Maya (Other Keyword)
326-350 (495 Records)
Although no physical examples of paper books are known from the Late Classic period Maya, scholarly considerations of Maya art have consistently considered this form of painting primary: as the inspiration of—if not the direct source for—representations in other media such as murals, finely slipped pottery, or relief-carved stelae. Due to fundamental differences in scale, form, and content, however, these media more likely played rather distinct social roles. Indeed, existing materials indicate...
Painted pots and royal routes: hieroglyphic and ceramic traditions in the western Peten (2017)
The cities of the western Peten shared a common history and several ceramic traditions. In the northwest along the San Pedro Martir River, archaeological sites like El Peru (Waka’), Zapote Bobal (Hiix Witz), La Joyanca, and La Florida (Namaan) flourished with seemingly few—if any—clashes between them for the entirety of the Classic Period. That being said, we know that this region was greatly affected by the Tikal-Calakmul wars. There was even a ‘road’ or route between the sites allied to the...
The Palenque Pool Project: Preliminary Investigations into Monumental Construction Costs (2016)
The Palenque Pool Project began excavations of the largest pool of the Picota Group in the Classic Maya site of Palenque in 2014. This group is located one kilometer from the Palace on the western edge of the site. Although the function of the pool is still unknown, its placement adjacent to one of Palenque's two stelae and its similarity to modern Maya examples, suggests ceremonial use. As a part of the 2015 field season samples were taken from two regions that appear to have been limestone...
The Palenque Pool Project: Sourcing the Sand from the Main Picota Pool (2015)
Many sites in the Maya Lowlands relied heavily on water storage features in order to sustain the annual dry season. However, in Palenque the opposite challenge was presented, as there was an abundance of perennial water flowing through the city. Palenque’s ancient name of Lakamha’ or Big Water was indicative of this issue. In response, there were intricate water management systems constructed in order to divert the water underground through aqueducts. In May of 2014, the Palenque Pool Project...
Paleoethnobotanical Remains Associated with the Sacbe at the Ancient Maya Village of Cerén (2015)
Paleoethnobotanical research conducted during the 2013 field season at Joya de Cerén in El Salvador focused on the analysis of plant remains found on the surface and associated features of an ancient Maya sacbe (causeway) that were well protected beneath tephra deposited by the volcanic eruption of Loma Caldera around AD 660. Plant remains were retrieved from the sacbe surface, adjacent drainage canals, and agricultural fields on either side of the sacbe. Because the plant remains found in...
Patrons and Artists: New Information on the Producers of Codex-Style Ceramics of the Mirador Basin (2015)
Codex-style ceramics are a distinctive product of the Late Classic Mirador Basin of north-central Peten, Guatemala. Through the archaeological work of the Mirador Basin Project and the chemical analyses of affiliated scholars we now have a considerable amount of information on the physical production of these vessels. In this presentation we present new evidence on the artists who produced these vessels, as well as the nobles for whom they were painting. These data provide much needed new...
Patterns of Grapheme Innovation in the Classic Maya Script (2015)
The ancient Maya script evolved over the course of about 1800 years, during which hundreds of distinctive functional graphic units (graphemes) were employed. Previous studies have shown that only a small subset of these graphemes was used at any given time, with bursts of innovation in certain epochs, particularly when the production of monuments spiked. This study revisits the question of the historical development of the Maya script, using the Maya Hieroglyphic Database, a comprehensive...
Paying Homage to the Ancestors: The (Preclassic) Cunil Phase Maya of Cahal Pech (2016)
More than 20 years of investigations at Cahal Pech have served to establish that the site has one of the longest sequence of occupation in the Maya lowlands. First settled at the end of the Early Preclassic period, the settlement gradually grew in size and affluence during the Middle and Late Preclassic periods, and eventually became one of the primary Classic period centers of the upper Belize River Valley. Cahal Pech’s rise to prominence, however, was not a product of Classic period...
Paynes Creek Salt Works: Ten Field Seasons of Underwater Maya Survey, Mapping, and Excavations (2016)
The unexpected discovery of wooden buildings preserved in the mangrove peat sediment below the sea floor in Paynes Creek National Park, southern Belize, provided an opportunity to re-evaluate the nature of salt production in the ancient Maya economy and the nature of ancient Maya wooden architecture. Innovative techniques based on shallow underwater survey elsewhere were used to systematically search in a salt-water lagoon system for wooden structures and associated briquetage—the pottery used...
The People Behind the Practice: An Ethnological Encounter with a Maya Forest Gardener (2016)
In recent years, alternative subsistence strategies have been explored by archaeoethnobotanists and others to describe ways in which the ancient Maya managed their land. Through a contextualized analysis of contemporary Maya interaction with their environment, ethnobotanists hope to gain insight into the past. Forest gardening, a sustainable, agroforestry system similar to permaculture practices, offers a glance into how the Maya cooperate with the land. This paper seeks not to provide an...
Peter Harrison: Remembering a Friend and Colleague (2015)
Peter Harrison introduced himself to me immediately after I presented my first SAA paper in 1991. We shared an interest in architecture, and I was then attending Trent University where he had taught. From that moment until his death Peter was extremely supportive personally and professionally. In this paper I introduce this session with reference to Peter’s support for me and other (then) young archaeologists, both personally and through his Ahau Foundation. I will highlight his work related...
Pib Naah y la Partería: Birth Rituals and Midwifery at Río Amarillo, Copan, Honduras (2023)
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. This paper explores evidence of women’s ritual practice at Río Amarillo, a site located 20 km from the Classic period center of Copan. While the ritual activities of royal women are largely hidden from view in Copan’s Acropolis, excavations at the site of Río Amarillo and in the groups surrounding it uncovered two contexts that were particularly...
A Place for the Living, A Place for the Dead: Social Memory at the Ancient Maya Hinterland Community of San Lorenzo, Belize (2017)
Public structures across the Maya lowlands functioned as materializations of ideology, memory, and identity. However, documentation of public ritual structures is typically limited to formal ceremonial centers. Little is known about public spaces within hinterland communities. Excavations at the site of San Lorenzo offer insight into the use and transformation of ritual space within a hinterland community. Recent excavations of a public structure group have uncovered multiple construction phases...
Place Making, Authority, and Ancestors: New Evidence of Developing Middle Formative Socio-Political Complexity from Ka’Kabish, Northern Belize (2015)
Northern Belize during the Middle Formative Period (1000-300 B.C.E.) has increasing become recognized as a critical locus in the development of Lowland Maya socio-political complexity. This period witnessed the founding of numerous ceremonial centers, substantial material cultural innovation, and the advent of mortuary practices indicating developing social differentiation in Northern Belize. Recent excavations at the site of Ka’Kabish in Northern Belize have uncovered evidence significantly...
Political Dynamics and the Organization of Chert Production in the Copán Valley (2017)
This study focuses on the social aspects of craft production among outlying populations of the greater Copán Valley of Honduras during the Late Classic to Early Postclassic transition (A.D. 800-1200). Lithic data from four valley sites including Rastrojón, Río Amarillo, Quebrada Piedras Negras, and Site 29 are compared to elucidate raw material procurement strategies and methods of chert reduction by local producers. Interesting differences emerge among the sites concerning changes in raw...
Political Dynamics in the Northwestern Petén from the Preclassic to the Classic: The View from La Cariba, Guatemala (2016)
La Cariba was a relatively small minor center in the northwestern Petén, but was situated in an area of important political dynamics with far-reaching consequences in the Maya world. During the Late Preclassic, the region may have been heavily influenced by El Mirador. Eventually, during the Late Classic, the nearby center of La Corona became a strong ally and vassal of the Kaan dynasty at Dzibanche and later Calakmul. Formal investigations at La Cariba since 2012 have revealed that La Cariba...
The Politics in Places: An Ethnographic Picture of Highland Maya use of Caves and other Landscape Voids in Guatemala (2017)
Caves and other sacred landscape features such as clefts in rocks and mountain voids embody special powers controlled by earthen, spiritual entities. To the Highland Maya that power personified by the earth owner needs to be maintained, appeased, and managed, even on a daily basis. This maintenance comes in the form of elaborate ceremonies utilizing a number of special items deemed suitable for pleasing the ancient entities. Mayan ritual specialists or daykeepers, who perform the ceremonies, are...
Polyvalent Monumentality: Analyzing Geospatially the Interplay of Fortification and Hydrology at the Maya site of Muralla de León (2017)
Dissertation fieldwork since 2014 at Muralla de León has documented, mapped, and partially excavated an integrated system of earthworks that appears to have served both large-scale defensive and hydrological functions. Located on the shores of Lake Macanché, the site sits atop a steep-sided natural rise, artificially augmented in height by an encircling stone rampart wall, or enceinte. A defensive function for the enceinte is hypothesized, though it also appears to serve as a means of water...
Pondering Prehistory, Texts, and Roads in Yucatan (2016)
Roads in Yucatan, Mexico, were aesthetic, territorial, and communicative systems that both united and divided the landscape. I employ network theory, placemaking, and urban planning and landscape models to analyze Maya road systems at Yaxuna, Coba, Ek Balam, and Chichen Itza as site extensions, markers of identity, and ritual and commercial corridors. It may seem heretical for an art historian to abandon historical documents available for one’s arsenal for analysis. However, Gil Stein and others...
Postclassic Murals of Mayapan as a Mirror of Cultural Transformation (2015)
The changing pictorial imagery in the murals of Mayapan offers a rich picture of cultural transformation in Postclassic Yucatan. The archaeological chronology of Mayapan and comparisons with murals elsewhere in Mesoamerica provide an anchor for the mural chronology. Between 1350 and 1400, Mayapan’s murals represent imagery that apparently was inspired by different sources. One mural program can be compared with the hybrid Maya painting style of the Madrid Codex, which also uses the same pigments...
Power and Polity in the Motul de San José Zone: Recent Research at Kantet’u’ul and Chachaklu’um (2016)
Motul de San José dominated a swath of the northern shore of Lake Peten Itza in central Peten, Guatemala, during the Late Classic. Recent excavations at two small sites in the periphery of Motul de San José, Kante’t’u’ul (approx. 3km northwest) and Chachacklu’um (approx. 5km east) investigated the relations between these secondary centers and their political overlords at Motul de San José. The divergent cultural histories, settlement patterns, architecture, and material culture of these two...
Power, Space, and Place in the Heart of La Milpa (2017)
La Milpa was one of the largest ancient Maya urban centers in the eastern Maya Lowlands during the second half of the Late Classic to the Terminal Classic periods, its influence extending over communities throughout the Three Rivers Region of northwestern Belize. La Milpa’s rise to regional prominence is associated with a series of upheavals during this period, including increased political dynamism following the decline of Tikal at the end of the Early Classic period, and a dramatic rise in the...
Preclassic Maya Households and Ritual at the Karinel Group, Ceibal, Guatemala (2015)
Founded around 1000 B.C., the Maya site of Ceibal has yielded important insights into the development of public rituals and spaces in Preclassic Mesoamerica. Recent excavations at the Karinel Group, located just outside the ceremonial core of Ceibal, have complemented this knowledge with data from domestic contexts. By making detailed comparisons of public and household ritual practices, we seek to understand the social processes through which the community of Ceibal changed over time. Some...
The Preclassic Maya Site of Noh K'uh: A Network of Communities (2015)
In many societies around the world, the concept of community plays a central role in the formation of individual identities. Communities are subject to change and the focus on community identity provides a theoretical approach in which the individual can be situated in a broader sphere of social interaction. I research community through spatial analyses of human constructions at the Preclassic site of Noh K'uh in Chiapas, Mexico. My findings revealed that house-mounds clustered on hill-tops...
Preclassic Reservoirs and Urbanism at Yaxnohcah, Campeche, Mexico (2017)
The need to collect and store rain water has been proposed as an important urbanizing force during the development of Maya civilization in the Elevated Interior Region on the Maya Lowlands, where surface water is naturally scarce and the dry season lengthy. We present data from Yaxnohcah, Campeche, Mexico indicating that the construction of large reservoirs was an integral part of the development of this urban center in the Middle and Late Preclassic periods. Data collected to date indicate that...