelter excavations have uncovered skeletal remains (Bonor 1995; Glassman et al. 2005; Saul et...
A Royal Portrait at Chichen Itza? Central Mexican Emblems of Authority in the Northern Maya Region (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The city of Chichen Itza has defied attempts to identify individuals who ruled the city and its basic political organization. Scholars once argued for a shared governance system called multepal, basing this assertion on glyphic references to a series of people who apparently jointly held power. Subsequent scholarship challenged this assertion, as revised...
Sabanas and the Sea: The Yalahau’s Ecological Niches and Preclassic Populations (2018)
The Yalahau region of northern Quintana Roo, Mexico is one of the few regions in the Maya Lowlands where a robust Preclassic population was not followed by the emergence of Classic period polities. For that reason it is an important area when trying to understand the unique characteristics of the Preclassic period in the Northern Lowlands. The Yalahau region is defined physiographically by freshwater wetlands (sabanas), which stand in stark contrast the rest of the Northern Lowlands. These...
Sacbeob in the Cochuah Region: Barriers or Links? (2018)
During the Terminal Classic, sacbeob were built at three Maya sites in the Cochuah region of west-central Quintana Roo, Mexico. The roads provided a physical connection between portions of Ichmul, San Felipe, and Yo’okop, running between important structures, out to outlying groups, and even to what had likely been separate settlements. Although they would have been used for processions between termini and may have had numerous symbolic meanings, the impact of some the roadways on the lives of...
The Sacred Landscape of Xunantunich, Belize (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Manifesting Movement Materially: Broadening the Mesoamerican View" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Early Maya communities centered themselves within a broader sacred landscape imbued with meaning through ritual practices. Centuries of movement through the landscape converted spaces into places that were deeply rooted in cosmology and social memory. Ritual practices at the center of the community and important places in...
Sacred Places as Battlefields: The Role of the Ritual Landscape in Struggles for Conquest and Resistance in the Northern Transversal (2018)
The Northern Transversal Region in central Guatemala is one of the most fertile regions of the Maya world in addition to being a key strategic point in the past and present. The rivers flowing out of the highlands provide fertile, volcanic soil in addition to natural communication routes. As a result, it has been subject to multiple waves of colonization over the past two millennia, from Classic period Tikal and Calakmul to contemporary narcotraffickers and transnational corporations. In this...
The Sakjol Marketplace of Yaxnohcah, Campeche, Mexico (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Ancient marketplaces serve as invaluable sources of information regarding the political-economic organization of archaeological sites. Marketplaces were important locations within ancient cities serving as nexuses of social, economic, and political interaction. There is a rich collection of ethnohistoric, linguistic, and pictorial evidence indicating the...
Sakwitz’ob: There’s Gypsum in Them Thar Hills (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This poster documents the discovery in 2018 of a large ancient Maya gypsum quarry in southern Campeche, Mexico. The quarry extensively mined a regionally prominent hill (witz), likely making it a white beacon within the ancient landscape. Nearby sites appear to include gypsum workshops. Gypsum mines have also been recently discovered near El Zotz, Peten. We...
The San Pedro Maya and the Western Frontier of British Honduras (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Making and Breaking Boundaries in the Maya Lowlands: Alliance and Conflict across the Guatemala–Belize Border" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Having fled the violence of the Caste War in Mexico, the San Pedro Maya occupied nearly two dozen small villages in the forests of western British Honduras and northeastern Petén from the 1850s to the 1930s. Archaeological and archival information attest to the fact that the...
Santa Clara
Photos 11684-11693, 11762-11764
Sayil
Photos10510-10525
Scale and Political Integration of Ancient Maya Polities: Ideology, Frame Analysis, and Caracol, Belize (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Regimes of the Ancient Maya" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Interpretations of ancient Maya society may be cast in different ways based on the bodies of data that are used and on the frame of analysis considered. New data and syntheses are changing what sometimes have been polarized perspectives. Excavation, survey, and particularly lidar data show both scalar relationships and regional variability on all levels,...
Scrutinizing Theories of Maya Collapse with the CHAAHK Spatial Simulation Model (2018)
The Classic Maya collapse remains as both relevant and controversial a topic as ever. For over a century, dozens of researchers have proposed different causes that may have driven this complex process. The last few decades have witnessed the academic community’s opinion converge on the notion that many different social and environmental factors, operating at likewise diverse scales, somehow contributed to a temporally gradual and spatially heterogeneous disruption of the demographic, political,...
A Season after Covid: Investigating Las Monjas Sascabera 2 (2023)
This is an abstract from the "The Subterranean in Mesoamerican Cultural Landscapes" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In June 2022, the Gran Acuífero Maya resumed investigations initiated in 2018 of Las Monjas Sascabera 2 (LMS2), one of 11 sascaberas located south and west of the Las Monjas complex at Chichén Itzá. In the intervening years, rain washed out accumulated soil that had blocked access to the circular, constructed entrance and exposed...
The Second Chapter: Further Analysis of Granite Ground Stone Tools from the Belize River East Archaeology Project, 2015–2022 (2023)
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. Granite was a preferred raw material for ground stone tool production in many parts of the Maya Lowlands. However, granite outcrops are spatially restricted within the Maya Mountains of Belize, and access to this material was limited. The movement of raw and/or finished tools would have required various mechanisms of...
Seeds that Germinate: Models, Paleobotanical, and Archaeological Evidence for Colha’s Early Inhabitants (2018)
The archaeological site of Colha, located within the northern Belize chert-bearing zone, is well-known for being one of the largest Maya lithic production sites in Mesoamerica. The site has occupation dating to the Archaic Period as well as the Middle Preclassic through the Early Postclassic. Pollen and geomorphologic evidence suggest intensive forest clearance, wetland soil manipulation, swamp margin, and upland manipulation dating as early as the Archaic Period. Evidence for intensive blade...
Selective Surplus: Material Networks in Formation at Yaxuná, Yucatan, Mexico (900 to 350 BCE) (2018)
Recent investigations of Yaxuná, Yucatan, Mexico have provided evidence to suggest that the earliest permanent spaces, by way of the site’s E-group complex, in the Northern Lowlands were roughly contemporaneous with the early developments observed at Central Lowland sites. On the one hand, this data provides an outlet to better explore the large scale social processes impacting the early macro-region of the Maya area. However, material analysis of recovered shell, lithic, and ceramic artifacts...
Sensing the Subterranean: Problems and Prospects of GPR Survey at Yaxuná, Yucatan, Mexico (2021)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This paper explores methodological opportunities for comparative settlement survey by applying ground-penetrating radar (GPR) as an augmentative remote sensing lens. In the last decade, remote sensing in Mesoamerica has undergone a renaissance through the application of Lidar to survey the landscape, providing immense quantities of data on new potential...
Serious Seriation: Age-at-Death Assessment of Skeletons from Caves Branch Rockshelter, Belize (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Caves Branch Rockshelter (CBR) is a large cemetery site in Central Belize used for burial by a rural Maya community during the Late Preclassic and Early Classic periods (~300 BC–AD 400). The CBR skeletal series is unusual in the region as it is large and appears to comprise a relatively complete mortality profile. However, due to poor preservation,...
“Serpent Emperor”: The Reign of K’ahk’ Ti’ Ch’ich’ and the Origins of Dzibanché Hegemony (2021)
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. Recent studies of the inscriptions related to the Kaanul dynasty has revealed a new ruler named K’ahk’ Ti’ Ch’ich’. He is mentioned in various Maya sites (El Peru, Uaxactun, Naranjo) as a high king and overlord with a wide dominion. His accession in 550 CE is recorded on the wooden Lintel 3 from...
Settlement Density, Household Inequality, and Social Interaction in the Western Maya Lowlands (2023)
This is an abstract from the "To Have and Have Not: A Progress Report on the Global Dynamics of Wealth Inequality (GINI) Project" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Decades of settlement pattern research in the Maya lowlands has produced unparalleled datasets for studying processes of urbanization in tropical landscapes. Recent comparative studies support a view of ancient Maya cities as low-density urban systems, which may have created different...
Settlement Pattern Analysis at the Medicinal Trail Community, Northwestern Belize: Results of Topographic Mapping from 2013- (2018)
This poster presents the results of five field seasons of intensive survey and total station mapping at the Medicinal Trail Community, a Maya hinterland settlement in northwestern Belize. Mapping during the summer of 2017 has further refined our understanding of the size and distribution of households and numerous landscape features that have been, or continue to be, the focus of excavations. Refinements to the topographical mapping within the area has revealed several complex household groups...
Settlement Pattern and Land Use at Holtun, Guatemala (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. In Maya archaeology, agricultural cycles are the cornerstone of multiple research topics that intertwine daily life, ideology, political economy, and settlement systems. In archaeological research, land-use can be indicative of social organization and provisioning strategies. In this...
Settlement Pattern and Land Use Dynamics at Naachtun: Shaping an Agrarian Maya Town (2018)
The classic Maya site of Naachtun is actually composed by a monumental and public core zone of 35 hectares surrounded by an extensive residential area of about 175 hectares. The study of its settlement pattern along with geoarchaeological works focused on agrarian strategies specifically have shown the role of vacant spaces in shaping the settlement as an agrarian town. Mainly dedicated to agriculture since the beginning of Naachtun’s occupation in the Early Classic period and maintained until...