Navigating the Daily Lives in Plazuela Groups: Early Excavations in the López Plaza at the Classic Period Maya Site of El Palmar, 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 data presented in this paper are results from the 2022 field season at the López Plaza, a small plazuela group located within the site center of El Palmar. Fieldwork included test pit excavations, shovel test pits, and geophysical prospections. Lidar images show that the López Plaza has two separate plaza spaces and approximately eight structures and was interconnected with the rest of the site’s center via sacbe. No stone monuments have been recorded in the López Plaza. In contrast, the K’awiil Plaza lies less than 100 m west and contains several monumental constructions with associated stelae and an altar. The goals of test pit excavations were to refine the chronology of the López Plaza to better contextualize the activities of this plazuela group and integrate them into the broader history of El Palmar. Shovel test pit excavations and geophysical prospections were conducted to identify midden context(s) associated with everyday activities in the group’s two plaza spaces. The intentions of the archaeological investigations conducted in 2022 were to begin to understand the activities of the López Plaza, the daily lives of those who participated in this space, and the group’s interactions with other areas in the site center.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

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

Keywords

Spatial Coverage

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 37598.0