Maya (Other Keyword)
426-450 (495 Records)
This paper examines the construction of residential and ritual space at the prehispanic Maya site of Wari Camp, located in northwestern Belize in the Rio Bravo Conservation and Management Area. We explore the productive activities of temple and pair groups at the site through examination of lithic and ceramic material recovered from excavations conducted at the northern satellite of the site in 2012. In addition, environmental and soil data from the site provides insight into the relationships...
Spatial Analysis of the Preserved Wooden Architectural Remains of Eight Late Classic Maya Salt Works in Punta Ycacos Lagoon, Toledo District, Belize (2017)
In 2005, eight Late Classic Maya sites with the remains of wooden posts were found beneath the surface of Punta Ycacos Lagoon in southern Belize. The presence of briquetage on the surface and embedded among the clusters of wooden architectural features implies association with salt production activity. This research employed a rigorous field survey, combined with mapping, sampling, and building a GIS. Detailed analysis of the spatial distribution of wooden posts was conducted to determine if...
Spatial Arrangements at Chichen Itza (2016)
Site mapping has been a mainstay in the study of archaeological cultures. Following upon the heels of mapping efforts, which have grown increasingly precise as our own technology develops, scholars have studied site, building, and monument orientations to great effect. In the Maya region such investigations have shown how the Maya positioned themselves relative to the cardinal and inter-cardinal directions, natural aspects of the landscape, and/or other parts of the built environment at inter-...
The Status of Excavations and Research at Blue Creek - 1997 (1997)
This report provides an overview of six years of fieldwork and research at the Blue Creek site. At this stage the project is designed to be an investigation of the internal structure of a single Maya city, with consideration of the city's temporal and functional dynamics as well as relationships with its neighbors. This report summarizes the status of these efforts both topically and in terms of fieldwork accomplished and future field seasons.
A Step-by-Step Guide to Excavating Burials, or how a Bioarchaeologist can be in Two (or Three) Places at Once (2017)
Bioarchaeologists often are faced with the challenge of managing field excavations and lab analyses of skeletal remains at the same time, along with student and staff training and curation of osteological remains. I present results from recent fieldwork at the Classic Maya sites Actuncan and San Lorenzo, Belize that were excavated using a method designed for non-osteologists. This includes complex burial deposits that were re-entered, secondary burials, and comingled and disturbed remains that...
Stop and Go Traffic: Power, Movement, and Emplacement in the Piedras Negras and Yaxchilan Kingdoms (2015)
This paper explores the many sides of the natural and supernatural landscape surrounding the Classic period Maya kingdoms of Piedras Negras and Yaxchilan with a particular focus on how the rulers of these polities struggled with one another for control of movement across the broken terrain of hills, cliffs, valleys, swamps, and rivers that define the Middle Usumacinta River basin. The standard image of a rather homogenous landscape in the Maya lowlands is quickly dispensed with in the Middle...
A Story Written in Sherds: Ceramic Use Patterns at Río Amarillo Reveal Strategies of Survival in the Terminal Classic to Postclassic Copan Valley, Honduras (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The site of Río Amarillo, on the far eastern side of the Copan Valley, was integrated into the economy of the Copan polity during the Classic period. However, the groups surrounding the core of Río Amarillo long outlasted both Copan’s center and the secondary center of Río Amarillo. This paper will explore the ceramic evidence from the hinterlands to...
Strontium Isotope Values for Early Colonial Cows at San Bernabe, A Spanish Mission in the Peten Lakes Region of Guatemala (2016)
The earliest Spanish explorers in the 15th century brought ships stocked with European domesticated animals. Yet for nearly two centuries, the Maya living in Guatemala’s Peten Lakes region continued to rely on traditional wild animal species. A small number of cow and horse bones have been identified in Contact period contexts at Zacpeten and Tayasal, but significant changes in animal use are only visible after the Spanish began to build missions in the region during the early 1700s. We explore...
Subterranean sculptural narratives of ancient Maya mythological beliefs (2016)
In this paper we present recent analyses conducted on the elaborate artwork in Actun Halal, an important ancient Maya cave site in western Belize. Actun Halal contains a wide variety of art forms, ranging from monumental modified speleothem sculptures four meters in height to small, detailed bas-relief sculptural works executed in layers of travertine only millimeters thick. Akin to the elegant scenes rendered in murals and on polychrome pottery vessels, the sculptural works in Actun Halal tell...
Surviving the Maya Collapse: A View from Moxviquil, Chiapas, Mexico (2016)
Although the famous "Maya collapse" in the 9th century A.D. destabilized many powerful Southern Lowland Maya Late Classic kingdoms, the small polities of highland Chiapas not only survived, but thrived. Excavations in the Central Highlands of Chiapas suggest that the small cities and towns in this region maintained their roles as political centers throughout the Late Classic-Early Postclassic period transition. Recent excavations at Moxviquil provide evidence for the economic and social...
Swamp, settlement, and society: Maya archaeology at Pulltrouser and Cuello in 1979. (2015)
In 1979, the Pulltrouser Swamp project led by Peter Harrison and B.L.Turner II shared a field camp with the Cuello Project. With one group investigating a ridge-top Preclassic Maya community exploiting some wetland resources, and the other studying Maya wetland use and the nature of swamp-edge settlements, there was ample opportunity to compare and contrast fieldwork results. With overlaps in research interests, and some ad hoc sharing of expertise, the synergism was both social and...
The Symbolic Centre: The Pre-Classic Legacy of Yaxnohcah’s E-Group (2017)
For nearly two thousand years, the E-Group at Yaxnohcah served as this city’s spiritual and administrative heart. From the early facet of the middle Pre-Classic through the Terminal Classic, as the rest of the site grew, morphed, and ultimately fell into disuse, this group continued to be remodelled, refurbished, and rededicated. Further, in a stunning testimony to social memory, and after a period of clear abandonment, it became the focus of Post-Classic activity that included the erection of...
A Tale of Two Projects: Comparative Findings of the CRAS and Yalahau Projects (2015)
The CRAS and Yalahau Projects of Quintana Roo have shared a similar trajectory for many years: although both projects have focused several seasons on individual sites with detailed mapping, excavations, and artifact analysis, the broader goal has been to address large areas of coverage, with relatively few excavations conducted into buildings. Both projects have focused on site location, with the use of local peoples as consultants and guides. Both projects are in regions that are generally...
Tan Tun: The Enduring Role of Cozumel in the Maya World (2017)
The island of Cozumel has long been known to have been a quintessential place in Late Postclassic Maya culture as the home to the shrine of Ix Chel, the lunar goddess of childbirth and fertility. Maya women of this period were expected to make the pilgrimage to the shrine at least once in their lives, which would have transformed the island into one of the most dynamic and multicultural social contexts throughout the late Maya world. Added to the fact that the island is the easternmost part of...
Technical Report to INAH, Bolonchen Regional Archaeological Project Field Season 2015, Investigation of the Annular Structures (2015)
A technical report to the Mexican National Institute of Anthropology and History regarding our 2015 Field Season excavations of Annular Structures. Funding provided by a National Science Foundation Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Grant (BCS-1445437), the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and Millsaps College.
Technologies of replication in Maya figurines (2017)
Among the class of Late Classic Maya figurines generally considered to be from the Island of Jaina, molds were used to form entire objects as well as individual body parts. Molds may also have been taken of one finished figurine in order to generate a new object that would be slightly larger than the original, sometimes resulting in cascading generations of related works. Production techniques of the ceramic mold may also have been deployed for individual body parts, particularly the human...
Teotihuacan Influence in the Maya Area as Documented by Archaeological Fieldwork and Museum Collections (2017)
There is extensive evidence of the exchange that occurred between Teotihuacan and the Maya area and new evidence has continued to surface in recent archaeological literature and in museum collections. This paper has several main objectives, first to revisit the history of research and analysis of iconographic symbols and epigraphy within the Maya area that notes a Teotihuacan influence. Secondly, to point out that the Maya obtained Central Mexican symbols and writing not merely for their...
Terminal Classic Maya Political Organization from the Perspective of a Secondary Site Cochuah Region, Quintana Roo (2016)
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...