Maya: Classic (Other Keyword)

DOCUMENT Citation Only Phyllis Johnson.

This is an abstract from the "Advances in Obsidian Studies of the Old and New Worlds" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Archaeologists have been using agent-based modelling (ABM) to re-create prehistoric social, economic, and political processes, along with prehistoric environments since the first publication of the model commonly known as "Artificial Anasazi." Very few archaeologists have attempted to model prehistoric lithic technology, however,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Laura Kosakowsky.

Early work in the 1970’s by Joe Ball on Northern Belize ceramics from the site of Aventura highlighted its geopolitical location between multiple spheres of interaction. These spheres, reflected in the ceramics of the Classic Period, demonstrate that Aventura’s intermediary position between the cities of the Petén to the west, and the Yucatan to the north no doubt contributed to its success and long occupation. My own research on the Aventura ceramics, begun in 2015 as part of the Aventura...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jim Aimers. Jaime Awe.

During the Belize Tourism Development Project (2000-2004), Awe excavated dense on-floor deposits on the stairs and stairside outsets of Structures A2 and A3 at Cahal Pech. These deposits were mainly pottery sherds but included a variety of other materials including whole and partial vessels, projectile points, obsidian blades, deer antlers, figurines and ocarinas, spindle whorls, and jade pendants. A standard interpretations of such deposits is that they represent garbage left behind by Terminal...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jillian M. Jordan. Jaime Awe. Julie Hoggarth.

This is an abstract from the "Where Is Provenance? Bridging Method, Evidence, and Theory for the Interpretation of Local Production" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Ceramic provenance studies often focus on resource acquisition to address the question "what is local?", overlooking the role that practice plays in vessel manufacture. Potters must learn to create viable ceramic vessels, engaging with learning networks that extend beyond conventionally...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Asli Erem.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Throughout thousands of years, various civilizations and groups have depicted their beliefs on objects and architecture. Maya rulers are an example in how architecture, extravagant costumes, jewelry, weaponry, ceramics were used to emphasize their title as ajaw.Ajaw, the title for a ruler which represents the king’s massive authority for their people...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Christina Halperin. Katherine Miller Wolf. Maria Fernandez López López.

This is an abstract from the "The Marking and Making of Social Persons: Embodied Understandings in the Archaeologies of Childhood and Adolescence" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Previous studies of bodily ornaments from burial contexts have often fixated on notions of wealth, social inequality, and prestige. Although we consider analyses focused on economic wealth, we turn, in particular, to Indigenous and ladino (mestizo) medical-spiritual...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Autumn Rose. Kitty Emery. Robert Guralnick.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Human-caused environmental changes and their effects on the Classic Maya continue to be topics of vital research importance. Zooarchaeological data can provide valuable inferences about ancient Maya environments but must be assessed with care. In the Maya area, habitat fidelity models use high predator abundances to indicate the local presence of the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Ken Seligson. Soledad Ortiz Ruiz. Luis Barba Pingarrón.

Burnt lime has played a significant role in daily Maya life since at least as far back as 1100 BC, and yet its ephemeral nature has limited archaeological studies of its production and distribution. The application of new surveying and remote sensing technologies in recent decades is now allowing for a more in-depth investigation of the burnt lime industries that existed in different sub-regions of the Maya area. In this talk, we present an overview of the current understanding of Prehispanic...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Thomas Hart. Fisher Zban.

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. Archaeobotanical analysis of Late Classic Maya remains is a rapidly growing field of study. While much has been written about the different types of plants that the Maya used, very little is known about how and where these plants were traded and their connection to regional integration and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Lucas Martindale Johnson.

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 investigations at Aventura recovered several primary stone materials common in northern Belize and elsewhere in the Maya Lowlands. Chert and chalcedony is common as well as a high relative proportion of obsidian indicating households had reliable access to tool stone. Ready and reliable access...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kevin Wann. Logan Kistler. Heather Thakar. Courtney Hofman.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The avocado is one of the most popular fruits exported worldwide and was originally domesticated in three independent episodes that resulted in the three main horticultural varieties we see today. One region of origin spans from the highlands of southern Mexico to the highlands of Honduras. The El Gigante Rockshelter is a site in the Southern highlands...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Alejandra Alonso. Gregory Smith.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This paper centers on the analysis of shell, lithics, and ceramics recovered from the ancient Maya community of Santa Cruz, located 3 km south of the secondary site of Ichmul de Morley in northern Yucatán. Ichmul de Morley appears to have had an expansive growth during the Late and Terminal Classic periods that might have encouraged local development of nearby...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Marcello Canuto. Luke Auld-Thomas.

Located in the northwestern Petén, Guatemala, the Maya sites of La Corona and El Achiotal have been investigated since 2008 by a multi-disciplinary US and Guatemalan research project. While a primary goal of this project has been to reconstruct the region’s political history, we have also investigated the management of local resources and general human impact on the landscape. In 2016, a LIDAR survey, funded by the Pacunam Foundation and operated by NCALM, was undertaken in a 410 square km...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Anna Bishop.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This paper will discuss the preliminary results of excavations at La Luna, a residential group outside of the El Zotz core. Initial investigations from this Late Classic complex yielded a large volume of high-quality polychrome sherds and prestige items that are inconsistent with the simple architecture of the group. The source of these materials and the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only David Hyde. Fred Valdez Jr..

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. With support from a National Science Foundation Grant, fieldwork was conducted at the Ancient Maya site of La Milpa, located in the northwest corner of the Three Rivers Region. Archaeological matrix samples were collected from three areas within La Milpa for soil analysis as a method for...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kelsey Sullivan. Kenichiro Tsukamoto.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In this paper, we present new research on the lithic production community of Took’ Witz, a hinterland group near the ancient Maya polity of El Palmar in Campeche, Mexico. While previous research at Took’ Witz focused on large-scale utilitarian lithic production, recent investigations provide insight into people’s daily lives. Through excavations at three...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Michael Prout.

Two chambers in Midnight Terror Cave, Belize show undeniable evidence of Maya child sacrifice. Operation V and Operation VIII are the deepest darkest chambers of the cave where some of the most important of ancient Maya rites were performed including human sacrifice. In 2009 Ann Scott proposed that sacrifices occurred in Operation VIII and, during ritual cleaning of this public space in preparation for a new ceremony, the bones were taken from their primary deposition site and moved to Operation...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Brett A. Houk.

The Chan Chich Archaeological Project has documented two types of terminal, above floor "problematic" artifact deposits in a number of different locations and contexts at the site of Chan Chich, Belize. The first type comprises light scatters of "exotic" ceramics and other artifacts on the steps to range buildings in epicentral courtyards. The second type is a dense artifact deposit in an ashy matrix at the base of a platform face in a hilltop, elite courtyard. Compositionally, the second type...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Whittaker Schroder.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Discussions of political collapse in archaeology have shifted recently to approaches that incorporate the adaptive cycles of resilience and reorganization that highlight the continuity of certain cultural practices, belief systems, and worldviews alongside the disintegration of political systems. This approach has garnered support especially in the Maya area...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Ashley Booher. Brett A. Houk.

Chan Chich is one of the dozen largest Maya ruins in Belize, reaching its apogee during the Late Classic period, ca. A.D. 750. The site has a number of notable site planning characteristics, including a massive public plaza, and two wide, radial causeways, that show connections to neighboring sites and suggest common ideas about city building. Some of these shared planning ideas reflect top-down design concepts related to specialized political and ritual functions for various buildings and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Yasmine Flynn-Arajdal.

This is an abstract from the "The Marking and Making of Social Persons: Embodied Understandings in the Archaeologies of Childhood and Adolescence" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Iconographic sources indicate that the wearing of earspools by ancient Maya peoples was so ubiquitous that it was an essential part of personhood, a status put into jeopardy when earspools were removed and replaced with paper in scenes of almost naked captives or of...

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 Rachel Horowitz. Marcello Canuto. Tomás Barrientos.

This is an abstract from the "The Urban Question: Interdisciplinary Approaches to Investigating the Ancient Mesoamerican City" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Studies of urban spaces have often relied on specialized production as a marker of urbanism. More recently, our understandings of production activities in urban environments have been used to understand the variety of activities that occurred within these spaces and the ways in which they...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Sarah Nicole Boudreaux. Laura Levi. Christian Sheumaker.

It is now well recognized that Late Classic Maya communities varied politically, economically, and environmentally. The corollary, however, that community and household variation went hand-in-hand in the Maya area often goes unrecognized or under problematized. Research that explores differences in household provisioning practices across a range of communities should help to rectify this situation. Referencing data from two large prehispanic Maya sites in northwestern Belize, this paper asks the...