Burt Lime Production in the Eastern Puuc Region

Summary

This is an abstract from the "The Bolonchen Regional Archaeological Project: 25 Years of Research in the Puuc" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

This talk will present an overview of the Bolonchen Regional Archaeological Project’s contributions to the study of Maya burnt lime production, drawing on a mix of excavation, archaeometric, and spatial data. As part of their extensive Kiuic-Labná intersect pedestrian survey, Tomás Gallareta Negrón and Rossana May Ciau identified hundreds of distinctive annular structures in the study region in the early 2000s. Vertical and horizontal excavations of a sample of these structures in the mid-2010s demonstrated that they were used as pit-kilns to produce burnt lime. Subsequent lidar flyovers of the study region in 2017 and 2022 identified hundreds more of these annular pit-kilns. Comparisons of the BRAP spatial data with those from lidar flyovers in other regions of the Maya lowlands suggest that the eastern Puuc was the epicenter of the annular pit-kiln method for burnt lime production. The high frequency of pit-kilns is likely connected with the distinctive demographic and architectural construction trajectories of the Late Classic eastern Puuc. In addition to providing an overview of pit-kiln mechanics, this talk will discuss the socioeconomic and ecological implications of burnt lime production in Classic Maya communities.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 89th Annual Meeting, New Orleans, LA (2024)   •
• The Bolonchen Regional Archaeological Project: 25 Years of Research in the Puuc

Keywords

Spatial Coverage

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 38046.0