Health, Mobility, and Burial Practices: Lifeways and Deathways at Aventura, Belize

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Households at Aventura: Life and Community Longevity at an Ancient Maya City" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Human remains are found in a variety of contexts at Aventura: as primary burials below the floors of houses, as secondary burials or caches also below the floors, and even in middens. The preservation of the bone is very poor and therefore the recovery of individuals is often less than 25%. This sometimes makes the interpretation of identifying whether a burial was a primary or secondary deposition difficult. Additionally, when just a few small flakes of bone are present (often alongside an upturned pot) and it cannot be determined whether the bone is human or faunal, it can be hard to interpret the nature of such a deposit. The analysis of the human remains has nevertheless provided insight into the health, diet, and lifeways of individuals from both elite and commoner households at Aventura. As well as considering the burial practices, this paper looks at the age-at-death and sex for demographic composition, dental disease and stable isotope analysis for diet, dental nonmetric traits and isotopes for biodistance, relatability and migrations, and dental modifications in relation to social status. We consider the health and cultural information from the human remains in relation to social (in)equality. This presentation contains archaeological human remains.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Households at Aventura: Life and Community Longevity at an Ancient Maya City   •
• Society for American Archaeology 88th Annual Meeting, Portland, OR (2023)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 35809.0