Mesoamerica: Maya lowlands (Geographic Keyword)
51-75 (1,004 Records)
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. Xnoha is a small Maya center in northwestern Belize that has seen two phases of investigation since it was recorded in 1990. While current research is largely focused on the Central Precinct or kawik, we have also invested much energy in the outlying groups of monumental architecture and settlement. Xnoha is located in a heavily...
An Animal Kingdom at Chichen Itza, Yucatan, Mexico (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Animal Symbolism in Postclassic Mesoamerica: Papers in Honor of Cecelia Klein" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. At the Postclassic Maya city of Chichen Itza, buildings, planned spaces, and imagery blend with the landscape to form meta-narratives. One instance is the Sacred Cenote, a limestone sinkhole that was a major focus of rituals. The cenote rim features frogs/toads carved from the living rock, and at one time...
Animal Management of the Late Classic Maya at Copán, Honduras, Using Stable Isotope Analysis (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In the late nineteenth century, Harvard Peabody Museum excavations at the Classic Maya site of Copán, Honduras, identified a large deposit of animal bones in structure 10L-36, a platform located in the El Cementerio area of Copán’s Late Classic Palace Complex. Primarily associated with the eighth–ninth-century CE reign of Yax Pahsaj, 10L-36 is thought to...
Animal Manifestations of the Creator Deities in the Maya Codices and the Popol Vuh (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Animal Symbolism in Postclassic Mesoamerica: Papers in Honor of Cecelia Klein" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Scholars have long recognized that certain Mesoamerican deities appear in animal as well as anthropomorphic form. The Maya creator Itzamna, for example, has aspects corresponding to a bird, a turtle, and an alligator, while the aged "God L" may be linked to the opossum in its anthropomorphic form (Pawah-Ooch),...
Animal Use in the Last Maya Kingdom (2018)
The archaeological site of Flores is a small, lacustrine island located in Northern Guatemala. Despite lacking in physical size, the island has a lengthy occupational history, dating from the Preclassic Maya period through the present. Flores, which became a provincial capital during the late Postclassic, was able to resist Spanish rule until 1697 AD, making it the last Maya holdout. Given this distinction, the island has been under much archaeological scrutiny and the subject of many...
Animal, Human, and Crafted Bone from the S-Sector of Piedras Negras (2018)
Excavations within the S-Sector at Piedras Negras in 2016 yielded an assemblage of lithic and bone artifacts consistent with evidence of craft production. The Proyecto Paisaje Piedras Negras – Yaxchilan returned to the S-Sector during the 2017 field season to conduct more extensive excavations in an attempt to understand production and exchange at this Maya polity capital. Between the 2016 and 2017 seasons, over 4,300 fragments of worked and unworked bone, both human and animal, were excavated...
The Anthropogenic Wetlands of Northwestern Belize: Decades of Research and New Horizons for Study (2023)
This is an abstract from the "2023 Fryxell Award Symposium: Papers in Honor of Timothy Beach Part II" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. It is now clear that wetlands were critical resources for populations throughout human history in the Maya Lowlands of Belize and adjacent regions, and that these wetlands serve as important ecosystems and cultural heritage zones today. In northwestern Belize, decades of research have transformed our understanding of...
Application of the Geospatial Method to On-Floor Assemblages: A Case Study from the Classic Maya City of El Palmar, Mexico (2021)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. On-floor assemblages provide clues as to how complex administrative and domestic activities interplayed within a structure. By combining photogrammetry, total station and GIS, we developed a geospatial method that plotted each on-floor remain accurately on a GIS map. This poster presents its application to horizontal excavations that took place at the Guzmán...
An Archaeogeochemical Perspective on Ancient Maya Land Use and Climate Change: The Case of Lagunas de Yalahau, Yucatan, Mexico (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Recent theoretical advances emerging from Historical Ecology have reoriented thinking regarding human-environment relations in many ancient contexts. Consistent with this research program, the concept of the Maya Forest-Garden introduced by Ford and Nigh and Rivera-Núñez and Fargher’s work on Kanan Ka’ax, among others, have provided a more integrated...
Archaeological Actor-Network Theory: Case Study at Cerro Maya (Cerros, Belize) (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This study uses a modified actor-network approach to examine and characterize the human and nonhuman relationships that produced and shaped ancient Maya caches and the corresponding ritual events wherein they were buried. This contrasts with archaeological approaches that have generally focused on defining essential properties of artifacts to define or clarify...
Archaeological Applications of Airborne LiDAR at the Maya Archaeological Site of El Palmar, Mexico (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Airborne Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR) survey has changed our perspectives on ancient Maya urbanism. In 2017, we conducted airborne lidar mapping at the Classic Maya city of El Palmar, located in southeastern Campeche, Mexico, covering a total area of 94 km2. Results show monumental architecture, possible marketplaces, causeways, vast intensive...
Archaeological Evidence in the Caves and Cenotes of the Yucatán Peninsula, Mexico (2024)
This is an abstract from the "Underwater and Coastal Archaeology in Latin America" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Since prehistoric times, the caves of the Yucatán Peninsula have been the locus of regular visit by animals but as well by the first humans populating the continent. Thousands of years later, the Maya culture would establish its cities around the cenotes and the few bodies of surface water. The Maya culture has developed over the...
Archaeological Reconnaissance and Excavations at El Encanto (Petén, Guatemala) in 2018 (2021)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Maya site of El Encanto is situated 12 km to the northeast from Tikal epicenter. Discovered in 1907 and occasionally visited by various projects throughout the twentieth century, it has never been the subject of large-scale excavations. Based on the map by the University of Pennsylvania Tikal project in 1964 that included two groups, El Encanto was...
Archaeology, History, and Ancient Political Dynamics of the Mopan River Valley (2018)
One hallmark of Joseph Ball’s research has been integration of archaeological data and ethnohistorical and historical data, put to the service of addressing larger anthropological questions. In this paper, we present new data to examine one research question studied by Joseph Ball and Jennifer Taschek: Classic Maya political dynamics in the Mopan Valley of western Belize. This valley was home to five large centers, spaced 1 to 5 km apart: Las Ruinas de Arenal, Early Xunantunich, Classic...
The Architectural and Urban Design Principles of Tenochtitlan (2018)
There exists a vast literature examining every aspect of Aztec culture. Despite this, few studies focus specifically on Aztec architecture and its implications for understanding broader aspects of Aztec cosmology. This paper contributes to our knowledge of Aztec society through an exploration of architectural and urban design principles that guided the building of their cities and ceremonial precincts. By examining ethnohistoric and archaeological sources, and drawing on evidence from several...
Architecture and Hydrology: Defining the Sacred Landscape of the Tayasal Hinterland amid the Shores of Lake Petén Itzá, Guatemala (2024)
This is an abstract from the "Hydro-Ecological System of the Maya in Petén, Guatemala" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Recent lidar survey of the Tayasal Peninsula in the Petén region of Guatemala revealed a collection of residence groups, situated on ridges of higher ground and separated by possible waterways of lower elevation. These suburb-like communities stand 2 km from Tayasal's urban core. They include structure compounds arranged into a...
The Architecture of the Classic Maya Regal Palace of La Corona, Guatemala (2018)
The regal palace of La Corona flanks Plaza A to the west and is the largest construction at the site: a complex of structures sitting atop a sustaining platform extending over ca. 80 x 55m, and 7m in height. This paper describes the architecture of the two northern groups of the regal palace during their two last phases of construction, spanning roughly 750-850 A.D. While the Northeast Group comprised elaborately decorated corbel-vaulted buildings, the Northwest Group featured a mix of sturdy...
Arqueología Preventiva en México: experiencias, alcances, limitaciones y propuestas (2019)
This is an abstract from the "La Práctica Arqueológica en México en Tiempos de Crisis: Escenarios, Problemáticas Claves, Actores, Acciones y Propuestas" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Son muchos son los riesgos en los que el Patrimonio Arqueológico en México se encuentra expuesto: el crecimiento de asentamientos humanos, las industrias que usan, transforman y reutilizan el territorio, así como el vandalismo, el saqueo y coleccionismo. Desde el...
Art and Experience in Chichen Itza (2021)
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. Chichen Itza was a city of unprecedented visual complexity in ancient Mesoamerica, a place where innovations in architecture, mural painting, and sculpture, as well as experiments with new media such as gold and turquoise, created an urban landscape unlike any other. In this paper, I will examine the interactions...
Artifact Ubiquity as an Index of Ancient Maya Socioeconomic Variability at Actuncan, Belize (2018)
The Actuncan Archaeological Project has conducted ten field seasons of research at this ancient lowland Maya site in Belize, Central America and inventoried all artifact classes including ceramics, lithics, marine shell, jade, daub, etc. from excavation contexts. One of my research goals was to consolidate this information into a relational Access database so that project members could more easily analyze artifacts across contexts and time periods. The database allowed me to construct...
Artificial Pools at Middle Preclassic period Nixtun-Ch’ich’, Petén, Guatemala (2024)
This is an abstract from the "The Past, Present, and Future of Water Supplies" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Recent work at Nixtun-Ch’ich’, Petén, Guatemala has revealed several artificial ponds. Many of the pools occurred naturally but were enhanced through the construction of floors and walls and the manipulation of groundwater flow. Some of the pools contained large ritual deposits, including ceramic sherds, animal bones, greenstone objects,...
Aspectos constructivos del Grupo Cascabel (2021)
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. En la última década, el Proyecto Cuenca Mirador ha trabajado en el Grupo Cascabel ubicado al norte de la gran plaza principal del sitio El Mirador. Su meta ha sido la investigación arqueológica y consolidación arquitectónica de varios edificios de este grupo para conocer los aspectos constructivos de épocas...
Assessing Botanical Diversity of Late-to-Terminal Classic Households at Xunantunich, Belize (2018)
Understanding household plant use can provide a wealth of data about subsistence practices, past agricultural systems, and strategies used to mitigate climatic stress. Plant use may also vary between households. By examining this variation, botanical data may yield further information on personal preference and cuisine differences between households. Aside from consumption for subsistence, plants were used for a wide range of activities conducted by individual households. Botanical datasets may...
An Assessment of Water Resources at Chichen Itza (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Studies in Mesoamerican Subterranean Archaeology" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Water has long been recognized as a critical but scarce resource in the Yucatan. At Chichen Itza, water resources have not received the attention they deserve. Traditionally, because of the focus on the Sacred Cenote, the Cenote Xtoloc became by default the profane cenote. Clearly, such a simplistic and culture-bound dichotomy tells us...
At the Gates of Xibalba: The Chultunob of El Mirador, Guatemala (2021)
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. Subterranean chambers known as chultuns or chultunob exist in great numbers in sites throughout the Maya world, with over 300 being found in the city site of El Mirador alone. Although seemingly ubiquitous, the function of these structures has yet to be fully understood, with a variety of uses having been proposed...