Maya Highland and Pacific Coast Archaeology: New Data, Debates, and Directions, Part 2

DOCUMENT Citation Only Oswaldo Chinchilla.

An archaeological collection from finca Pompeya in the Antigua Guatemala valley provides significant information about Late Classic interaction with the adjacent Pacific coast. Excavated in 1893, the collection was eventually scattered to several museums in Germany, the United States, and Guatemala. However, it can be reconstructed from a photograph made not long after the discovery, and from newspaper reports that provide rough descriptions of the excavations. The objects themselves are still...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Katharine Johnson. Guido Pezzarossi.

Postclassic Maya settlement patterns have long been explained in terms of the increasing defensibility in the transition from Classic period settlement patterns. Drawing on arguments for the increased militancy and conflict that characterized the Maya region in the wake of the Classic "collapse", this narrative has endured despite minimal cross-context, large scale assessment. This paper presents the results of a large-scale, in-progress diachronic geospatial analysis of Maya settlement...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Marie Annereau-Fulbert.

Compared to its Guatemala counterpart, the region of the Chiapas highlands is known to have a marginal history in the Postclassic period. This misrepresentation is due to limited investigations since the 1960´s and to inexistent ethnohistoric sources, which could provide clues for the interpretation of ethnic and settlement patterns on the eve of the Conquest. However, Spanish documents described "cacicazgos" as Chamula and Zinacantan near Jobel Valley, which is the focal point of our study....

DOCUMENT Citation Only Gavin Davies. Tomas Barrientos Quezada.

Lake Atitlan sits within the Sierra Madre mountain chain which represents the physical divide between the Guatemalan highlands and the Pacific lowlands. It was thus ideally situated to act as a hub for cultural and economic exchanges between these two contrasting ecological zones. The three imposing volcanoes that line its southern shore, however, severely limited options for travel between these areas and commerce and settlement thus concentrated around obvious natural corridors such as those...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Iyaxel Cojti-Ren.

In this paper I will explore how the western Kaqchikel managed from being military auxiliaries to the K’iche’ kingdom to become and independent and expansionist polity, and how this transition was reflected in the material culture of their two last settlements. I will use ethnohistorical documentation to inform how the western Kaqchikel conceived their auto determination, and how they reached it after they abandoned their first capital Chi Awar after breaking their political alliances with the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Alexander Rivas. Brent Woodfill.

Salinas de los Nueve Cerros was a massive city in west-central Guatemala that was built around the only non-coastal salt source in the Maya lowlands. In spite of this lowland location, highlanders were drawn to it for its agricultural potential and the rich concentration of salt. In this paper, we will look at the three major colonization attempts of the saltworks and the surrounding region by Maya highlanders—the Early Postclassic, the conquest period, and the late 20th century. After the city...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Janine Gasco. Yahaira Nunez Cortes.

Xoconochco is located along a well-travelled transportation route that links what is today Central and parts of Southern Mexico with Central America. The region has had cultural and economic ties with its neighbors to the north and to the south for millennia, a pattern that continued into the Late Postclassic period. In this paper we examine the nature of Xoconochco’s involvement in Mesoamerican exchange systems in the Late Postclassic period. We know that Xoconochco’s forest...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Eugenia Robinson. Geoffrey Braswell. Francisco Belli-Estrada.

Least cost analysis of prehistoric nodes of interaction in the Kaqchikel Guatemalan highlands and Pacific Coast indicates the locations of viable travel routes. Several classes of data, such as sculpture, obsidian and ceramics, indicate that there was communication and economic exchange in the Kaqchikel Maya area in the central highlands and Cotzumalguapan Piedmont during the Late Classic Period (600-830 A.D.). Today people walk between neighboring towns on foot paths and roads designed for cars...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Roberto Lopez Bravo. Elizabeth H. Paris.

In contrast to the sociopolitical instability and depopulation observed at many sites in the Southern Maya Lowlands during the Classic to Postclassic transition, Highland Chiapas was characterized by stability and demographic expansion, as suggested by our excavations in the Jovel Valley, where small cities and towns maintained their roles as political and economic centers throughout this period. In this paper, we examine patterns of continuity and change evidenced by recent excavations at the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only David McCormick.

Scholarly understanding of the prehistoric economy of the Pacific Coast lacks the resolution afforded its Lowland counterpart. Analysis of the Obsidian deposits at Cotzumalguapa offer us a lens through which to bring our understanding of the prehistoric economy of the Pacific Coast into focus. Surface survey and excavations near the El Baúl acropolis revealed the presence of several obsidian dumps, the result of a large-scale lithic industry in the Classic Period site of Cotzumalguapa. Thus far,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Chloé Andrieu. Arthur Demarest. Paola Torres. Julien Sion. Juan Fransisco Saravia.

In the Verapaz valleys, there were sites of the major exchange route used to transport jade and obsidian from the Maya highlands to the lowlands during the Classic period. The Late Classic site of Raxruha Viejo, located on the highland side of the boundary between the Classic Maya kingdoms and their Verapaz highland trading partners, has a unique architecture and material culture of highland Verapaz style but with significant lowland elements. Overall, its assemblage and architecture appear to...