Mesoamerica: Maya lowlands (Geographic Keyword)

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 Asli Erem.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Throughout thousands of years, various civilizations and groups have depicted their beliefs on objects and architecture. Maya rulers are an example in how architecture, extravagant costumes, jewelry, weaponry, ceramics were used to emphasize their title as ajaw.Ajaw, the title for a ruler which represents the king’s massive authority for their people...

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...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kazuo Aoyama.

This is an abstract from the "Aguada Fénix and the Middle Usumacinta Region: Interregional Interactions and Social Transformations in the Middle Preclassic Period" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This paper discusses the results of my diachronic analysis of lithic artifacts collected in Aguada Fénix and its neighboring sites in the Middle Usumacinta region, Mexico, in order to elucidate one aspect of long-term changing patterns in the Preclassic...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Clarissa Cagnato.

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. Paleoethnobotanical evidence, in conjunction with other archaeological data, provides key information regarding ancient practices. This paper presents the results of microbotanical analyses —specifically the study of starch grains—carried out on diverse Preclassic Maya archaeological...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Michael Callaghan. Brigitte Kovacevich. Rachel Gill. Karla Cardona.

Recent research in the Maya lowlands has shown that "E-Group" architectural complexes were intricately tied to the development of complex society during the Middle Preclassic period (900 BC – 300 BC). First identified at the site of Uaxactun, Guatemala, E-Group complexes consist of a western radial platform and eastern range structure. For many years Maya archaeologists believed E-Groups functioned primarily as celestial observatories. However, recent data have shown E-groups were the locus of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Michael Smyth.

Some of the earliest and largest monumental architecture in the Puuc Hills are found at the Maya center of Xcoch. Noted by John Stephens in 1841 as a large city with a deep water cave and gigantic pyramid, Xcoch is among a host of Puuc sites now dated to the Preclassic period. An interdisciplinary research program at Xcoch and vicinity from 2006 to 2013 revealed Preclassic Maya community patterns, megalithic architecture, and material culture for a developing complex society. Massive high...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Miguel García Mollinedo.

This is an abstract from the "Aguada Fénix and the Middle Usumacinta Region: Interregional Interactions and Social Transformations in the Middle Preclassic Period" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In the Middle Usumacinta region, located in southeastern Mexico, multiple standardized architectural complexes dated from the Middle Preclassic (1000–00 BC) have been detected with the use of lidar technology. Of these complexes, three belong to the Middle...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Autumn Rose. Kitty Emery. Robert Guralnick.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Human-caused environmental changes and their effects on the Classic Maya continue to be topics of vital research importance. Zooarchaeological data can provide valuable inferences about ancient Maya environments but must be assessed with care. In the Maya area, habitat fidelity models use high predator abundances to indicate the local presence of the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Ken Seligson. Soledad Ortiz Ruiz. Luis Barba Pingarrón.

Burnt lime has played a significant role in daily Maya life since at least as far back as 1100 BC, and yet its ephemeral nature has limited archaeological studies of its production and distribution. The application of new surveying and remote sensing technologies in recent decades is now allowing for a more in-depth investigation of the burnt lime industries that existed in different sub-regions of the Maya area. In this talk, we present an overview of the current understanding of Prehispanic...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Thomas Hart. Fisher Zban.

This is an abstract from the "Prehispanic Maya Marketplace Investigations in the Three Rivers Region of Belize: First Results" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Archaeobotanical analysis of Late Classic Maya remains is a rapidly growing field of study. While much has been written about the different types of plants that the Maya used, very little is known about how and where these plants were traded and their connection to regional integration and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Lucas Martindale Johnson.

This is an abstract from the "Households at Aventura: Life and Community Longevity at an Ancient Maya City" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Household investigations at Aventura recovered several primary stone materials common in northern Belize and elsewhere in the Maya Lowlands. Chert and chalcedony is common as well as a high relative proportion of obsidian indicating households had reliable access to tool stone. Ready and reliable access...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Alejandra Alonso. Gregory Smith.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This paper centers on the analysis of shell, lithics, and ceramics recovered from the ancient Maya community of Santa Cruz, located 3 km south of the secondary site of Ichmul de Morley in northern Yucatán. Ichmul de Morley appears to have had an expansive growth during the Late and Terminal Classic periods that might have encouraged local development of nearby...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Marcello Canuto. Luke Auld-Thomas.

Located in the northwestern Petén, Guatemala, the Maya sites of La Corona and El Achiotal have been investigated since 2008 by a multi-disciplinary US and Guatemalan research project. While a primary goal of this project has been to reconstruct the region’s political history, we have also investigated the management of local resources and general human impact on the landscape. In 2016, a LIDAR survey, funded by the Pacunam Foundation and operated by NCALM, was undertaken in a 410 square km...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Anna Bishop.

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 preliminary results of excavations at La Luna, a residential group outside of the El Zotz core. Initial investigations from this Late Classic complex yielded a large volume of high-quality polychrome sherds and prestige items that are inconsistent with the simple architecture of the group. The source of these materials and the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only David Hyde. Fred Valdez Jr..

This is an abstract from the "Prehispanic Maya Marketplace Investigations in the Three Rivers Region of Belize: First Results" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. With support from a National Science Foundation Grant, fieldwork was conducted at the Ancient Maya site of La Milpa, located in the northwest corner of the Three Rivers Region. Archaeological matrix samples were collected from three areas within La Milpa for soil analysis as a method for...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kelsey Sullivan. Kenichiro Tsukamoto.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In this paper, we present new research on the lithic production community of Took’ Witz, a hinterland group near the ancient Maya polity of El Palmar in Campeche, Mexico. While previous research at Took’ Witz focused on large-scale utilitarian lithic production, recent investigations provide insight into people’s daily lives. Through excavations at three...

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

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Lithicists use various attributes of chipped stone tools to characterize hunter-gatherer technological organization, which is thought to be partly determined by mobility patterns of these groups; thus, lithic attributes serve as proxies for the amount and type of mobility practiced. In particular, lithic platform preparation has received attention as an...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Sebastian Salgado-Flores.

How did Postclassic Maya communities decide which tree species to harvest for firewood and timber in a diverse forest environment? Most studies of ancient tree selection have used the principles of optimal foraging to construct a baseline of expectations for interpreting archaeological charcoal datasets. This paper will explore the implications of such a model on the interpretation of wood charcoals from the site of La Punta in Chiapas, Mexico, while also considering how the political structure...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Michael Prout.

Two chambers in Midnight Terror Cave, Belize show undeniable evidence of Maya child sacrifice. Operation V and Operation VIII are the deepest darkest chambers of the cave where some of the most important of ancient Maya rites were performed including human sacrifice. In 2009 Ann Scott proposed that sacrifices occurred in Operation VIII and, during ritual cleaning of this public space in preparation for a new ceremony, the bones were taken from their primary deposition site and moved to Operation...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Brett A. Houk.

The Chan Chich Archaeological Project has documented two types of terminal, above floor "problematic" artifact deposits in a number of different locations and contexts at the site of Chan Chich, Belize. The first type comprises light scatters of "exotic" ceramics and other artifacts on the steps to range buildings in epicentral courtyards. The second type is a dense artifact deposit in an ashy matrix at the base of a platform face in a hilltop, elite courtyard. Compositionally, the second type...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Marieka Brouwer Burg. Eleanor Harrison-Buck. Samantha Krause.

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. There are many persistent issues that hamper archaeological interpretations of human-landscape interactions, from modern-day disturbances to more distant postdepositional processes and changing environmental conditions. These circumstances often make it a challenge to tease out cultural behaviors and the resulting...