“The Center and the Edge”: How the Archaeology of Belize Is Foundational for Understanding the Ancient Maya
Part of: Society for American Archaeology 89th Annual Meeting, New Orleans, LA (2024)
This collection contains the abstracts of the papers presented in the session entitled "“The Center and the Edge”: How the Archaeology of Belize Is Foundational for Understanding the Ancient Maya" at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.
In 1841, following his first historic trip to the Maya World, John Lloyd Stephens commented that between Belize City and the “inhabited part of Central America is a wilderness, unbroken even by an Indian path” and that “residence there is more confining than living on an island” (1841:19). While spectacular architectural remains and carved monuments pertaining to the ancient Maya were almost immediately recorded in the center of the Yucatán Peninsula, coastal areas like Belize had yet to yield similar results. Thus, many early archaeologists automatically assumed that what became the modern country of Belize was peripheral or, at best, on the edge of ancient Maya development. For many researchers in the Maya area, especially in modern countries surrounding Belize, this perspective continues to be espoused with little attention being paid to the Belizean archaeological data. Yet, the archaeology that has been undertaken in Belize has contributed disproportionately and significantly to our collective knowledge of ancient Maya civilization. This session highlights the many contributions that Belizean archaeology has made to the broader area of Maya studies and demonstrates how research in Belize has been at the leading edge of scholarly debates on ancient Maya prehistory.
Other Keywords
Maya: Classic •
Survey •
History Of Archaeology •
Ceramic Analysis •
Maya: Preclassic •
Resilience and Sustainability •
Social and Political Organization: States and Empires •
Lithic Analysis •
Chronology •
Economy
Geographic Keywords
United Mexican States (Country) •
Peten (State / Territory) •
Yucatan (State / Territory) •
Belize (Country) •
Orange Walk (State / Territory) •
Cayo (State / Territory) •
Corozal (State / Territory) •
Belize (State / Territory) •
Stann Creek (State / Territory) •
Quintana Roo (State / Territory)
Resources Inside This Collection (Viewing 1-15 of 15)
- Documents (15)
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Centering the Edge: The Preclassic Ceramics of Belize (2024)
DOCUMENT Citation Only
This is an abstract from the "“The Center and the Edge”: How the Archaeology of Belize Is Foundational for Understanding the Ancient Maya" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. For many years the notion of a core (or center) versus periphery (or edge) dominated models of prehistoric Maya development. However, in 1979 David Freidel argued against the idea that there was a center or edge, asserting that the lowland Maya belonged to an interaction sphere....
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Cities on the Cutting Edge: Urban Research in Belizean Archaeology (2024)
DOCUMENT Citation Only
This is an abstract from the "“The Center and the Edge”: How the Archaeology of Belize Is Foundational for Understanding the Ancient Maya" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Archaeologists’ views of the breadth and depth of precolumbian Maya urbanism, and Mesoamerican urbanism more broadly, have been repeatedly revolutionized by archaeological researchers in Belize. The first National Science Foundation funding for Maya archaeology centered on...
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The Contributions of Belize Archaeology to Our Understanding of Ancient Maya Economies (2024)
DOCUMENT Citation Only
This is an abstract from the "“The Center and the Edge”: How the Archaeology of Belize Is Foundational for Understanding the Ancient Maya" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Archaeologists working in Belize have made signal contributions to our knowledge of Maya economies and their relationships to political processes and dynamics. In this paper, we examine the ways that archaeological research at Maya sites in Belize has advanced our understanding of...
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Contributions of Belize Cave Research to Ancient Maya Studies (2024)
DOCUMENT Citation Only
This is an abstract from the "“The Center and the Edge”: How the Archaeology of Belize Is Foundational for Understanding the Ancient Maya" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Throughout the Maya area, caves are recognized as unambiguous ritual contexts that provide scholars with a glimpse into the ritual life of ancient people. Religious ritual was not epiphenomenal as some theoretical stances would argue, but was intertwined with the social and...
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From Marginalized to Impactful: Belizean Archaeology and the Classic Period Maya (2024)
DOCUMENT Citation Only
This is an abstract from the "“The Center and the Edge”: How the Archaeology of Belize Is Foundational for Understanding the Ancient Maya" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The impact of Belizean centers and settlement on ancient Maya civilization of the Classic period (CE 250–900) has been recognized in the last 50 years of research. Before 1975 Belize was seen as being on the fringes of the Maya world and portrayed as a backwater. Most...
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Historical Archaeology in Belize: Maya Continuity amid Colonial Landscapes (2024)
DOCUMENT Citation Only
This is an abstract from the "“The Center and the Edge”: How the Archaeology of Belize Is Foundational for Understanding the Ancient Maya" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. We can trace the roots of historical archaeology in Belize to 1974, when David Pendergast launched a project at a site known locally as Indian Church, not surprisingly owing to the remains there of an early church. Today, the site is known as Lamanai. Identification of Spanish...
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House and City: Ancient Maya Water Management in Belize (2024)
DOCUMENT Citation Only
This is an abstract from the "“The Center and the Edge”: How the Archaeology of Belize Is Foundational for Understanding the Ancient Maya" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The rainfall-dependency of the ancestral Maya shaped their daily and seasonal existence in homes, communities, and cities. They adapted quite well to the annual wet and dry seasonal cycles—as well as extreme weather events like hurricanes, tropical storms and severe droughts,...
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Innovation, Not Imitation: The Classic Period Ceramics of Belize (2024)
DOCUMENT Citation Only
This is an abstract from the "“The Center and the Edge”: How the Archaeology of Belize Is Foundational for Understanding the Ancient Maya" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Entertaining the initial assessment of Belize as a secondary outpost of ancient Maya culture, Belize’s subordinate role should be reflected in its ceramic record based on conventional archaeological assumption. However, research since the 1980s proves this to be untrue. Our paper...
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Insights from the Classic to Postclassic Pottery of Belize (2024)
DOCUMENT Citation Only
This is an abstract from the "“The Center and the Edge”: How the Archaeology of Belize Is Foundational for Understanding the Ancient Maya" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. For many years, Belize was considered to be peripheral to major social and cultural dynamics in the ancient Maya world. Recent pottery analyses in Belize, however, document that Classic and Postclassic Belize experienced some significant regional changes that inform our current...
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Light Comes from the East: The Archaeology of Belize in Historical Context (2024)
DOCUMENT Citation Only
This is an abstract from the "“The Center and the Edge”: How the Archaeology of Belize Is Foundational for Understanding the Ancient Maya" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. For more than a century, archaeological research in Belize has been at the vanguard of Maya Studies, contributing disproportionately to our knowledge of ancient Maya civilization. Yet, Belize’s archaeological contributions to the field are often overlooked in many current...
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Maya Lithic and Metal Technologies in Belize (2024)
DOCUMENT Citation Only
This is an abstract from the "“The Center and the Edge”: How the Archaeology of Belize Is Foundational for Understanding the Ancient Maya" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Over more than a century, archaeological research in Belize has contributed greatly to our understanding of past Maya stone and metal technologies. From the preceramic through the colonial periods (~11,000 BC−AD 1700), the analysis of flaked and ground stone tools recovered from...
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Rising from the East: The Preclassic Foundations of Lowland Maya Societies in Belize (2024)
DOCUMENT Citation Only
This is an abstract from the "“The Center and the Edge”: How the Archaeology of Belize Is Foundational for Understanding the Ancient Maya" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Preclassic period (1200/1100 BC–AD 300) represents one of the most significant cultural transitions for lowland Maya societies. Over the course of ~1,500 years, communities settled permanently on the landscape, committed to agriculture, and began building monumental...
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The Scope and Contributions of the Hieroglyphic Corpus of Belize to our Understanding of the Ancient Maya (2024)
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This is an abstract from the "“The Center and the Edge”: How the Archaeology of Belize Is Foundational for Understanding the Ancient Maya" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The epigraphic corpus of Belize is often considered as being limited in scope, with few monuments and few contributions to the historical sources of the Classic Maya. Yet, discoveries in recent years have considerably changed this picture. Some of the more spectacular discoveries...
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The Shadow Realm: How Belizean Archaeology Has Illuminated the Maya Postclassic Era (2024)
DOCUMENT Citation Only
This is an abstract from the "“The Center and the Edge”: How the Archaeology of Belize Is Foundational for Understanding the Ancient Maya" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Without Belizean archaeological data, we would know very little about the Maya Postclassic period (CE 950–1530). While viewed as a period of lesser cultural development by earlier researchers, Postclassic archaeological research in Belize was published as early as 1898 but...
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Six Decades of Research into Ancient Maya Settlement in Belize (2024)
DOCUMENT Citation Only
This is an abstract from the "“The Center and the Edge”: How the Archaeology of Belize Is Foundational for Understanding the Ancient Maya" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Nearly 60 years ago Gordon Willey’s team published "Prehistoric Maya Settlements in the Belize Valley," initiating the study of ancient Maya communities with a focus at Barton Ramie in Belize. The lead continues to this day with the first archaeological application of lidar by the...