Maya: Classic (Other Keyword)

DOCUMENT Citation Only Lisa Johnson. Lucas Johnson. Arianna Campiani. Rodrigo Liendo Stuardo. Rosemary Joyce.

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. Increasingly, archaeologists working in Classic period Maya cities have focused their attention on defining “neighborhoods” as a means to reconcile both a bottom-up and top-down approach. A consideration of Palenque’s urban form and patterns in the clustering of stone structures along built terraces makes the existence of neighborhoods...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Traci Ardren.

Domestic gardens are a well-established aspect of Classic Maya residential settlement, and they are rightly considered important components of food security and even food sovereignty strategies utilized by the ninety-nine percent. Taking inspiration from the emerging field of human-plant studies, I argue daily interactions with household garden plants exerted a profound influence on not only the daily habits of ancient Maya populations, but also on their memories and sense of social identity. ...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Debra Walker.

This is an abstract from the "Households at Aventura: Life and Community Longevity at an Ancient Maya City" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Household pottery from recent excavations at Aventura informs our current understanding of life near Chetumal Bay, its resilient villagers situated within a larger boom-and-bust economy. Although Preclassic pottery has been found near bedrock in some household excavations, construction began in earnest about...

DOCUMENT Citation Only T. Manahan.

Across the Maya Lowlands, the Terminal Classic Period (AD 800-1000) represented a time of dramatic sociopolitical transformation. Investigation of the Northern Maya lowland site of Xuenkal, shows an abrupt break in the pattern of steady demographic growth during the Terminal Classic, associated with the center of Chichen Itza 45 km away. Xuenkal presents a unique case to evaluate this transition as it contains discrete households associated with the Late Classic zenith of local political...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Cady Rutherford. Marisol Cortes-Rincon. Jonathan Roldan. Spencer Mitchell.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Hinterland households are an under-explored aspect of Maya area. Further research in this area will help to build our understanding of variation present within and between regions. This analysis looks at several households in northwestern Belize in order to better understand the variation that exists within this region. I analyze the construction methods, the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Julien Hiquet. Julien Sion. Divina Perla-Barrera.

At Naachtun, extensive excavation programs carried out in monumental Group B, a compact set of three large elite clusters of residential compounds located in the site epicenter, and intensive test-pitting programs applied to the residential zones which surround the monumental core, have enabled us to understand the site occupation development during the Classic phases. We identify contraction, dispersal and expansion where and when most households units were occupied. We compare these space-time...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Mary Miller.

One of the distinctive features of one of the principal Maya solar deities, the Jaguar God of the Underworld, is the twisted cord—nicknamed "cruller" for the German doughnut over 100 years ago by Eduard Seler—that loops under the eyes (with their characteristic inward curl for pupils) and twists between them, sometimes ending under the deity’s jaguar ears. This feature, perhaps to be associated with fire and burning, takes up its place on the nose of a different deity, Tlaloc, in Central Mexico,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Nicholas Dunning. Jeffrey Brewer. Christopher Carr. Kathryn Reese-Taylor. Armando Anaya Hernández.

This is an abstract from the "2023 Fryxell Award Symposium: Papers in Honor of Timothy Beach Part I" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The ancient inhabitants of the Elevated Interior Region of the Maya Lowlands spent centuries devising ways to capture and store rainwater in this seasonally arid environment devoid of sizeable permanent surface water bodies. Over time, varied methods were created to ensure a sufficient quantity of water to meet the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kat Fitzgerald. Kacey Grauer. Zachary Nissen. Cynthia Robin.

This is an abstract from the "Households at Aventura: Life and Community Longevity at an Ancient Maya City" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. A human geography perspective provides our broadest lens to envision the entwined relationships of people, communities, and environments at Aventura. Drawing from an 18 km2 lidar survey and 1 km2 pedestrian survey, this paper presents a human geography of Aventura that links people, settlement, agriculture,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Justin Bracken.

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. Premodern landscape modification at the northeast corner of Lake Macanché, surrounding the site of Muralla de León, predominantly consists of small hilltop settlements and hydraulic channels. These channels interact with the lake itself, as well as the juleques (pond-sized water-filled sinkholes) that cluster in the vicinity. Two...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Victoria Khaghani. Whitney Goodwin. Marcello Canuto.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This thesis explores the relationship between iconography and material analysis of Ulúa polychromes in Honduras between 450 – 1200 CE. From a dataset of 56 ceramic pieces, first analyzed iconographically which has been the main form of analysis for these artefacts. Second, the 56 pieces were sampled for INAA and processed through a computer program. The...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Gabriela Saldaña. Tia Watkins. Emma Messinger. Rosamund Fitzmaurice. Jaime Awe.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Classic Maya graffiti (AD 300–800) provides a unique perspective of individual experiences, with figures etched onto plastered surfaces that were added as secondary elements within existing architecture. In the Maya lowlands, graffiti is typically found within monumental architecture, as these contexts favor preservation in tropical environments. The...

DOCUMENT Citation Only George J. Micheletti. Sheldon Skaggs. Terry G. Powis.

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. For the ancient Maya of Pacbitun, the onset of the Late Classic period (AD 550-800) signifies a time of exponential site growth and heightened prosperity. While this florescence is evident in the archaeological record, recent studies have begun to demonstrate that this affluence...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Victoria Izzo. John P. Walden. Olivia P. Ellis. Kirsten Green Mink. Jaime J. Awe.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Classic period (AD 300-900) Belize River Valley was a complex political landscape of numerous semi-autonomous Maya polities. Many began their emergence at the end of the Early Preclassic period (1200-900 BC), consolidated their political power in the Late Preclassic, and subsequently underwent collapse in the Terminal Classic period (AD 750-900/1000). The...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Yijia Qiu. Julie Hoggarth. Claire Ebert. John Walden.

Archaeologists have had a long-standing interest in domestic economy because households are often considered to be the primary social unit of production, consumption, and reproduction in most agrarian societies and occupy an important place in the study of ancient state economies. A relatively novel avenue for exploring broader patterns in the domestic economies of ancient Maya polities involves compositional analysis of ceramics. Variability in the compositional makeup of the ceramics can show...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Heather McKillop.

This is an abstract from the "An Exchange of Ideas: Recent Research on Maya Commodities" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Production of salt cakes for trade in modern and historic communities provides three testable hypotheses for identifying ancient Maya trade of this commodity. If salt cakes were transported in pots as in the Philippines, briquetage would be found at consumer communities, as suggested for Aventura, Belize. Only non-vessel...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Takeshi Inomata.

This is an abstract from the "Warfare and the Origins of Political Control " session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Recent investigations have revealed substantial evidence of fortifications and physical conflicts in the Maya lowlands. Nonetheless, warfare in Maya society never led to the development of stable conquest states or empires. Factors affecting this process may have included the ideological and material conditions of this region. The ideology...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Garrett Toombs.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Lithic artifact functions are often determined by the form of an artifact rather than by an analysis of functional characteristics. Some ways in which artifact function can be determined include experimental archaeology, use wear, and paleoethnobotanical analyses. Determining artifact function provides information about the types of tasks people performed,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kong Cheong. Linda Howie. Terry Powis.

The Classic Maya crafted a wide variety of music instruments from clay and other materials. Numerous depictions of musicians on vase paintings and murals attest to the important role of music in ceremonial occasions. Music instruments were also interred with the deceased during funerary ceremonies; although their comparative rarity in burials suggests that their inclusion was not a common practice. At the site of Pacbitun, music instruments have been recovered from multiple Classic period...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Terance Winemiller. Virginia Ochoa-Winemiller.

This paper discusses the spatial, typological, and stylistic analyses of obsidian and ceramic artifacts recovered from El Chichicaste and Dos Quebradas, two prehistoric sites in the department of Olancho, Eastern Honduras. Using geographic information systems and 3D laser scanning technology, analyses revealed the extent of trade relationships that these two ancient communities maintained with sites in Mesoamerica and their southern neighbors in Central America. We argue that integration of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jiawei Huang. Claire Ebert. Jan Oliver Wallgrün. Jaime Awe. Alexander Klippel.

Immersive technologies such as virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR), in combination with low cost yet high quality photogrammetry techniques, are beginning to change the way that archaeologists understand space and place. The availability of affordable immersive technologies is dissolving natural boundaries of space and time, and offering new ways of communications. The maturity of existing software environments such as Unity additionally allows for integrating spatial analysis tools...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Anais Levin. John Walden. Lauren Garcia. Julie Hogarth. Jaime Awe.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Lithic tool production and use offers a way to understand domestic activities and how they developed in relation to broader socio-political changes. The Late Classic (AD 600-900) Maya polity of Lower Dover, Belize emerged in the midst of a densely occupied landscape, and this transition saw the incorporation of three autonomous communities – Tutu Uitz Na,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Erin Patterson.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Ancient Maya settlement patterns and density have come into focus thanks to site survey and, more recently, extensive lidar mapping. Settlement density zones suggested by recent investigations in northwest Petén, Guatemala, allow for interpretation of areas of higher and lesser settlement density and the comparison of those groups between sites of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only W. James Stemp. Jaime Awe. Christophe Helmke.

This is an abstract from the "The Subterranean in Mesoamerican Indigenous Culture and Beyond" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Large, finely made laurel-leaf chert bifaces have been recovered from the ancient Maya cave sites of Actun Chapat, Actun Tunichil Mucnal, Actun Yaxteel Ahau, and Je’reftheel, which are located in central Belize. By considering these laurel-leaf bifaces from the perspectives of lithic raw material, production techniques,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Andrea Cucina.

This is an abstract from the "Approaches to Cultural and Biological Complexity in Mexico at the Time of Spanish Conquest" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Dental morphology among the Prehispanic Maya population has been characterized by a certain degree of stability. Isolation-by-distance models do not fit well into Mesoamerican populations, due to a relatively homogeneous dental structure. This was true also in the Yucatan peninsula, despite the...