Maya: Postclassic (Other Keyword)

DOCUMENT Citation Only Merideth Paxton.

This is an abstract from the "Animal Symbolism in Postclassic Mesoamerica: Papers in Honor of Cecelia Klein" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Dresden Codex is a Postclassic Maya document that is thought to have originated in the Yucatán Peninsula. The opossum figures in the panels at the tops of its section on the New Year (pages 25-28) are associated with the uayeb, the five nameless, unlucky days that mark the ends of the 365-day haabs. A...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Miranda George. Elizabeth Paris. Roberto López Bravo.

This is an abstract from the "Recent Advances in Zooarchaeological Methods" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The utilization of dental morphology for the identification of different dog breeds in archaeological contexts has recently emerged as a promising new avenue for zooarchaeological methodologies, particularly in cases differentiating between coated and hairless breeds. Recent zooarchaeological studies from the Early Postclassic period (ca. AD...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Lindsay Powell. Zachary Hruby.

This is an abstract from the "The Pre-Columbian Cultures of Honduras after AD 900" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The rather diminutive site of Rio Amarillo, located to the north of the Copan city center, is well known as a subsidiary site that was somehow involved in the movement of goods between the Motagua and Copan Valleys. After the collapse of the Copan Dynasty, large civic-ceremonial structures were abandoned and the people that remained,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Zachary Hruby.

The position of Vista Alegre at the Northeastern edge of the Yucatan Peninsula, a gateway between the Caribbean and the Gulf of Mexico, made it a strategic location for circumpeninsular maritime trade in Pre-Colombian times. A robust sample of obsidian artifacts from the Terminal-Postclassic transition increases our understanding of trade relations between the eastern and western sides of the Maya world. Technological and source analyses of obsidian artifacts from the site are presented to fill...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Cecelia Klein.

A number of enigmatic human figures in the imagery of late 9th-early 10th century A.D. Chichen Itza can be identified as fire priests, men whose task was to drill, tend, and/or oversee ritual fires reenacting the primordial birth of the sun from a flaming hearth at ancient Teotihuacan. Detailed analysis of the costumes, ceremonial responsibilities, and internal rankings of Chichen’s Itza’s fire priests reveals strong similarities to those of later Aztec fire priests as documented in painted...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Annabeth Headrick.

In the Early Classic period a distinct characteristic of Central Mexican art is the appearance of warriors in public art. To the contrary, these figures generally appear on more private, personal items in the art of the Classic Maya, though their proliferation on these media distinctly rises in the Late Classic. In a remarkable development, the presence of warriors in public art explodes in Early Postclassic Chichen Itza. While central Mexican influence may have sparked this development, this...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Eric Lo. Dominique Rissolo. Michael Hess. Dominique Meyer. Falko Kuester.

Photogrammetric techniques are increasingly being used for documenting cultural heritage sites for digital preservation and analysis, but the challenges of working in constrained spaces with difficult lighting conditions have encumbered widespread adoption in subterranean environments. The Proyecto Arquitectura Subterranea de Quintana Roo, coordinated by the Cultural Heritage Engineering Initiative (CHEI), at the University of California San Diego, in collaboration with the Instituto Nacional...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jessica Moss.

Photogrammetry can be used to reconstruct the excavation process in a way that aids in both interpretation and education. By peeling back the layers of each excavation level, three-dimensional documentation of the excavation process reveals both the archaeological materials and their context at various stages of excavation. This interdisciplinary tool can also be georeferenced with GIS and used within 3D modeling programs to extend its visualization applications into virtual or augmented reality...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Allen Christenson.

This is an abstract from the "Place-Making in Indigenous Mesoamerican Communities Past and Present" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Throughout the highlands of Guatemala, Maya traditionalists believe that mountains and their associated cave openings are the “mouths of the world” giving access to spiritual realms inhabited by sacred beings that have influence over natural phenomena of importance to the outside world. Each of these caves or watery...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Cynthia Kristan-Graham.

An archaeology of the senses expands the understanding of physical, tangible aspects of place to include qualities that are unseen, silent, or otherwise not readily perceptible. My paper analyzes acoustics at the late Maya capital of Chichen Itza. Sound—especially the human voice, animals, music, ritual, and dancing—were part of Chichen Itza’s atmosphere. An analysis of soundscapes, along with the intersection of architecture, planning, and acoustics, augments what is known about the site’s...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Nathan Meissner.

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. The Late Postclassic and Early Contact Periods (A.D. 1400-1697) of central Petén and western Belize are typically characterized by intensive interaction and migration during a time of shifting geo-political divisions. One of the divisions in Belize known as Dzuluinikob (loosely,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only David Milley. Armando Anaya-Hernández. Nicholas P. Dunning. Kathryn Reese-Taylor. Debra S. Walker.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Yaxnohcah is a large site in Campeche, Mexico with evidence of continual occupation from the early Middle Preclassic into the Postclassic. In 2014, the Yaxnohcah Archaeological Project commissioned a high resolution lidar scan of the region, which has allowed for accurate modeling of surface hydrology and significantly contributed to our understanding of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Sebastian Salgado-Flores.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Over the last several decades, research in anthracology (the study of charcoal recovered from archaeological sites) has become increasingly relevant to our understanding of human-environment dynamics. The field’s understanding of human fuelwood collection is currently based on a model guided by the “Principle of Least Effort,” which expects wood gatherers to...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Manda Adam. Fred Valdez, Jr.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Ancient Maya Postclassic period (1000-1500 CE) is one of the least understood periods of Ancient Maya cultural history. Essential questions about the Postclassic remained unanswered due to a focus on the preceding period the Classic Maya Collapse (800-1000 CE). While the collapse is well studied and understood, what happens after the collapse is not....

DOCUMENT Citation Only Igor Sarmientos.

This is an abstract from the "The Maya Wall Paintings of Chajul (Guatemala)" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In this paper, the author discusses an interpretation of the iconography of the murals of Chajul, Quiche, in the highlands of Guatemala. The murals consist of several paintings of Ixil-Maya culture music and dances from the late colonial period. An approach from archaeomusicology and ethnomusicology has been applied in this analysis both...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Sebastian Salgado-Flores.

How did Postclassic Maya communities decide which tree species to harvest for firewood and timber in a diverse forest environment? Most studies of ancient tree selection have used the principles of optimal foraging to construct a baseline of expectations for interpreting archaeological charcoal datasets. This paper will explore the implications of such a model on the interpretation of wood charcoals from the site of La Punta in Chiapas, Mexico, while also considering how the political structure...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Cristina Verdugo. James Brady. Lars Fehren-Schmitz.

This is an abstract from the "Multidisciplinary Approaches to the Subterranean" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Since 2014, the Midnight Terror Cave (MTC) osteological assemblage has been subjected to archaeological, skeletal, isotopic, and paleogenomic analyses generating new insights regarding the use of the cave space as well as the individuals found within it. The thousands of human remains, animal bones, ceramics, and artifacts, have pushed us...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Melanie Saldana. James Brady.

This is an abstract from the "Studies in Mesoamerican Subterranean Archaeology" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In the archaeological literature, the Osario at Chichén Itzá has been defined by the 998 A.D. long-count date inscribed on a pillar at the top of the pyramid. Although the pillar could have been added long after the construction of the pyramid, the complex is, nevertheless, consistently treated as a late construction. From the outset,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Travis Stanton. Dominique Meyer. Jose Osorio. Jeremy Coltman. Karl Taube.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In this poster, we present the results of a program of remote sensing and the digital documentation of the art and architecture of the Maya site of Chichen Itza, Yucatan, Mexico. An aerial lidar survey performed in 2014 has aided in creating a more accurate map of the site. Detailed photogrammetry and ground-based liar, performed in the area open for tourism,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Eponine Wong. Kacey Grauer. Zach Nissen. 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. Recent excavations have revealed that Postclassic Aventura was a very different place: both reverentially remembered and a home. In this paper, we review the evidence for human activity during the Postclassic period at Aventura. From identifications of Late Postclassic incensario fragments in surface material...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Justine Shaw.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. After many sites in the Southern Maya Lowlands were abandoned during the major societal transformation known as the “Maya Collapse,” settlements in the North grew markedly in size. In the Cochuah region of the Yucatan peninsula, and elsewhere, some of the largest architecture ever built was constructed. More residences than had been seen before, or since,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Samantha Krause. Timothy Beach. Sheryl Luzzadder-Beach. Thomas Guderjan.

This is an abstract from the "Ancient Maya Landscapes in Northwestern Belize, Part II" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Birds of Paradise wetlands have been a subject of recent intensive study within Northwestern Belize. We now recognize this fluviokarst wetland has undergone extensive modification of field building and channelization during the Maya Classic (1650-1050 BP) with use possibly extending into the early Maya Postclassic (1050-700...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Guillermo Gerardo De Alaniz. Karla Ortega.

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 2018 season, the Gran Aquífero Maya project began exploration of the cave of Balamku, located some 2.4 km east of Chichen Itza's site center. The cave is noteworthy in containing incensarios, manos and metates, and other artifacts identical to those in the back passage of Balankanche, only in greater numbers. The similarity...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Dominique Rissolo.

This is an abstract from the "Studies in Mesoamerican Subterranean Archaeology" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The construction and ceremonial use of miniature temples, or shrines, in caves across the central coastal zone of Quintana Roo, Mexico is a well-documented tradition and one that has received recent scholarly attention. Also common in caves throughout the region was the siting of unenclosed altars in a range of different forms and styles....

DOCUMENT Citation Only Virginia Miller.

This is an abstract from the "The Movement of People and Ideas in Eastern Mesoamerica during the Ninth and Tenth Centuries CE: A Multidisciplinary Approach Part II" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The striking recumbent stone figure known as a chacmool is a defining feature of the Mesoamerican Terminal Classic and Postclassic, occurring not only at Chichen Itza and Tula, where the largest number of figures is documented, but also in later Mexica...