Mesoamerica: Maya lowlands (Geographic Keyword)

DOCUMENT Citation Only Arlen Chase. Diane Chase. Adrian Chase.

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. Human-nature relationships are key to understanding past societal developments. The value of conducting transdisciplinary research, involving new methods and other investigators, has become increasingly apparent as the field of Maya Studies has matured. While there has continued to be a significant increase in the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Nicholas Suarez. Claire Ebert. John Walden. Julie Hoggarth. Jaime Awe.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Studies of ancient Maya commodities have focused on elite control of economic institutions, yet goods were mobilized at different levels of the social hierarchy to support the growth of broader economic institutions. Here we present the results of portable x-ray fluorescence (pXRF) analyses of over 4000 obsidian artifacts from Preclassic to Terminal...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Frank Tzib. John Walden. James Mesh. Christina Warinner. Jaime Awe.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. New archaeological aDNA approaches have the potential to dramatically change our understanding of the ancient Maya but it is important that living Maya people are aware of the research, provide their thoughts and input, and give their consent given the involvement of ancestral human remains. This poster presents the ongoing interview based consultation...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Brigitte Kovacevich. Michael Callaghan. Karla Cardona. Rodrigo Guzman.

This is an abstract from the "Holtun: Investigations at a Preclassic Maya Center" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The archaeological site of Holtun, Guatemala has been documented as an intermediate-sized Maya center with occupation spanning the Middle Preclassic through Terminal Classic periods. The site is situated approximately 35 km southwest of Tikal and 12.3 km to the south of Yaxha. The formal site consists of a monumental epicenter built...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Luis Martos. Sergio Grosjean.

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. The "ejidatarios" of Cuzama in Yucatán have developed a community tourist complex on the lands of the ancient hacienda of the same name, where they opened three cenotes. This work presents the first results of a survey carried out in a recently discovered cave and cenote known as Xaan Chan, where there are notable paintings...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Eleanor Harrison-Buck.

This is an abstract from the "Archaeology and the History of Human-Environment Interaction in the Lower Belize River Watershed" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This paper situates the results of 10 years of archaeological investigations by the Belize River East Archaeology (BREA) project, beginning more than 10,000 years ago in the preceramic period. We have also documented ample Maya occupation, including their settlement, production activities,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Marcia Chacon De Hernandez.

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. Investigaciones en el Grupo Sereque han enfocado en la estructura principal conocida como Edificio 5A7.1 del Grupo Sereque, que corresponde al complejo La Danta. El grupo esta ubicada al norte sobre una elevación y área de cantera y está conectado directamente a la primera plataforma de la Danta por una calzada de...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Tucker Austin.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Despite more than a century of intensive archaeological research, factors leading to the Classic Maya Collapse continue to be debated by Maya archaeologists. This presentation discusses the Classic Maya Collapse and its effects on the people of Xunantunich, Belize. Investigations from the 2018 field season, carried out by the Belize Valley Archaeological...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Daniel Conley. Rissa Trachman.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Finding evidence of an ancient Maya marketplace is difficult due to the perishability of telltale materials such as food, textiles, and wooden stalls in the tropical environment of northwestern Belize. Therefore, multiple lines of evidence including material culture, stratigraphy, soil chemistry, and spatial analysis are essential in identifying possible...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Evan Parker.

This is an abstract from the "The Bolonchen Regional Archaeological Project: 25 Years of Research in the Puuc" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Research conducted by the Bolonchen Regional Archaeological Project over the last several decades has firmly established the presence of Middle Preclassic occupations across the Puuc region. Survey and excavation at sites such as Xocnaceh, Yaxhom, and Kiuic have identified and confirmed the antiquity of a...

DOCUMENT Citation Only George J. Micheletti. Terry Powis. Norbert Stanchly.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Since the discovery of Stela 6 in the mid-1980s, the weathered remains of this Early Classic period carved stone monument continue to lie in the main plaza at Pacbitun, displaced in antiquity. Re-exposed in 2003, epigraphic analysis verified the monument’s AD 485 Long Count date—confirming it as one of the earliest carved stelae in the Maya lowlands—and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Wendy Layco.

This is an abstract from the "Studies in Mesoamerican Subterranean Archaeology" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Some 75 m southwest of the Las Monjas complex at Chichen Itza and just west of Sacbe No. 7, lie a series of eleven sascaberas that are shown schematically on the Carnegie map. While ceiling collapse has undoubtedly occurred in the millennium since their creation, some, such as Sascabera #2, have an extensive enclosed dark zone space. In...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Erin Ray. Holley Moyes.

The ancient Maya site of Las Cuevas, in Western Belize features a cave system that runs beneath the main plaza. Investigations by the Las Cuevas Archaeological Reconnaissance project suggest that the site functioned as a Late Classic ritual pilgrimage venue and that the cave was used for large public centrally-organized performances. The cathedral-like cave entrance contains monumental architecture consisting of at least 76 plastered platforms. I hypothesize that the level of managerial...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Yasmine Flynn-Arajdal. Katherine Miller Wolf. Carolyn Freiwald. Christina Halperin.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Ucanal, is an archeological site situated in the Petén area of the southern Maya Lowlands. Close to the modern-day border between Guatemala and Belize, it is situated on the Mopan River which seems to have facilitated the trade of objects between different neighboring sites. While we know that this site was a nexus for the movement of goods from afar, less is...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Rick Smith. Angelina Locker. Austin Reynolds. Diane Chase. Arlen Chase.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Santa Rita Corozal, hereafter known as Chactemal, is a Maya site located in what is now northern Belize on the coast of Chetumal Bay. Chactemal was home to some of the earliest known Maya peoples in northern Belize during the Middle Preclassic (~800-300 BCE), was continuously occupied throughout all subsequent phases of Maya chronology, grew to become an...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Richard Paine. Richard Hansen. Carlos Morales-Aguilar. Kevin Johnston.

El Mirador, in the northern Peten, has redefined our ideas about the Maya Preclassic. Its massive architecture and its complex system of sacbes compare to the largest Classic period centers. Unlike many of its smaller Preclassic neighbors, El Mirador collapsed at the dawn of the Classic. Understanding El Mirador’s organization, economy, and relationship to its environment requires detailed knowledge of the site’s population trajectory. Reconstructing El Mirador’s population trajectory, we face a...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Alana Pengilley. Fred Valdez Jr..

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The distribution of prehistoric artifacts across spatial and temporal realms is frequently used to investigate trade, exchange, mobility, and socioeconomic relationships in the past. In the Maya region, chert was a key component in ancient toolkits due to its widespread availability and suitability for knapping into tools. Previous studies in the Maya...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Donald Slater. Ryan Collins.

During 2011 excavations deep beneath the petroglyph panels in Aktun Kuruxtun, Mexico, members of the Central Yucatan Archaeological Cave Project (CYAC) uncovered a small tunnel leading into a previously unknown chamber of the cavern. The discovery came in the final days of the field season, however, and the chamber was too choked with flood sediments to be methodologically investigated. As a result, the passage was reburied. Last summer, CYAC returned to the cave and successfully explored the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Alexandre Tokovinine. Sandra Balanzario Granados. Dmitri Beliaev. Clara Alexander. Dana Moot.

This is an abstract from the "The Rise and Apogee of the Classic Maya Kaanu’l Hegemonic State at Dzibanche" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Re-documentation and analysis of inscribed monuments from the archaeological site of Dzibanche and its vicinity have revealed new details of the history of the Kaanu’l polity during the Classic period. The presentation centers in particular on the narratives recovered from the hieroglyphic stairways of El...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Tomas Barrientos. Marcello Canuto. David Stuart.

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. Over the past two decades it has become increasingly clear that the ancient Maya political landscape was permeated by regional systems of political asymmetry. These hegemonic networks fluctuated through time, but the steady presence of a few especially dominant polities shows that they were a...

DOCUMENT Citation Only John Douglass. Ellen Bell. Samuel Connell.

This is an abstract from the "I Love Sherds and Parasites: A Festschrift in Honor of Pat Urban and Ed Schortman" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Since the 1980s, the Kenyon-Honduras Program, under the leadership of Drs. Patricia Urban and Edward Schortman (P&E to us), has engaged students in the study of archaeology, anthropology, and life. Hundreds of students have been a part of the program over the past several decades. Being in the program...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Tiffany Cain.

In this paper, I explore the ways in which albarradas, or the dry-laid enclosure walls ubiquitous to Yucatec Maya towns, can be manipulated to become defensive structures under the threat of attack. I discuss the results of a recent study that conducted a construction analysis on a series of wall features in the now unpopulated town of Tela – an auxiliary to and key commercial throughway for the burgeoning frontier hub of Tihosuco (since repopulated) during the 19th century. This town was...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Whittaker Schroder. Socorro Jimenez Alvarez.

Though today the Usumacinta River marks part of the boundary of Mexico and Guatemala, during the Classic period the Usumacinta would have passed through numerous kingdoms, including Piedras Negras and Yaxchilan. Alternate travel routes through the valleys to the west in Mexico crossed an even more complicated political landscape approaching the kingdoms of Palenque, Tonina, and Sak Tz’i’, as well as the plentiful minor centers and rural settlements throughout the region. While surveys between...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Celine Gillot. Christina Halperin.

This is an abstract from the "Crafting Culture: Thingselves, Contexts, Meanings" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. One of the underlying precepts of materiality is that, whereas people make objects, objects simultaneously and recursively make people. Objects also make objects, however, in so far as seemingly separate crafting traditions were intimately entangled with each other, stimulating and reinforcing similar procedures, practices, and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Dorie Reents-Budet. Ronald L. Bishop. Christophe Helmke. Julie Hoggarth.

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. Painted and carved pictorial pottery of the Classic Maya (250-850 CE) served primarily as ostentatious serving vessels at feasts and other principal celebrations. The vessels were masterful creations by accomplished artisans and are, for the most part, individualistic...