Mesoamerica: Maya lowlands (Geographic Keyword)
376-400 (778 Records)
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 a recently discovered Classic Maya fortress in the central Petén of Guatemala. Situated between the major ancient kingdom of Tikal and the minor city-state capital of El Zotz, the site has a complex history tied into the broader geopolitics of the Buenavista Valley, which it overlooks. This talk introduces the...
Land Systems Architecture and Ecology as Infrastructure in Cities and Regions across the Maya Lowlands (2021)
This is an abstract from the "The Urban Question: Interdisciplinary Approaches to Investigating the Ancient Mesoamerican City" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Relying on the lens of ecological urbanism this paper describes the diversity of long-term patterns of urbanization and agricultural intensification on regional landscapes in the Maya lowlands of southern Mexico and Central America. Best described as a mosaic, the Maya lowlands offers an...
Landscape and Settlements in the Bolonchen District, Puuc Region, Mexico (2021)
This is an abstract from the "Landscapes: Archaeological, Historic, and Ethnographic Perspectives from the New World / Paisajes: Perspectivas arqueológicas, históricas y etnográficas desde el Nuevo Mundo" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This paper combines the results of settlement and vegetation surveys in the Puuc Region of Yucatan, Mexico, with an emphasis in the Bolonchen District and the archaeological Maya site of Kiuic. The extensive...
Landscape Modification Seen from Above: Remote Sensing Analysis at Postclassic Mayapan (2018)
This paper examines shifting environmental paradigms in the Maya realm. Using Mayapán as a case study, a site long-considered to be located in a "marginal" environment for agricultural productivity, I will evaluate site resilience, sustainability, and self-sufficiency and use these concepts to create a more nuanced perspective of human-environment interactions. Data from Mayapán will be cross-referenced to other similar sites across the Maya region. I will show that assumptions about the...
Landscape of the Mirador-Calakmul Karst 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. The southern Petén Plateau can be subdivided into four karst landscapes, each with a dominant karst landform. They are fluviokarst, polygonal karst, karst margin plain, and upland karst. These terrains have different proportions of uplands and low standing wetlands. Within this framework lies the Mirador-Calakmul...
Landscape with Bees: Apiculture in Yucatán after the Spanish Invasion (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. In this paper we examine how European colonization and the shift to industrial capitalism altered beekeeping in Yucatán from AD1600 to the present. Honey and wax produced from stingless bees were circulated throughout the Mesoamerican world system during the Postclassic period. In the wake of the European...
Landscapes of Inequality in Ebtun, Yucatán, 1800–1890 (2021)
This is an abstract from the "Place-Making in Indigenous Mesoamerican Communities Past and Present" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In this paper, I examine the postcolonial social transformations of Yucatec-speaking communities located southwest of Valladolid, Yucatán, occasioned by the Caste War (1847–1901), a violent rebellion and revitalization movement intricately related to processes of decolonization following Independence. How did Native...
Las mujeres en los rituales de final de periodo durante el Clásico maya (250-900 dC) (2023)
This is an abstract from the "The Role of Women in Mesoamerican Ritual" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Durante el periodo Clásico se esculpieron dinteles y estelas donde algunas mujeres de sitios específicos desempeñaron un papel relevante en las ceremonias de final de periodo. Así lo atestiguan inscripciones de varias ciudades del Usumacinta y de la región de Petén, entorno geográfico en el que se centrará nuestro trabajo. La escritura...
Las Ruinas de Arenal and the Buenavista del Cayo Polity: Political Dynamics in the Western Belize River Valley (2018)
The socio-political and economic interactions of Las Ruinas de Arenal, a small but architecturally rich center in the lower Mopan River Valley, are explored through a focused investigation of select Classic period (250-850 CE) pottery from general occupation and special deposits. The study combines ceramic typological data with evaluations of artistic style and paste chemical composition. Previous archaeological investigations by Taschek and Ball found scant evidence of foreign influence in Las...
Late Classic Lithics Caches in Northwestern Belize: Technology and Symbolism (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Ceremonial Lithics of Mesoamerica: New Understandings of Technology, Distribution, and Symbolism of Eccentrics and Ritual Caches in the Maya World and Beyond" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. During the Late Classic, lithic artifacts, including eccentrics, served as the primary elements of many Lowland Maya caches. Despite this general pattern, technological and iconographic analyses illuminate the distinct character of...
Late Classic Maya Commoner Myth, Ritual, and Landscape at Chawak But’o’ob, Belize. (2018)
Recent research at the ball court complex and other areas of the ancient hinterland community of Chawak But’o’ob in the Rio Bravo Conservation and Management Area in northwestern Belize indicates the existence of a sophisticated interplay of environment and ideology at this agrarian site. The intersection of landscape, hydrology, and architecture here hints at mythological underpinnings of Maya commoner ritual that only partially overlap those in evidence in ancient urban contexts.
The Late Preclassic Households of Noh K’uh, Chiapas Mexico (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Late Preclassic (400 B.C. – A.D. 200) site of Noh K’uh is located in the Mensäbäk basin, over 30 kilometers west of the Usumacinta. Within this understudied region, the site of Noh K’uh was an important ceremonial center during the Late Preclassic, and was composed of several hilltop aggregates that clustered around a moderate monumental core. The site’s...
The Late Preclassic Monumental Foundation of Nixtun-Ch’ich’, Petén, Guatemala (2023)
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 archaeological site of Nixtun-Ch’ich’, Petén, Guatemala, exhibits urban planning different from “typical” Maya cities. In addition to its urban density and gridded layout, it possesses large monumental architecture along its central axis that distinguished it as a prominent city during the Preclassic period. This axis...
The Late Terminal Classic in the Cochuah Region: Neither Classic, Nor Postclassic (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Over the course of three field seasons, eight round foundation braces supporting perishable pole-and-thatch buildings were excavated in the Cochuah region of west-central Quintana Roo, Mexico. Dating to the period immediately after the region was largely abandoned during what is known as the “Maya collapse,” the structures reveal small populations living...
Late-Terminal Classic Community Mobility and Migration at El Perú-Waka’ (2018)
Recent archaeology at the Classic Maya city of El Perú-Waka’ has revealed a number of distinct communities making up the urban occupation. These communities possess their own cycles of settlement, florescence, and abandonment. Taken together, these cycles seem to show two distinct aspects that directly pertain to Classic Maya urbanism. One, it shows the urban landscape to be in a continuously changing state. The urban ruins encountered by researchers are the end product of centuries of such...
Lead Isotopic Evidence for Foreign-Born Burials in the Classic Maya City of Holmul, Petén, Guatemala (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. La Sufricaya, a Classic Period Maya civic-ceremonial complex in the city of Holmul, Petén, Guatemala, has several epigraphic elements that potentially link it to the Maya city of Tikal and the central Mexican metropolis of Teotihuacan. The La Sufricaya area boasts elaborate elite residential buildings, plazas, a ball court, and carved stelae; rulers from...
Lend Me Your Ears: Modeling Traditional Maize Production at Las Cuevas, 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 Las Cuevas region, situated on the southeastern edge of the Vaca Plateau in western Belize, consists of several medium-sized centers dispersed between low hills, steep ridges, and small seasonal swamps. Although occupied only briefly during the Late Classic period (700–900 CE),...
Let the Crops Speak for Themselves: How to Avoid Imposing Agroecological Assumptions at Altar de Sacrificios (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. Any sizable population must be sustained by an adequate food supply. As such, estimates for high population densities in the Maya Lowlands must be met with an equal or greater productive capacity. The “Provisioning Ancient Maya Cities” symposium seeks to understand this on a...
Lidar as a Tool to Estimate Late Classic Population in the Central Maya Lowlands (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. In 2016, the Pacunam Lidar Initiative surveyed 2,100 km2 of the Maya Biosphere Reserve in the Department of Petén, Guatemala. This lidar survey provided an unprecedented scale of settlement data that attest to elevated population levels throughout the southern Maya lowlands, especially for the Late...
Lidar Reconnaissance of the Calakmul Urban Landscape (2023)
This is an abstract from the "A Session in Memory of William J. Folan: Cities, Settlement, and Climate" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Building on the work of William J. Folan, the Bajo Laberinto Archaeological Project, initiated in 2022, is focused on investigations of urbanism centered on the city of Calakmul in southern Campeche. An initial 100 km2 lidar survey along the northern rim of the Bajo Laberinto has revealed large, elaborate...
Lidar Vegetation Analysis and Ground Truthing Efficacy at the Maya Archaeological Site of El Palmar, Mexico (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. An essential component of analyzing lidar data is adapting them to the researcher’s specific environmental situation, including the effects of local vegetation types on the identification of archaeological features. Doing so, can refine estimates of existing structures in non-surveyed areas and inform improved ground survey strategies in the future. At the...
Lidar: Guided Archaeological Surveys in the Hinterlands of Northwestern Belize (2021)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In the last decade airborne mapping lidar has become an extremely valuable tool for archaeologists studying ancient settlement patterns. It has proven especially useful in regions covered by dense forests on which prospection with other remote sensing techniques is not possible. This paper contributes to the growing international dialogue regarding the use of...
Lies the Spaniards Told (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. The Spaniards characterized the northeast corner of Yucatán state as being demographically depleted and possessed of unhealthy terrain and a lack of exploitable minerals. This picture has been perpetuated by historians, who lack independent lines of evidence against which to check it. Yet archaeological...
Life and Death of Lakam Elites at the Maya Center of El Palmar, Campeche, Mexico (2018)
During the Late Classic period (A.D. 600-800), Maya non-royal elites frequently appeared in courtly scenes, which are depicted on polychrome vessels and carved monuments. While epigraphic studies over the last two decades have gradually shed light on their political and ritual roles, little is known about their life histories and mortuary practices. One group of these elites held the title of lakam, which has been reported only at three archaeological sites. We detected tangible evidence of...
Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR) of San Gervasio, Isla Cozumel, Quintana Roo, Mexico (2018)
The use of Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR) in Mesoamerican archaeological research been steadily increasing. Building on this knowledge, LiDAR was conducted during the summer of 2017 over a 6km2 area of the prehispanic site of San Gervasio, Isla Cozumel, Quintana Roo, Yucatan, Mexico. This was part of a larger survey and mapping project conducted by the Proyecto de Interacción Política del Centro de Yucatán (PIPCY) spearheaded by Dr. Travis Stanton. The proposed poster will discuss LiDAR...