Heart of an Ancient Maya City: Investigations of the Central E Group at Yaxnohcah, Campeche, Mexico

Summary

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

Ancient Maya E Groups were important loci of sociopolitical continuity, sociocultural change, and social memory across millennia of lowland Maya civilization. As sustained generational foci of sociopolitical machinations and social memory, the built environment and significance of E Groups would have been continuously generationally reformulated to meet contemporary exigencies. As such, alteration and/or destruction of such sociopolitically significant built environments may reflect historical inflection points, while expansion and elaboration may reflect periods of relative sociopolitical stability and continuity. Recent investigations at the ancient Maya center of Yaxnohcah have reconstructed a two-millennia-plus (900 BCE–1250 CE) occupational history of the central E Group complex, with construction events or ritual activities evidenced in nearly every major period. Excavation of the eastern structure of Yaxnohcah’s E Group demonstrates that the form and dimensions of this structure changed significantly across generations, reflecting periods of intensive use, remodeling, and expansion, as well as possible violent destruction, abandonment, and subsequent reoccupation. This paper will situate these events in Yaxnohcah’s history, discuss the significance of these new findings in relation to broad lowland sociocultural trends, and speculate as to Yaxnohcah’s relationship with its regional neighbors, El Mirador and Nakbe, and later in time to Calakmul.

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): 37618.0