Mesoamerica: Maya lowlands (Geographic Keyword)

DOCUMENT Citation Only David Small.

The limited territorial control of small states, here the Classic Maya, has hindered the development of political economies in several cases. This paper looks at the issue of non-ruling elite interstate economic and political networks, and their effect on the evolution of internal political economies for the Classic Maya. Examples will be drawn from such polities as Copan, El Palmar, and Caracol. A further window into the dynamics of the effect of limited territorial control on political...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Amy Thompson.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This paper compares the developmental trajectories of two Classic Period (AD 300 – 800) Maya centers, Ix Kuku’il and Uxbenká, located in the southern foothills of the Maya Mountains, Toledo District, Belize. High-precision radiocarbon dates and ceramic sequences from household contexts inform the chronological development within these communities. Initial...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jennifer Meanwell. Linda Seymour. Elizabeth Paris. Carlos Peraza Lope.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Elaborately decorated and painted objects, most typically murals and incense burners, were a central part of the religious and cultural life at the Postclassic period Maya capital of Mayapán. These objects required great skill to produce and requisite control over a variety of materials, including plaster, pottery, and the pigments used as colorants. One...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Timothy Dennehy. Christopher Merriman. Keith M. Prufer.

How do subsistence-related changes impact lithic technology over the course of thousands of years? Three stratified rockshelters in Belize contain evidence of Paleoindian through Classic Maya period occupations. This span of time witnessed the initial hunting and gathering subsistence economy of the Paleoindian period, the introduction of horticulture and increasing reliance on cultivars in the Early Archaic, and the emergence of full-scale agriculture in the Late Archaic. Explaining variations...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Anais Levin. John Walden. Jaime Awe.

The use and production of lithic tools offers an avenue into the behavior and activities conducted in ancient residential and ritual contexts. We explore variability in the lithic assemblages of various contexts in the ancient Maya neighborhood of Tutu Uitz Na in the Late-Terminal Classic period (AD 700-900). Tutu Uitz Na is one of several neighborhoods surrounding the Lower Dover political center in the Belize River Valley. Variation in household lithic assemblages might vary based on the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Monica Rodriguez. Vera Tiesler. Jeffrey B. Glover. Dominique Rissolo.

In this paper, we provide a sinopsis of the two dozen burial findings from the archaeological site of Vista Alegre, Quintana Roo, recovered during a decade (2008 to 2017). Most of the mortuary contexts from Vista Alegre were documented using detailed in situ recording (archaeothanatology), followed by macroscopic and isotopic research in a collaborative effort between the Georgia State University and the Bioarchaeology Lab of the University of Yucatan. Put in context with other burial series...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Thomas Garrison.

Conflict pervaded the civilizations of ancient Mesoamerica from an early time. In the Maya lowlands, the physical vestiges of defensive fortifications date to the Late Preclassic period, while textual evidence of conflict comes from the subsequent Early Classic period. This paper examines settlement changes within the context of a contested landscape. The Buenavista Valley, largely controlled during the Classic period by the kingdom of El Zotz, extends out west from the great city of Tikal....

DOCUMENT Citation Only Eva Lemonnier. Julien Hiquet. Julien Sion.

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. Archaeological investigations carried out since 2011 at the site of Naachtun provide series of data useful to draw with sufficient details, the historical trajectory of this Maya Classic regional capital located between Tikal and Calakmul. Starting its development with the construction of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jessica Munson.

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. Recent studies using network analysis in archaeology seek to understand the interactions and structures that defined past societies. Such approaches are based on graph theoretic models that are simplifications of reality used to conceptualize and describe relationships, either qualitatively or...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Mathieu Picas. Margarita Díaz-Andreu.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Cultural heritage is a social construction that allows groups of different character to appropriate culturally or politically ancient sites by attaching symbolism to them. In Mexico, the use by the state of archaeological remains for the construction of a homogeneous national identity has been marked by the management of many sites since the late 1930s. The...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jocelyne Ponce. Marcello Canuto. Tomás Barrientos.

This is an abstract from the "A Celebration and Critical Assessment of "The Maya Scribe and His World" on its Fiftieth Anniversary" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Over two dozen hieroglyphic panels looted in the 1960s from the site of La Corona, formerly known as “Site Q,” ended up in private collections around the globe. Some of these panels are featured in the Grolier Catalog. While the monuments have provided extensive information on the role...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Erik Velásquez García.

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. Diversos hallazgos arqueológicos en Dzibanché (Kaanu'l) y en otros sitios de las tierras bajas mayas orientales han revelado que el asiento original de los gobernantes de la dinastía Kaanu'l o "Cabeza de Serpiente" se encontraba en el sur del actual estado mexicano de Quintana Roo. En esta...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Martha Adriana Saenz Serdio. Mikaela B. Razo.

El Proyecto Costa Escondida, quien a través de un equipo interdisciplinario dirigido por los doctores Jeffrey Glover y Dominique Rissolo ha explorado la costa norte de Quintana Roo desde el año 2005, excavó en su temporada 2017, dos montículos del sitio llamado Conil; este es uno de los dos asentamientos más grandes registrados en la costa norte involucrados en cierta medida, en el comercio costero de la época prehispánica. Las estructuras presentan distintas formas, tamaños y técnicas...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Holley Moyes. Harriet Beaubien. Erin Ray.

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. Over the past 30 years archaeologists have made large strides in understanding the function and meaning of ancient Maya ritual caves sites. Ethnographic analyses have made major contributions to interpretive efforts and advanced the field in innumerable ways. Throughout Mesoamerica, there have been many long-term sustained...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jill Onken. Jessica Munson. Andrés G. Mejía Ramón. Lorena Paiz.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Proximity to aquatic resources, rich soils, and transportation corridors can make riverine landscapes attractive settings for human occupation. Floodplains, however, are dynamic environments subject to flooding, erosion, and channel migration, which can dramatically transform the surrounding landscapes and create challenges for sedentary communities. The...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Joseph Dober. Rachel Cajigas. Alexandre Tokovinine. Aura Barrientos. Francisco Estrada-Belli.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Shallow geophysical prospecting methods have been underutilized in the Lowland Mayan regions due, in part, to the densely forested environment. Recent research at La Sufricaya, a Classic Maya site in the Homul region, has produced promising results using magnetic gradiometry to identify features buried below the plaza surface. Despite copious foliage and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Carolyn Freiwald. Kara Fulton. Nicholas Billstrand. Destiny Micklin.

The patio adjacent to the eastern structure of Group 1 at the site of Actuncan served as a burial ground for generations. At least twelve individuals in more than seven graves were buried at one of the oldest residential groups at the site during the Late Classic period (AD 600-900). Eastern structures were used to bury revered ancestors in the Belize River Valley, but nearly all of the Actuncan Group 1 burials were disturbed by later burials. When was it acceptable to disturb an ancestor, and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Joanne Baron.

At the time of Spanish contact, the Mesoamerican commercial economy was highly elaborated, with an interconnected system of marketplaces, a large variety of goods bought and sold as commodities, and the widespread use of currency in the form of cacao and woven textiles. While much of what we know of this economic system is provided by written records, the presence of large-scale marketplaces and currency can be traced into earlier periods using archaeological evidence. This evidence suggests...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Tiffany Lindley.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Investigations at Floodplain North of the San Lorenzo Survey Area, located in the hinterlands of Xunantunich, examined the political and economic behaviors of a community as the navigated major transformations of the Terminal Classic (780-950 AD) period. While causes of the Maya collapse, the abandonment of large centers, and the changes in elite culture...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Laura Levi.

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. Ancient Maya places were dynamic assemblages of people, the things that they made and used, and myriad material and immaterial affordances. Unfortunately, a simple enumeration of their components cannot account for the historical valence carried by places. In northwestern Belize, the multi-scalar operation of ritual may help clarify...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Charles Golden. Takeshi Inomata.

This is an abstract from the "Decipherment, Digs, and Discourse: Honoring Stephen Houston's Contributions to Maya Archaeology" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Throughout his decades of scholarship, Stephen Houston has fundamentally changed our understanding of Maya courtly life and community. He synergistically weaves results from groundbreaking decipherment and archaeological excavations like no other scholar in the field. His many publications...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Sean Daugherty. Alexander Vermillion. Garrett Jones. Timothy Hare.

We report the results of testing a UAV-borne LiDAR and multispectral mapping system for archaeological mapping and modeling at the city of Mayapán, Mexico, located 40km south of modern Mérida. Mayapán was the largest Postclassic political capital and was one of the most densely nucleated of all Maya cities. The initial test is in an area adjacent to the south side of Mayapán’s monumental center. Previous research indicates the existence of a dense and complex system of residential and public...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Thomas Crimmel. Yimeng Yan.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The ancient Maya center of El Pilar is a mid-sized settlement nestled on the ecotone dividing the central Peten and Belize river valley. With nearly half of the site consisting of seasonally inundated wetlands, defining the extent and nature of these areas is essential before interpreting El Pilar’s settlement patterns. Remotely sensed lidar and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Rafael Cobos.

This is an abstract from the "Regional and Intensive Site Survey: Case Studies from Mesoamerica" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. A systematic mapping program conducted at Chichen Itza, Yucatan, Mexico, revealed a considerable amount of archaeological as well as non-archaeological features distributed over the surface of several areas located in the site’s periphery. This program relied upon the traditional mapping method consisting in clearing the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jeremy McFarland. Marisol Cortes-Rincon.

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 processes and methods of relief visualization of LiDAR-derived digital elevation models (DEM’s) and classification of secondary data to identify archaeological remains on the Maya landscape in northwestern Belize. The basis of the research explores various GIS and cartographic techniques to visualize topographical relief. Graphic...