Ancient Maya Landscapes in Northwestern Belize, Part I

DOCUMENT Citation Only Marisol Cortes-Rincon. Jeremy McFarland. Jonathan Roldan. Cady Rutherford. Spencer Mitchell.

This is an abstract from the "Ancient Maya Landscapes in Northwestern Belize, Part I" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This paper will discuss investigations of two sacbeob in the hinterlands in northwestern Belize. These features connect ancient Maya household groups, aguadas, quarries, terraces and ritual features. The study of ancient causeway systems is crucial to the understanding of mobility, sociopolitical, and economic networks in the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Thomas Guderjan. Joshua Kwoka. Colleen Hanratty.

This is an abstract from the "Ancient Maya Landscapes in Northwestern Belize, Part I" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Xnoha is a small Maya center in northwestern Belize that has seen two phases of investigation since it was recorded in 1990. While current research is largely focused on the Central Precinct or kawik, we have also invested much energy in the outlying groups of monumental architecture and settlement. Xnoha is located in a heavily...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Sarah Boudreaux.

This is an abstract from the "Ancient Maya Landscapes in Northwestern Belize, Part I" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. It is now well recognized that Late Classic Maya communities were highly variable politically, economically, and environmentally. Researchers often assume that community and household variation are corollary with the broader political climate— and this remains under problematized. Thus, research that explores differences in...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Nicholas Brokaw. Sheila Ward.

This is an abstract from the "Ancient Maya Landscapes in Northwestern Belize, Part I" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Some archaeologists believe that a key to the success of ancient Maya civilization was sophisticated tailoring of agriculture and forestry to varied environments. Some archaeologists and ecologists also think that ancient forestry is reflected in the tree species composition of modern forests. Based on studies in northwest Belize we...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Benjamin Baaske. Joshua J. Kwoka.

This is an abstract from the "Ancient Maya Landscapes in Northwestern Belize, Part I" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Maya E-groups served as foci of political and ritual practices from the Preclassic through Terminal Classic. In addition to the hallmark western pyramidal and eastern range structures, these groups are often populated by a number of ancillary structures. This paper details recent investigations of one such structure located at the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Rissa Trachman. J. Alex Canterbury.

This is an abstract from the "Ancient Maya Landscapes in Northwestern Belize, Part I" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The current research in the Dos Hombres civic ceremonial center utilizes the lens of "everyday life" in order to understand the internal ritual, economic, social, and ideological activities of this ancient city, as well as how it interacted with the surrounding household hinterlands, and the socio-political and economic role this...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Stacy Drake.

This is an abstract from the "Ancient Maya Landscapes in Northwestern Belize, Part I" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Studies of ancient Maya mortuary patterns have asserted that Maya burials do not adhere to a singular mortuary pattern (Ashmore and Geller 2005, Fitzsimmons 2009, Geller 2004, Ruz Lhuillier 1965, Welsh 1988). However, many of these same studies also suggest that a review of data specific to certain contexts (inter-site, time period,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Marc Wolf. Thomas Guderjan.

This is an abstract from the "Ancient Maya Landscapes in Northwestern Belize, Part I" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. For several decades, MRP (Maya Research Program) has been working to amass an enormous base of survey and mapping data from the Three Rivers (Blue Creek, Bravo, Booth’s) and upper La Lucha escarpment region of Belize. Over 50 archaeological sites have been precisely recorded using innovative technologies and techniques that...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Laura Levi.

This is an abstract from the "Ancient Maya Landscapes in Northwestern Belize, Part I" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Ancient Maya places were dynamic assemblages of people, the things that they made and used, and myriad material and immaterial affordances. Unfortunately, a simple enumeration of their components cannot account for the historical valence carried by places. In northwestern Belize, the multi-scalar operation of ritual may help clarify...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Thomas Hart. Debora Trein. Fred Valdez.

This is an abstract from the "Ancient Maya Landscapes in Northwestern Belize, Part I" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Widespread terrace construction in the Lowland Maya region is often viewed as a response to increasing demands for food during the Late Classic. Such was the demand that terraces became integrated into the architectural arrangements of large urban entities, going so far as to be built right up to the edge of a settlement center....

DOCUMENT Citation Only Robyn Dodge. David M. Hyde.

This is an abstract from the "Ancient Maya Landscapes in Northwestern Belize, Part I" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This paper discusses features and material culture from two hinterland settlements located in northwestern Belize, Hun Tun and the Medicinal Trail Community, east of the ancient Maya urban center of La Milpa. Residential groups include formal courtyards with "expensive" structures at one end of the continuum to numerous informal...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Eleanor King. Neil Hansen. Richard Terry. Christine Taylor. Michael Brennan.

This is an abstract from the "Ancient Maya Landscapes in Northwestern Belize, Part I" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In 2016 the Maax Na Archaeology Project systematically tested the soils of two major plazas at Maax Na, a large prehispanic site located in the Three Rivers Region of Belize. Tests in the West Plaza sought to determine whether phosphorus levels there supported its identification as a marketplace during the Late Classic (C.E....

DOCUMENT Citation Only Debora Trein. Angelina Locker. Stacy Drake. Manda K. S. Adam. Patricia Neuhoff-Malorzo.

This is an abstract from the "Ancient Maya Landscapes in Northwestern Belize, Part I" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Programme for Belize Archaeological Project (PfBAP) was established to explore ancient Maya life in a 250,000 acre area of protected forest in northwest Belize, employing a regional perspective grounded in robust field methods. This regionally-oriented approach continues to guide research being conducted at PfB every year since...