La Cuernavilla, Guatemala: A Maya Fortress and Its Environs
Part of: Society for American Archaeology 88th Annual Meeting, Portland, OR (2023)
This collection contains the abstracts of the papers presented in the session entitled "La Cuernavilla, Guatemala: A Maya Fortress and Its Environs" at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.
In 2017, data from the Pacunam Lidar Initiative revealed a previously undetected Maya fortress situated at the edge of a steep limestone escarpment binding the northern edge of the Buenavista Valley, running between the ancient kingdoms of El Zotz and Tikal. The site, named La Cuernavilla, occupies two adjacent hilltops and some of the foothills below. It is protected by concentric rings of massive defensive systems at a scale and intensity previously unattested for the Maya Lowlands. Initial reconnaissance recorded the distinctive Teotihuacan talud-tablero architectural style in one of La Cuernavilla’s temples, suggesting a connection to the important 378 CE entrada during which Tikal’s ruler was assassinated and replaced by an invading party from Central Mexico. Initial test excavations indicated a deeper and more complex history that provoked a more intensive investigation of the fortress in 2021 and 2022. The goals of the research at La Cuernavilla were to understand the site’s emergence and growth in relation to its local and regional environs, as well as its place within broader geopolitical machinations in the Buenavista Valley and the Maya Lowlands as a whole. The papers in this session report the most recent results from the research at La Cuernavilla.
Other Keywords
Maya: Classic •
Geoarchaeology •
Warfare •
Violence •
and Conflict •
Lithic Analysis •
Architecture •
Survey •
Paleoecology •
Landscape Archaeology
Geographic Keywords
United Mexican States (Country) •
Belize (Country) •
North America (Continent) •
Peten (State / Territory) •
Yucatan (State / Territory) •
Orange Walk (State / Territory) •
Cayo (State / Territory) •
Corozal (State / Territory) •
Belize (State / Territory) •
Stann Creek (State / Territory)
Resources Inside This Collection (Viewing 1-9 of 9)
- Documents (9)
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Feeding a Citadel: Subsistence Practices (2023)
DOCUMENT Citation Only
This is an abstract from the "La Cuernavilla, Guatemala: A Maya Fortress and Its Environs" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. La Cuernavilla is an ancient Maya site situated in the El Zotz Biotope in the central Petén of Guatemala. This study focuses on the paleoenvironmental changes, agricultural subsistence, and occupational trajectories of La Cuernavilla, based on data gathered from across the larger landscape between 2009 and 2017 on the Proyecto...
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he Best Offense Is a Good Defense: Monumental Defensive Works at La Cuernavilla (2023)
DOCUMENT Citation Only
This is an abstract from the "La Cuernavilla, Guatemala: A Maya Fortress and Its Environs" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The ancient Maya center La Cuernavilla is well known for its defensive features and its role as a fortress located between the Classic Maya cities of Tikal and El Zotz in the Buenavista Valley of modern-day Guatemala. Excavations of the defensive features as well as the analysis of the artifacts collected during excavations...
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La Cuernavilla, Guatemala: A Fortress and Its Environs (2023)
DOCUMENT Citation Only
This is an abstract from the "La Cuernavilla, Guatemala: A Maya Fortress and Its Environs" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. La Cuernavilla is a recently discovered Classic Maya fortress in the central Petén of Guatemala. Situated between the major ancient kingdom of Tikal and the minor city-state capital of El Zotz, the site has a complex history tied into the broader geopolitics of the Buenavista Valley, which it overlooks. This talk introduces the...
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Lithic Debitage, Thermal Damage, and Other Signs of Conflict (2023)
DOCUMENT Citation Only
This is an abstract from the "La Cuernavilla, Guatemala: A Maya Fortress and Its Environs" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. While fortifications speak to the potential for conflict, indicators of actual warfare are difficult to discern. The ancient Maya produced few lithic implements that were strictly martial in nature. Furthermore, evidence of destruction events, such as large-scale fires, preserve poorly in tropical environments. However, recent...
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Managing a Tikal Outpost: The Palace and Associated Architecture (2023)
DOCUMENT Citation Only
This is an abstract from the "La Cuernavilla, Guatemala: A Maya Fortress and Its Environs" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. La Cuernavilla’s palace complex is made up of 14 elongated structures around two internal patios seated on a wide raised platform. Its location at the foot of the escarpment in the extreme northeast of the Lower East Group protects and restricts its access from the surrounding Buenavista Valley. Causeways into the escarpment...
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Paleoecology and Geoarchaeology of the Buenavista Valley, Petén, Guatemala (2023)
DOCUMENT Citation Only
This is an abstract from the "La Cuernavilla, Guatemala: A Maya Fortress and Its Environs" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. We have studied the long-term environmental change and geoarchaeology of the Buenavista Valley in the region of El Zotz and La Cuernavilla in Guatemala’s Petén through multiple NSF grants from the 2000s to an NGS Grant for fieldwork in 2022. Past studies focused on the El Zotz reservoir, other regional reservoirs, dam...
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A Subjugated Land: Regional Settlement Growth and Consolidation (2023)
DOCUMENT Citation Only
This is an abstract from the "La Cuernavilla, Guatemala: A Maya Fortress and Its Environs" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Buena Vista Valley (BVV), encompassing the ancient Maya communities of La Cuernavilla and El Zotz, has been the subject of years of extensive archaeological survey carried out by the Proyecto Arqueológico El Zotz (PAEZ). In 2017 and 2019, the Pacunam Lidar Initiative (PLI) acquired aerial lidar data over the entirety of the...
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The Time the Tikal State Emerged (2023)
DOCUMENT Citation Only
This is an abstract from the "La Cuernavilla, Guatemala: A Maya Fortress and Its Environs" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. During the first centuries of the CE, the Maya Lowlands underwent many changes in its political landscape, which were caused by the abandonment of the main Formative centers, including El Palmar, which was the most powerful center in the Buenavista Valley. Taking advantage of these compulsive times, Tikal begins to become the...
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Water for the Keep: Hydrological Flow and Accumulation (2023)
DOCUMENT Citation Only
This is an abstract from the "La Cuernavilla, Guatemala: A Maya Fortress and Its Environs" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This paper will present the final results and interpretations of data collected from La Cuernavilla’s aguada. Special emphasis is placed on new data collected through several types of soil and geoarchaeological analyses that crucially supplement the data that have already been presented. Previous presentations on this topic...