Poor Preservation in Complex Urban Settings: Chronology-Building in the Maya Area

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Constructing Chronologies I: Stratification and Correlation" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Archaeologists working in the Maya area face multiple challenges as they develop chronological studies. First, many sites are complex urban centers with diverse types of structures and areas. Second, these sites commonly have long occupation, involving migrations, destructions of buildings, and recycling of construction materials. Third, in this tropical environment, the preservation of organic materials is poor. To build reliable chronologies under these conditions, researchers need to have substantial data from excavation and a sufficient number of radiocarbon dates combined with ceramics studies and stratigraphic information. A particularly important issue is the identification of problematic old radiocarbon dates resulting from stratigraphic mixing. The Bayesian analysis of radiocarbon dates provides an effective tool in this process.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 86th Annual Meeting, Online (2021)   •
• Constructing Chronologies I: Stratification and Correlation

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 31972