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.
This study proposes a sampling method for ground-truthing LiDAR-derived data that will allow researchers to verify or predict the accuracy of results over a large area. Our case study is focused on a 24 km2area centered on the site of Yaxnohcah in the Yucatan Peninsula. This area is characterized by a variety of dense tropical rainforest and wetland vegetation zones with limited road and trail access. Twenty-one 100 x 100 m blocks were selected for study, which included examples of several different vegetation zones. A pedestrian survey of transects through the blocks was conducted, recording two types of errors. Type 1 errors consist of cultural features that are identified in the field, but are not seen in the digital elevation model (DEM) or digital surface model (DSM). Type 2 errors consist of features that appear to be cultural when viewed on the DEM or DSM, but are caused by different vegetative features. Concurrently, we conducted an extensive vegetation survey of each block, identifying major species present and heights of stories. The results demonstrate that the lidar survey data are extremely reliable and a sample can be used to assess data accuracy, fidelity, and confidence over a larger area.
Stone tool producers in the Maya Lowlands had several types of raw materials from which to choose. Limestone, chert, and obsidian are the most naturally abundant, whereas chert and obsidian outnumber limestone in archaeological contexts. The presence of flaked-stone tools made of limestone is typically attributed to the scarcity of more suitable raw materials. Nevertheless, in chert-rich areas, such as the upper Belize River valley, limestone bifaces and production debitage are present. To understand their presence, we examine limestone biface production and use at Buenavista del Cayo.
It is held that the study of complex societies can effectively focus on the human interactions that define communities. Given the operational primacy of architectural survey in archaeological investigations, with some prominent exceptions, it is surprising how little attention has been paid to how communities of varying scales can actually be identified using these data sets. This article weds a modified version of Yaeger and Canuto's (2000) ‘interactional approach’ to community identity with a materialist (empirical) body of method-theory known as space syntax in a discussion of community structure and systems of authority represented in the architectural structures and spaces of epicentral Teotihuacan, Mexico.
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