Recent Investigations of Maya Archaeological Site Looting in Petén, Guatemala

Summary

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

Archaeological looting in the Maya area has been an enduring concern for over 60 years. While many individual archaeological projects have worked diligently to record looting within their respective project areas, the recent application of lidar in archaeology facilitates the large-scale study of illicit digging in the forested Maya region for the first time. Using a combination of lidar data from northern Guatemala, field verifications of potential looting incidents, and existing literature and excavation reports, this paper presents the recent investigations of Maya archaeological site looting in the department of Petén in northern Guatemala. Both fieldwork and analyses of lidar surveys from archaeologically unstudied areas in the Petén reveal looting that had not been previously identified, highlighting the pervasive and persistent illicit digging practices within the region. Quantification and geospatial analyses of looting incidents in the Petén further demonstrate the potential of lidar and GIS for estimating the scale of looting across the landscape and identifying potential risk factors for Maya archaeological sites. A regional study of illicit digging therefore provides an understanding of looting patterns that had not been possible with traditional survey techniques.

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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Spatial Coverage

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 37499.0