From Origins to Collapses:  New Insights in the Cultural and Natural Processes of the Mirador-Calakmul Karst Basin

This collection contains the abstracts of the papers presented in the session entitled "From Origins to Collapses:  New Insights in the Cultural and Natural Processes of the Mirador-Calakmul Karst Basin" at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Recent archaeological investigations in the Mirador-Calakmul Karst Basin system of northern Guatemala and southern Campeche, Mexico have demonstrated new insights in the formation of complex society that emerged by the early Middle Preclassic period (ca. 1000 BCE. This area developed an extraordinary cultural apogee by the Late Preclassic period (ca. 300 BCE). with a major demographic demise by about 150 CE. The identification of early remains (Pre-Mamom) by about 1000-800 BCE indicates a point of origin and a continuity of an accelerated cultural process, resulting in a proliferation of art, architecture, and communication systems throughout the entirety of the basin, including E-Groups, triadic architectural formats, extensive causeways, terraces, reservoirs, dams, canals, defensive walls and moats. Analyses of architectural art and varied architectural groups, settlement distributions, extensive contiguous LiDAR studies, and artifact assemblages associated with technolo

gical evaluations such as phytoliths, geological, botanical, and biological studies, lithics, bone, DNA, isotopes, ceramics, and radiometric dating provide new insights in the cultural florescence in the Basin. The dynamics of the social-political and economic prowess also ultimately resulted in a demographic demise, providing fresh perspectives of cultural and environmental processes associated with the early Maya.