Sessions in Honor of Dr. Fred Valdez Jr. and His Contributions to Archaeology, Part 1

Part of: Society for American Archaeology 90th Annual Meeting, Denver, CO (2025)

This collection contains the abstracts of the papers presented in the session entitled "Sessions in Honor of Dr. Fred Valdez Jr. and His Contributions to Archaeology, Part 1" at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Professor Fred Valdez Jr. has had a long, important career in terms of his own contributions to Maya archaeology and through his direction of projects and institutions. As director of The Center for Archaeological and Tropical Studies (CATS) at The University of Texas at Austin and the Programme for Belize Archaeological Project (PfBAP) he has mentored scores of students at all levels. He has also advised a remarkable number of doctorates and master’s degrees as a professor at UT Austin over the past several decades. Fred has also taken on the heavy mantle of directing the Texas Archeological Research Laboratory (TARL) at The University of Texas at Austin. This session brings together papers on the considerable contributions of Fred Valdez, Jr. to Maya Archaeology and to Archaeology in general. This session brings together papers focused on the following topics: novel research presentations on Maya archaeology that Fred has supported and contributed to over many decades, discussions on his pedagogy and mentorship, and complementary special topics on bioarchaeology, geoarchaeology, geophysics, and paleoecology that have been supported by Fred through his leadership at CATS, PfBAP and TARL.

Other Keywords
Geoarchaeology • Bioarchaeology/Skeletal Analysis • North America: Southwest United States • Mesoamerica: Maya Lowlands

Resources Inside This Collection (Viewing 1-12 of 12)

  • Documents (12)
Documents
  • Criss-Crossing Paths with Fred: Settlement and Subsistence from Colha to Maax Na (2025)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Eleanor King.

    This is an abstract from the "Sessions in Honor of Dr. Fred Valdez Jr. and His Contributions to Archaeology, Part 1" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Despite working in large prehispanic Maya city centers such as Rio Azul, Fred Valdez to this day maintains that his strongest interest lies in small Maya communities and households. He is happiest when exploring how the average Maya lived, away from the pomp and circumstance of the ruling classes. My...

  • Lineage and Legacy: La Milpa North Tomb 1 and the Origins and Lifeways of its Non-Royal Elite Occupants (2025)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Lauri Martin.

    This is an abstract from the "Sessions in Honor of Dr. Fred Valdez Jr. and His Contributions to Archaeology, Part 1" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Analysis of mortuary remains provides information on aspects of daily living, whereas isotopic analysis may reveal the geographic origins of individuals. Examination of a tomb burial at La Milpa North, an ancient Maya hilltop palatial compound built and occupied in the Late to Terminal Classic period...

  • Maya Pottery and More: Fred Valdez, Jr.’s Influence on Mesoamerican Archaeology (2025)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Lauren Sullivan.

    This is an abstract from the "Sessions in Honor of Dr. Fred Valdez Jr. and His Contributions to Archaeology, Part 1" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Through decades of fieldwork, mentorship, and teaching Fred Valdez, Jr has left a lasting impact on the field of Mesoamerican archaeology. From his early work as a student at sites such as Cerros, Colha and Rio Azul to his more recent role as the Project Director of the Programme for Belize...

  • Multiscale Analyses from Households to City: Investigations of Everyday Life at and Around the Site of Dos Hombres, Belize (2025)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Rissa Trachman.

    This is an abstract from the "Sessions in Honor of Dr. Fred Valdez Jr. and His Contributions to Archaeology, Part 1" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Understanding households and communities and their relationships to nearby cities is a topic of great interest. Investigations in and around the ancient city of Dos Hombres is an example of multi-scale analysis in northwestern Belize. Community level social, political, and economic organization are...

  • The multiscale heterogeneous environment of the Maya Lowlands of the present (2025)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Sheila Ward.

    This is an abstract from the "Sessions in Honor of Dr. Fred Valdez Jr. and His Contributions to Archaeology, Part 1" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The book Heterarchy, Political Economy, and the Ancient Maya, edited by Scarborough, Valdez, and Dunning, argued that local natural resources shaped distinctive local communities of the ancient Maya, which, in combination, could have produced different regional political economies. Thus to understand...

  • New Developments at Colha and Tzak Naab: Geophysical Survey and Faunal Remains (2025)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Manda Adam.

    This is an abstract from the "Sessions in Honor of Dr. Fred Valdez Jr. and His Contributions to Archaeology, Part 1" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. During the summers of 2023 and 2024, new archaeological efforts were undertaken at the ancient Maya sites of Colha and Tzak Naab in northern Belize. At Colha in 2023, a Postclassic (1000-1500 CE) midden was uncovered and magnetometry surveys were completed in the main plaza and south of the main plaza...

  • The New Normal: Three Decades of Hydrologic Monitoring in the Three Rivers Region of the Maya Lowlands (2025)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Sheryl Luzzadder-Beach.

    This is an abstract from the "Sessions in Honor of Dr. Fred Valdez Jr. and His Contributions to Archaeology, Part 1" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Thirty-year normals are statistical units used for hydroclimatological monitoring. They run for 30 Water Years (1 October through 30 September) representing statistically coherent temporal data sets. The most recent 30-year normal period was 1991-2020, and we have just entered a new normal of...

  • New Perspectives on the Bajos of the Elevated Interior Region of the Maya Lowlands: PfB and Beyond (2025)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Nicholas Dunning.

    This is an abstract from the "Sessions in Honor of Dr. Fred Valdez Jr. and His Contributions to Archaeology, Part 1" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In the early 1990s, Fred Valdez, Vernon Scarborough, Nicholas Dunning and others initiated a project examining ancient Maya land use in the Programme for Belize including several small bajos. These karst depressions are common physiographic features within the Elevated Interior Region (EIR) of the...

  • Reduce, Reuse, Recycle: Aquaculture and Small Finds in the Collections of Maya Archaeological Assemblages of the BREA Project in Belize. (2025)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Astrid Runggaldier.

    This is an abstract from the "Sessions in Honor of Dr. Fred Valdez Jr. and His Contributions to Archaeology, Part 1" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This presentation addresses data from a region of Belize located between two areas, Programme for Belize in the northwest and Colha in northeastern Belize, where Fred Valdez has focused several decades of research. Following in Valdez’s interests in ceramics and material culture studies, I focus on...

  • Reflections on Maya Ceramic Analysis for the Classic and Postclassic Periods (2025)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Arlen Chase.

    This is an abstract from the "Sessions in Honor of Dr. Fred Valdez Jr. and His Contributions to Archaeology, Part 1" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Maya archaeological projects must deal with the sizeable quantity of pottery sherds that accrue as a result of excavation. The categorization of ceramic materials was formalized in the Maya area by James Gifford based on the ceramics excavated by Gordon Willey at Barton Ramie in the 1950s. His study...

  • Research Themes in the Maya archaeology of Northwestern Belize (2025)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Colleen Hanratty.

    This is an abstract from the "Sessions in Honor of Dr. Fred Valdez Jr. and His Contributions to Archaeology, Part 1" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. <html> Until the late 1980’s, unstable political conditions limited archaeological research in northwestern Belize to a few early explorations in the early part of the 20<sup>th</sup> century. The establishment of long-term, intensive and extensive investigations by the Programme for Belize...

  • When Is a Hinterland? Political Affiliation and Place-Making among the Prehispanic Maya (2025)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Laura Levi.

    This is an abstract from the "Sessions in Honor of Dr. Fred Valdez Jr. and His Contributions to Archaeology, Part 1" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Hinterland is one of the most under-interrogated constructs in lowland Maya archaeology. At best, it is used to designate areas between large precincts of monumental architecture, and therefore implies notions of architectural scale as well as physical and social distance. At worst, it is conflated...