Mesoamerica: Maya lowlands (Geographic Keyword)

DOCUMENT Citation Only Robin Robertson.

Joseph Ball has devoted his professional career to masterfully determining how the ceramic complexes at one site related to those at another, generating models for Maya movements and prehistory from the identified similarities or differences between them. Following his example, this paper proposes to take the data from Cerro Maya in Northern Belize and correlate it with other sequences in the region to produce a carefully researched sequence for the region with specific attention to the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Takeshi Inomata. Daniela Triadan.

Excavations at Aguateca and Ceibal revealed a series of dense deposits associated with the ritual destruction of buildings. At Aguateca, such deposits were found in and around Structures M7-22 and M7-32 of the Palace Group, probable royal administrative-residential buildings. Excavators also unearthed similar deposits around Structures L8-6 and L8-7, temple pyramids in the Main Plaza. These deposits date to c. AD 810 when enemies attacked Aguateca. At Ceibal, dense deposits of broken objects...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Sherman Horn. Anabel Ford.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Ongoing research at El Pilar—an ancient Maya city located along the Belize/Guatemala frontier—has documented hundreds of landscape-modification features in the area surrounding the monumental civic center. The complexity and variety of these features, which include terraces, berms, quarries, check-dams, and aguadas, indicate the sophistication of Maya...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Eric Fries.

In the absence of LiDAR and similar high-resolution data products, an alternative approach was developed to model and predict site location information from low-resolution, publicly available datasets such as ASTER, LANDSAT, and aerial photographs. Manipulating and combining the analyses of multiple datasets permits refinement of modeling and detection capabilities. A large database of known sites, in assorted topographic and vegetative conditions and degrees of exposure, was used as a...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Lori Phillips. Erin Thornton. Eleanor Harrison-Buck.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Stable isotope analysis of carbon (13C/12C) and nitrogen (15N/14N) are often used to reconstruct ancient Maya diets. While these two isotopes provide us with a broad understanding of past subsistence practices, carbon and nitrogen are limited in their ability to differentiate freshwater and terrestrial based diets. Similar problems exist in other areas of the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Arianne Boileau.

Identifying formation processes of shallow archaeological sites can be difficult. At Lamanai, Belize, the main problem consists of distinguishing between pre- and post-Spanish contact deposits buried at a depth of 10 to 60 cm. Evidence of interaction with the Spanish includes a few European objects and two Christian churches. However, identifying pre-contact deposits is more challenging. Maya archaeologists typically rely on ceramic typology to establish chronology, but the main pottery type in...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Maia Dedrick. Luke Auld-Thomas.

This is an abstract from the "Multispecies Frameworks in Archaeological Interpretation: Human-Nonhuman Interactions in the Past, Part I" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This paper considers the development of agriculture and society in northeastern Yucatán, Mexico, drawing on evidence from lidar imaging, paleoethnobotany, and isotopic studies. We focus on geological features known as dolines, sinkholes, or rejolladas—round, low areas that dot the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Meaghan Peuramaki-Brown. Shawn Morton. Antonio Beardall.

This is an abstract from the "“The Center and the Edge”: How the Archaeology of Belize Is Foundational for Understanding the Ancient Maya, Part II" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Archaeological heritage management (AHM) involves identifying, protecting, managing, and preserving material remains of past human activity. In Belize, the Institute of Archaeology-NICH oversees AHM, including archaeological permitting, artifact management (including...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Sheryl Luzzadder-Beach. Timothy Beach. Colin Doyle. Greta Wells.

This is an abstract from the "Ancient Maya Landscapes in Northwestern Belize, Part II" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This research seeks to understand the interconnections and interactions of the water resources of Northwestern Belize, via its contributing Three Rivers Watersheds. The Three Rivers Watersheds drain Guatemala, Mexico, and Belize via the Rio Azul/Blue Creek, Rio Bravo, and Booths River systems. These Three Rivers merge to form the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Chelsea Fisher.

Tzacauil is a small archaeological site in the hinterlands of Yaxuná, a major center in the central Yucatán region of the northern Maya lowlands. Excavations of Tzacauil’s nine house groups suggest that a community formed here twice: first during the Late Formative period (250 BCE – 250 CE) and again in the Terminal Classic period (700 – 1100 CE). Both of these occupations coincide with population peaks at nearby Yaxuná. Judging by the ample open spaces surrounding the site’s house groups,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Sherman Horn. Anabel Ford.

Survey at the ancient Maya center El Pilar, along the border between Belize and Guatemala, has incorporated LiDAR imagery since 2013, allowing expansive – yet targeted – coverage of settlement beyond the monumental core. Successive field seasons have revealed a complex picture of landscape modification, resource extraction, and settlement concentration in different micro-environmental zones around the city center. Our fieldwork in 2017 had three foci: 1) explore and map the Amatal Supercluster,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Laura Elena Sotelo Santos.

This is an abstract from the "Adventures in Beekeeping: Recent Studies in Ecology, Archaeology, History, and Ethnography in Yucatán" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. La evidencia escrita más completa sobre el cultivo de abejas en el mundo maya procede del libro jeroglífico prehispánico denominado Códice Tro-Cortesiano. En los almanaques de las abejas que están en las páginas 89b y 103 a la 112 hay abundante información sobre diversos aspectos de la...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Madeline Snyder.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. There has been a long history of settlement and household archaeology in the Belize River valley that has added significantly to our understanding of everyday people in the Maya lowlands. Recent studies that include LiDAR provide a broader landscape perspective. LiDAR can also be useful in determining labor investment in domestic architecture through...

DOCUMENT Citation Only James Meierhoff.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In 1879, the Guatemalan Secretary of Agriculture Salvador Valenzuela saw the damage to the temples of Tikal by the removal of many of its carved wooden lintels, and observed that; “The beams of the doors of these towers, which form the lintels of the doors, were pulled out by a foreign doctor [Gustave Bernoulli] the year before last, and that which time...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Edwin Roman-Ramirez.

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. During the first centuries of the CE, the Maya Lowlands underwent many changes in its political landscape, which were caused by the abandonment of the main Formative centers, including El Palmar, which was the most powerful center in the Buenavista Valley. Taking advantage of these compulsive times, Tikal begins to become the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Chrissina C. Burke. Katie K. Tappan. Gavin B. Wisner. Julie Hoggarth. J. Britt Davis.

Deciphering middens, feasting, ritual, or terminal deposits in the Maya world requires an evaluation of faunal remains. Maya archaeologists have been and continue to evaluate other artifacts classes, but often simply offer NISP values for skeletal elements recovered from these deposits. To further understand their archaeological significance, we analyzed faunal materials from deposits at the sites of Baking Pot and Xunantunich in the Upper Belize River Valley. We identified the species, bone...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Taylor Lawhon. David Mixter.

In 2012, excavations were conducted within a Late Classic noble palace at the ancient Maya site of Actuncan, located in western Belize. Remains of a large deposit of Terminal Classic materials were recovered from a corner of the palace’s primary courtyard. Based on its location on the courtyard surface and below collapse, the deposit was assumed to date to the period of the palace’s abandonment. The placement of this deposit was contemporary with Actuncan’s 9th-century renaissance as a...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Sarah Kurnick.

This is an abstract from the "Democratizing Heritage Creation: How-To and When" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Collaborative archaeological approaches recognize that partnerships between archaeologists and members of descendant communities can potentially democratize heritage production and foster a more inclusive—and thus more accurate—understanding of the past. Nevertheless, descendant communities are often themselves hierarchical. Inequalities...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Megan O'Neil. Nawa Sugiyama. Gilberto Pérez Roldán. Laura Maccarelli. Yosi Pozeilov.

This is an abstract from the "From Materials to Materiality: Analysis and Interpretation of Archaeological and Historical Artifacts Using Non-destructive and Micro/Nano-sampling Scientific Methods" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This paper reviews our interdisciplinary study examining a set of carved deer bones comprising what appears to be a weaving or sewing kit for an ancient Maya royal woman bearing the Sa’ emblem glyph associated with...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jessica MacLellan. Daniela Triadan.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. We analyze 253 Late and Terminal Classic (c. AD 600-950) Maya ceramic figurine whistles (ocarinas) and fragments excavated at Ceibal, Guatemala, as materials of socialization. The figurines are mold-made and represent repeating characters. Based on mortuary contexts and other evidence, we argue they were used in household performances and associated with...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Borislava Simova.

This is an abstract from the "The Preclassic Landscape in the Mopan Valley, Belize" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. One of the earliest known examples of permanent architecture in the Maya Lowlands, a distinctive plaza-structure complex known as an E Group, is also one of the most commonly encountered architectural groups present within Preclassic sites throughout the region. The rapid adoption of permanent architecture and widespread...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Nadia Neff. Keith M Prufer. Geraldine Busquest-Vass. Erin Ray. Seth Newsome.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The middle-late Holocene in southern Belize saw shifts in subsistence strategies, including the introduction of managed plants and animals. Botanical and stable isotope data have been used to track the introduction of agricultural products into human diets, with maize first consumed before 7,000 cal. BP. However, the timing of the introduction of managed...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Esteban Herrera-Parra. Melanie Pugliese. Shanti Morell-Hart.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Over the past few decades, understandings of cuisine in the Maya area have been radically amplified by the use of new techniques. Some methods offer the opportunity to directly connect artifacts and features with actual plant food residues. The ability to recover microscopic residues of food from sediments, artifacts, and human teeth has revealed not only...

DOCUMENT Citation Only E. Moises Herrera-Parra. Melanie Pugliese. Shanti Morell-Hart.

This is an abstract from the "Advances in Macrobotanical and Microbotanical Archaeobotany Part 1" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Over the past few decades, understandings of cuisine in the Maya area have been radically amplified with the use of new techniques. Some methods offer the opportunity to directly connect artifacts and features with actual plant food residues. The ability to recover microscopic residues of food from sediments, artifacts,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Shane Montgomery.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Over the past decade, aerial lidar (Light Detection and Ranging) technology has transformed understanding of prehistoric landscape modifications throughout the Maya Lowlands, including the Late Classic (A.D. 700—900) center of Las Cuevas. The site, situated on the southeastern edge of the Vaca Plateau in western Belize, is not immense, but is distinguished...