Ancient Maya (Other Keyword)
1-25 (31 Records)
Recent archaeological investigations at Cahal Pech, Belize have focused considerable attention on understanding the form and function of monumental architecture in the site’s largest public courtyard. Designated as Plaza B, the courtyard contains an eastern triadic shrine or "E-Group", and three large range-type or palace-like buildings that are located on the north, west and south flanks of the plaza. Our investigations of these buildings, particularly on Structure 7, have revealed important...
Analysis of Marine Sediment of Ancient Maya Saltworks in Paynes Creek National Park, Southern Belize. (2017)
In this paper we present the results of archaeological research at two Classic period Maya salt works currently submerged in a shallow salt-water lagoon in Paynes Creek National Park, Southern Belize. These two contexts are part of the more than 100 locations so far identified in the area where salt was produced by boiling brine over fires near wooden structures. Through the study of marine sediment recovered at excavations from sites 24 and 35, we were able to document environmental and...
Ancient Maya Elite Political-Economic Practices at La Milpa North, Northwestern Belize (2015)
Archaeological research has increasingly revealed the role of elite labor and influence in ancient Maya political economies. Rising awareness of the complexity of ancient Maya socioeconomic organization and attention to households as loci of production has led to new understandings of the structures and practices of production within elite households and the position of elite individuals in relations of production that extend beyond their households. Status-enhancing material goods of elite...
Ancient Maya Trade and Communication as Evidence by Petrographic and Iconographic Analysis of Unit-Stamped Pottery (2015)
The Paynes Creek salt works of southern Belize were a massive industry for the production of salt for trade with inland Maya consumers during the Classic period (A.D. 300-900). The salt workers lived elsewhere, perhaps at the nearby trading port of Wild Cane Cay, which was a large contemporary settlement. The infrastructure of production includes wooden buildings preserved below the sea floor. The majority of artifacts recovered from survey and excavations consist of briquetage—locally-made...
Bioarchaeological analysis of an ancient Maya ancestral context at Cahal Pech, San Ignacio, Belize (2015)
Interaction of the living with the bones of the deceased is a tradition practiced in various forms throughout ancient and modern Mesoamerica. Among the ancient Maya the manipulation of the deceased body is associated with powerful ancestral rituals likely carried out to reinforce and legitimate sociopolitical power. Structures placed on the eastern perimeter of plaza groups often contain multiple inhumations and are interpreted as ancestral locations. Structure B1 at Cahal Pech, located within...
The constraints and conditions of water chemistry for human use of Maya tropical wetland fields (2016)
A large wedge of our planet is tropical, and archaeology and natural science have long histories of tropical research. But we still know comparatively little about human interactions in the tropics while rates of land and water use change that expunge ecological and archaeological records are accelerating. In this paper we focus on evidence for ancient wetland management in the Maya World, especially around the evidence for water chemistry in multiple watersheds of northern Belize. Here we...
Constructing Rural Complexity: Intra-household Relations of Community and Inequality at Chunhuayum, Yucatán, Mexico. (2017)
The concept of rural complexity acknowledges that social, political, and economic complexity is not limited to large urban centers (Iannone and Connell 2003; Schwartz and Falconer 1994). Like urbanites, hinterland residents are involved in diverse and shifting interactions through which they form, maintain, and reinvent relations of commonality and social differentiation. Chunhuayum, a small settlement located in the Northern Lowlands and occupied from the Late Preclassic through the Late...
The Cultural and Natural Landscapes of El Tintal, Guatemala: Preliminary Results of the Application of Airborne LiDAR (2017)
In this paper, we present the results of our preliminary analysis of the application of LiDAR (light detection and ranging) imagery of the archaeological site of El Tintal in northern Guatemala. El Tintal is an extensive site with over 800 known buildings distributed in an area of about 12 square kilometers. From the Preclassic through the Late Classic Periods (ca. 400 B.C. to A.D. 850), the cultural settlement developed in direct association with the natural landscape marked by extensive bajos...
Desperate Times, Distinctive Places: Human Landscape Interaction at Tzak Naab, Belize (2017)
Located in northwestern Belize, the ancient Maya site of Tzak Naab lay at the intersection of an urban polity and vital agricultural space during the Terminal Classic, a period of considerable ecological and economic stress. The monumental architecture of the site strays from regional grammars with an atypical spatial syntax that emphasizes a connection to an adjacent bajo, a seasonally inundated wetland significant to the regional political economy. Attention to site planning and experiential...
Discordant Relationships: Household and Community at Callar Creek, Belize (2015)
From the Late Preclassic to the Late Classic period (400 BCE to 900 CE), the Mopan Valley of Belize was a complex political landscape and an arena of intense political competition. During this time, the Valley witnessed the sequential rise of three, closely-spaced, major centers – centers likely in direct competition with one another – as well as the establishment and abandonment of minor centers and settlement clusters. The Mopan Valley Archaeology Project recently completed excavations and...
Exploring Migration and Kinship of the Ancient Maya through Isotopes and aDNA in NW Belize (2017)
As a uniquely sustained archaeological research program that has annually excavated in the Rio Bravo Conservation and Management Area for 25 years, the Programme for Belize Archaeological Project (PfBAP) offers a wealth of knowledge for bioarchaeological research. This paper examines ancient Maya burials from northwestern Belize, spanning the Late Preclassic (250 BCE – 250 CE) to the Terminal Classic (850 – 950 CE). Detailed here are stable isotope, ancient DNA, and osteological analyses from a...
Feeding the Gods, Calling the Rains: Archaeobotanical Remains from a Monumental Fire Shrine at El Perú-Waka’, Guatemala (2015)
The discovery of a fire shrine atop the adosada of Structure M13-1 at El Perú-Waka’ supports the archaeological and epigraphic records which have at various places in the Maya region (including Waka’) made reference to the arrival in AD 378 of Siyaj K’ak’. This event resulted in the introduction of the fire shrine cult, glossed as Wite Naah in Mayan, from Teotihuacan to the Maya Lowlands. M13-1’s cal AD 7th century fire shrine is the final phase of the main temple’s fronting platform. Careful...
Feeding the Mountain: Plant Remains from Ritual Contexts On and Around Structure M13-1 at El Perú-Waka’ (2017)
Structure M13-1, a major civic-ceremonial building at the center of the Classic Maya city El Perú-Waka’ in northwestern Petén, Guatemala, held special significance to its citizenry. While it was likely ritually significant since the Early Classic period, evidence indicates it was the focus of sustained and repeated ceremonial acts of likely varying scales, accouterment, and practitioners throughout the Late and Terminal Classic periods (circa A.D. 600-900). In this paper, we explore data from...
Garden Soils: Assessing the Viability of Soil Phosphate Analysis in the Archaeological Identification of Ancient Maya Kitchen Gardens (2016)
The study of ancient Maya intensive, intra-site agricultural systems has gained new interest in recent years as a valuable way of interpreting numerous aspects of the ancient Maya’s daily life. However, ancient kitchen gardens, specifically, are usually difficult to identify by traditional archaeological techniques because of their lack of architectural structures and other identifying features. To compensate for this, Phosphate analyses are being used to positively identify kitchen gardens that...
Hinterland Household Economy: A Preliminary Analysis of Data from the San Lorenzo Settlement Cluster. (2015)
This paper is a summary of recent archaeological investigations at the San Lorenzo settlement cluster in the Mopan River Valley of Western Belize. The primary objective of current research at this ancient hinterland settlement is to better understand the dynamics of ancient Maya household economic organization and integration during the Late and Terminal Classic periods (A.D. 670-890). Households are fundamental units of economic organization in both past and present societies. The examination...
Hun Tun: Household Context and Social Complexity in Northwestern Belize. (2015)
The ancient Maya site, Hun Tun is located in northwestern Belize and serves as a platform of inquiry into social complexity at the household level. This paper addresses ancient Maya commoners in household contexts while discussing data that are pertinent to ideas of household identity, social formation, and household production by re-evaluating the value of domestic space. The analysis of everyday objects in domestic contexts contributes to these data. Major archaeological features at Hun Tun...
Intertwined Histories and Relational Personhood: Maya Co-essences (Spirit or Way Companions) Past and Present (2016)
It is widely recognized that co-essences or spirit companions (wayob) were a part of ancient Maya understandings of personhood. Partly because ethnographic analogies are used to understand ancient practices, it is easy to assume that beliefs and experiences surrounding Maya co-essences were static over many hundreds of years. In examining archaeological, epigraphic, ethnohistoric, and ethnographic data, this paper investigates the history of co-essences and, in turn, the way in which co-essences...
La Milpa East, Hun Tun, and Medicinal Trail Communities: Ancient Maya Hinterland Settlements East of La Milpa, Belize. (2017)
The hinterland east of La Milpa is distinctive of an upland landscape with bajos on its edges, a few formal courtyard groups, monuments, and numerous informal clusters of mounds. Multiple landscape modifications such as terraces, depressions, chultuns, and linear features are present in these eastern hinterland settlements as well. This paper will provide an overview of the excavations into three specific hinterland communities: La Milpa East, Hun Tun, and the Medicinal Trail Community, as well...
‘Limestone Bars’ as Power Objects among the Ancient Maya: a Consideration of Objects as Active Participants in Ritual Practice (2015)
This paper considers how people and things come together in a ritual setting and attempts to break down the division between the human participants and the materials engaged. Using contemporary perspectives surrounding post-Marxian materialism, it is argued that archaeology has the means to explore the ways in which materials exhibit their active nature in particular contexts. With this in mind, this study will reassess small bar-shaped limestone artifacts that have been recovered from...
Local Chert Reduction, Maintenance, and Toolmaking: Terminal Classic Chert Use at Nohmul, Belize (dataset)
This dataset contains analysis of 381 chert artifacts excavated from structures 9 (circular) and 20 (patio quad) at the site of Nohmul in modern Belize. This material was originally excavated in two field seasons in 1978 and 1979 under the Corozal Postclassic Project by Diane Chase. The analysis of this material by Adrian SZ Chase and Jonathan Paige is published in the 2020 volume of Research Reports in Belizean Archaeology and should use that paper as a reference for this dataset (see abstract...
Monumentality in the Middle Preclassic: The Beginnings of Public Ceremonialism at Pacbitun, Belize (2016)
In the Middle Preclassic (900-300 BC), physical evidence of the increasing complexity of Maya society can be found in the form of monumental public architecture. However, the origins of temple building are poorly understood during this time period, especially in the Belize Valley. At the site of Pacbitun we have been exploring the initial purpose of public architecture as constructions to bring likeminded communities together for ritual, ceremonial, and/or social functions. Archaeological...
The Rebirth Of The Maize God: Contextualizing Burial 37 From El Perú-Waka’ (2015)
At the core of the ancient Maya site of El Perú-Waka’, Petén, Guatemala, an elaborate burial was discovered inside Structure M12-32 dated to around AD 600. The burial contained human remains of a ruler, who probably belonged to the centipede dynasty, known in the past as Wak. The diversity of artifacts placed with the ruler, including a greenstone mosaic, pyrite mirror, and an alabaster vessel, suggest not only that this person was wealthy, but also asserts the important influence of El Perú...
Reconsidering "sites," "features," and "landscapes" in the Maya Lowlands with remote sensing and ground-based survey (2017)
Etic distinctions between "sites" and "landscape features" and the limits of pedestrian survey have long influenced how scholars in the Maya lowlands model social and political dynamics of the region. The adoption of remote sensing technologies, particularly LiDAR, has improved our ability to identify anthropogenic features over wider areas. Yet remote sensing data collection remains centered on known "sites" and data serving to further expand the mapped boundaries of ancient "cities,"...
Refining Architectural Classifications of Preclassic Monumentality at Early Xunantunich, Belize (2017)
The site of Early Xunantunich in Belize provides us with a rare opportunity to conduct large scale investigations of Preclassic architecture due to its lack of Classic Period overburden. Since 2008, ongoing excavations at the site have yielded a wealth of information regarding Preclassic activities in the area. However, recent investigations of a monumental flat-topped platform at the site have illuminated issues with the ways in which we describe and classify these early structures. In this...
Resignification: Public Ritual and Changing Cultural Landscapes at Actuncan, Belize (2015)
Across the Maya Lowlands, dedication ritual served a vital role in endowing public and household spaces with meaning and function. Through ritual, structures acquired the soul-force, or k’ulel, necessary to sustain activity within their walls. However, many structures lived (at least) two ritual lives: one associated with their original intended function, and a second following the abandonment of their initial use. We argue that through ritual resignification the original meanings of public...