Community Formation through Movement: Focal Nodes and Community Landscapes of the Mopan River Valley, Belize

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Manifesting Movement Materially: Broadening the Mesoamerican View" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Movement is often implicitly assumed when exploring the ancient makeup of communities. We conceptualize movement at different scales of interaction – at the hyperlocal through households, as well as between and across communities, polities, and landscapes. Here, I will explore how movement to/from focal nodes on a landscape may shape community identity through the creation of space/place. Public spaces are focal nodes for local community- and regional polity-making processes, embedding social hierarchies, ideologies, and social memories into the physical landscape. However, relatively little attention has been given to public spaces within rural communities. Using the ancient community of San Lorenzo, Belize, this paper focuses on movement to expand our understanding of how access to and through specific places changed over time. The dynamics of how focal nodes form within a landscape is examined by analyzing the potential for movement and interaction across the built and natural environments of the San Lorenzo community and the surrounding Mopan River Valley.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Manifesting Movement Materially: Broadening the Mesoamerican View   •
• Society for American Archaeology 84th Annual Meeting, Albuquerque, NM (2019)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 24990