Maya: Classic (Other Keyword)

DOCUMENT Citation Only Eric Fries.

This is an abstract from the "Provisioning Ancient Maya Cities: Modeling Food Production and Land Use in Tropical Urban Environments" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The ancient Maya settlements of the Aguacate region of western Belize feature a dispersed settlement pattern spread across a highly varied landscape. Both soil and water resources are unevenly distributed across the region, interspersed with karst outcrops and ridges. Nonetheless,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Gloria Hernandez-Bolio. Patricia Quintana-Owen. Nadia Neff. Keith Prufer. Vera Tiesler.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Understanding dietary patterns in past societies is critical for interpreting economic and social transformations. The analysis of dietarily derived isotopes is a reliable source of categorical information about the types of foods consumed by an individual. Furthermore, multisystem-isotope analyses can clarify inferences about food sources and relative...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Alejandra Roche Recinos.

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. The Middle Usumacinta River was a politically fragmented and contested region during the Classic Maya period, with neighboring polities vying for territory, prestige, and wealth. Recent archaeological and epigraphic work is continuing to delineate the shifting borders and alliances of this time period, with the goal of understanding the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Tia Watkins. Rosamund Fitzmaurice. Christophe Helmke. Jaroslaw Zralka. Jaime Awe.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The precolumbian game of patolli was imbued with ideals of competition, risk, and ritual significance. The board game had a widespread presence across Mesoamerica throughout the Classic period (~ AD 250–820) and was often etched into the surfaces of monumental architecture. Recent excavations led by the Belize Valley Archaeological Reconnaissance project...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Christina Iglesias. Michael Prout.

This is an abstract from the "Studies in Mesoamerican Subterranean Archaeology" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. During the widening of the air strip at Chichen Itza in 1967, a small subterranean chamber, located some 300 m north of the Cenote of Sacrifice, was discovered. The feature, variably called a cave or a chultun, contained two small chambers, the larger of which was only 4 x 5 m. These chambers contained human skeletal material, a portion...

DOCUMENT Citation Only G. Van Kollias.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Frontiers and borderlands are often conceptualized as places of precarity, where uncertainty characterizes communities outside the purview of authority. In contrast, borders evoke the presence of a reinforced authority where physical and political structures have been put in place to fortify a territory. However, these approaches often simplify or distill...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kirsty Escalante.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. While scholars have been concerned since the 1960s about the widespread looting of Maya sites to supply the international antiquities market, countless objects have been illicitly exported over the decades from Guatemala and surrounding countries. The repatriation of looted antiquities to their countries of origin has received increased attention as source...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Barbara Arroyo. Gloria Ajú. Javier Estrada.

Kaminaljuyu is a site of critical importance that has been partly destroyed by Guatemala City. However, there is important evidence buried in locations that have not been previously considered for research. Most of the excavations at Kaminaljuyu have taken place inside mounds, offering information on a sector of the society. This research has yielded data on the site´s chronology, function of the mounds, and site layout. Recent excavations have uncovered important information regarding specific...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kara Fulton. David Mixter. Borislava Simova.

This paper summarizes the archaeological investigations of ten residential units at Actuncan that likely represented three distinct social strata: commoner, elite, and noble. We explore the trajectories of these residences from the Preclassic to the Terminal Classic period. Data suggest that although political authority in the Mopan River valley shifted throughout Actuncan’s long occupation, many commoner residences maintained local identities and residential continuity through time. However,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kelsey Sullivan. Kenichiro Tsukamoto.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This paper presents the results of a multiyear research project at the lithic production community of Took’ Witz, a hinterland group located near the ancient Maya city of El Palmar (Campeche, Mexico). Our research explored the large-scale utilitarian lithic production that occurred at the site, as well as the activities and material cultures at three...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Benjamin Eble. Zachary Hruby.

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. Almost a century of bias in favor of direct percussion in the archaeological modeling of biface manufacture in the New World has obscured the central role of indirect percussion in this process. We examine ethnohistorical and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Gabriela Saldaña. Elizabeth Graham.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. A significant assemblage of Late to Terminal Classic stucco was discovered at the archaeological site of Lamanai in northern Belize. Originally forming a frieze adorning the upper facade of the palatial Structure N10-28, the stucco fragments are remarkable for their overall preservation and their extensive polychromatic pigmentation. In 2023 a new phase of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Brent Woodfill.

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. In spite of the intensity of interest in the ancient Maya, very little research has been conducted to date in lowland eastern Chiapas. This region, crossed by several important rivers and trade routes, connects multiple important areas, including the southern Maya lowlands, the Guatemalan and Caribbean highlands, and the Gulf and Caribbean...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Frank Tzib.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This poster introduces a community engagement program I designed to teach Classic Maya epigraphy to members of my community, Ox Mul Kah (San Antonio, Belize). While the Classic Maya ancestors left us with an elaborate culture, which was passed on to modern communities like Ox Mul Kah, many Maya today are unaware of the ancestral achievements like...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Edy Barrios. Cameron McNeil. Mauricio Díaz García.

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. In 2014, rescue excavations in a residential group on the outskirts of Río Amarillo, 20 km from the ancient center of Copan, revealed the presence of a Pib Naah (temazcal/sweat bath), with clear ties to women’s rituals and Maya concepts of fertility. This evidence led the author to name this structure...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Alexander Safronov. Dmitri Beliaev. Milan Kovác.

This is an abstract from the "At the Interface the Use of Archaeology and Texts in Research" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The dynastic history of Uaxactun is one of the most ancient among the political centers of the Maya Lowlands in the Preclassic and Classic periods. The beginning of history of a dynasty concerns to the III cent. BC, and its end to the final years of the IX cent. AD. On an extent more than a thousand-year history the dynasty...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Renee Collins. Rafael Guerra.

Since 2010, the BVAR Project has conducted intensive research at the recently discovered site of Lower Dover, located directly across the Belize River from Barton Ramie. A major part of the BVAR investigations is to determine the socio-political relationship between Lower Dover, Barton Ramie, Blackman Eddy, and Baking Pot. Other research questions have focused both on the monumental architecture of the site core, and on plazuela groups in the periphery of site’s epicenter. One such peripheral...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Whittaker Schroder.

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. The Maya have inhabited diverse environments in southern Mesoamerica, typified by marked seasonal contrasts between wet and dry periods. Access to water as a resource for agriculture and transportation varied spatially and seasonally for Maya communities, with scholarly and public attention often focusing on the challenges posed by...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Laura Angelica Romero Padilla.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In this paper, I will examine the significance of ritual cave use in the emergence and development of Classic Maya polities. Caves are critical settings to understand the diversity of ritual practices and the involvement of such contexts within socio-political systems. My work in caves in the Middle Usumacinta Valley will further our understanding of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Laura Angelica Romero Padilla.

This is an abstract from the "Preclassic Maya Social Transformations along the Usumacinta: Views from Ceibal and Aguada Fénix" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. As part of the Middle Usumacinta Archaeological Project, I conducted reconnaissance in three caves with archaeological remains, named Santo Tomás, San Marcos, and Corregidora. The three caves are located in the Tenosique municipality in Tabasco, Mexico near the border with Guatemala. A...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Whitney Lytle. Rachel Horowitz. Carolyn Freiwald. Kathryn Brown.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Between the 2012-2016 field seasons, the Mopan Valley Preclassic Project conducted investigations of an eastern pyramidal structure (Str D-6) at Group D, Xunantunich. Group D is a sacbe terminus architectural group which is connected to Xunantunich’s main plaza. The location of the sacbe suggests that Group D was part of an important ritual circuit. Over 5...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jessica Munson. Matthew Looper. Jonathan Scholnick.

This is an abstract from the "Archaeological Applications of Network Analysis" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Ritual and performance play important integrative functions in the creation, maintenance, and negotiation of social ties that bind communities together. The shared experience of these public displays establishes strong bonds between individuals, defining their membership in certain social groups while reinforcing cultural norms and values....

DOCUMENT Citation Only Alejandro Garay Herrera.

This is an abstract from the "The Role of Women in Mesoamerican Ritual" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Classic Maya period inscriptions provide us with extensive documentation of the rituals and ceremonies that Maya elites performed as part of their royal duties. Throughout this paper we will discuss those that were overseen by women belonging to the royal houses of the polities of the Maya lowlands, which have been recorded through the images and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Brett Meyer. Claire Ebert. Julie Hoggarth. John Walden. Jaime Awe.

This is an abstract from the "Stability and Resilience in Zooarchaeology" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Debate has surrounded the Terminal Classic (AD 750–900/1000) Maya “collapse,” a period when the Classic period political structure deteriorated and parts of the southern lowlands were depopulated. While these changes were the result of various developments including warfare, social unrest, environmental degradation, and climate change, one...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Marilyn Bueno.

Because of Maya religion’s heavy focus on the sacred Earth, subterranean spaces tend to be seen as sacred landmarks. Caves in particular have been shown to be the most promising context for the archaeological study of Maya religion (Brady and Prufer 2005). Rockshelters, however, have received less attention and appear to have identities and meanings that are negotiable across the lowlands. Recent rockshelter excavations have uncovered skeletal remains (Bonor 1995; Glassman et al. 2005; Saul et...