Explaining Variability in On-Floor Assemblages: The Contextual-Behavioral Method

Summary

Settlement abandonment studies are crucial for understanding the archaeological record, as they yield the key to decipher the context of on-floor deposits, or assemblages. We advocate the use of a behavioral-contextual method for studying on-floor assemblages for ascribing them to one of several categories of abandonment. This behavioral-contextual approach examines the vertical and horizontal architectural contexts of artifacts, the relative completeness of vessels, and the represented vessel forms in order to better understand on-floor assemblages. This method accounts for mundane and ceremonial abandonments of gradual and catastrophic nature, along with abandonment with anticipated return. The proposed method is framed in a visual model built on archaeological case-studies from across the Maya world. Most of the featured examples correspond to residential architecture, but this model should be applicable to other types of buildings. While it is far from exact, the interpretational framework that we propose allows to explain the variability of documented abandonment contexts and promises the avoidance of such equivocal terms as "problematical deposits".

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 83rd Annual Meeting, Washington, DC (2018)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 20577