Maya (Other Keyword)
451-475 (504 Records)
This paper focuses on characteristics of a secondary center and its satellite settlements to provide evidence for the nature of political organization in the Cochuah Region during the Terminal Classic Period. The examination of these settlements gives insight into the political organization of a secondary center which otherwise would not be available if investigation was limited to the primary centers. The data used for investigation of the nature of political organization during this time are...
Terminal Classic to Early Contact Period Obsidian in the Petén Lakes Region: Inter- and Intra-Site Variation of Raw Materials (2016)
Recently, obsidian studies in the Maya area have benefited from the instrumental sourcing of large samples to reconstruct political and domestic economies. This paper summarizes results of the largest portable x-ray florescence (PXRF) source attribution study of obsidian in the Petén lakes region from the sites of Tayasal and Nixtun-Ch'ich'. Cluster analysis of the chemical profiles of 1,123 obsidian specimens suggests that two sites had varying strategies of procurement that emphasized...
Territorial Boundaries and the Northwestern Peten: the View from Jaguar Hill (2015)
What actually constitutes Classic Maya political units? One way to address this question would be to examine ancient Maya conceptions of territory. Certainly, many major Maya sites had emblem glyphs, and these did provide—for those who could read—the sense of a geographic place controlled by a ‘holy lord.’ The real issue for understanding territory, however, is not an emblem glyph but what a Maya kingdom was to the people within it: how territorial boundaries were perceived by different...
Testing the Utility of Rib Histology Methods in Age Estimation in Fragmentary Remains from Maya Rockshelter Burials (2015)
Poor skeletal preservation is a ubiquitous problem in the Maya area, complicating the use of macroscopic techniques aimed at producing age range estimates. An important, but underutilized, set of skeletal approaches to aging employ microscopic methods, which rely on quantifying age-related histomorphological changes. This study focuses on histological structures in ribs and has two objectives: 1) to refine age estimations for burials from two rockshelters in the Caves Branch River Valley, Belize...
Their world at hand: Entering the language of gesture in Classic Maya art (2016)
Our hands shape and express the social and material worlds in which we live by creating and measuring things around us and communicating our thoughts, feelings and ideas. In Classic Maya iconography, hands are represented in a variety of shapes and forms, which offers a unique glimpse into ancient Maya gestural practices. This paper journeys through the actions and representations of hands in the ancient Maya world, exploring the dynamic and dialogic relationships between bodily gestures and...
There’s No Place Like Otot: The Domestic Architecture of the Maya in Their Own Words (2016)
The construction of the home (‘otot’ in the language of the Classic Maya inscriptions) is one of the most important and meaning-laden events in Maya communities modern and ancient alike. In the Maya world, culturally-contingent notions of propriety, order, and moral rectitude guide each stage of housebuilding, including the procurement of materials, the organization of labor, and the actual act of construction itself. Additionally, houses must be properly consecrated before they can be...
They are what they eat: A need to know more about diet through residues, hieroglyphic texts, and images of the Classic Mayas (2017)
Among the various sources of information about what foodstuffs comprised the Classic Mayan diet, we lack resolution on daily, domestic, and the various ritual and event foodstuffs. Beyond the archaeologically recovered macrofossil and faunal data, the identifications of drugs and ritual foodstuffs are less well established. Speculative and presumed behaviors that surround these goods tend to bias methods of analysis towards known substances and preconceived interpretations, thereby potentially...
Tlaloc Imagery in Western Belize and its Implications for Central Mexican and Lowland Maya Interaction (2016)
Recent archaeological investigations in western Belize have recovered evidence for the representation of Tlaloc imagery in the iconographic record of this sub-region of the Maya lowlands. In Central Mexican Civilizations, Tlaloc represented the important rain deity, equivalent, in many ways, to Cha’ac in the Maya area. In the case of western Belize, Tlaloc imagery appears to become increasingly popular at the end of the Classic period, and is depicted on a variety of mediums, including stucco...
To Burn like the Sun: Rituals of Fire and Death among the Classic Maya (2015)
The dichotomies of hot and cold, light and darkness were essential to Classic Maya cosmology. The celestial and underworld journey of solar deities offered a fundamental mythic charter, and fire was the ultimate transformative force, providing a bridge between earthly and otherworldly realms. Such ideology is especially patent in rites of death, sacrifice, and veneration. Monuments from western kingdoms describe censing rituals performed months, years, and even decades after the death of...
To the Mountain: Heritage preservation through archaeological literacy in San Jose Succotz, Belize. (2017)
Maya archaeology has seen a steady shift to the integration of community heritage interest and ownership in the design, execution and outcomes of research and preservation efforts. This poster describes a heritage outreach project focused on archaeology literacy development among grade school children in the community of San Jose Succotz, Belize, adjacent to the Xunantunich archaeological reserve. We authored a fully illustrated book entitled To the Mountain (2016) for the Succotz community,...
A Toast to the Gods and Ancestors: The Role of Beverages in Classic Maya Elite Cave Ritual in West Central Belize (2017)
For the past two decades, considerable archaeological attention in the Maya area has been paid to ritual cave practices and absorbed residue analysis of pottery, yet these two areas of research have not intersected. In this paper, we discuss the results of the kinds of liquid residues identified in monochrome and unslipped pottery vessels from caves around the site of Pacbitun in west central Belize, where extensive research in Classic Maya elite behavior has taken place. While we know the elite...
Tracing Pathways of Power, Identity, and Landscape at Río Amarillo, Copan Valley, Honduras (2017)
During the Late Classic period, the ancient community of Río Amarillo was actively engaged in the politics of the city of Copan, whether willingly or not. Some have suggested that the fertile bajos of the Río Amarillo East Pocket may have produced food for the city to its west, ameliorating shortages that could have arisen due to its rising population. Archaeological research conducted by the Proyecto Arqueológico Río Amarillo, Copan (PARAC) since 2011 has recovered information regarding both...
Tracing the Emergence of Maya Lordship at Secondary Centers of the Copan Polity: An Examination of Residential Differentiation and Access at Centers in the Cucuyagua and El Paraiso Valleys (2017)
In this paper we contend that Copan fundamentally transformed the political structures and social institutions of centers in outlying areas as it expanded and integrated these regions. Evidence from our areas of study, the Cucuyagua and El Paraiso valleys, suggest that these regions had long lived autocthonous populations prior to Copan’s expansion into these regions in the Late Classic period. Using evidence from other non-Maya sites in Western and Central Honduras we contend that while varied...
Tracking Luxury Craft Production across Mayapán's Physical and Social Landscapes (2015)
Considering luxury production activities in Mayapán's urban landscape reveals new data regarding a complex and diverse economic system. We explore the evidence for luxury production activities at households attached to elite palaces at this Postclassic Maya capital city. Surplus crafting at Mayapán varied according to scale, intensity, and the value of surplus items. Crafting of valuables such as effigy censers, figurines, copper objects, and stucco sculptures, was more closely supervised (or...
Transformations within an Ancestor Shrine: New Discoveries from Group D - Xunantunich, Belize (2017)
The concept of transformation is expressed by innumerable cultures and has been explored by archaeologists across the globe. The ritual act is often represented in Maya iconography as rulers and religious practitioners exhibiting their power through the ability to change into their animal uays. However, like individuals, spaces can undergo a process of ritual transformation. This paper examines the subject of transformation and how it is demonstrated through imagery and space within a Classic...
Two Newly Discovered Maya Chert Tool Workshops in the Belize Valley: Results of the 2014 Surface Reconnaissance (2015)
Few lithic workshops have been found in the Belize Valley of Western Belize. This paper presents the results of surface reconnaissance and debitage collection at two newly discovered chert tool workshops near the villages of Esperanza and Teakettle in the Cayo District of Western Belize. Each of these workshops consists of a single large mound of debitage and includes tools aborted or broken at various stages of manufacture. At both locations, the main tool types produced were oval bifaces and...
Tz’utujil Maya Ritual Practitioners, Embodied Objects and the Night (2017)
For contemporary Tz’utujil Maya ritual practitioners living in the highlands of Guatemala, the night is a particularly potent time and one to which they are inherently linked. Individuals often learn of their destiny to become ritual practitioners when they are first contacted by ancestral beings, known collectively as nawales, at night during dreams. Thereafter ancestral nawales and ritual practitioners enter into mutually beneficial social relationships that are mediated through sacred objects...
"Under the Volcano": Assemblages, Causality and Volcanic Matter at San Pedro Aguacatepeque, Guatemala. (2015)
The colonial Maya community of San Pedro Aguacatepeque, located in Pacific piedmont Guatemala, sits on the eastern flank of the Volcan de Fuego, a long-active stratovolcano. The interventions of new materialist approaches, in particular Bennett’s notion of the "vibrancy" and influence of nonhumans in the unfolding of history, are brought into relief when considering the abundant historical entanglements between the Volcan de Fuego and Aguacatepeque. The regular flows and bursts emanating from...
Understanding Environmental Thresholds through Geoarchaeology: Case Studies from the Maya Lowlands (2016)
All depositional environments can leave complex records of environmental change over time. We consider floodplains, alluvial fans, and wetlands of the Maya lowlands at present day Neundorf, Belize. We have documented a rich history of sedimentation, water chemistry, and archaeological data that show a measurable environmental and archaeological signature that date back over 4,000 years in this region. This research uses soil geomorphology to study the chronology and processes of wetland...
Understanding Residential Space through Soil Chemistry in the Northern Maya Lowlands (2015)
Soil chemistry in the Northern Maya Lowlands has been an effective method at a variety of sites and in a range of contexts such as households, ballcourts, causeways, and ceremonial plazas. Recent chemical analyses of the Ucí-Cansahcab Regional integration Project (UCRIP) also revealed that the soils of the Yucatán, México, are testable using the in-field Olsen bicarbonate method to measure levels of extractable inorganic phosphate. When supplemented with distributional analyses of artifacts on...
Understanding variability in distribution and consumption in low-wealth households from the Classic period (2016)
This paper explores data on consumption of durable goods in Classic period domestic contexts both in cities (Chunchucmil, Tikal) and rural areas (Ceren, hinterlands of Izamal and Copan). The goal is to document variation in distribution systems across the lowlands. Though some of this variation may be due to the intensity of market systems, other variation may be due to the wealth and resourcefulness of individual households and some due to long-term trends in economic prosperity throughout the...
Underwater Transect Excavations, Sediment Coring, Remoting Sensing at the Paynes Creek Salt Works (2017)
Following the discovery and mapping of over 100 salt works in a shallow, salt-water lagoon system, a collaborative, interdisciplinary research project was initiated with funding from NSF to examine the ancient landscape, sea-level rise, use of the wooden buildings for salt production and as residences, and reconstruct the underwater sites using 3D GIS. Sediment coring across the lagoon system identified red mangrove peat, an indicator of actual sea-level rise, as well as a plethora of pollen...
Unit-Stamped Red Jars in the Southern Lowlands: New Insights into Ceramic Production and Exchange (2015)
Monochrome red jars and bowls featuring unique unit-stamped designs have been excavated from Late Classic contexts throughout the southern Petén and the areas surrounding the Maya Mountains. Adorning apparently utilitarian vessels, these unit-stamps show both a consistency in size and application across their spatial range, as well as a great diversity in the preferred motifs depicted. Combining a new ceramic chronology developed at Lubaantun and data from across southern Belize and the southern...
Using 3D Geographic Information Systems to Understand Settlement Decisions at Calakmul (2015)
In 1982, fifty years after the Carnegie Institution of Washington surveyed and mapped sections of Calakmul, a project under the direction of William J. Folan began mapping the site. The completed map published in 2001 covers 30 square kilometers of the ancient site. Many printed maps or datasets like those from Calakmul created with laser total stations or conventional surveying equipment can provide the essential geospatial information to produce accurate topographic maps and 3D map objects...
Using GIS to Explore the Strategic Location of Ancient Maya Centers Within the Vaca Plateau of Western Belize (2015)
Settlement patterns studies in archaeology have shown that a myriad of environmental, political, social, and ideological factors influenced where ancient people chose to settle on the landscape. In efforts to better understand these complex behaviors, archaeologists have increasingly turned to GIS-based modeling approaches including viewshed and least cost path analyses. This study draws upon these techniques to explore visibility and movement across the north Vaca Plateau of west-central...