Mesoamerica: Maya highlands (Geographic Keyword)

DOCUMENT Citation Only Miranda George. Elizabeth Paris. Roberto López Bravo.

This is an abstract from the "Recent Advances in Zooarchaeological Methods" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The utilization of dental morphology for the identification of different dog breeds in archaeological contexts has recently emerged as a promising new avenue for zooarchaeological methodologies, particularly in cases differentiating between coated and hairless breeds. Recent zooarchaeological studies from the Early Postclassic period (ca. AD...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jared Katz.

Over the past several years, the Maya Music Project has documented over 430 ancient Maya musical instruments. In addition to photographing all of the instruments, over 160 musical artifacts have been 3D scanned, and audio recordings were made of many of the artifacts. This paper will focus on the typological analysis of instruments based not only on their stylistic and technological attributes, but also on the tones the instruments are able to produce, as it is clear the artisans who created...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Nicolas Delsol.

This is an abstract from the "The Columbian Exchange Revisited: Archaeological and Anthropological Perspectives on Eurasian Domesticates in the Americas" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Among all the Eurasian domesticates that were introduced consequently to the arrival of the Europeans in the Americas, pigs hold a singular place. Unlike larger ungulates such as horses and cattle, their rearing does not require large resources which makes them...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Akira Ichikawa.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Plazas are important spaces for the ancient Mesoamerican daily life. Despite this perception is shared among many scholars, in the Southeastern Maya area, especially in El Salvador, the study of plaza is limited. This paper focuses on San Andres, which was ceremonial center in the Zapotitan valley during the Late Classic period and has been identified two...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Guido Pezzarossi. Kelton Sheridan.

Ceramic assemblages of Postclassic and Colonial Maya sites in highland and coastal Guatemala are dominated by comales: griddle-like cooking vessels indicative of a maize tortilla diet. Given that some archaeologists have interpreted the appearance of the nixtamal/tortilla/comal complex in Guatemala as evidence of the "Mexicanization" of the Maya region, the Pacific coastal region of Guatemala -and its Central Mexican diasporic populations- is seen as the likely source of comales. As a result,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Santiago Juarez.

This is an abstract from the "Recent Archaeological Investigations in Chiapas, Mexico" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Late Preclassic (400 BC–AD 250) ceremonial center of Noh K’uh was designed in a quincunx pattern to commemorate the importance of cardinality and cosmological symbols. This kind of architectural design was commonplace in Preclassic Mesoamerica, as the earliest populations shaped their ceremonial spaces in reverence to natural...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Allen Christenson.

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. Throughout the highlands of Guatemala, Maya traditionalists believe that mountains and their associated cave openings are the “mouths of the world” giving access to spiritual realms inhabited by sacred beings that have influence over natural phenomena of importance to the outside world. Each of these caves or watery...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Barbara Arroyo. Javier Estrada. Gloria Ajú.

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. The population estimates from the Preclassic period for the site of Kaminaljuyu located in the Maya Highlands were the result of regional surveys conducted by the Pennsylvania State University research program in the 1970s. Since then, Guatemala City urban sprawl has impacted the site conservation....

DOCUMENT Citation Only María Luisa Vázquez De Ágredos Pascual. Cristina Vidal Lorenzo. Patricia Horcajada Campos. Núria Feliú Beltrán.

This is an abstract from the "The Maya Wall Paintings of Chajul (Guatemala)" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The houses of Chajul, region of Ixil, Guatemala, have preserved stucco coatings and mural paintings from the colonial period. Since 2019, the University of Valencia (Spain) has collaborated with the Jagiellonian University (Poland) within the framework of the Project of Conservation of Chajul Murals–COMUCH. The objective of this study has...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Igor Sarmientos.

This is an abstract from the "The Maya Wall Paintings of Chajul (Guatemala)" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In this paper, the author discusses an interpretation of the iconography of the murals of Chajul, Quiche, in the highlands of Guatemala. The murals consist of several paintings of Ixil-Maya culture music and dances from the late colonial period. An approach from archaeomusicology and ethnomusicology has been applied in this analysis both...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Tomas Barrientos. Ernesto Arredondo Leiva. Julia Guernsey. Diego López García.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The sculptural style known as potbelly (“barrigón”) has been widely documented in archaeological sites in the southern Maya region, from Chiapas to El Salvador, with a few examples in the Lowlands and other areas of Mesoamerica. However, most of these monuments are concentrated in sites occupied during the Late Preclassic period on the Guatemalan Pacific...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Elizabeth Paris. Ashley Megan Williams. Gabriel Laló Jacinto.

This is an abstract from the "Dynamic Frontiers in the Archaeology of Chiapas" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This paper presents an analysis of obsidian artifacts from the ancient Maya city of Tenam Puente. The site is located in the eastern Chiapas highlands, and was occupied from approximately AD 500 to 1100. We analyze a sample of 859 obsidian artifacts from the site’s monumental zone, which were excavated by the Proyecto Tenam Puente,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Megan Leight. Brent Woodfill. Alexander Rivas.

Investigations at Cancuen, Sebol, Salinas de los Nueve Cerros, and other sites at the base of the Guatemalan highlands since the late 1990s have shown the importance of the region for importing and refining a variety of highland goods for the lowland market. While most of the emphasis has been placed on the goods for which there is direct evidence of production and exchange—obsidian, jade, iron pyrite, and other lithic commodities present in abundance at these and other sites—Demarest, Dillon,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Marlen Garnica. Ramiro Edmundo Martinez Lemus. Eugenia Robinson.

This is an abstract from the "Art, Archaeology, and Science: Investigations in the Guatemala Highlands" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The archaeological investigations in the eastern zone of Guatemala have reported many sites with painted rock art or petroglyphs. There are other similar representations in rock shelters in Guatemala especially at La Casa de las Golondrinas in the Antigua Valley. At these sites, the representation of serpents is...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Barbara Arroyo. Gloria Ajú. Javier Estrada.

Kaminaljuyu is a site of critical importance that has been partly destroyed by Guatemala City. However, there is important evidence buried in locations that have not been previously considered for research. Most of the excavations at Kaminaljuyu have taken place inside mounds, offering information on a sector of the society. This research has yielded data on the site´s chronology, function of the mounds, and site layout. Recent excavations have uncovered important information regarding specific...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Gavin Davies.

Combining archaeological, ethnohistoric and ethnographic data with an analysis of least cost routes, the current paper examines the network connections and craft industries that fueled Lake Atitlan’s prehispanic economy and connected it to the wider Mesoamerican World. The documentary evidence, which I synthesize here, indicates that the lake’s principle exports were perishable goods such as textiles, mats, rope products and foodstuffs. While insufficient to produce significant wealth, I argue...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Gavin Davies.

This is an abstract from the "Art, Archaeology, and Science: Investigations in the Guatemala Highlands" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Ruler stelae are a well known class of monument in the Southern Maya region but have so far been recovered only from only the largest sites, such as Kaminaljuyu, Takalik Abaj, and Chocola, all of which are considered to have been regional capitals. The recovery of a basal fragment of one of these monuments near the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Erin Sears.

This is an abstract from the "Multidisciplinary Approaches to the Subterranean" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. An accidental discovery by bulldozer of an ancient Maya ceramic workshop has created a post-civil war chapter of exploration in central Alta Verapaz. The site of Aragón lies at the base of a mountain, near the headwaters of what becomes the Usumacinta drainage. Its Late Classic-Terminal figural contents represent a range of ritual and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Ernesto Arredondo. Arthur Demarest.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Semetabaj site in the Guatemalan Highlands is one of the earliest sites in the region and the largest. Research carried out by E. Shook in 1978 revealed an interesting pattern of interaction with the northern Highlands and the south coast of Guatemala. The new research offers a review of the data and new proposals, which include its role as an economic...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Gregory Borgstede.

This is an abstract from the "Art, Archaeology, and Science: Investigations in the Guatemala Highlands" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This paper examines dynamic changes in Maya settlement patterns through a comparison of expansion and contraction of settlement patterns during the pre-Columbian, historic, and contemporary periods. In particular, it looks at when and why settlements are formed, within what is generally considered to be a single...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Miranda George. Ellizabeth Paris. Roberto López Bravo.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The site of Moxviquil is located in the Jovel Valley of highland Chiapas, and contains a funerary cave from which human and faunal osteological remains have been recovered. The site’s occupation spans the Late Classic (AD 600–900) to Early Postclassic (AD 900–1250) periods. Approximately one-third of the remains belong to the species *Canis familiaris,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Payson Sheets.

This is an abstract from the "Heat, Steam, and Health: The Archaeology of the Mesoamerican Pib Naah (Sweat Baths)" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The ancient Ceren sweat bath was a communal facility of notable sophistication, especially for a commoner village. Household 2 supported its functioning with ollas full of water, pine kindling, and presumably structural maintenance. Loma Caldera’s phreatomagmatic eruption phases, with lava bombs, caused...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Ramon Folch.

This is an abstract from the "Recent Archaeological Investigations in Chiapas, Mexico" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Following the work presented in SAA 2023 about identifying specialized potters in the Comitán Valley of Chiapas, a study of change brought by the Spanish conquerors is presented. The local potters had to innovate as their work was integrated into sugar cane processing via the molds or “pilónes” used to crystalize sugar as well as...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Guido Pezzarossi. Paige Emerson.

This is an abstract from the "Archaeologies of Surveillance: Seeing and Power in the Material World" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Technologies of surveillance are a common element of diverse forms of extractive early modern colonial projects as a method of effectively extracting value from humans/non-humans. The forms surveillance takes vary widely, frequently blurring into technologies of “care” for laboring bodies to ensure their continued...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Monika Banach. Mark Howell.

This is an abstract from the "The Maya Wall Paintings of Chajul (Guatemala)" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Baile del Tz’unun is one of the dance-plays performed in the western highlands of Guatemala. In the past it was an annual celebration in Chajul. It is also present in Aguacatan, and there is a documented history of musical exchange between these two regions. Oral tradition associated to the Baile del Tz’unun as well as in the same time to...