Yucatan (State / Territory) (Geographic Keyword)
776-800 (948 Records)
The ancient Maya port site of Conil is located in the modern community of Chiquilá on the north coast of Quintana Roo, Mexico. In 1528 Francisco de Montejo, a Spanish conquistador, reported that Conil was a large town consisting of 5,000 houses. William Sanders was the first archaeologist to work at the site in 1954, but the site core was not formally mapped until 2005 by Glover. Further work was conducted in 2014, 2016, and 2017 as part of El Projecto Costa Escondida (PCE). Data collection and...
Settlement, Economy, and Society at Mayapán, Yucatan, Mexico/Asentamiento, Economía y Sociedad en Mayapán, Yucatán, México (2021)
An edited compilation of contributions by members of the Mayapan archaeological team from the U.S. and Mexico, pertaining to research from 2001-2009. Survey, household archaeology, monumental archaeology, and analyses of various artifact classes (more developed research than available in the informes). Book is open access, online, and it is bilingual (English and Spanish).
The Shell Game: Maya Cosmology as Reflected in Recent Discoveries at Tutu Uitz Na (2018)
The plaza held special significance to the ancient Maya, and across ancient Mesoamerica. In a reflection of Maya cosmological beliefs, the plaza was seen as a representation of, and a portal to the primordial sea, the watery underworld from which all things originate. This connection is evident in various ways throughout the region, from special dedicatory deposits to decorative architecture and iconography. This presentation explores that cosmological salience through the recent excavations at...
Shellfish Harvesting, Subsistence Strategies, and Human/Environmental Interactions in the Río Champotón Drainage, Campeche, Mexico (2018)
With regional occupational continuity from the Middle Formative through Postclassic Periods, the Río Champotón drainage provides an ideal case study to examine long-term change in ancient Maya subsistence strategies and human/environmental interactions during two and a half millennia of human occupation. This poster presents the results of analysis of an assemblage of over 13,000 shell artifacts generated by the Champotón Regional Settlement Survey during seven seasons of research in the Río...
Shifting Colonial Narratives at the Edge of the Spanish Colony: 15th-17th Century Maya Archaeology at Progresso Lagoon, Belize (2019)
This is an abstract from the "After Cortés: Archaeological Legacies of the European Invasion in Mesoamerica" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. There is no question that colonialism in the Americas brought huge and unanticipated changes for both European and Indigenous peoples. Yet Indigenous people often contextualized colonial efforts within their own worldview, or ontology, even as they interacted with European people, things, and colonial...
Shifting Course: Change as the Norm in the Preclassic Usumacinta Faunal Record (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Preclassic Maya Social Transformations along the Usumacinta: Views from Ceibal and Aguada Fénix" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Usumacinta River and its tributaries played an integral role in the survival and growth of Maya communities in the southern lowlands of Mexico and Guatemala. Early human settlements relied on the river as a source of food and transportation. Examining the animal bones and shell remains...
The Shifting Political Landscape of the Mopan Valley: A Diachronic Perspective (2018)
The Mopan River valley of Belize is home to five closely spaced Lowland Maya ceremonial centers with extensive settlement occupying the landscape between. From south to north, the ceremonial centers are Arenal, Early Xunantunich, Classic Xunantunich, Actuncan, and Buenavista del Cayo. Archaeological evidence suggests that each of these centers was initially occupied by the Middle Preclassic, but they had distinct histories, evolving into ceremonial/political centers at different times, from...
Shifting Regimes at La Corona: Political Resilience of Classic Maya “Secondary” Center (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Regimes of the Ancient Maya" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Data from investigations at the archaeological site of La Corona reflect the role that secondary sites had for political integration in the Maya lowlands. Comparing what the hieroglyphic texts suggest with what the material culture of the secondary sites indicates, it is possibly to assess the nature of La Corona political regime before, during, and after its...
The Significance of Debt to Household and Political Economies of Postclassic and Contact Period Maya Societies (2018)
Debt was important to late Maya societies in religious and political terms. This paper explores the many facets of debt that tied together household and regional economies, including bottom-up mechanisms employed by families and communities, as well as top-down institutions that garnered support for religious and political bureaucracies. Graeber’s distinction between moral and impersonal economies outlines a comparative continuum with profound implications for issues of human rights in the past....
Situating a Cached Ballgame Yoke from Matacanela, Veracruz (2021)
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 ballgame complex was an important component of the Classic Veracruz style that spanned the Late or Epiclassic period (AD 600–900) and that was concentrated along the Mesoamerican Gulf lowlands and extended into adjacent regions. The ballgame, however, has early roots, both in Mesoamerica in general and in Veracruz in particular. In...
Situating Early Xunantunich, Belize, in the Preclassic Landscape: A Synthetic Perspective from Structure F1 (2021)
This is an abstract from the "The Preclassic Landscape in the Mopan Valley, Belize" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Over the last five years, intensive investigations of Structure F1 at Early Xunantunich, Belize, have shed light on a dynamic and important time in the site’s early history. The monumental platform structure played an important role in the early ceremonial center, creating the site’s northern boundary, hosting large public rituals,...
Skull Offerings: The Koxol Offertory Assemblage in the Maya Area (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Skull offerings among the ancient populations of Mesoamerica are well documented by archaeological, ethnohistorical and iconographic sources. New finds in 2017, in the Lowland Maya Classic site of Naachtun (Guatemala) required intersite comparisons beyond the few well-known cases such as Uaxactun E-Group’s deposits. The association of a cached human skull and...
Slam Dunk: 3D Imaging in Belizean Cave Sites Using Hovermap System (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. Mapping is one of the most fundamental and important enterprises for cave archaeologists not only for research but also integral to cave management and heritage preservation. Using traditional cartography techniques is often a tedious and long-term project involving numerous field seasons and thousands of measurements. Capturing 3D...
Slow Archaeology, Community Engagement, and Collaborative Knowledge Production in the Maya World (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Archaeological endeavors around the world have begun to emphasize ethical project design and community engagement. Several projects in Latin America are adopting Community-Based Participatory Research (CBPR) but the pace of adoption of recommendations from the Indigenous Critique and Black Feminist Anthropology remains slow. Parachute archaeology is still...
The Snake Dynasty: What We Know and What We Don’t (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. Epigraphic discoveries of the last few years now make possible a fresh engagement with questions about the origins and development of the Snake dynasty, of its external political influences during both the Early and Late Classic periods, and of the multiple physical centers from which the dynasty...
Snake Queens and Political Consolidation: How Royal Women Helped Create Kaanul—A View from Waka’ (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. Our paper demonstrates the key role played by royal women of the Kaanul realm in fortifying and consolidating that realm’s power and hegemony in the seventh to eighth centuries CE. We draw upon archaeological, visual, and textual evidence from Waka’, including preliminary analysis of recently...
Social and Geographic Associations of Cotton-sized Spindle Whorls in South-central Veracruz, Mexico (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Textile Tools and Technologies as Evidence for the Fiber Arts in Precolumbian Societies" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The western lower Papaloapan basin in south-central Veracruz was subject to systematic survey and surface collection in several blocks of terrain. An initial analysis of spindle whorls from one survey block showed cotton-sized whorls were relatively abundant during the Classic and Postclassic...
Social Complexity of Peripheral Settlements on the Regional Capital of Ichkaansihoo (2018)
In the last decade, research done by "Proyecto Arquelogico Region de Merida" (PARME) on peripheral settlements of the Ichkaantijo area has had as a main objective to recognize and interpret the social organization of these ancient communities, that according to literature have been defined as rural settlements. Therefore, how is this area and the sites that constitute it characterized? What role did they play in the political and economic system? And, which cultural elements have witnessed...
The Social Transformation of the Terminal Classic Maya to Postclassic Maya in Northern 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 Terminal Classic (AD 800-1000) and Postclassic (AD 1000-1500) periods of Maya civilization in northern Belize were times of significant change and social transformation. Changes and developments during the Terminal Class are visible archaeological at several northern Belizean communities including Colha, Lamanai, and La Milpa. We evaluate changes at...
Societal Cycling Influenced by Climatic Variability Among Early Agricultural Communities: Comparative Perspectives from Belize and Croatia (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Global Perspectives on Climate-Human Population Dynamics During the Late Holocene" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Archaeological studies continue to highlight the extreme variability in sociopolitical responses to prehistoric fluctuations in climate, from the emergence to complete breakdown of hierarchical societies. These processes were likely more volatile among early farming communities with high degrees of...
Society in Flux: Migration and Kinship during Sociopolitical Change in the Southern Lowlands (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. In the midst of conflict and change people are instigators, bystanders, or unwilling victims of larger sociopolitical machinations. Those living in the Southern Lowlands in the prehistoric and historic periods were familiar with the results of fluctuations in the social...
Soil and Water Chemistry: Aguada Fenix, Tabasco and Northern Belize (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Preclassic Maya Social Transformations along the Usumacinta: Views from Ceibal and Aguada Fénix" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Most of the Yucatan has no vestige of rivers; humans and ecosystems rely on rainwater catchment and soil and ground water. Along the southern margins of the Peninsula, however, lie rivers in Belize and Quintana Roo to the southeast and Tabasco and Campeche to the southwest. This paper...
Soil Carbon Persistence and Influence in the Early Anthropocene of the Maya Lowlands (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. Coupled studies of Maya Lowlands soils and geoarchaeological exploration provide insight into neotropical soil and atmospheric carbon cycle dynamics in space and time, and soil carbon’s role in defining the Early Anthropocene. This paper tests the hypothesis that soil carbon persistence differs in time, space, and...
Soil Differences and Their Implications for Plaza Function and Site Organization at Maax Na, Belize (2019)
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. In 2016 the Maax Na Archaeology Project systematically tested the soils of two major plazas at Maax Na, a large prehispanic site located in the Three Rivers Region of Belize. Tests in the West Plaza sought to determine whether phosphorus levels there supported its identification as a marketplace during the Late Classic (C.E....
Some Temporal Markers in Olmec Pottery from Los Soldados (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Los Soldados has been considered by many to be a secondary center with respect to La Venta due to its proximity to the capital; however, in the absence of a tuned ceramic chronology for the Middle Preclassic, this cannot be corroborated. Over a number of seasons, the Arroyo Pesquero Archaeological Project has carried out excavations at Los Soldados, and among...