A Microbotanical View of Classic Period Households in Central Yaxuna, Yucatán, Mexico

Summary

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

The ancient Maya city of Yaxuna was a political and economic center of the northern lowlands in the Middle to Late Preclassic periods (1000 BC–AD 250), and residents continued to occupy the city through the Classic period (AD 250–900) amid geopolitical shifts in the region tied to the rise of Coba and the Late Classic (AD 600–800) construction of a monumental sacbe, or causeway (Sacbe 1), connecting the two cities. In this paper, we report microbotanical data from artifact extractions conducted on a sample of ground stones, ceramic sherds, and obsidian blades recovered from horizontal excavations at three domestic groups in Yaxuna and Coba, which occupy central locations in their respective cities. We consider these data in context with the construction history of the house groups and associated deposits, as well as the broader setting pertaining to the construction of Sacbe 1 and its transformation of the sociopolitical landscape of the Peninsula. Microbotanical evidence provides a lens through which to fortify understandings of household foodways, domestic tool use, and place-making in groups 5E-110 and 5E-112 at Yaxuna.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts   •
• Society for American Archaeology 88th Annual Meeting, Portland, OR (2023)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 36116.0