High-resolution airborne lidar has been employed in the Maya lowlands to examine landscape modifications, detect architectural features, and expedite and expand upon traditional settlement surveys. Another potentially beneficial-and to-date underutilized-application of lidar is in the analysis of water management features such as small reservoirs and household storage tanks. The urban center of Yaxnohcah, located within the Central Karstic Uplands of the Yucatan Peninsula, provides an ideal test case for studying how the residents of this important Maya community managed their seasonally scarce water resources at the household scale. We employ an integrative approach combining lidar-based GIS analysis of 24 km 2 of the site area, ground verification, and excavation data from five small depressions to determine their function and the role they may have played in water management activities. Our research shows that some, but not all, small depressions proximate to residential structures functioned as either natural or human-made storage tanks and were likely an adaptive component of expanding Middle Preclassic to Classic period urbanization at the site. Thus, while lidar has revolutionized the identification of topographical features and hydrologic patterns in the landscape, a combination of ground verification and archaeological testing remains necessary to confirm and evaluate these features as potential water reservoirs.

Beekeeping among the modern Maya of Yucatan, Mexico, reflects an intricate network of symbiotic relationships between bees, flowering plants, humans, and the managed landscape, which includes both settlements (kaaj, [kah]) and the cultivated and fallow farmlands surrounding them (k'ax). Native stingless bees are valued today both for the honey and wax they produce and the crops they pollinate. This study utilizes the ethnobiology of modern Maya stingless beekeeping to interpret the material correlates of ancient Maya beekeeping through archaeological exploration at Late Formative (200 BC–AD 200) Cerro Maya, Belize. Our contemporary data focus on the species of bees kept, the characteristics of wood species preferred for hive structures (hobon[ob]), the functional parameters of limestone disk hobon covers (mak tuun[ob]), and the plant species identified in symbiotic cultivation with them. The ecological and cultural factors that mediate stingless beekeeping in the present day provide important insights for the interpretation of ancient beekeeping practices at Cerro Maya, evidenced in the worked limestone disks hypothesized to be ancient mak tuunob. Beyond Cerro Maya, the documentation of beekeeping activity throughout ancient urban centers has important implications for the interpretation of urban green spaces in early Maya cities. Together with information on the ritual use of hive furniture and effigies, these data suggest ancient elites recognized the importance of pollinator species, and that deliberate management of stingless bees was standard practice during the period of agricultural intensification known as the Late Formative.

In this article, we use the precision of Bayesian modeled radiocarbon dates to reconstruct a generational history of Late Preclassic (300 BC–AD 250) Cerros (Cerro Maya), Belize. This research was made possible by long-curated excavation records and material remains now housed at the Florida Museum of Natural History, Gainesville. Our interpretations build on earlier research and refine the temporal resolution significantly, enabling us to view site development from the perspective of adjacent generations sharing a lived experience. Here we examine material evidence of their collective actions as they built new buildings and renovated aging ones, characterizing their roles in inventing a visual future for the Late Preclassic Maya port that engaged ancestral actions while reinventing the landscape.

This study focuses on the identification of Maya neighborhood marketplaces during the Late/Terminal Classic period (550‐900 CE) in the urban landscape of Yaxnohcah, Campeche, Mexico. We use a configurational and contextual approach to identify four marketplaces that are situated in a strategic inner ring 1.5–2.5 km from the epicenter of the city. Physical features of the marketplaces include a plaza area of 2000–3100 m2, low perimeter platforms surrounding the plazas, multiple corner entries, easy access to pedestrian corridors, association with large elite households or civic complexes, and equidistance from other neighborhood marketplaces. Artifact frequencies within the plaza support the identification of these complexes as markets, while a locational analysis identifies the service area of each. Finally, we consider the role of these marketplaces as anchors for residential zones during the Late Classic period.[Maya, Campeche, Late Classic, Neighborhoods, Marketplaces]