Caracol,Belize, and Changing Perceptions of Ancient Maya Society

Archaeological research at Caracol, an ancient Maya site that was rediscovered in 1937, has become a major resource in the interpretation and understanding of the ancient Maya. Caracol, in west-central Belize, is situated in a subtropical region once characterized as being unsuitable for the development or maintenance of complex societies, yet it is one of the largest, if not the largest Classic period Maya site in the southern Maya Lowlands, home to over 100,000 people at its height between AD 600 and 700. The investigations at Caracol underscore the utility of long-term archaeological projects incorporating large-scale settlement study that combine excavation with varied research designs and the use of a contextual approach. By employing Maya epigraphic history, traditional archaeology, and modern technology like LiDAR, research at Caracol details the rise, maintenance, and fall of an ancient Maya city, affording a large window into ancient Maya lifeways. Archaeological work provides evidence of sustainable agriculture, a market economy, city planning that included a road system, the impact of warfare on the site’s inhabitants, the sociopolitical status of women, the role that archaeology can play in refining written history, and the significance of commemorating the cyclical passage of time to the ancient Maya. This article summarizes archaeological research efforts at the site by the Caracol Archaeological Project over the last three decades.     

Envisioning Artifacts: a Classic Maya View of the Archaeological Record

This paper explores a Classic Maya (ca. AD 250–900) “material vision”—that is, a locally determined and culturally specific way of understanding the material world, its salient qualities, and associated meanings—based on evidence found in hieroglyphic texts from across the Maya world. Understanding Classic Maya ways of seeing the material world is an important undertaking as part of exploring alignments and misalignments between ancient indigenous and modern archaeological understandings of what today we view as “artifacts.” This topic is explored in the article through two related inquiries: first, I look at “artifacts” (i.e., materials that qualify as such, in an archaeological material vision) recorded in the hieroglyphic record, yielding thematic understandings of objects related to form and function, wholeness versus brokenness, and the relational potential of objects. Second, I use ten hieroglyphic property qualifiers that indicate Maya material perceptions and categories to gain explicit insight into some organizing principles within a Maya way of visualizing the material world. Throughout the article, I ask: can we envision archaeological objects using Maya conceptions, and how does this way of seeing align or misalign with archaeological material engagements?     

Country Roads: Travel,Visibility, and Late Classic Settlement in the Southern Maya Mountains

Mayanist archaeology has long been concerned with creating and evaluating explanatory models for the locations of ancient sites relative to one another and to the physical geography of the Maya world. This study combines epigraphic data and spatial analyses to explore motivations for settlement location and to interrogate territorial strategies in Late Classic (a.d. 600–830) kingdoms in the southern Maya Mountains, around the modern towns of Dolores and Poptún, Guatemala. Least-cost path analyses were used to model natural travel corridors and their relationship with site location was assessed. In conjunction, viewshed analyses were applied to evaluate the importance of visual connections to likely travel routes. The results are considered in the context of the socio-politics and economics of the region, and raise questions about the character of and interconnections between travel, exchange, settlement location, and mechanisms for reinforcing territorial claims in the Late Classic Southern Maya Mountains.     

Building a high-resolution chronology at the Maya archaeological site of El Palmar,Mexico

This paper discusses how detailed analyses of archaeological contexts and macrobotanical remains are critical for building a high-resolution chronology in archaeological research. While the application of Bayesian modelling has improved chronology-building significantly, archaeologists have sometimes neglected different dates recovered from the same depositional layer without further scrutiny. Based on 78 radiocarbon samples, this problem is challenged by building a high-resolution chronology of the Guzmán Group, a small plaza compound of the ancient Maya city of El Palmar, Mexico. The results permit a deeper understanding of relationships between dynastic interactions and the emergence of non-royal elites in Classic Maya society.     

New Directions in Classic Maya Household Archaeology

Over the past two decades, household studies have coalesced into a recognized subfield within archaeology. Despite this relatively short history, household archaeologists are now taking a leading role in epistemological shifts that are placing people and their practices and differences at the center of archaeological interpretations of the past, rather than subsuming these into the noise of passive and depersonalized depictions of ancient social systems. As Maya archaeologists have played a critical role in the development of household archaeology, examining recent trends in Maya household research provides a perspective on the directions of both Maya studies and household archaeology more generally. This article explores three interrelated trends: (1) understanding ordinary people; (2) understanding social diversity among households; (3) understanding households in articulation with the broder social universe. Through a discussion of these three trends, this review uses Classic Maya household archaeology as a case study to illustrate how household research has led to the development of theoretically rich and empirically substantive understandings of an ancient society, which repeople the past and foreground the active roles of and structural constraints on ancient people.     

Collective Remembering in Archaeology: a Relational Approach to Ancient Maya Memory

Drawing on a case study from the Maya site of Actuncan, Belize, this article presents collective remembering as a way to conceptualize the relational construction of memory by ancient societies. Emphasizing the process of remembering allows archaeologists to investigate how memory divides as well as unites. Over time, the interactions between humans and between humans and their landscape that take place as part of everyday life produce memories of the past that are inaccurate and inconsistent between individuals. In particular, people who interact frequently, either due to geographic proximity or similarity in socioeconomic status, tend to form mnemonic communities—communities based on a similar understanding of the past—that may serve as identity markers differentiating them from other groups. At Actuncan, the community’s past was collectively remembered across times of prosperity and subjugation. First, the site was a Late and Terminal Preclassic seat of an early divine king who built a monumental ceremonial center. Second, when the site was subjugated during the Early and Late Classic periods, the ceremonial center fell out of use, but the site’s commoner households remained continuously occupied. Finally, in the Terminal Classic period, the site’s residents reestablished Actuncan as a local seat of authority following the Classic Maya collapse. The community’s use of the Preclassic monumental core during the Terminal Classic period indicates that the memory of the site’s Preclassic apogee served to legitimize their Terminal Classic authority. However, the Preclassic past was remembered in a manner consistent with contemporaneous cultural forms and the site’s recent past of subjugation.     

Using Actor-Network Theory to Characterize the Production of Ancient Maya Caching Events at Cerro Maya (Cerros,Belize)

Inspired by actor-network theory, this research uses an operationalized archaeological actor-network approach to characterize and examine human-object relationships associated with ritual caching deposits (votive bundles of objects) at the site of Cerro Maya (formerly Cerros), Belize. Designed to be broadly applicable for archaeological studies, our archaeological actor-network approach made it possible to inductively examine, characterize, and diachronically compare the complex arrays of human and nonhuman relationships. In contrast to previous studies that characterized caches mainly in symbolic terms, we treated caches as traces of the small-scale actor-networks that emerged during the production of ancient Maya caching events. More specifically, our actor-network methodology made it possible to characterize caches and caching events in terms of the relationships between materials, temporality, objects, places, and groups of people, their intentions, and actions. The inductive and diachronic focus of approach also allowed us to compare arrays of caching actor-networks over time while considering the social affect that caching events had on subsequent caching events and the site’s social development. This approach demonstrates that even simple artifact clusters can be viewed as proxies for highly complex networks of interlinked social relations that play roles in shaping important historical interactions and social orders over time.

     

Classic Lowland Maya Political Organization: A Review

This paper reviews recent archaeological research concerning Classic Maya lowland political systems (ca. A.D. 250–1000). It focuses specifically on (1) subsistence practices revealed through the analysis of prehistoric climate, available resources, agricultural technologies, and diet; (2) population distribution, density, and size revealed through the analysis of settlement practices and architectural function; (3) social differentiation and interaction revealed through the analysis of burial practices, diet and health, architecture, and production, consumption, and exchange patterns; and (4) ancient Maya political economy (how it was funded) revealed through the analysis of community organization, ritual activities, the Classic Maya collapse, and warfare. It finally ends with a brief discussion of the future of Maya archaeology. A key factor that recurs throughout this review is the noticeable amount of variability that existed—varied resources, subsistence strategies, settlement practices, and social and political systems. An understanding of this variability is the key to appreciate fully the Classic Maya.     

The collision of heritage and economy at Uxbenká, Belize

The relationship between the Mopan Maya community of Santa Cruz and the Classic period Maya site of Uxbenká in southern Belize has had a lasting impact on archaeological investigation and conservation at the site over the last generation. Community members, long the ‘stewards’ of Uxbenká, believe they have an economic right to the ruins that translates loosely into ‘ownership’. Although they seek to maintain the relationship between Santa Cruz and Uxbenká, archaeologists with the Uxbenká Archaeological Project (UAP) challenge the legitimacy of the community’s claim via the power vested in them by the state to conduct scholarly investigations at the site. For both the UAP and the state‐affiliated Institute of Archaeology, Uxbenká belongs not to one village but to all Belizeans. This paper is a data‐driven analysis of the interactions and expectations of community members, archaeologists, and the state as they interact within the archaeoscape of Uxbenká.     

The Not So Peaceful Civilization: A Review of Maya War

The first Maya encountered by Europeans in the early sixteenth century were exceedingly warlike, but by the 1940s the earlier Classic Maya (AD 250–1000) were widely perceived as an inordinately peaceful civilization. Today, in sharp contrast, conflict is seen as integral to Maya society throughout its history. This paper defines war, reviews the evidence for it in the Maya archaeological record, and shows how and why our ideas have changed so profoundly. The main emphasis is on the Classic period, with patterns of ethnohistorically documented war serving as a baseline. Topics include the culture history of conflict, strategy and tactics, the scope and range of operations, war and the political economy, and the intense status rivalry war of the eighth and ninth centuries AD that contributed to the collapse of Classic civilization. Unresolved issues such as the motivations for war, its ritual vs. territorial aims, and sociopolitical effects are discussed at length.     

An integrated assessment of archaeobotanical recovery methods in the Neotropical rainforest of northern Belize: flotation and dry screening

This report presents results of a study examining the ancient use of plants at four Late Classic (CE 600-900) Maya rural farmsteads in northwestern Belize. Our research specifically targeted residential middens for macrobotanical recovery. Samples yielded the remains of more than a dozen plant families, representing some genera that do not currently grow in the area. These plants were used in the Late Classic, countering the idea that ancient botanical remains do not survive in Neotropical archaeological contexts. We also evaluated two macrobotanical sample processing methods vis-à-vis one another: flotation and dry screening. Our results indicate that flotation recovered 58% more seeds than dry screening, while dry screening yielded almost twice as much charcoal and other wood as flotation. The divergent quantities in the types of material recovered suggest a comprehensive macrobotanical recovery program should include the use of both processing methods.     

Human biology in the Classic Maya collapse: Evidence from paleopathology and paleodiet

We review evidence from human biology—paleopathological and isotopic paleodietary studies on ancient Maya skeletons—to assess the validity of ecological models of the Classic Maya collapse, in which elevated disease and deteriorating diet are commonly assumed. To be upheld, the health arguments of ecological models require that the Maya disease burden (1) was greater than that for many other societies and (2) increased over the span of occupation. The dietary argument requires (1) consistent change in diet from Preclassic and Early Classic Periods to the Terminal Classic and (2) increasing social divergence in diet. A correlation between diet and disease is necessary to link these arguments. Neither pathology nor isotopic data consistently support these criteria. Instead, it appears that local environmental and political factors created diversity in both disease burden and diet. In view of the human biological data, we are skeptical of ecological models as generalized explanations for the abandonment of Classic Maya sites in the southern lowlands.     

Directional layouts in central lowland Maya settlement

This paper suggests the existence of non-random, directional patterns in the location of housemounds across the Late Classic Maya settlement landscape at Baking Pot, Belize, and then explores the wider implications of this patterning in the central Maya lowlands. It introduces an anisotropic method – based on nearest neighbour bearings and successive grid offsets – in order to explore possible rectilinear organisation in settlement layouts despite the presence of uneven and irregular patterns of archaeological dating and recovery. The results suggest a grid-like distribution of houseplots and, by implication, also a set of routes running throughout the housemound landscape and local Maya neighbourhoods during the site's Late and Terminal Classic history. Furthermore, different possible alignments in different parts of the site are tentatively regarded as an indication of shifting orientations to localised grids, following the shift in alignment of monumental architecture, as the settlement landscape expanded over time. Finally, we discuss the implications of these findings with respect to the broader interpretation of Maya settlement patterns.     

Sociopolitical network interactions: A case study of the Classic Maya

The organization of Classic Maya society emerged from diverse and overlapping social interactions which shaped a dynamic political landscape. Vying for power, elites legitimized their status by claiming ancestry from various supernaturals and engaged in conspicuous displays of competition, warfare, and ritual practice which were often recorded on stone monuments. By examining the inscribed relationships between Maya centers, we chart organizational changes in sociopolitical networks throughout the Classic period. Methods derived from social network analysis are used to examine temporal changes in the distribution and centralization of political power through different network interactions. We examine the intersection of antagonistic, diplomatic, subordinate, and kinship relationships and discuss how these overlapping networks contributed to dynamic changes in the Classic period. This case study demonstrates how current network analysis techniques can contribute to archaeological studies of the scalar dynamics and organizational changes of past social and political systems.     

Deciphering the inorganic chemical record of ancient human activity using ICP-MS: a reconnaissance study of late Classic soil floors at Cancuén,Guatemala

Inorganic chemical analysis of soil floors using inductively coupled plasma-mass spectrometry (ICP-MS) was undertaken to provide information on the nature and location of past human activity in the ancient Maya city of Cancuén, Guatemala. The use of ICP-MS to detect trace and ultra-trace elemental enrichment of two excavated soil floors from the late Classic period is the first study of its kind in Mesoamerican archaeology. Geochemical background of the site was established by the analysis of palaeosols and nearby undisturbed ‘off-site’ soil profiles. Robust statistical methods used in the study clearly distinguished the level of anthropogenic enrichment across the former floors. Many elements measured showed only minor departures (10–20%) from the site's background soil chemistry. The greatest levels of elemental enrichment were detected in the rare earth elements, mercury, and gold. The latter is of particular interest considering the consensus that gold was absent from the world of the Classic-period Maya. Comparisons of the spatial pattern of mercury enrichment with lithic and archaeological data show strong linkages to past industrial and ritual activities. Elevated rare earth element concentrations were recorded broadly across both soil floors and are considered to be related to concentrated human occupation in antiquity.     

From Crafting to Caching: Technological and Iconographic Analyses of Blue Creek Cache 37

This paper presents technological and iconographic analyses of a Late Classic (a.d. 600–830) lithics cache recovered from the ancient Maya site of Blue Creek, Belize. The cache consisted of 21 obsidian prismatic blades and a number of chert artifacts, including 21 stemmed bifaces, a large laurel leaf biface, and a tridentate eccentric. The technological analysis of the stemmed bifaces identified three distinct stem production techniques that may be attributable to a combination of idiosyncratic knapping gestures and laterality, or handedness. A survey of Maya iconography demonstrated that large laurel-leaf bifaces and tridentate eccentrics occur in scenes depicting sacrifice and the burning of human remains, often by ritual specialists titled ch’ajoom, or “person of incense.” It is suggested that the presence of a large laurel-leaf biface and tridentate eccentric in the cache may indicate that Blue Creek was the residence of ch’ajoom at some point during the Late Classic period.     

Early Maya geometric planning conventions at El Palmar,Guatemala

Archeology of complex societies has long focused on the actors behind the planning and engineering of architecture in monumental centers. However, the motivations for and conventions used in ancient planning are often lost to modern scholars without the aid of texts of the builders. This is especially true with the early ancient Maya, where large centers with evidence of extensive planning existed as early the Late Preclassic period (ca. 300 BC–250 AD). The current Focus article addresses site planning of monumental Late Preclassic settlements with a case study at El Palmar, Guatemala. Results suggest that apart from cardinal alignments based on solar movement, conventions of planar geometry formed a large part of the planning toolkit. The discussion argues that the dimensions of repeating similar rectangles probably related to the ideal size of ancient Maya agricultural spaces.