Maya Obsidian Production and Exchange in the Southern Belize Region

Summary

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Permanent occupation of inland southern Belize began at the dawn of the Classic period and continued into the Terminal Classic. Excavations at Pusilha, Lubaantun, and Nim li Punit have recovered more than 5,000 obsidian artifacts that date to these periods. These have all been sourced using portable XRF and subject to metric and attribute analyses. Although the Southern Belize Region is small and the major sites are close to each other, their access to material, procurement strategies, production and consumption patterns differ, supporting the notion that these communities had distinct external relations, were the center of their own bounded economies, and were distinct small polities.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts   •
• Society for American Archaeology 89th Annual Meeting, New Orleans, LA (2024)

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Spatial Coverage

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 38002.0