Maya: Classic (Other Keyword)

DOCUMENT Citation Only Sarah Jackson.

This is an abstract from the "Crafting Culture: Thingselves, Contexts, Meanings" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The study of Classic Maya hieroglyphic writing (ca. AD 250-900, Mexico and Central America) has yielded rich understandings of texts in recent years through increasingly nuanced ways of reading, contextualizing, and interpreting hieroglyphs. Beyond examining hieroglyphic texts as culturally contextualized documentary sources, however,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Dawn Crawford.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The site of Holtun, in the central lakes region of the Maya lowlands, was occupied from the Preclassic through the Postclassic. Over 30 residential groups make up the northern settlement area on the periphery of Holtun where most of these surface residential structures date to the Late Classic and Terminal Classic periods. The non-elite household...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Céline Lamb.

As Maya archaeology has shifted away from urban-centric perspectives, recent research demonstrates that hinterland populations, like urbanites, were involved in diverse and shifting practices enabling them to build and negotiate complex relationships. Using a community approach, this paper examines non-agrarian activities practiced during the late Early and Late Classic (ca. 500 – 850 AD) by residents of Chunhuayum, a small yet socioeconomically diverse farming settlement located in northwest...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Virginia Ochoa-Winemiller. Terance L. Winemiller. William J. Folan. Lynda Florey Folan.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Three-dimensional multi-line laser scanning reproduces highly accurate models that preserve measurable characteristics of portable artifacts such as figurines, whistles, stamps, and molds. Metrological analyses are revealing valuable information about manufacturing techniques, the crafter’s tool kit, the function of these artifacts, and the extent of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only George J. Micheletti.

The Late Classic period (AD 550 – 800) at Pacbitun, Belize brought about heightened prosperity evinced in a surge of architectural development and an increase in precious exotic materials. However, despite continued growth, by the close of the Late Classic Pacbitun’s affluence appears to have diminished considerably. To the north, settlements of the Belize River Valley also seemingly undergo a concomitant florescence and economic decline. Research suggests the pecuniary instability of the Belize...

DOCUMENT Citation Only David Mixter.

This is an abstract from the "The Vibrancy of Ruins: Ruination Studies in Ancient Mesoamerica" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The precolonial Maya city of Actuncan was occupied as a monumental center, then a city, for approximately 2,000 years from its establishment prior to 1000 BC until its abandonment around AD 900. As at any long-occupied urban center, the city grew when it thrived economically and politically, while it contracted and became...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kenichiro Tsukamoto.

This is an abstract from the "Regimes of the Ancient Maya" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Spatial and temporal heterogeneity of office titles and architectural styles in the Maya lowlands suggest that there existed diverse material, textual, and symbolic expressions that created, maintained, and modified regimes during the Classic period (ca. AD 250–900). The variation also signals that authority, power relations, legitimacy, and ideologies were...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Carolyn Freiwald.

This is an abstract from the "Making and Breaking Boundaries in the Maya Lowlands: Alliance and Conflict across the Guatemala–Belize Border" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Present day conversations about migration focus on borders and limiting population movement with the presence of police, harsh regulations, and walls. This paper examines the concept of migration in the Maya region and what the past decade of isotope geochemistry research tells...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Mario Borrero. Luke Stroth. Chad Rankle. Geoffrey Braswell.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This paper will present a synthetic review of the Terminal Classic collapse of the Maya site of Nim li Punit, Belize, based on new data from recent architectural excavations and artifact analysis. These lines of evidence show that around A.D. 800 the site saw the cessation of elite activities, the halting of new constructions, the disrepair of existing...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Rissa Trachman.

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. Evidence from the site of Dos Hombres in northwestern Belize is presented from multiple contexts revealing the cultural collaborations with ritual, economic, and social expression/s as they are manifest in and necessarily tied to material aspects of everyday life. Ongoing previous research...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Ricardo Antorcha Pedemonte. Lane F. Fargher. Alexander Correa-Metrio.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The discourse surrounding the environmental impact of humans on Earth underscores the imperative to comprehensively grasp the temporal and geographical dimensions, as well as the transformative intensity of anthropogenic changes. The Parque Estatal de Yalahau Project, a multidisciplinary endeavor encompassing archaeology, paleoecology, and historical...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Cristina Vidal-Lorenzo. Gaspar Muñoz Cosme.

This is an abstract from the "The Movement of People and Ideas in Eastern Mesoamerica during the Ninth and Tenth Centuries CE: A Multidisciplinary Approach Part I" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In the Late Preclassic, certain buildings in the Petén region began to incorporate complex iconographic programs on their façades. The friezes with central masks, carved in limestone and covered with layers of stucco, are particularly striking examples of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Dana Moot. Alexandre Tokovinine.

This is an abstract from the "The Rollout Keepers: Papers on Maya Ceramic Texts, Scenes, and Styles in Honor of Justin and Barbara Kerr" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Distinct regional styles are a hallmark of Lowland Maya elite polychrome ceramic vessels during the Late Classic period (550–820 CE). However, our understanding of the phenomenon has not advanced beyond its mechanics - the presence of attached craft workshops at the courts of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Anna Novotny.

This is an abstract from the "Embodied Essence: Anthropological, Historical, and Archaeological Perspectives on the Use of Body Parts and Bodily Substances in Religious Beliefs and Practices" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The archaeological record of the ancient Maya reveals many examples of the living returning to human interments to exhume skeletal elements, expose the elements to fire or smoke, or to paint them with red pigment. At the ancient...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Thomas Guderjan. Alexander Parmington. Colleen Hanratty.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Surrounding the ancient Maya site of Xnoha in northwestern Belize are residential areas with houselots delineated by Linear Stone Boundary Markers (LSBMs). Lidar from 2016 revealed hundreds of such houselots. However, until now, we had no understanding of the dates of construction of the LSBMs. In 2023, backhoe testing was undertaken to determine that...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Sandra Balanzario Granados.

This is an abstract from the "New Light on Dzibanché and on the Rise of the Snake Kingdom’s Hegemony in the Maya Lowlands" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. El asentamiento prehispánico de Dzibanché, se localiza en el Sur de Quintana Roo, tiene una extensión aproximada de 60 km2, superficie que incluye las áreas destinadas a la producción de alimentos y áreas habitacionales. Dzibanché fue el asiento de la dinastía Kaanu’l, durante el periodo del...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Michael Petrozza. Jason Yaeger. M. Kathryn Brown. Kit Nelson. Rachel Horowitz.

Archaeologists working in the Maya area frequently find dense deposits of artifacts that are classified ‘terminal deposits,’ ‘final deposits,’ or ‘problematical deposits’. These classifications may accurately reflect a deposit’s stratigraphic placement, but ultimately mask or even misrepresent the diverse social behaviors which led to the creation of such deposits. Excavations in the courtyard in front of Structure B-6 at Xunantunich, Belize, exposed a dense deposit of artifacts. Through...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Ana García Barrios.

This is an abstract from the "A Celebration and Critical Assessment of "The Maya Scribe and His World" on its Fiftieth Anniversary" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Grolier exhibition commissioned by M. Coe in 1973 came to researchers as an inescapable reference that remains today. His studies on codex-style vessels, so defined by him, opened the door to new studies from different perspectives and approaches that are reviewed here. This study...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Andrew Scherer.

This is an abstract from the "Decipherment, Digs, and Discourse: Honoring Stephen Houston's Contributions to Maya Archaeology" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Houston’s "The Life Within" is among the most perceptive and nuanced statements on Classic Maya materials and the animate quality of things. Here, I draw inspiration from this future-classic work to more deeply probe Maya understandings of bone – a material most generally treated by...

DOCUMENT Citation Only George Kollias.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The notion of debt pervades anthropological discussion of political economy and exchange. Often used as a descriptor of unequal relationships it also embodies notions of reciprocity, expectation, and mutuality. Debt carries with it a charged negativity in many contexts, conveying experiences of precarity and violence, pressure and visibility. However, debt can...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Eva Lemonnier. Charlotte Arnauld.

Based on the study of two Classic Maya Lowland sites, La Joyanca and Naachtun (Guatemala), this paper explores the topic of rurality through the parameters of potential land use, visible architectural variation, and plausible population mobility. La Joyanca was a medium-sized settlement surrounded by villages and hamlets all of which were recorded by means of conventional surface mapping, whereas Naachtun was a regional capital located amidst extended communities linked by causeways that have...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Xin Lin. Guopeng Chen.

This is an abstract from the "Misinformation and Misrepresentation Part 1: Reconsidering “Human Sacrifice,” Religion, Slavery, Modernity, and Other European-Derived Concepts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The procurement and consumption of jade are conventionally thought to have been under the control of Maya elites. Through cross-cultural comparison with ancient China as a representative jade-using culture, we argue that the multidimensional...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jessica Ratcliffe.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The ancient Maya of the Belize River Valley maintained a strong, spiritual connection with nature, one that can be explored through the layers of religious symbolism imbued into their built environments. In Xunantunich during the Late Classic period, the Maya created a sacred space by incorporating symbols—such as stelae, altars, and cache deposits—into...

DOCUMENT Citation Only David Webster.

This is an abstract from the "Decipherment, Digs, and Discourse: Honoring Stephen Houston's Contributions to Maya Archaeology" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Recent projects in the Buenavista region, some 25 km to the east at Tikal, reveal a landscape of probable Early Classic conflict. What seem to be large defensive features are positioned on a frontier between El Zotz and the Tikal polity. Despite the impressive size of these features, which...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jessica Leonard. Hannah Plumer-Moodie. Thomas Guderjan. Colleen Hanratty.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The osteological analysis of skeletal remains provides a unique lens for viewing social behaviors within ancient complex societies at the level of the individual as well as the population. The dentition from skeletal remains can be especially useful for answering questions regarding dietary practices as the consumption of specific foods leave identifiable...