Jennifer Mathews

Trinity University · Department of Sociology and Anthropology

We established the Costa Escondida Project in 2006 to investigate the pre-contact and historic maritime cultures and landscape of northern Quintana Roo, mexico. While removed from the major tourist centers of the caribbean coast, this area has a burgeoning ecotourism industry associated with isla Holbox. This paper will discuss our experiences as a...

The archaeological record, as well as written texts, oral traditions, and iconographic representations, express the Maya perception of cosmic order, including the concepts of quadripartite division and layered cosmos. The ritual act of portioning and layering created spatial order and was used to organize everything from the heavens to the layo...

Starting in the nineteenth century, industries like henequen, chicle, hardwoods and sugarcane required the installation of narrow-gauge railroads across the Yucatán Peninsula. Mules, horses or people pulled low and flat, four-wheeled wooden carts along these rails, which connected haciendas, ports, and remote jungle camps. These rails brought suppl...

For more than a decade, we have been studying historic sugarcane and rum distillery sites from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries in Quintana Roo, Mexico. These distilleries were small haciendas located in remote jungle and mangrove environments. Foreigners (sometimes from the U.S.) often managed the small operations that relied on a...

This essay is an overview of the ancient, historic and contemporary history of chicle (chewing gum), focusing in particular on the ancient Maya and Aztec, as well as the role of Thomas Adams, Sr., Santa Anna de Lopez, and William Wrigley in the production of chewing gum in the Americas. In press.

members of the Yalahau and Costa Escondida projects have focused on historical archaeology in northern Quintana Roo, Mexico. Although the majority of the project research has focused on the ancient Maya, this chapter will highlight a 20-year diversion into studying the historic era of the 19th century, focusing on the commodities of chicle or chewi...

This chapter will provide an overview of the recent research on the protection and conservation of touristic archaeological heritage through the lens of economic, cultural, and ethical considerations.

This volume examines the creation of commodities and their value in the Maya region prehistorically, historically and in the contemporary times.

Jade, stone tools, honey and wax, ceramics, rum, land. What gave these commodities value in the Maya world, and how were those values determined? What factors influenced the rise and fall of a commodity’s value? The Value of Things examines the social and ritual value of commodities in Mesoamerica, providing a new and dynamic temporal view of the r...

This research focuses on the recent historic past (1850–1920) of the Costa Escondida region of northern Quintana Roo. We examine the history of the extractive industries and commodities in the area, concentrating specifically on the production of sugarcane and rum during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. We conducted archival resea...

Since the mid-1990s, members of the Yalahau and Costa Escondida projects have focused on historical archaeology in northern Quintana Roo. Our research has examined the remnants of the chicle (chewing gum), sugar cane and small-batch rum industries from the late 1800s. Although these sites are relatively recent, the production equipment and other ar...

Note this is the uncorrected proof. The volume will be out in the late fall of 2015.

Paper presented at the Society for American Archaeology Meetings as part of the session, “The Value of Things: Commodities in the Maya Region from Prehistoric to Contemporary” , Society for American Archaeology Meetings, Austin, Texas, April 23-27, 2014

We established the Costa Escondida Project in 2006 to investigate the pre-contact and historic maritime cultures and landscape of northern Quintana Roo, Mexico. While removed from the major tourist centers of the Caribbean coast, this area has a burgeoning ecotourism industry associated with Isla Holbox. This paper will discuss our experiences as a...

The use of radiocarbon dating to analyze mortar and charcoal inclusions within mortar or plaster is a useful way to date the construction of architecture, particularly when options for other chronometric methods are limited. In the Yalahau region of northern Quintana Roo, Mexico, members of the Yalahau Regional Human Ecology Project have faced chal...

Manipulation of wetlands for agricultural purposes by the ancient Maya of southern Mexico and Central America has been a subject of much research and debate since the 1970s. Evidence for wetland cultivation systems, in the form of drained or channelized fields, and raised planting platforms, has been restricted primarily to the southern Maya Lowlan...

While the Postclassic period is most often associated with Maya seafaring, in fact, the strengthening of maritime economies and the establishment of circum-peninsular trade routes occurred during the preceding Terminal Classic period (ad 850–1100). It was during this time when the major city of Chichén Itzá demonstrated an increased reliance on mar...