Categories, Space, and New Perspectives in A Late Classic Maya Community

Summary

An interest in indigenous viewpoints has grown in recent years in archaeology, coupled with a commitment to integrating these perspectives more closely into the excavation process. To facilitate this there is a need for field recording systems that offer a means of incorporating the multivocality reflected in various perspectives, which can include not only alternative interpretations but also category systems for the archaeological data recovered. The Say Kah Archaeological Project, in the Programme for Belize area in northwestern Belize, has developed a field recording system that integrates an active onsite database with a system of indigenous Classic Maya categories of objects and places (derived from hieroglyphic, iconographic, and comparative ethnographic evidence) in a combined FileMaker-based system, used by archaeologists in the field on iPads. This links with the project’s GIS to give these categories a central role in the spatial record of the site and provide new perspectives on ancient Maya settlements and the experience thereof. In this paper, we discuss how our recording system worked to incorporate Maya understandings of materials in the excavation and documentation of the site and how we used these understandings to produce alternative spatial visualizations based on archaeological data.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 81st Annual Meeting, Orlando, FL (2016)

Keywords

Spatial Coverage