Maya (Other Keyword)
276-300 (495 Records)
It has long been recognized that ancient Maya architecture encoded sacred ideologies and replicated primordial landscapes through building forms and structural orientations. Many studies have focused on the architecture of the Southern Maya Lowlands, where rich textual sources exist and where an abundance of archaeological data aids in efforts to understand and interpret the meanings of architectural groups. We seek to augment interpretive frameworks with respect to the Northern Maya Lowlands,...
Maya Ceramic Production along the North Coast of the Yucatan Peninsula: Diagnostic Attributes Associated with Unslipped Wares at Viste Alegre (2015)
Along the northeastern portion of the Yucatan Peninsula prehistoric ceramic production practices included a variety of utilitarian forms. During recent work at the Maya coastal site of Vista Alegre, Drs. Jeffrey Glover and Dominique Rissolo recovered a high volume of unslipped plain and striated sherds. Due to the absence of complete vessels as well as the mixing of materials stratigraphically, classifying the sherds typologically has proven problematic. This paper examines and compares...
Maya Child Sacrifice Via Cranial Punctures (2017)
Our knowledge of Maya human sacrifice is drawn from iconographic representations and contact period Spanish sources. Unfortunately, the corpus related to child sacrifice is extremely limited. In 1971 David M. Pendergast described the burial of a child from Eduardo Quiroz Cave with traumatic perimortem holes in the parietals. Later, Brady reported on a second child with similar wounds. Both Pendergast and Brady interpreted the evidence as reflecting child sacrifice. The recovery of thousands...
Maya E-Groups and the Nature of Science -- Ours and Theirs (2017)
Maya E-Group architectural assemblages have attracted scholarly attention for about a century, and yet our ideas about them have become more muddled through time. Since the beginning of investigations in the 1920’s these structures have been thought to have had some astronomical function, but the exact astronomical significance suggested by archaeologists has changed though time. Today there is very little agreement about their meaning and function. In this presentation I will briefly review the...
Maya Graffiti and Sacred Spaces (2015)
This paper explores the nature and possible implications of graffiti identified inside presumably abandoned Maya architecture. There exists a wealth of ancient iconographic graffiti scattered throughout the Maya world. It has been argued that such graffiti was, in many cases, created after the spaces in which it is found had ceased to be used for their original purposes. Therefore, graffiti in this context is a possible example of the repurposing of Maya architecture by members of a society with...
Maya Health Though Time in Northwestern Belize (2016)
This presentation will examine paleopathology among the ancient Maya through the analysis of the skeletal remains from three different medium Maya sites in northwestern Belize. Osteological health indicators such as trauma, porotic hyperostosis, cribra orbitalia, osteoarthritis, and various dental health issues will be assessed both within and between the three sites. The sites to be discussed are Blue Creek, Nojol Nah, and Xnoha all of which are located along the Bravo Escarpment in...
Maya metals: A Comparative Analysis from Tipu and Lamanai, Belize (2017)
Investigations at the southern Maya Lowland sites of Lamanai and Tipu, Belize have yielded diverse assemblages of metal artifacts. These metals are from the Postclassic and Colonial (12th to 17th century) occupations at Lamanai and Colonial (mid-16th to early 18th century) contexts at Tipu. As a rare occasion to look at the similarities and differences between artifacts made of the same material from different sites, this research compares the forms, contexts, and technologies of metal artifacts...
Maya Monumental Energetics (2016)
Inspired by the important development of architectural energetics methodologies in Maya studies, I explore current research concerning monumental construction practices and labor at the ancient Maya site of Xunantunich, Belize. I discuss the foundational energetics principles applied to the major acropolis of Xunantunich, known as the Castillo, and highlight how virtual reconstruction plays a role in developing such energetics studies. Most importantly, I discuss how the scale of monumentality...
Maya Mortuary Practices over Time and Space: The Effects of Socio-Political and Environmental Change on Mortuary Practices and the Statistical Analysis of Trends in Mortuary Characteristics (2017)
Mortuary practices are created to convey something about the deceased individual, as well as their surviving relatives, but can also give insight into the religious, social, and political structure of the community. This paper focuses on Maya mortuary practices in Belize, and how/why those practices changed over the transition from the Formative period (2000 BC – AD 300) to the Classic Maya florescence (AD 300-800). Comparing differences of mortuary characteristics within and between...
Maya Palaces at Aguateca and Ceibal, Guatemala (2017)
Royal palaces at the medium-sized centers of Aguateca and Ceibal appear to represent a basic template for the spatial and functional configurations of Maya palaces. They exhibit simple square forms resembling smaller residential groups of lower status, indicating their primary function as residential complexes of the royal families. Administrative and ceremonial functions were likely merged with domestic ones. These palaces also provide information on the degree of spatial mobility. While the...
Maya Palaces: Royal Courts of the Ancient and Not-So-Ancient Maya (2017)
The Palaces of the Peten Campechano and the remainder of the Yucatan Peninsula represent single and composite, royal multipurpose households of varying shapes and sizes often associated with triadic relationships representing religious, civic, and military responsibilities. These relationships are manifest in structures at Calakmul, Oxpemul, Becan, Santa Rosa Xtampak, the triadic Monjas Quadrangle of Uxmal, Structure #385 of Dzibilchaltun, the triad of Noh Cah Chan Santa Cruz, El Palacio de...
Maya Shell Trumpets: An Interpretative Pivot (2017)
For the ancient Maya, the use of music was often depicted as central to ritual activity. One of the longest lasting instruments, the shell trumpet, provides ample material for analysis. My three-pronged interpretive approach is made possible by the shell’s use in ancient ritual contexts, its appearance in Classic era iconography, and its organic origins. Archeologically provenanced trumpets, for example, yield deposition data, while art historical methods address both unprovenanced trumpets...
Maya Turkey Management and Domestication at Mayapan (2016)
It has been largely assumed within Maya archaeological research that the native ocellated turkey (Meleagris ocellata) was consumed but not managed, and the domesticated Mexican turkey (Meleagris gallopavo) wasn’t introduced to the Maya region until 1000-1500 AD. Recent investigations have begun to question these assumptions and our research aims to further illuminate this complex topic. Through morphometric and stable isotope analyses of zooarchaeological remains of both species, we investigated...
Maya Wetlands: Natural and Anthropogenic (2015)
In our continuing endeavors to better understand Maya wetland formation and agricultural systems across the Maya Lowlands, we now compare natural and anthropogenic wetland field formation. Natural wetland processes can form patterned environments that may be similar visually to intensive, culturally modified, wetland systems. This paper will consider natural factors that can produce similar topography to Maya wetland fields. We will also present aerial photography, GIS, soil stratigraphy, and...
The Maya: Historic Archaeology and Archaeology of Historic Periods (2017)
The study of the ancient Maya has become complicated over the past 30 years. As the ancient Maya writing has been deciphered, these texts provide an historical record of parts of the ancient social and political systems. This development has moved the study of the Maya past into the realm of historic archaeology. In addition, the study of the colonial period in the Maya area has focused upon Spanish and indigenous texts to understand this historic period but additionally to create analogical...
Mercury pollution and the ancient Maya: where, why and how. (2015)
Multi-element inorganic geochemical studies across the Maya lowlands have revealed elevated levels of mercury (Hg) in soils and sediments that date mainly from the Classic period (c. 250-900 AD). Mercury pollution has now been recorded at a range of archaeological sites despite the absence of metallurgy until the Postclassic Period (after 1000 AD), or any other industry capable of significant heavy metal pollution of the environment. This paper presents the first detailed analysis of the extent...
Mesoamerican Plants of the Night: A Paleoethnobotanical Perspective (2017)
The ancient Mesoamerican landscape has been extensively researched archaeologically, with the field of paleoethnobotany allowing for a better understanding of what plants the ancient people valued agriculturally and in their economic, ritual, medicinal and other daily practices. Typically, archaeologists interpret the archaeological record in terms of how the ancient peoples interacted with the artifacts and navigated through the landscape during the daytime. What about nightly practices? How...
Metallurgical Production at Mayapan, Yucatan, Mexico: New Discoveries from the R-183 Group (2017)
The Postclassic period urban center of Mayapan housed numerous household craft production industries, including metallurgical production. The recovery of metal artifacts, production debris, and metallurgical ceramics from contexts throughout the city suggests a number of independent production sites. One of the most significant archaeological contexts associated with metallurgical production is the R-183 group, an elite residential group in the southeast mid-city sector. Salvage excavations in...
Methods for Intensive Data Collection on Terminal Deposits in the Belize River Valley, Belize (2017)
Terminal deposits, defined here as dense midden-like assemblages that contain non-elite and elite paraphernalia (i.e. utilitarian and decorated ceramic vessels, faunal remains, obsidian blades, ground stone tools, and human remains) have been discovered at sites across central and northern Belize. Despite the research on these features, there is little consensus on what type of activities these deposits represent. In the past, archaeologists have labelled these deposits as de facto refuse,...
Middle Formative Origins of the Early Classic Period Stela Cult (2015)
Stela are standing stones, incised or carved with iconographic or hieroglyphic information. Stelae vary in size from the portable to monumental stones. Some of the earliest examples of stelae were erected at the middle formative period site of La Venta. Undoubtedly, these La Venta stela, like their Maya counterparts, are linked to concepts of rulership and sacred cycles of time. A close iconographic analysis supports an interpretation that finds the origin of these early stela firmly rooted in...
"A Mischief that is Past and Gone": Situating Ka’Kabish in the Larger Ancient Maya Political (2015)
Discussions of ancient socio-political interactions are most productive when site-specific archaeological data is incorporated into a multi-scalar analysis that includes centres of different distinction. The ability to integrate centres into a nuanced landscape is a luxury derived from a long legacy of archaeological work by different researchers. This work draws upon the increasing large corpus of data created for north-central Belize over the last 50 years. In this paper, we present a...
Mobility in the Central Maya Lowlands: Strontium, Oxygen, and Carbon Isotope Values from La Corona and El Perú-Waka’ (2016)
The movement of Classic Maya people has been recorded in numerous epigraphic texts. These references, along with migration studies at Tikal, Copán, and other smaller communities, suggest that there was a considerable amount of migration among Maya centers. We present the results of strontium, oxygen, and carbon stable isotope analysis of 71 individuals buried at the sites of La Corona and El Perú-Waka’ in the northwest Petén, Guatemala. The sample includes single and multiple burials, non-burial...
A Model for Interpreting the Royal Court Puuc Tradition (2016)
Throughout sixteen years of research at the archaeological site of Kiuic, located in the Puuc zone of the Yucatán Peninsula, explorations have yielded the complete construction sequence of its Late Classic Period royal court and central architectural group, Yaxché. Deep and detailed excavations at the group’s central building, Str. N1065E1025, have produced a unique picture of the evolution of architecture, modification of the landscape, and its role in the consolidation of royal power through...
A Model for Urbanism from the Neotropics? (2016)
Drawing from our own research on food, water, and waste management, we describe the development and characteristics of settled life in the humid neotropics with a view to isolating features or patterns that reflect sustainable trajectories. Because mainstream concepts of “the city” tend to be structured by urban experiences that lie outside the tropics and are recentist in outlook, we suggest that there are urban (and peri-urban) phenomena in the deep past of the neotropics that tend to be...
Modeling Maya markets (2016)
A profusion of data now supports the existence—long doubted—of markets in the Maya area prior to the Postclassic (C.E. 900-1500). Using a range of approaches from examining the effects of market exchange on artifact distributions to identifying marketplaces within sites, researchers have established that markets were important building blocks for Classic Maya (C.E. 250-900) economies. To date, however, models of prehispanic Maya markets remain nebulous. Scholars continue to rely on frameworks...