Mesoamerica: Maya lowlands (Geographic Keyword)

DOCUMENT Citation Only Timothy Pugh. Evelyn Chan. Katherine Miller Wolf.

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 1718, Bishop Juan Gómez de Pareda, the 20th bishop of Yucatan, consecrated a number of bells destined for churches in what is now Petén, Guatemala. At least two of these bells swung in the San Bernabé mission church. The mission was established on the western end of the Tayasal peninsula in Petén, Guatemala...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Ernesto Arredondo. Luke Auld-Thomas.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Maya Lowlands have been a focus of human development across millennia, and the impact of Maya civilization on this tropical environment has been a focus of sustained research and intense debate. It has become common to discuss environmental crises and societal collapse in the region as analogous to contemporary socio-environmental problems. However, the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jeffrey DeMario.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. A petrographic analysis was conducted on sherd samples from the small prehistoric Maya site of Hun Tun, located in the hinterlands of the larger elite polity, La Milpa, in Northwestern Belize. Hun Tun contains a chultun, an archaeological feature in the ground which was filled with a clay which was lacking in inclusions. Dr. Robyn Dodge, the archaeologist who...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Estevan Ramirez. Kenichiro Tsukamoto.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The application of photogrammetry has been a growing interest in archaeological research. Among different archaeological contexts, burials highlight the effectiveness of photogrammetric for fieldwork. This poster aims to represent how the combination of photogrammetry, total station, and GIS document mortuary contexts in the most efficient manner, not only...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jessica Moss.

Photogrammetry can be used to reconstruct the excavation process in a way that aids in both interpretation and education. By peeling back the layers of each excavation level, three-dimensional documentation of the excavation process reveals both the archaeological materials and their context at various stages of excavation. This interdisciplinary tool can also be georeferenced with GIS and used within 3D modeling programs to extend its visualization applications into virtual or augmented reality...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Sarah Kurnick.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Photography is a ubiquitous part of our daily lives and a pervasive feature of archaeological practice. For over a century, photographs have fostered interest in archaeology and offered a means to document artifacts, sites, and excavations. Perhaps because of its prevalence, archaeological photography is often taken for granted and only occasionally examined...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Cameron McNeil. Edy Barrios. Mauricio Díaz García. Agapito Carballo. Samuel Pinto.

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. This paper explores evidence of women’s ritual practice at Río Amarillo, a site located 20 km from the Classic period center of Copan. While the ritual activities of royal women are largely hidden from view in Copan’s Acropolis, excavations at the site of Río Amarillo and in the groups surrounding it uncovered two contexts that were particularly...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jacob Welch.

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. During the Late Classic period, ancient excavators at an elite residence at Ucanha, Yucatan, Mexico, broke through several stucco floors and peeled away rocky fill before partially exposing two earlier buildings dating back to the Late Preclassic. Centuries separated the initial burial of these Preclassic buildings and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Franco Rossi. Heather Hurst.

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 2010, archaeologists of the San Bartolo-Xultun Project began investigations of an acropolis complex located at the northern limit of the urban center of Xultun, designated "Los Arboles." The penultimate phase of the complex, dating to the Early Classic period (likely fifth century AD), included extensive preserved...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Luke Stroth. Mario Borrero. Geoffrey Braswell.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. We describe the paleobotanical collection from Nim li Punit (AD 150 to 830), a small-scale center in the Toledo District, Belize. The samples were collected from Structure 50, a range building that we interpret to be a Late Classic (AD 700 to 830) elite domestic context. This was a time of growth and change for Nim li Punit, where new construction coincided...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Leah McCurdy. M. Kathryn Brown.

In 2016, we discovered a sage’s chamber in the El Castillo acropolis at the ancient Maya site of Xunantunich, Belize. In the Late Classic Tut Building on the east side of El Castillo, all interior and exterior plaster walls are incised with "graffiti." The total number of elements documented is nearly 300 with themes ranging from human and animal forms to glyphs and multi-figure scenes. We expect to encounter more in future field seasons. Based on a variety of factors, we view this as practice...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Cynthia Kristan-Graham.

An archaeology of the senses expands the understanding of physical, tangible aspects of place to include qualities that are unseen, silent, or otherwise not readily perceptible. My paper analyzes acoustics at the late Maya capital of Chichen Itza. Sound—especially the human voice, animals, music, ritual, and dancing—were part of Chichen Itza’s atmosphere. An analysis of soundscapes, along with the intersection of architecture, planning, and acoustics, augments what is known about the site’s...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jaroslaw Zralka. Bernard Hermes. Carmen Ting. Christophe Helmke. Wieslaw Koszkul.

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. Archaeological investigations at Nakum (an important Maya site located in northeastern Guatemala) brought about the discovery of many monochrome and polychrome ceramics in many different architectural contexts. The style of ceramics supplemented in many cases by mineralogical...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Verónica Vázquez López. Felix Kuppat. Kathryn Reese-Taylor. Armando Anaya Hernández.

This is an abstract from the "Regimes of the Ancient Maya" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The history of the Kanu’l dynasty and their Late Classic regime at Calakmul has been researched extensively since the 1990s. The most recent insights into the earlier episodes of Kanu’l politics have emphasized that their seat of power during the Early Classic was Dzibanche and that it was a powerful faction that took power in Calakmul in the early seventh...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Alyce De Carteret. Diana Magaloni Kerpel.

This is an abstract from the "Polychromy, Multimediality, and Visual Complexity in Mesoamerican Art" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Maya polychrome ceramics have long been regarded for the distinctive regional styles that emerged during the Late Classic period (ca. 600–900 CE). These styles, aligned with royal workshops and their patrons, encompass a wide range of aesthetic strategies, particularly with respect to color. Some workshops and their...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Takeshi Inomata.

This is an abstract from the "Constructing Chronologies I: Stratification and Correlation" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Archaeologists working in the Maya area face multiple challenges as they develop chronological studies. First, many sites are complex urban centers with diverse types of structures and areas. Second, these sites commonly have long occupation, involving migrations, destructions of buildings, and recycling of construction...

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

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. Caracol, Belize, is among the largest known ancient Maya cities. Its urban area spans some 200 km2 and is integrated by a series of radial causeways that connect outlying public architecture and plazas to the central hub. The entire landscape is covered by residential settlement and agricultural...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Nathan Meissner.

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. The Late Postclassic and Early Contact Periods (A.D. 1400-1697) of central Petén and western Belize are typically characterized by intensive interaction and migration during a time of shifting geo-political divisions. One of the divisions in Belize known as Dzuluinikob (loosely,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Sebastian Salgado-Flores.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Over the last several decades, research in anthracology (the study of charcoal recovered from archaeological sites) has become increasingly relevant to our understanding of human-environment dynamics. The field’s understanding of human fuelwood collection is currently based on a model guided by the “Principle of Least Effort,” which expects wood gatherers to...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Phyllis Johnson.

This is an abstract from the "Advances in Obsidian Studies of the Old and New Worlds" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Archaeologists have been using agent-based modelling (ABM) to re-create prehistoric social, economic, and political processes, along with prehistoric environments since the first publication of the model commonly known as "Artificial Anasazi." Very few archaeologists have attempted to model prehistoric lithic technology, however,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only William Gilstrap. Michael Callaghan. Daniel Pierce.

This is an abstract from the "Where Is Provenance? Bridging Method, Evidence, and Theory for the Interpretation of Local Production" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Formal studies of archaeological pottery have moved far beyond traditional typological approaches through applications of complementary instrumental analyses, borrowed mainly from the Natural Sciences. No contemporary study of archaeological pottery is complete without some form of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kazuo Aoyama.

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. I discuss the results of a diachronic analysis of lithic artifacts collected from Ceibal, Guatemala, in order to elucidate long-term patterns and changes in the Preclassic and Classic Maya exchange, craft production and ritual practices. The interregional exchange of large polyhedral cores of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Justin Bracken.

A third season of fieldwork at the fortified site of Muralla de León has expanded the scope of coverage for the project by mapping and excavating nearby hilltop occupations on the shores of Lake Macanché. The work serves to contextualize the space contained by the site’s enceinte, a physical barrier that serves also as a boundary feature. Earlier investigations into the site interior and the ramparts of the enceinte itself begged for a comparative data set, as the significance of a barrier...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Mary Jane Acuña. Carlos Chiriboga. Varinia Matute. Francisco Castañeda.

The site of El Tintal, located in northern Petén, Guatemala, provides early evidence of monumental construction, initiating with the large-scale transformation of the landscape in preparation for the site’s ceremonial core, followed by construction programs consisting of pyramids, elevated causeways, and a diversity of hydraulic features. Recent investigations at El Tintal have shed light on its Preclassic settlement, organized around what we propose was an ancient lagoon which settlers...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Alessandra Villarreal.

Understanding the organization of ancient ceramic production and distribution patterns can provide archaeologists a means of exploring past economies. Recent studies have shown that petrographic analysis can be operationalized to detect variability in production recipes, distribution of production groups across a landscape, and even producer-specific material choices. Ceramicists working in the Maya lowlands have demonstrated the benefit of using petrographic analysis in conjunction with other...