Claire Ebert

University of Pittsburgh | Pitt · Department of Anthropology

Land use practices have had important implications for structuring household inequalities and broader political systems in the past. Our contribution examines settlement patterns in relation to political structure, household wealth, ecological productivity and agricultural techniques. Combining settlement pattern data with high–precision soils data...

Many humans live in large, complex political centers, composed of multi-scalar communities including neighborhoods and districts. Both today and in the past, neighborhoods form a fundamental part of cities and are defined by their spatial, architectural, and material elements. Neighborhoods existed in ancient centers of various scales, and multiple...

Production and consumption of pottery tempered with fresh volcanic ash peaked in the Late to Terminal Classic periods in the Maya lowlands. Differences in the type of volcanic inclusion and vessel form indicate that the pottery was produced in multiple locations by different groups of potters. In this article, we characterize pottery from household...

The Mesoamerican Radiocarbon Database (MesoRAD) compiles radiocarbon dates from the archaeological literature of Mesoamerica. The inaugural data set, ‘Lowland Maya Dates’, includes 1846 radiocarbon dates from 132 sites in 21 distinct environmental zones in the Maya lowlands. These data span the Paleoindian to Colonial Periods (11,670 to 190 uncal B...

Archaeologists and demographers increasingly employ aggregations of published radiocarbon (¹⁴C) dates as demographic proxies summarizing changes in human activity in past societies. Presently, summed probability densities (SPDs) of calibrated radiocarbon dates are the dominant method of using ¹⁴C dates to reconstruct demographic trends. Unfortunate...

The transition from the Late Archaic to the Late Early Formative period witnessed profound changes in the Maya lowlands. In addition to the establishment of the first settlements and agrarian communities, this critical phase of cultural development heralded the introduction of ceramics, saw changes in lithic technology, gave rise to inter-regional...

This article presents a review of the earliest Maya skeletal remains thus far found, including a list of 398 burials dating to the Early (1800–900 b.c. ) and Middle Preclassic periods (900–300 b.c. ) and adjacent regions. These sites are spread throughout the Maya region and the data allow basic descriptive syntheses about early mortuary behavior a...

Maya archaeologists have long been interested in understanding ancient diets because they provide information about broad-scale economic and societal transformations. Though paleodietary studies have primarily relied on stable carbon (δ13C) and nitrogen (δ15N) isotopic analyses of human bone collagen to document the types of food people consumed, s...

The COVID-19 pandemic has had far-reaching impacts in all segments of life worldwide. While a variety of surveys have assessed the impacts of the pandemic in other fields, few studies have focused on understanding the short- and long-term impacts of the pandemic for archaeology. To assess these trends, we asked survey respondents (n = 570) if they...

We thank our colleague for his comment, address concerns raised, and encourage future collaborative research to answer important questions about the Middle Preclassic at Cahal Pech.

Excavations of a peri-abandonment deposit at Cahal Pech, a Classic Maya center in the Upper Belize Valley, showed an increase in Mount Maloney Black (MMB) ceramics compared with earlier Terminal Classic contexts. This change is intriguing because the type is closely associated with Xunantunich, a nearby political center. To explore the causes of th...

Recent investigations at Cahal Pech, Belize, documented a previously unrecognized Middle Preclassic (700–500 cal BC) E-Group complex. Located in an open public plaza, the monumental complex likely functioned as a forum for communal public events. In the Late Preclassic, the E-Group was replaced by an ancestor shrine where several royal tombs are lo...

The peoples of southern Mesoamerica, including the Classic period Maya, are often claimed to exhibit a distinct type of spatial organization relative to contemporary urban systems. Here, we use the settlement scaling framework and properties of settlements recorded in systematic, full-coverage surveys to examine ways in which southern Mesoamerican...

Since its inception in 1988, the Belize Valley Archaeological Reconnaissance (BVAR) Project has had two major foci, that of cultural heritage management and archaeological research. While research has concentrated on excavation and survey, the heritage management focus of the project has included the preservation of ancient monuments, the integrati...

Archaeologists and demographers increasingly employ aggregations of published radiocarbon (14C dates) as demographic proxies summarizing changes in human activity in past societies. Presently, summed probability densities (SPDs) of calibrated radiocarbon dates are the dominant method of using 14C dates to reconstruct demographic trends. Unfortunate...

Classic Maya architecture serves as a durable reminder of the political strategies its builders engaged in. Specifically, the level of accessibility encoded within architectural layouts offers an avenue to examine the intentions of their designers. This chapter focusses on identifying patterned variability in accessibility of architecture from 17 s...

The Belize Valley figures prominently in the history of Maya archaeology as the birthplace of settlement pattern surveys, where Gordon R. Willey and his colleagues conducted their pioneering research project, from 1954 to 1956. Six decades on, settlement surveys are an integral part of archaeological research strategies not only across the Maya are...

The discovery of cultural remains on or above the floors of rooms and courtyards at several Maya sites has been interpreted by some archaeologists as problematic deposits, squatter's refuse, as evidence for feasting, termination rituals, de facto refuse, or rapid abandonment as a result of warfare. Investigations by the Belize Valley Archaeological...

Archaeological investigations by the Belize Valley Archaeological Reconnaissance Project at Cahal Pech uncovered several Terminal Classic ( a.d. 750–900) peri-abandonment deposits and activity areas at this Belize River Valley center. The deposits contained a diverse assemblage of cultural remains located above and between collapsed architecture, a...

The Belize Valley figures prominently in the history of Maya archaeology as the birthplace of settlement pattern surveys, where Gordon R. Willey and his colleagues conducted their pioneering research project, from 1954 to 1956. Six decades on, settlement surveys are an integral part of archaeological research strategies not only across the Maya are...

Intermediate elites played pivotal roles in the political dynamics of ancient complex societies across the world. In the Classic period (CE 250–900/1000) Maya lowlands, intermediate elites acted as mediators between apical rulers and lower status commoners. These individuals and the political strategies they employed, however, have rarely taken cen...

Preclassic ceramic economy in Belize: neutron activation analysis at Cahal Pech - Volume 93 Issue 371 - Claire E. Ebert, Daniel E. Pierce, Jaime J. Awe

The earliest complex societies and a distinctive set of pan-regional social, political, and economic institutions appeared in the southern Maya lowlands during the Preclassic period (ca. 1200/1100 cal BCE ecal 300 CE). The timing of these cultural changes was variably influenced by local developments, interaction with other regions of Mesoamerica,...

Sedentary agricultural villages, ceramic technology, and evidence for institutionalized socio-economic inequality first appeared in the Maya lowlands during the Preclassic Period (1200 cal BC – cal AD 300). The chronological details of these significant cultural developments between different regions of the lowlands remain unclear in many cases bec...

Chronology-building in Maya archaeology has long been dominated by relative ceramic typologies based on excavations conducted in the 1950s, with date ranges temporally grounded by long-count calendar dates and a small number of imprecise radiocarbon dates. Higher-precision chronologies based on more recent methodological innovations in radiocarbon...

This paper reports on a burial discovered in 2000 by the BVAR project in Plaza G of the Cahal Pech site core. Our stratigraphic data indicated that the grave had penetrated the last two plaza floors in the courtyard. The fact that neither of these floors were subsequently resurfaced strongly suggested that the burial was intrusive. The grave contai...

Immersive technologies have the potential to significantly improve anddisruptively change the future of education and research. The representational oppor-tunities and characteristics of immersive technologies are so unique that only therecent development in mass access fostered by heavy industry investments will allowfor a large-scale assessment o...

Accurate and high-resolution airborne light detection and ranging (lidar) data have become increasingly important for the discovery and visualization of complete archaeological settlement systems in the Maya Lowlands. We present the results of systematic quantitative analysis of lidar data and ground verification for the major centers of Cahal Pech...

Archaeologists have traditionally relied upon relative ceramic chronologies to understand the occupational histories of large and socially complex polities in the Maya lowlands. High-resolution accelerator mass spectrometry (AMS) radiocarbon dating can provide independent chronological control for more discrete events that reflect cultural change t...

Archaeological research investigating prehistoric water management in the Maya lowlands has identified the diversity and complexity of ancient human adaptations to changing environments and socioeconomic landscapes. Our research at the medium-sized Maya center of Baking Pot, located in the Belize River Valley, has explored a water management system...

Chichén Itzá dominated the political landscape of the northern Yucatán during the Terminal Classic Period (AD 800–1000). Chronological details of the rise and fall of this important polity are obscure because of the limited corpus of dated hieroglyphic records and by a restricted set of radiocarbon dates for the site. Here we compile and review the...

Analyses of terminal long count dates from stone monuments in the Maya lowlands have played a central role in characterizing the rise and "collapse" of polities during the Late and Terminal Classic periods (A.D. 730-910). Previous studies propose a directional abandonment of large political centers from west-to-east. We retest the west-to-east hypo...

Shellfish remains excavated from an early agricultural village on the Pacific Coast of Mexico (Guerrero) indicate a dietary shift from locally obtained estuarine shellfish (1400-1100 BC) to a greater diversity of mollusks collected from more distant marine environments (900-500 BC). The timing of this shift suggests that it occurred as human popula...

Long-distance networks for the transport of exotic goods and the beginnings of specialized craft production first appear in Mesoamerica during the Formative Period. The results of portable X-ray fluorescence (pXRF) analysis of 456 obsidian artefacts imported to the Pacific coast site of La Zanja (Guerrero, Mexico) indicate that long-distance exchan...

The role of climate change in the development and demise of Classic Maya civilization (300 to 1000 C.E.) remains controversial because of the absence of well-dated climate and archaeological sequences. We present a precisely dated subannual climate record for the past 2000 years from Yok Balum Cave, Belize. From comparison of this record with histo...