Maya: Preclassic (Other Keyword)

DOCUMENT Citation Only Sharon Hankins. Megan Skillern.

We have been very fortunate this year to have Dr. Fred Valdez, Luisa Aebersold and their team graciously contribute to our research program in ceramic technology. They took time during their extremely busy field season to bring clay for our team to prepare and attempt to build pottery at Programme for Belize Archaeological Field School. We have two different types of clay to research. The first clay is yellow clay CH4444. The second clay is iron-rich, red clay CH2222. Our first task was to...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jemima Georges.

This is an abstract from the "Recent Research in the Petén Lakes Region, Petén, Guatemala" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Petén Lakes region of Petén, Guatemala, sits on karst bedrock and is home to a series of lake chains, the largest of which is Lake Petén Itzá. Nixtun-Ch’ich’ lies on the lake’s western arm. The lowland’s limestone topography allows for high drainability of water resulting in scarce surface hydrology. Aside from the few...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Julia Guernsey. Andrew D. Turner. Michael Love.

Pedestal sculptures featuring supernatural felines with cacao drupes projecting from their foreheads dotted the Late Formative landscape of the Pacific slope and adjacent Guatemalan Highlands. In this paper we consider the implications of the replication of this sculptural form, its role in articulating an elite agenda linked to the production of cacao, and its pertinence to sites of varying scale and relative regional authority. A similar suite of meanings engaged with cacao and supernatural...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Evan Parker. Kenneth E. Seligson.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Proyecto Arqueológico de Sitios de Pesqueña Escala en el Puuc Oriental (PASPEPO) recently completed an intensive mapping and surface collection program at three small-scale sites in the eastern Puuc Region of the northern Maya lowlands. Using lidar-derived digital terrain models (DTMs) as a baseline for settlement pattern identification, we identified...

DOCUMENT Citation Only AnaBeatriz Balcarcel. Richard Hansen. Carlos Morales. JuanLuis Velésquez.

This is an abstract from the "Recent Multidisciplinary Investigations in the Mirador Basin, Guatemala" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The ball game was one of the most widespread in Mesoamerica since the Early and Middle Preclassic periods if not earlier. This presentation will present the different ball courts detected in the Mirador Cultural and Natural zone, also known as Mirador Basin, indicating the chronology, form, contextual associations,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Clifford Brown. Hector Neff. Michael Glascock. Sofia Feliciano. Andrew Terentis.

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. We describe the Cosigüina ceramic complex from the coastal plain of the Department of Chinandega, Nicaragua. It dates from the Late Formative. We assign it stylistically to the Providencia-Miraflores ceramic spheres of western El Salvador and southeastern Guatemala. We used instrumental neutron activation analysis to...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Elodie Treffel.

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. Por medio de esta presentación, intentamos entender y considerar la importancia ritual y simbólica de un temascal Preclásico ubicado en la ciudad de Naranjo, Petén, Guatemala. Trataremos este tema a partir de la ubicación del temazcal dentro del paisaje sagrado del epicentro monumental de Naranjo y de...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Joshuah Lockett-Harris. Kathryn Reese-Taylor. Felix Kupprat. Armando Anaya-Hernandez. Deborah Walker.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Ancient Maya E Groups were important loci of sociopolitical continuity, sociocultural change, and social memory across millennia of lowland Maya civilization. As sustained generational foci of sociopolitical machinations and social memory, the built environment and significance of E Groups would have been continuously generationally reformulated to meet...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Richard Paine. Kevin Johnston. Enrique Hernandez. Richard Hansen.

This is an abstract from the "Recent Multidisciplinary Investigations in the Mirador Basin, Guatemala" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Invisible structures present serious and difficult to solve challenges for Mayanists. Despite a generation of research into Classic period invisible structures, we know little about their prevalence, history, or range of uses. We know even less about invisible structures from the Preclassic. Invisible structures are...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Richard Paine. Richard Hansen.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Preclassic El Mirador polity collapsed around 150 C.E. One focus of explanations of El Mirador’s collapse is anthropogenic changes to Basin ecology, centered on 1) population growth and agricultural overexploitation; and 2) conspicuous consumption of stucco for elite construction. Reliable estimates of population are essential for evaluating these...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jessica MacLellan.

Recognizing that households contribute to – rather than simply reflect – broad social changes, scholars working in the Maya lowlands and Central Mexico argue that domestic ritual played a role in the emergence of complex societies in Formative (or Preclassic) Mesoamerica (c. 1000 BC - AD 300). Certain aspects of household-level, ritualized activities are shared across Mesoamerican cultures. However, major differences within and between the two regions show that a variety of social organizations...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Justin Bracken.

This is an abstract from the "Manifesting Movement Materially: Broadening the Mesoamerican View" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Tracking patterns of everyday movement by individuals within a local population offers deep insight into the spatialized social structure of the group, providing information such as who interacts with whom, which areas are public and which are private, and the tightness or openness of different social circles. Like most...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Terry Powis. George Micheletti. Matthew Tarleton. Gary Owenby. Nicaela Cartagena.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Investigations in Plazas A and B of the site core at Pacbitun indicate that initial occupation began in the early Middle Preclassic period (900–600 BC). At this time, a small agricultural community was established in Plaza B beginning with a few domestic structures built just above bedrock. These early domiciles would also function as workshops for the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Dominique Sparks-Stokes.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Scanning electron microscopy (SEM), energy-dispersive X-ray spectrometry (EDS), energy dispersive X-ray fluorescence spectrometry (ED-XRF), and X-ray diffractometry (XRD) are used to compare the mineralogical and chemical composition of pottery from Colha, a Preclassic Maya site in Belize and the Twin Mounds Village, a Middle Woodland, Hopewell site in...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Marcia Chacon De Hernandez.

This is an abstract from the "Recent Multidisciplinary Investigations in the Mirador Basin, Guatemala" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Investigaciones en el Grupo Sereque han enfocado en la estructura principal conocida como Edificio 5A7.1 del Grupo Sereque, que corresponde al complejo La Danta. El grupo esta ubicada al norte sobre una elevación y área de cantera y está conectado directamente a la primera plataforma de la Danta por una calzada de...

DOCUMENT Citation Only M. Kathryn Brown. Rachel Horowitz.

This is an abstract from the "The Preclassic Landscape in the Mopan Valley, Belize" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Mopan Valley Preclassic Project began a multiyear project at Las Ruinas de Arenal as part of a larger regional study of the Preclassic social and political landscape in the upper Belize River valley. New excavations of the site’s E Group complex and associated ball court have shed light on Preclassic ritual behavior at the site....

DOCUMENT Citation Only Richard Paine. Richard Hansen. Carlos Morales-Aguilar. Kevin Johnston.

El Mirador, in the northern Peten, has redefined our ideas about the Maya Preclassic. Its massive architecture and its complex system of sacbes compare to the largest Classic period centers. Unlike many of its smaller Preclassic neighbors, El Mirador collapsed at the dawn of the Classic. Understanding El Mirador’s organization, economy, and relationship to its environment requires detailed knowledge of the site’s population trajectory. Reconstructing El Mirador’s population trajectory, we face a...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Alana Pengilley. Fred Valdez Jr..

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The distribution of prehistoric artifacts across spatial and temporal realms is frequently used to investigate trade, exchange, mobility, and socioeconomic relationships in the past. In the Maya region, chert was a key component in ancient toolkits due to its widespread availability and suitability for knapping into tools. Previous studies in the Maya...

DOCUMENT Citation Only James Brady.

At the 1985 Maya Ceramic Workshop, Arthur Demarest noted the intense interest in the Protoclassic. Indeed, ceramists with only a mammiform support and a handful of sherds would pause to speculate on the significance of a statistically insignificant number of sherds. During the 1990s, Joseph Ball and I doggedly worked to reexamine every aspect of the Protoclassic issue. Aided by contributions of a number of colleagues, the resulting document attempted to strip the Protoclassic of association...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Edgar Suyuc.

This is an abstract from the "Recent Multidisciplinary Investigations in the Mirador Basin, Guatemala" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Dentro de las investigaciones del Proyecto Cuenca Mirador, se cuentan las realizadas en La Acrópolis Triádica La Pava. En los resultados se evidencian rasgos arquitectónicos relevantes de la ocupación del Preclásico Tardío en El Mirador. Durante esta presentación se expondrán los hallazgos de las excavaciones en...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Ross Ensley. Richard Hansen. Carlos Morales. Josie Thompson.

This is an abstract from the "Recent Multidisciplinary Investigations in the Mirador Basin, Guatemala" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The southern Petén Plateau can be subdivided into four karst landscapes, each with a dominant karst landform. They are fluviokarst, polygonal karst, karst margin plain, and upland karst. These terrains have different proportions of uplands and low standing wetlands. Within this framework lies the Mirador-Calakmul...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Santiago Juarez.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Late Preclassic (400 B.C. – A.D. 200) site of Noh K’uh is located in the Mensäbäk basin, over 30 kilometers west of the Usumacinta. Within this understudied region, the site of Noh K’uh was an important ceremonial center during the Late Preclassic, and was composed of several hilltop aggregates that clustered around a moderate monumental core. The site’s...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Evelyn Chan.

This is an abstract from the "Recent Research in the Petén Lakes Region, Petén, Guatemala" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The archaeological site of Nixtun-Ch’ich’, Petén, Guatemala, exhibits urban planning different from “typical” Maya cities. In addition to its urban density and gridded layout, it possesses large monumental architecture along its central axis that distinguished it as a prominent city during the Preclassic period. This axis...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Emiliano Gallaga.

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 archaeological community of the Zoque is still under development in the state of Chiapas. Most of the archaeological research focuses on the Maya and some on the Soconusco Coastal region, but very little research on the Zoque themselves. We know that the Zoque had a very complex long-distance regional trade network from where they...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jill Onken. Jessica Munson. Andrés G. Mejía Ramón. Lorena Paiz.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Proximity to aquatic resources, rich soils, and transportation corridors can make riverine landscapes attractive settings for human occupation. Floodplains, however, are dynamic environments subject to flooding, erosion, and channel migration, which can dramatically transform the surrounding landscapes and create challenges for sedentary communities. The...