Identifying Elite Maya Residential Spaces: Distribution of Polychrome Potter across the Maya City of El-Peru Waka'

Summary

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2025: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Rediscovered in the 1960s by petroleum workers in modern day Petén, Guatemala, the ancestral Maya city of El Peru-Waka’ has been the subject of archaeological investigation since 2003. Located at the crossroads of two major trade routes and with a dynasty fully engaged in the geopolitics of Classic period, Waka’ is one of the longest surviving Maya cities with an occupation of nearly a millennium (ca. 100 – 1000 CE). Building upon over a decade of ceramic and settlement studies by the Waka’ Archaeological Project (PAW), this poster compares the spatial distribution of polychrome and non-polychrome pottery from over 300 residential test excavations across much of the city’s urban core and immediate hinterlands. The spatial association of higher densities of polychrome and bichrome pottery with larger scale residential architecture compared to lower scale household architectural residences reinforces its distribution as a potential marker of Classic Maya class differences and inequality. The present analysis provides an additional indicator of household inequality across the Waka’ urban landscape.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 90th Annual Meeting, Denver, CO (2025)   •
• SAA 2025: Individual Abstracts

Keywords

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 53938