Maya (Other Keyword)
351-375 (495 Records)
The use of GIS-based analyses has been increasing in archaeology over several years, including predictive modeling from digital elevation models (DEMs). Critics of these methods suggest that these computational approaches leave no room for human agency, and can create improper landscape analyses. However, these methods can be properly used when operating in well-defined theoretical frameworks and correct scale. In this paper, we present recent ground survey data and ethnoarchaeological methods...
Preliminary Findings at the Quebrada de Oro Ruins: Shining New Light on a Classic Maya Site We Thought We Knew (2017)
The Quebrada de Oro Ruins comprise the remains of one of four known Classic Maya centers located in Bladen Branch region of the Maya Mountains of southern Belize. Initially recorded in the 1970s, the site has not garnered much attention by archaeologists due to its remoteness. However, this has not deterred cartographers from noting it as a significant landmark or archaeologists from asserting that it played an important role in ancient times. This contrasts with the views of the few...
Preliminary Interpretations of the Reduction Technology and Distribution of Obsidian Cores at Caracol, Belize: Learning to Reconsider Maya "Eccentrics" and Social Relations of Ritual Objects. (2015)
To the uninitiated, Maya "eccentrics" are vague archaeological labels applied to flaked obsidian objects placed in ritual caches during the Classic Period (AD 250-800). Although an unclear label of humanoid, deity, animal-like, or other shaped objects, lithics analysts have tried to define eccentrics based on technological attributes enabling comparisons between contexts, sites, and regions. Those studies that reconstruct a complex chaîne opératoire demonstrate many eccentrics had a dynamic...
Preliminary LiDAR-based Analyses of the La Corona – El Achiotal Corridor (2017)
Located in the northwestern Petén, Guatemala, the Maya sites of La Corona and El Achiotal have been investigated since 2008 by a multi-disciplinary US and Guatemalan research project. While a primary goal of this project has been to reconstruct the region’s political history, we are now beginning to investigate the management of local resources and general human impact on the landscape. In fact, the area between La Corona and El Achiotal is almost entirely unknown archaeologically, especially...
Preliminary Obsidian Analysis for the Site of Holtun, Petén, Guatemala 2011-2015 (2016)
Holtun is a medium-sized civic-ceremonial center located in the Maya lowlands in the central lakes region of Petén, Guatemala that was occupied from the Preclassic (~600BC) through the beginning of the Postclassic (AD1000). During the 2011, 2014, and 2015 field seasons of the Holtun Archaeological Project approximately 147 pieces of obsidian were recovered from a mixture of contexts including fill, plaza, ceremonial, and household. Analyses of obsidian artifacts included typological analysis,...
Preliminary Results of Wood Charcoal analysis for Household groups in San Bartolo (2015)
This paper presents preliminary results of analysis of charcoal remains recovered from well stratified household middens at the Maya archaeological site of San Bartolo located in the Department of the Peten, Guatemala. It presents reconstructed use patterns of local trees for typical San Bartolo residential households, as well as a discussion of how these patterns changed over time, and what factors, cultural and environmental, may have influenced these changes using secondary evidence. SAA...
Preparing for the Future through Rock Mounds and Research (2015)
Mentoring and strong teaching methods are the hallmarks of Scott Fedick's career. When just an undergraduate, Fedick took a chance on Anna Hoover and guided her into studying an ancient agricultural technique that is actually still practiced today. Chi'ich mounds, or small rock/pebble mounds, are utilized where surface soils are thin of temperatures are dry and arid. Serving as both mulch and root stabilizers for vines, shrubs and trees, these little features can be found n archaeological...
Presenting Order: Painting as Mythic Past and Mathematical Future in the Murals of San Bartolo and Xultun, Guatemala (2015)
Though the murals of San Bartolo and Xultun are located only 8km apart in the lowland forests of Guatemala they are separated by more than 800 years of Maya history and reflect very different relationships between society and the cosmos as well as between the artworks and their intended audiences. Where one publicly recounts episodes of Maya mythology and the idealized roles of both gods and kings in the creation and maintenance of cosmic order, the other painted within a private household...
A Problematic Deposit from a Maya Hinterland Household: Chert, Sherds and Obsidian (2015)
A significant amount of recent study has been directed to what have been termed "problematical deposits." Although superficially similar to middens, they tend to have a ritual component that makes them distinct from simple trash pits, and as Houk (2000) indicates, they are often located at the centerline of monumental, ceremonial architecture ( Clayton et al. 2005; Houk 2000). The Tapir Group of the Medicinal Trail Community has an Early Classic "problematic deposit" that is located in the base...
Production, maintenance, and exchange in a young Maya community: Ceren, El Salvador (2016)
What is now El Salvador was devastated by the Ilopango eruption, probably in AD 536. A small group of Maya immigrants founded the Ceren village in the uncontested landscape some three decades later. Only about four generations lived in and constructed the functioning community before it was buried by the tephra from the Loma Caldera eruption in about AD 650. Production and maintenance activities of the recently discovered sacbe are presented, along with its various functions. Evidence indicates...
Prospering in Place: Cerro Maya and the Late Preclassic Exchange Networks (2015)
Cerro Maya, located on Lowry’s Point at the southern edge of Chetumal Bay in northern Belize, sits at a strategic intersection between riverine and coastal transportation routes used by the Maya from Preclassic times onward. Evidence suggests a major dock facility was the first monumental construction undertaken during the initial Late Preclassic occupation, indicating the site was intentionally founded to mediate access to interior sites on the two principal river drainages in the region for...
Provisioning a 19th Century Maya Refugee Village; Consumer Culture at Tikal, Guatemala. (2018)
In the late-nineteenth century Maya refugees fleeing the violence of the Caste War of Yucatan (1847-1901) briefly reoccupied the ancient Maya ruins of Tikal. Unlike the numerous Yucatec refugee communities established to the east in British Honduras, those who settled at Tikal combined with Lacandon Maya, and later Ladinos from Lake Petén Itza to form a small, multiethnic village in the sparsely occupied Petén jungle of northern Guatemala. This paper discusses the analysis of the mass-produced...
Proyecto Salinas de los Nueve Cerros
Archaeology, ethnohistory, ethnography, geology, and community development at the largest Precolumbian saltworks in the Maya world. Salinas de los Nueve Cerros was a Maya city located at the highland-lowland transition along the Chixoy River that produced up to 24,000 tons of salt/year during the Late Classic period (AD 600-850). It was occupied from at least 800 BC through the Classic collapse, and continued to be occupied throughout the Postclassic and colonial periods, with salt production...
Pushing the Limits of Power: Copan Expansionist Strategies in the El Paraíso Valley, Western Honduras (2017)
The reign of K’ahk’ Uti’ Witz’ K’awiil, Copan Ruler 12, has been rightly hailed as a pivotal time in Copan's political history. Given that no monumental constructions on the Copan Acropolis have as yet been securely attributed to his patronage, this long-lived ruler appears to have turned his focus outward, expanding the Copan kingdom into a multi-ethnic polity with a long geographic reach. In this paper we explore Ruler 12's administrative strategy in one region of the Copan kingdom, the El...
Putting the Pieces Together: Maax Na in Its Regional Context (2017)
Twenty years of research at the large prehispanic Maya site of Maax Na in northwestern Belize have yielded insights not only into site organization and function, but also into its role in the Three Rivers Region. Ongoing investigations of a marketplace and of local caves indicate that Maax Na, while probably not the political capital that its neighbor La Milpa was, nonetheless had a distinct and important regional function as a religious and marketing center. Investigation of water management...
Putting Xultun on the Map (2015)
This poster shall illustrate the several different mapping phases of the archaeological site of Xultun, Guatemala in order to demonstrate how the mapping process has significantly altered our understanding of the site. Xultun was first surveyed by Sylvanus Morely in the 1920’s whose maps included a handful of structures and stelae. The site remained largely uninvestigated for the next 50 years until Von Euw expanded the map, through his epigraphic work for the Peabody Museum. Xultun’s map did...
Pyramids, Plazas, and Walls: Hilltop Settlements at the Periphery of El Zotz, Guatemala (2016)
Landscape studies provide new insights into the ways communities manipulated and used their environments. Among the ancient Maya, settlements at the outskirts of important centers varied greatly in design, elevation, and function, pointing to a unique and complementary form of urbanism. Among these, hilltop groups are key to understanding some of the social and political dynamics taking place in the Maya lowlands. Serving as strategic locales in the landscape, hilltop settlements served varying...
A Quarter-Century of Exploring the Three Rivers Watersheds in Belize (2017)
The Programme for Belize Archaeological Project is situated in the heart of the Three Rivers Watersheds, drained by the Rio Bravo, Booth's River, and Rio Azul/Blue Creek in Northwestern Belize. These three river systems, along with groundwater, springs, and wetlands, nurture what is today the tropical rainforest refuge of the Rio Bravo Conservation Management Area, active farming communities, and long ago sustained multiple ancient Maya communities such as La Milpa, Dos Hombres, Chawak But'o'ob,...
Que Linda Vista! The first glance at LiDAR from Northwestern Belize. (2017)
In this paper, we offer a first look at the results of a LiDAR survey of northwestern Belize performed by the National Center for Aerial Laser Mapping in July, 2016. Three survey blocks were defined – one centered on the site of Xnoha near the Mexican border and another along the Rio Hondo corridor from near its headwaters to Chetumal Bay. The third and largest, covers the sites of La Milpa and Blue Creek as well as numerous ditched agricultural areas. At the time of submission, only the first...
Quintessential Queen of Kaanul: K’abel of Waka’ in the age of empire. (2017)
Classic Maya civilization witnessed the reigns of many great queens, but the greatest in the southern lowlands was Kaloomte’ K’abel of Waka’. She presided over the routes of conquest in western Peten during the seventh century wars of Yuknoom Ch’een the Great. During her lifetime she and her consort King K’inich Bahlam turned the power of the ancient Wite’ Naah Fire Shrine, it’s Moon Goddess, its Death God Akan, and its other gods to the conquest and subjugation of Tikal. She and her city knew...
Ramparts and Channels: Defensive and Hydraulic Architecture at Muralla de León (2016)
The ongoing project at Muralla de León is investigating the relationship between defensibility, water control, and emergent social complexity in the Petén Lakes Region. Located on the shores of Lake Macanché, recent excavations at the site have zeroed in on the imposing rampart which encircles it, providing evidence for the chronology, as well as the nature, of its construction. Mapping of the site has turned up strong indications of hydraulic architecture both within and outside of the rampart....
Rapid Survey, Salvage, and Mapping Using Drones in an Ancient Maya Landscape: New Settlement Revealed at the Crossroads of Saturday Creek, Belize (2015)
Saturday Creek is a sizeable Maya site center with an elite residence, three large pyramids, and two ballcourts. While much of the site core is in bush, most of the surrounding area has been cleared for agriculture. While the clearing makes for good visibility, the hinterland settlement has been subject to extensive bulldozing, repeated plowing, and removal of stone over the years, obscuring the smaller mounds and making it difficult to discern them on the ground. In less than two days, we flew...
Raw Artifact & Chemical Data - Community Identity and Social Practice during the Terminal Classic Period at Actuncan, Belize (2015)
Raw Artifact & Chemical Data
(Re)Creating Monumental Space: The everyday use of plaza space at Aventura, Belize from the Terminal Classic to Late Postclassic (2017)
During the comprehensive survey of the Maya city of Aventura, Belize, the Aventura Archaeology Project (AAP) identified 29 structures located within the confines of the site’s largest monumental plaza, the A Plaza. While Maya plazas tend to be open places for ritual performance and/or market exchange, the structures in Aventura’s A Plaza, constructed with "seemingly" no regard to the orientation and layout of the site’s other monumental architecture, suggests the possibility of an alternative...
A Reappraisal of Postclassic Maya Effigy Censers in the Cave Context: Evidence from the Central Coastal Region of Quintana Roo, Mexico (2016)
Like the subterranean construction and use of ancient Maya shrines and altars, the presence of incense burners in caves provides unequivocal evidence of ritual practice. Effigy censers, particularly those of the Chen Mul Modeled ceramic type, were locally produced and widely used across the northern lowlands and have been reported in contexts within architectural precincts at a number of Postclassic Maya centers. The use of such censers in ceremonies involving deity veneration was most likely,...