The Maritime Maya: Current Archaeology of Coastal Yucatan, Mexico, and Belize

DOCUMENT Citation Only Gabriel Wrobel.

This is an abstract from the "The Maritime Maya: Current Archaeology of Coastal Yucatan, Mexico, and Belize" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This paper reviews previously published skeletal studies from coastal sites in Mexico and Belize, focusing on diet, health, population structure, and preliminary genetic data. Bioarchaeological research in these regions has provided unique insights into the biocultural adaptations of the Maya to coastal...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jim Aimers.

This is an abstract from the "The Maritime Maya: Current Archaeology of Coastal Yucatan, Mexico, and Belize" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Along with chronology, one of the key goals of ancient Maya pottery analysis is to better understand trade and stylistic interaction among people in various parts of the Maya world and beyond. In this paper I review how some of the styles and types of pottery that are evidence for coastal trade in Maya...

DOCUMENT Citation Only E. Cory Sills.

This is an abstract from the "The Maritime Maya: Current Archaeology of Coastal Yucatan, Mexico, and Belize" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The coastal area of Placencia Lagoon, Belize has long served as a vital economic resource. During the Late Classic period, the ancient Maya utilized the hyper-saline brackish water of the lagoon to produce salt, which was essential for their diet. The salt producers likely resided on Placencia Cay, trading...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Amanda Meaux.

This is an abstract from the "The Maritime Maya: Current Archaeology of Coastal Yucatan, Mexico, and Belize" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This study reports on the desalination of pottery collected from seafloor mapping and underwater excavation from Site 8 in Paynes Creek National Park, Belize. Because the pottery was saturated with salt water, leaving it out without desalination results in the formation of salt crystals, which expand and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Cheryl Foster.

This is an abstract from the "The Maritime Maya: Current Archaeology of Coastal Yucatan, Mexico, and Belize" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Excavations in 2022 were carried out at Ek Way Nal, a submerged ancient Maya salt works in Punta Ycacos Lagoon in southern Belize in order to extract a 1.7m-long sediment column for examining the relationship between the ancient Maya settlement at the site and sea-level rise during the Late and Terminal...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Scott Simmons.

This is an abstract from the "The Maritime Maya: Current Archaeology of Coastal Yucatan, Mexico, and Belize" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. As the largest island among hundreds of offshore islands or ‘cayes’, Ambergris Caye, Belize was part of a network of coastal sites in Belize and Yucatan that together played a significant role in the economy of the ancient Maya. Yet despite the prominent role it played in Maya coastal trade, Ambergris Caye...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Rafael Cobos.

This is an abstract from the "The Maritime Maya: Current Archaeology of Coastal Yucatan, Mexico, and Belize" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The first work on the role played by the sea during the prehispanic period in the Maya area was published in 1897. From that moment on, the study of the sea associated with Maya culture focused on recognizing (1) the importance of maritime trade in the emergence of Maya civilization, (2) goods that were...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Andrea Cucina.

This is an abstract from the "The Maritime Maya: Current Archaeology of Coastal Yucatan, Mexico, and Belize" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Yucatan Canal, separating Mesoamerica from the Caribbean’s Greater Antilles has been thought of representing a geographical barrier for the movement of people and goods. This has supposedly forged independent population dynamics in the two macro-regions. Nonetheless, the so far sporadic presence in the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only W. James Stemp.

This is an abstract from the "The Maritime Maya: Current Archaeology of Coastal Yucatan, Mexico, and Belize" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Given the absence of chert and obsidian sources on Ambergris Caye, Belize, lithic raw materials and finished tools had to be acquired from the mainland. Chipped chert and obsidian demonstrate different trade patterns; however, once tools made from these raw materials were acquired, they were treated as...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Panos Kratimenos.

This is an abstract from the "The Maritime Maya: Current Archaeology of Coastal Yucatan, Mexico, and Belize" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Precolumbian Maya site of Marco Gonzalez, located at the southern tip of Ambergris Caye, is significant in appearing to have weathered the storm of the so-called Terminal Classic ‘Collapse’. While transformations abounded, unlike many other inland sites, Marco Gonzalez persisted into the ‘Postclassic’,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Elizabeth Graham.

This is an abstract from the "The Maritime Maya: Current Archaeology of Coastal Yucatan, Mexico, and Belize" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. "No sólo comercio sino también poder” was the title of a paper Graham presented at the Congreso de Mayistas in Izamal in 2016 and expanded on in Kyoto in 2017. The core problem, however, remains unsolved and worth investigating: What was the role of the commercial classes in the Maya dynastic collapse and in...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Allan Ortega-Muñoz.

This is an abstract from the "The Maritime Maya: Current Archaeology of Coastal Yucatan, Mexico, and Belize" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Palaeodemograhic analysis has been a useful tool to understand the evolution and adaptability of ancient populations. Because, historically, the small number of individuals exhumed in archaeological surveys along the coastal sites in the peninsula of Yucatan, the application of this methodology have been hard...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jeffrey Glover.

This is an abstract from the "The Maritime Maya: Current Archaeology of Coastal Yucatan, Mexico, and Belize" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Proyecto Costa Escondida (PCE) has been conducting interdisciplinary research along the north coast of Quintana Roo, Mexico since 2011. Project members have focused on the two ancient Maya port sites of Vista Alegre and Conil. Both have occupations stretching from the Middle Preclassic to the Historic...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Ashuni Emmanuel Romero Butrón.

This is an abstract from the "The Maritime Maya: Current Archaeology of Coastal Yucatan, Mexico, and Belize" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The archaeological site “El Meco” is located in the northeastern region of the Yucatan Peninsula, on the coast of the Caribbean Sea. The first explorations by W. Sanders in 1954 and the latter by Andrews, Robles, and colleagues in 1977 provided the basis to know the different moments of occupation that the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only María Maldonado Vite.

This is an abstract from the "The Maritime Maya: Current Archaeology of Coastal Yucatan, Mexico, and Belize" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Es muy conocida la existencia de interacciones culturales entre los pueblos que se asentaron en la Costa del Golfo, sobre todo del Preclásico con los prolíficos estudios de los Olmecas; pero sin duda los estudios más numerosos y avanzados son los Mayas. Las relaciones entre los Mayas y las élites del Clásico...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Heather McKillop.

This is an abstract from the "The Maritime Maya: Current Archaeology of Coastal Yucatan, Mexico, and Belize" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The sea provided opportunities for the maritime Maya, including a transportation highway, seafood, resources for building construction and tools, and ritual paraphernalia. Maritime settlement in southern Belize endured for at least a millennium, from a Middle Preclassic shell midden at Ich’aktun, to Classic...