Maya: Classic (Other Keyword)

DOCUMENT Citation Only Dominique Rissolo. Holley Moyes. Justin Simkins. Kay Vilchis Zapata. Graham Goodwin.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Actun Tunichil Muknal (ATM), located in Western Belize, is among the most touristed archaeological caves in the Maya area and is well known for its striking physical characteristics and intact cultural deposits. Though well surveyed and studied, the cave and its many fragile and at-risk offerings had not been digitally documented. A collaborative program...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Mary Clarke.

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. Sweat baths have been used in Mesoamerica for more than a millennium for humoral medicine, childbirth, and obstetrics, not to mention rituals related to death, birth, and rebirth. During this long period of time, they have held a relatively constant place in mythology; they are ancestral grandmothers who...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Rachael Wedemeyer. Kenichiro Tsukamoto.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The data presented in this paper are results from the 2022 field season at the López Plaza, a small plazuela group located within the site center of El Palmar. Fieldwork included test pit excavations, shovel test pits, and geophysical prospections. Lidar images show that the López Plaza has two separate plaza spaces and approximately eight structures and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Mirko De Tomassi.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Weaving-related objects, mainly spindle whorls and needles, found in prehispanic Maya burials are usually interpreted as an indication of either the identity of the deceased or the activities carried out in life. Such a symbolic approach is valuable in tracking the construction of identity in funerary contexts. However, it can be misleading in some contexts....

DOCUMENT Citation Only Linda Brown. Kitty Emery.

This is an abstract from the "Supernatural Gamekeepers and Animal Masters: A Cross-Cultural Perspective" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In various contemporary Maya communities, hunting involves careful negotiations among various active agents – human and other-than-human – involved in the hunt. A pivotal actor in these negotiations is the deity known as the Lord of Wild Animals, the supernatural gamekeeper of the wild species in the forest....

DOCUMENT Citation Only Madeline Snyder.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. There has been a long history of settlement and household archaeology in the Belize River valley that has added significantly to our understanding of everyday people in the Maya lowlands. This research has allowed us to examine questions related to broader cultural norms and traditions, as well as better understand the distribution of settlement across the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only John Walden. Michael Biggie. Kyle Shaw-Müller. Anaïs Levin. Rafael Guerra.

One relatively understudied aspect of neighborhood integration in ancient cities relates to the divergent trajectories along which cities form. In some ancient cities, the urban periphery appeared as autonomous communities prior to the development of a center, representing an ‘outside-in’ model of urbanism. Such contexts provide a valuable case study for investigating neighborhood integration into cities, due to a clear comparative temporal threshold (before and after incorporation). This...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jacob Welch. Scott Hutson.

Archaeologists working on the question of integration of neighborhoods within cities or polities often begin by assuming the existence of centralized authority. Next, they move to consider the relationship between neighborhoods and such authorities. Researchers typically see this relationship as one of domination, independence, or something in between. The case of Chunchucmil, a large Maya site located in northwest Yucatan, Mexico, challenges this common approach to neighborhood integration. At...

DOCUMENT Citation Only James Doyle. Griselda Pérez Robles. Edwin Pérez Robles.

In 2016, a pilot project began for the conservation of sculpted monuments including stelae, altars, and panels at the site of Piedras Negras, Guatemala. Since then, a team in conjunction with the international Proyecto Paisaje Piedras Negras-Yaxchilan has constructed new platforms with roofs to house the monuments, protecting them from further weathering, moisture, and biological agents. The results of the implementation of the innovative system—platforms of powdered lime and local stones,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only David Reed.

This is an abstract from the "Innovations and Transformations in Mesoamerican Research: Recent and Revised Insights of Ancestral Lifeways" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Sex and age factor into ancient diets. This poster revisits the largest single Maya polity paleodiet study using approaches that have been developed since the original data were collected, and to incorporate newer knowledge of Maya foodways in developing a better reconstruction of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Caitlin Earley.

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. Recent archaeological work at the western Guatemalan site of Quen Santo by the Proyecto Arqueológico de la Región de Chaculá (PARCHA) has investigated the chronology of the site and resulted in the discovery of new monuments. In this paper, I present the results of recent study of these monuments. After reviewing...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Melanie Saldana. Michele Bleuze. James Brady.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In 1993, a previously unknown composite material made of layers of finely woven cotton fabric saturated in ceramic slip were recovered by the Petexbatun Regional Cave Survey in the Cueva del los Quetzales, Petén, Guatemala. An analysis of the sherds was conducted by the Smithsonian Institution's Conservation Analytical Laboratory (now the Smithsonian...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Edward Jolie. W. Rex Weeks.

This is an abstract from the "The Ties That Bind: Cordage, Its Sources, and the Artifacts of Its Creation and Use" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Ethnographic, iconographic, and archaeological records attest to the sophisticated and sumptuous textiles produced by Maya peoples in ancient and contemporary times. However, historical neglect of cordage industries in archaeology, combined with poor organic preservation and gaps in the ethnographic...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Markus Eberl. Sven Gronemeyer. Claudia Marie Vela González.

In Classic Maya society, termination rituals were conducted to ‘kill’ buildings and artifacts, predominantly in elite contexts. The resulting deposits were rapidly deposited in intentionally damaged buildings. They contain dense artifact assemblages with exotic objects and refittable ceramic sherds. After burning them, the artifacts were covered with white marl. Here, we report the extensive excavation of non-elite Structure 5PS-12 at the outskirts of the Classic Maya capital of Tamarindito. Its...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Dominique Michelet. Pierre Becquelin.

This is an abstract from the "Regimes of the Ancient Maya" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. With the publication of the influential “Chronicle of the Maya Kings and Queens” (Martin and Grube 2000) along with the convincing analysis of the Classic Maya political universe in terms of city-states (Grube 2000), a Classic Maya political regime model seemed to have been set up, relying on divine kingship based more on the domination of people than of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Bridgette Degnan. Kaitlin Murphy. Brett Houk.

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. During the Late Classic period (600–850 CE), the ancient Maya had a robust market economy that connected people with goods through long-distance and local exchange networks. Marketplaces were an important institution serving a primary economic function while also stimulating social and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only David Stuart.

This is an abstract from the "The Rise and Apogee of the Classic Maya Kaanu’l Hegemonic State at Dzibanche" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The historical importance of the Kaanu’l (Kanul) dynasty and its political networks is now well established. Dzibanche and Calakmul were its two principal centers over the course of the Late Classic period, and the sources we use for reconstructing its history come from many surrounding sites in the southern...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Chloé Andrieu. Edgar Carpio. Brent Woodfill. Arthur Demarest.

During the Classic period most lowlands cities imported obsidian from the El Chayal source, the other two major high quality outcrops (SMJ and Ixtepeque), being in the minority by comparison. Despite the fact that much has yet to be understood about the way this material was transported from the Highlands to the Lowlands, the recent discoveries at Cancuen of a single cache containing hundreds of complete prismatic cores demonstrated that this site played a major role in the production and export...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Debora Trein. Thomas Hart.

Terrace construction for agriculture was integral to the survival and growth of ancient Maya centers in the Lowland Neotropics. Terraces supplied communities with food for consumption and trade, materials for construction and goods production, and plants of medicinal and ritual significance. Research into ancient Maya agricultural practices has been largely situated in wetlands contexts, known to be sites of extensive landscape modification for agricultural purposes. Nevertheless, terraces are...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Caroline Parris.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Feasting is a commonly cited interpretation across the Maya area for middens which include large quantities of ceramics and animal bones. This poster takes a closer look at previously published Maya feasting contexts by further examining the functional make up of their ceramic assemblages. By moving beyond the standard open/closed or serving/storage functional...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Sandra Balanzario Granados.

This is an abstract from the "The Rise and Apogee of the Classic Maya Kaanu’l Hegemonic State at Dzibanche" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. El sitio prehispánico de Dzibanché tuvo una ocupación continua, desde el periodo del Preclásico Medio-Superior hasta el Clásico Tardío (300 aC-800 dC). Ocupación que continuó con una población menor hasta el periodo del Clásico Terminal-Posclásico (900-1500 dC). Fue el asiento de la dinastía Serpiente “Kaanu’l”...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Sandra Viskanta Khokhriakova. Alexandre Tokovinine. Dmitri Beliaev. Sandra Balanzario.

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. This paper presents some preliminary results of the first field season of 3D documentation of buildings, monuments, and portable artifacts from the archaeological site of Dzibanché in Quintana Roo, Mexico. Four building facades, 20 stairway blocks, nine miscellaneous sculpture fragments, and six...

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 Edgar Carpio. Anahí Solares.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The results of the typological analysis of the sample of the collection of obsidian artifacts from the Uaxactún site for the 2010 to 2019 seasons are presented, highlighting the importance of this imported material to the inhabitants of the site, the variety of artifacts, and their possible uses.

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jorge Ramos. Zachary Hruby. Xinwei Li.

This is an abstract from the "Ceremonial Lithics of Mesoamerica: New Understandings of Technology, Distribution, and Symbolism of Eccentrics and Ritual Caches in the Maya World and Beyond" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Ongoing excavations in Structures 69C and 70W in the 8N-11 group of Las Sepulturas have uncovered pressure blade caches of great complexity and size. While blade caches are relatively common at Copan, these caches were excavated...