Bells, Blades and Bodegas: The Pervasive Influences of Payson Sheets

Summary

Payson Sheets has influenced the work of a great number of archaeologists over the years, particularly researchers interested in the nature of households and the quotidian aspects of domestic life, lithic production and use, and in the field of ‘disaster archaeology.’ This paper highlights some of those influences in the work of the Maya Archaeometallurgy Project and, more recently, the Ambergris Caye Archaeological Project II, both of which are in Belize. This paper focuses on the anthropological investigation of ancient Mesoamerican technologies, an area of research where Payson Sheets has had a particularly pervasive influence. The results of research on ancient Mesoamerican metallurgy are discussed as well as a more recent program of study on sourcing obsidian artifacts found on Ambergris Caye using X-Ray fluorescence. Households played an important role in both the production and use of metal objects at the Maya site of Lamanai, located in northern Belize. On the coastal island of Ambergris Caye, Maya households were consumers of obsidian that originated from a variety of sources throughout Mesoamerica. The results of household archaeology at these sites also will be discussed in this paper.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 81st Annual Meeting, Orlando, FL (2016)   •
• After the Volcano Erupted: Papers in Honor of Dr. Payson Sheets (Part 1)

Keywords

Spatial Coverage