Monumentality, Politics, and Power: Implications of Recent Investigations of Late Preclassic Public Architecture at Xunantunich, Belize

Summary

This is an abstract from the "The Preclassic Landscape in the Mopan Valley, Belize" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

The Late Preclassic period (~300 BC–AD 300) witnessed some of the most important changes in social and political roles in the Maya lowlands when an emergent elite class began to use art and architecture to publicly display their elevated status in society. Recent archaeological research at the hilltop center of Xunantunich, located in western Belize, have focused on creating a high-resolution chronology for the site’s architectural development to further explore the periods leading up to the site’s sudden peak in monumentality and socio-political power during the Late Classic period (~AD 750). During the 2018 field season, the Xunantunich Archaeology and Conservation Project, in collaboration with the Belize Valley Archaeological Reconnaissance Project, carried out stratigraphic excavations of Structure A7 in the Xunantunich site core to help fill in chronological gaps in the site’s occupational history. Analysis of architectural construction phases at Structure A7, and results from AMS 14C dating indicate previously undocumented large-scale monumental construction by the Late Preclassic period. This presentation reports on the results of our 2018 investigations on Str. A7, and explores some of the earlier monumental construction episodes at Xunantunich during the Preclassic.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 86th Annual Meeting, Online (2021)   •
• The Preclassic Landscape in the Mopan Valley, Belize

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 32871