Making and Breaking Boundaries in the Maya Lowlands: Alliance and Conflict across the Guatemala–Belize Border

Part of: Society for American Archaeology 84th Annual Meeting, Albuquerque, NM (2019)

This collection contains the abstracts of the papers presented in the session entitled "Making and Breaking Boundaries in the Maya Lowlands: Alliance and Conflict across the Guatemala–Belize Border," at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Pre-Columbian social ties, political alliances, trade networks, and migrations were oblivious to contemporary geopolitical divisions, such as those between Guatemala and Belize. While a good deal is known about the major political players during the Classic period, it is a continual effort to flesh out the many shifting political, social, and economic formations and fissures in the Peten–Belize area of the Southern Maya Lowlands. This session seeks to bring together collaborations across the Belize–Peten divide to better understand the dynamic ways ancient and historic period Maya boundaries of belonging were formed and broken. We emphasize, in particular, the ways in which such affiliations, conflicts, co-existence, and movements were constantly changing, and as such, symposium papers cover multiple periods of Maya history.

Resources Inside This Collection (Viewing 1-15 of 15)

  • Documents (15)

Documents
  1. Ally, Client or Outpost? Examining the Relationship between Xunantunich and Naranjo in the Late Classic Period (2019)
  2. Boundaries of the Past as Viewed through the Fences of Today: Shifting Methods of Archaeological Inquiry in the Southern Maya Lowlands (2019)
  3. Breaking with Tradition? Terminal Classic and Postclassic Developments Across the Guatemala – Belize Border (2019)
  4. Convergence Zone Politics and Cultural Affiliations at the Archaeological Site of Ucanal, Peten, Guatemala (2019)
  5. Crossing Borders: What Isotope Geochemistry Reveals about Migration among the Maya (2019)
  6. Entangled: The Shifting Networks that Linked the Classic Maya of Belize’s Mopan Valley to Adjacent Regions (2019)
  7. Erasing Borders: Integrating the Settlement Hierarchies of Central Belize and the Petén, Guatemala (2019)
  8. Identifying Late Classic Political, Economic, and Cultural Affiliations at Pacbitun, Belize (2019)
  9. Komkom What May: The Ancient Maya Kingdom of Komkom in Time and Place (2019)
  10. Political Alliances and Trade Connections Seen in Ceramic Record from the Classic period: the Perspective of the Maya Site of Nakum, Guatemala (2019)
  11. Politics of the Borderlands: An Epigraphic History (2019)
  12. The Porous Boundary: Understanding Late Postclassic Belize-Petén Interactions through Lithic Technology (2019)
  13. The San Pedro Maya and the Western Frontier of British Honduras (2019)
  14. Society in Flux: Migration and Kinship during Sociopolitical Change in the Southern Lowlands (2019)
  15. A Tale of Two Cities: Holtun, Holmul, and Permeable Ceramic Boundaries between Guatemala and Belize (2019)