7 March 2011 @BULLET The SAA Archaeological Record

Pacbitun Regional Archaeological Project (PRAP): A Report on the 2011 Field Season

Historic Native American burials in ancient eartlien mounds suggest a link between the pre-contact aboriginal past and the colonial period. This practice has heen silenced in the ethnohistorical record, but the nature of this silence is fiot known. Some forms of resistance occurred bei/ond the gaze of Euro-American observers, and the colonizers certainly had their own reasons for not "seeing" or recording a link betzoeen the mounds and contemporari/ native groups. This article explores the possible connections between this practice and the contemporaneous construction of the "myth of the moundbuilders," and the possibility that these "intrusive" burials represent a response to colonialism.

How Well Do Facts Travel?

Religion, Archaeology and the Material World, edited by Lars Fogelin, pp. 78-96. Center for Archaeological Investgations, Occasional Paper No. 36, Southern Illinois University, Carbondale. (2008)

Maya caves are exclusively ritual spaces, so all artifacts within them are part of a ritual assemblage. Because of their social importance, caves were magnets for ancient activities and thus produce the largest ritual assemblages recovered. Therefore, caves are the single best context to study ancient Maya religion and have enabled cave archaeologists to pioneer a new approach to defi ning ritual assemblages. Most Maya cave artifacts are identical to socalled utilitarian objects excavated in surface contexts. Thus, discrete ritual and utilitarian assemblages do not exist. Special-use objects made specifi cally for ritual that form the core of traditionally identifi ed ritual assemblages constitute a minor component of cave assemblages, suggesting that most ritual activity in surface contexts goes unrecognized. Because there are only subtle differences between ritual and utilitarian assemblages, the analysis of cave assemblages can inform the fi eld about ways of recognizing ritual.

Osteobiographies in Mesoamerica, 2024

Excavating houses at archaeological sites gives us a chance to think about what it would be like to live in a different place and time. Yet we still talk about artifacts and dates more than people's lived experiences. Osteobiographies offer us a way to reconstruct a person's life or even the lives of their pets (Castro et al. 2017; Cerezo-Román et al. 2021; Tourginy et al. 2016) and share these stories in a way the reader can relate to (Boutin 2019; Hosek and Robb 2019). Crafting the narratives also provides room for archaeologists to reflect on how we make sense of what we find as we excavate, work in the laboratory, and begin the process of collaboratively writing down our interpretations (Hosek 2016). The osteobiography concept also serves to create biographies of artifacts (see chapter 17, this volume) and places that Mesoamerican peoples viewed as living or animate, like buildings or mountains (Brown 2004). Some of these places were animated by ancestors, especially burial spaces that contained both the physical remains of a person and the spiritual remains of the deceased. The Classic period Maya (AD 250-900) often buried their dead in residential settings that they used repeatedly to perform funerary rites meant to transition the deceased into an ancestor (see chapter 9, this volume). These pages tell the story of one burial place at the archaeological site of Actuncan, Belize, in the eastern Maya Lowlands. Group 1 was a household that was occupied for centuries, and its residents used the patio to bury their dead. The earliest graves had offerings and well-constructed crypts, but later burials were repeatedly disturbed as gravediggers dislodged the bones and

I am a descendant of a Cofetazque Queen, known in Western Literature as the “Lady of Cofitachiqui”. She graciously greeted Hernando di Soto and his Expedition on their 1540 trek through South Carolina’s Low Country. In his Journal, he’s said to have described her Mound’s, Grand Lodge as, “The Richest I’d seen in either Peru or Mexico”. Mounds are Man- made Pyramid type, Flat-topped, Earthen Structures and were used for various reasons, including Habitation, Ceremonial and Astronomical purposes. Some 10,000 plus mounds dotted the landscape along the Mississippi River Valleys, of Ohio and Illinois during the height of Moundbuilding Civilization, and they have been found as far West as, Balboa Mound in California. Much has been written, but little is known about these Pre-Columbian Native Americans, who had a complex Social Order; thriving City States across the Americas, with Trade Routes to Central & South America, and a Spiritual Cosmology, in times of Antiquity. 30+ years of research and chelatest DNA Technology go into Ms. Giza's book, Moundbuilders of Ancient America: A Legacy Reclaimed.

ABSTRACT Research at Wits Cah Ak’al (WCA), a heretofore unexcavated site near Belize City, Belize, has produced evidence of a salt extraction and pottery production industry in a non-residential setting. The artifact assemblage of the salt-production component bears strong resemblance to other salt production sites found along the Caribbean coast of Belize during the past two decades. Solid clay cylinders and other briquetage signify the use of a method of salt extraction commonly called sal cocida. Despite site utiliza- tion extending back conservatively to the Late Preclassic period (400 BC – AD 250), salt production is confined to Late/Terminal Classic periods (AD 600 – 950), a finding that concurs with production at other known salterns in Belize. Results of excavation and recording of briquetage reveal at least one in situ salt-boiling pit furnace that likely involved an array of seven pottery vessels. During the Late Preclassic, pottery production took place at Wits Cah Ak’al. Excavation and artifact analyses satisfy multiple criteria for the identification of a pottery production locale; thus, WCA is one of the most firmly identified––and the first specialized––pottery production locales documented for the Maya lowlands. Currently WCA is located in a mangrove landscape; pollen evidence presented here indicates that this landscape has considerable antiquity. This finding may explain why the site lacks evidence for residential occupation. On the other hand, the area is rich in organic and inorganic resources—such as clay, brine, chert, limestone, sand, and fuel wood—which may have attracted ancient Maya potters and salters to this distinctive landscape. This research integrates multiple lines of evidence from archaeological survey, magnetometry, excavation, palynology, geomorphology, artifact analysis, replicative experiments, AMS dating, INAA, ICP-MS, thin section petrography, micromorphology, SEM, FTIR, and GIS. Furthermore, this study answers recent calls by archaeologists to consider the importance of all types of production (not just specialized production), to focus on producers and contexts in which production occurred, to explore the interaction of multiple crafting practices, and to generate much needed empirical data upon which better constructed theories of craft production may stand.

During the Preclassic period in the Maya lowlands, public structures became the materializations of ideology and memory, functioning to add permanence and significance to the growing ritual landscape. Most Preclassic public ritual structures, however, are documented within formal ceremonial centers. Little is known about Preclassic public spaces within hinterland communities. Recent excavations at the Xunantunich hinterland site of San Lorenzo have uncovered a Preclassic round platform buried beneath a Late-to-Terminal Classic settlement cluster. This platform sits on an expansive tamped marl surface and based on preliminary ceramic analysis dates to the Terminal Preclassic period. Comparative data suggests that this platform may have served a ritual or public function due to its size and form. The reuse and rebuilding on this location during the Late Classic has further implications for the maintenance of meaning and social remembrance of sacred places on the landscape outside formal ceremonial centers.