Re-excavating Xno’ha: Aligning Maya Architecture across Seven Years of Archaeological Research

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Ancient Maya Landscapes in Northwestern Belize, Part II" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Maya architecture at Xno’ha has been recorded digitally every field season since 2012 by the Blue Creek Archaeological Project in conjunction with the Center for Heritage Conservation at Texas A&M University. Through the application of preservation technologies such as laser scanning, it is now possible to juxtapose completely excavated structures within the same digital model. Each structure is laser scanned once the excavation has either been completed or reached its furthest extent for the season. Combined with a coordinate system established using a Total Data Station, the 3-dimensional point clouds generated using the ever-changing laser scan technologies (Riegl, FARO 120, FARO 330) are aligned across multiple seasons of data collection. This allows structures excavated in 2012 to be placed in the same spatial context as structures excavated in 2018. Archaeologists can then analyze relationships between structures at the scale of the city, plaza, and group. For structures that have been excavated over multiple seasons, architectural phases can be examined 3-dimensionally in the same spatial context. Our outputs from Xno’ha indicate a highly sophisticated means by which we can begin to analyze Maya architecture in terms of construction, style, and meaning.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Ancient Maya Landscapes in Northwestern Belize, Part II   •
• Society for American Archaeology 84th Annual Meeting, Albuquerque, NM (2019)

Keywords

Spatial Coverage

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 26099