The Yaxhom Valley Survey II

Summary

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

The second season of the Yaxhom Valley survey, conducted during the summer of 2018, continued its assessment of LiDAR imagery collected by an NSF-sponsored mission flown over the eastern Puuc region of Yucatan, Mexico. Our focus shifted to Muluchtzekel, which LiDAR revealed to be the dominant site of the entire valley. We covered approximately one square kilometer of the site center during the 2018 pedestrian survey and used LiDAR to suggest possible excavation loci in our search for the earliest civic architecture in the Puuc. The survey data allowed us to refine our understanding of the LiDAR signatures of various classes of features in the imagery and to quantitatively assess feature identification confidence levels in areas yet to be ground-truthed. Digital elevation models of Muluchtzekel provided insight into the network of public structures and elite households involved in the administration of both agricultural production and quarrying, and revealed extensive modification of hilltops along the interface of the valley with the Bolonchen Hills. This paper discusses possible involvement of these hilltop groups in the production of construction materials and suggests that administration strategies for environmental resources at Muluchtzekel differed noticeably from sites in the eastern part of the valley.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 84th Annual Meeting, Albuquerque, NM (2019)

Keywords

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 24298