Preclassic to Colonial: Current Investigations in the Petén Lakes Region, Guatemala

DOCUMENT Citation Only Tucker Austin. Carolyn Freiwald. Melissa Quartarone. Hali Niles. Timothy Pugh.

A number of general trends characterize changes in Maya animal use over time. Previous studies have found that remains of dogs are most common in Preclassic contexts, while Classic period elite deposits typically consist mainly of large game, such as whitetail deer. Native species remained important even after the introduction of European domesticated species during the Contact and Colonial periods. Unfortunately, large faunal deposits that span multiple time periods are absent at most Maya...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Megan Leight.

Art-making is an essential element of Mesoamerican culture. Asserting the primacy of the art object as a site of inquiry can provide a fascinating framework for organizing, imagining, and interpreting the past. This paper considers art objects produced during the Late Classic (ca. 600-900 CE) by the Maya Ik’ polity in Petén, Guatemala. The elaborately painted surfaces with naturalistic figures, realistic color schemes, and detailed hieroglyphic inscriptions about artists, patrons, and regional...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Katherine Miller Wolf. Timothy Pugh.

The Spanish established the San Bernabé Mission in the heartland of the Itzá Maya area at Tayasal in the Petén Lakes region around 1710. Census data suggest that the mission was at the center of a multi-cultural community of 126 individuals in 1712, yet within three decades the population size had reduced by 70% potentially due to epidemics and flight. Excavations by the Tayasal Archaeological Project have recovered 46 individuals from 33 graves in the mission’s cemetery that shed light on what...

DOCUMENT Full-Text Kevin Schwarz.

Costly signaling theory indicates that highly visible acts of public generosity and display, which exact costs not easily recouped, however, can provide social benefits to those engaged in such acts. Such signaling is associated with the strength or fitness of the provider. Analyzing slipped and fineware ceramics in display contexts, and obsidian use and architecture, this presentation explores how Maya elites and rural sub-elites engaged in costly signaling and modified their actions by cost...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Ellen Moriarty. Matthew Moriarty.

In this paper we present a detailed view of ancient Maya domestic economy from the perspective of household midden ceramic assemblages at two sites along the north shore of Lake Petén Itzá: Trinidad de Nosotros and Xilil. A highly successful method of midden prospecting was employed over the course of three field seasons, resulting in the excavation of more than 20 middens in 15 Late Classic residential groups across the two sites. Analyses of ceramics from these middens, including type-variety,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Katherine South. Leslie Cecil.

Investigations in the western Petén lakes area have provided useful collections of pottery excavated from a variety of sites ranging from the Middle Preclassic to the Contact periods. This abundance has enabled intensive study of pottery from both macroscopic and compositional perspectives. This paper compares compositional results from Middle Preclassic and Postclassic pottery samples collected and analyzed by the authors. A comparison of petrographic analysis from thin sections demonstrates...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Timothy Pugh.

Gridded settlements are rare in the Americas and previously unknown in the Maya world until the Spanish conquest. Recent work has documented a modular orthogonal grid at Nixtun-Ch’ich’, Petén, Guatemala. The grid appears to have been imposed upon much of the site around 400-200 BCE. In other parts of the world, planned orthogonal grids are frequently associated with powerful central authority. If this were the case at Nixtun-Ch’ich’ then then this act of power is correlated with the emergence of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Matthew Yacubic.

Lithic artifacts represent a major aspect of the archaeological record, and they are found in a wide variety of cultural settings. For the Maya lowlands, lithic analysis is particularly insightful for studying relationships between economics and society because stone was the dominant raw material used to produce tools at differing levels of social organization. The purpose of this presentation is to examine community connections at Tayasal using an interactionalist perspective. Through this...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Antonia Foias. Kitty Emery.

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...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Justin Bracken.

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....

DOCUMENT Citation Only Yuko Shiratori. Nathan Meissner. Timothy Pugh.

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...