Browsing by Subject "Belize"
Now showing 1 - 20 of 29
- Results Per Page
- Sort Options
Item The Ancient Maya Craft Community at Colha, Belize, and Its External Relationships(1989) Hester, Tomas R.; Shafer, Harry J.Item Archaeological Investigations at Punta De Cacao, an Ancient Maya Town-Sized Settlement in Orange Walk District, Northwest Belize, Central America; The University of the Incarnate Word Project, 2001-2004(University of Texas at Austin, 2015) Robichaux, Hubert R.; Hartnett, Kristen; Pruett, Candace; Miller, AlexandraTable of Contents : In Memoriam (p.iii) -- Acknowledgements (p.v) -- Introduction (p.1-10) -- A Regional Perspective of the Punta de Cacao Ceramic Complexes / by Fred Valdez, Jr. (p.11-20) -- Mapping Punta de Cacao (p.21-28) -- Excavations at Punta de Cacao (p.29-44) -- The Central Precinct of Punta de Cacao (p.45-54) -- Punta de Cacao as a Whole: Total Area, Population Density, and Total Population (p.55-58) -- Town Layout (p.59-62) -- Social Stratification at Punta de Cacao: Implications Derived from the Structure Data Base (p.63-64) -- Punta de Cacao through Time: Its Life Cycle (p.65-70) -- Final Thoughts (p.69-70) -- APPENDIX A: Structure Type Codes (p.71-13) -- APPENDIX B: Vegetation Codes (p.73-75) -- APPENDIX C: Punta de Cacao Structure Data Base -- (p.75-93) --APPENDIX D: Excavation/Temporal Data (p.93-94) -- APPENDIX D: Excavation/Temporal Data (p.95-96) -- References Cited (p.97)Item Belize: At the Crossroads(2013-12) Castellanos, OsvaldoReport on assets and challenges for sustainable development in Belize. Written under the auspices of the Bridging Disciplines Programs at The University of Texas at Austin with mentor David V. Gibson of the IC² Institute.Item Belize: Decoding the Census(2015-08) Munoz, Ilse; Gibson, David V.Report on demographic, social, and economic trends in Belize based on the 2010 Census. Written under the auspices of the Bridging Disciplines Programs at The University of Texas at Austin with mentor David V. Gibson of the IC² Institute.Item The Colha Preceramic Project: A Status Report(1995) Hester, Thomas; Hudler, Dale B.Item Defining the development and meaning of a commemoration complex : the Los Pisos Courtyard, La Milpa, Belize(2013-08) Martinez, Maria Magdalena; Valdez, Fred, Jr., 1953-The current research takes place at La Milpa, the third largest Maya center in Belize, Central America. The primary aim of this research was to investigate the development and function of "palace" courtyard complexes within Maya centers. More specifically, this research chronicles transformations in the built environment and activities taking place, particularly rituals, in the Los Pisos Courtyard from the Late Preclassic to the Late/Terminal Classic periods (400 B.C.-A.D. 900). Consequently, an attempt to correlate shifts in the built environment with changing sociopolitical fields and ritual practice was engaged. The role of agents in the construction and use of the built environment is of particular importance to the study of Maya monumental architecture. Therefore, the incorporation of social theories of structure and agency were employed in order to create a dialogue between the built environment and the people of La Milpa. This research project explored how the Los Pisos Courtyard developed in concert with the central precinct and its role within the La Milpa community. Excavations conducted by the author coupled with LaMAP (directed by Drs. Norman Hammond and Gair Tourtellot) excavations revealed that during the Late Preclassic period the Los Pisos Courtyard and Plaza A were cleared and leveled as the central precinct began to take form. During this time it is argued that the 3 m natural hillock on which the Los Pisos Courtyard rests was an open space used for ritual activity and community engagement. By the Early Classic period, a massive construction program occurred and the courtyard began to take its present configuration. The most significant change occurred during the Late/Terminal Classic period, when colossal construction efforts took hold of the entire site. Through monumentality and verticality, the Los Pisos Courtyard became an exclusive and segregated space designated for the most important inhabitants of La Milpa. Although the Los Pisos Courtyard became an exclusive locale, it may have remained an important symbol that served as a mnemonic device used to invoke memories that legitimated the power and authority of the elite.Item Deforestation in Belize 1989/1992-1994/1996(1996) White, William Allen, 1939-; Raney, J. A.; Tremblay, Thomas A.Belize has extensive forest and associated woodland resources characterized primarily by tall, highly diverse broadleaf forests, and secondarily by pine forests, low scrubby woodland areas, and abundant mangroves (King and others, 1986, 1989, 1992; Zisman, 1992; Forest Department, 1993; and LIC, 1994). Among the environmental issues facing Belize are deforestation and the management of forest resources. Thousands of hectares of broadleaf forest have been cleared for agriculture and other purposes (Forest Department, 1993). Nevertheless, it is generally believed that the amount of deforestation that has occurred in Belize is much less than that which has occurred in other regions. The Ministry of Natural Resources of Belize, and its various components including the Land Information Centre (LIC), Forestry Department, and Lands and Survey Department, recognized the importance of assessing the current distribution of forest cover and determining the extent of deforestation in order to document the magnitude of the problem and to provide quantitative information to assist in managing these valuable natural resources.Item Developmental education in Belize : toward a national strategy(2009-05) Bateman, Douglas Richard; Roueche, John E.; Bumphus, Walter G.The issues and challenges for post-secondary education in Belize are many and have been exacerbated by the democratization of higher education in this young, small, developing, Caribbean nation. Improving access to tertiary education is understood as essential to the development of nations throughout the world and increasing access to higher education is an important element in regional development and integration. Despite significant growth in the tertiary education population, the Caribbean region continues to lag behind the developed world in post-secondary enrollment and Belize's enrollment of the 18-24 year old cohort is among the lowest in the region. As the tertiary system in the Caribbean has been democratized and the enrollment numbers have increased, developmental education programs have been introduced to protect the quality of college credit courses and to ensure that students are academically prepared for success at the tertiary level. This research was designed to assess the effectiveness of developmental education offered in the junior colleges of Belize and to examine student and faculty perceptions of developmental education programs in Belize. St. John's College Junior College (SJCJC), located in Belize City, and its Summer Development Program (SDP) provided the case study for this research. Since SJCJC's summer bridge program has been replicated at other junior colleges in Belize, this research contributed to understanding a national approach to developmental education. The investigator used a mixed methods approach relying on quantitative and qualitative methodologies. The research questions were: What percentage of students who enrolled in SJCJC's SDP passed the next level gateway course in the subject for which they required remediation? How does this compare with the success rate of students not enrolled in SDP courses? What percentage of students who took one or more courses in the SDP graduated within two years? How does this compare with the graduation rate of students that had not enrolled in SDP courses? What are SDP students' perceptions of the program? What are SDP faculty members' perceptions of the program? How do these perceptions relate to the effectiveness of the program as determined by research questions #1 and #2?Item Educating Belize: Challenges and Opportunities for the Future(2015-08) Weigand, Madison; Gibson, David V.Report on the current state of the Belizean educational system and recommendations for reforms. Written under the auspices of the Bridging Disciplines Programs at The University of Texas at Austin with mentor David V. Gibson of the IC² Institute.Item Excavation and preliminary analysis of a Maya Burial at the Medicinal Trail archaeological site, Belize, Central America(2011-05) Drake, Stacy Marie; Valdez, Fred, Jr., 1953-; Creel, DarrellThe following report describes the excavation and preliminary analysis of Burial 5 at Group A of the Medicinal Trail archaeological site in northwest Belize. The excavation of Burial 5 occurred over the duration of the 2009 and 2010 field seasons, and this report focuses on the 2010 portion of this excavation, which was conducted within the field laboratory at the Programme for Belize Archaeology Project. In this report, I describe the methods utilized during the 2010 excavation and preliminary analysis processes. I also discuss some of the theory relevant to Maya mortuary practices as they relate to my interpretations of the findings from Burial 5.Item Geoarchaeological and archaeobotanical approaches to human-environmental interactions during the Archaic to Preclassic Periods in Northwestern Belize(2015-05) Aebersold, Luisa; Valdez, Fred, Jr., 1953-; Beach, TimothyThis report reviews human-environmental interactions in Northwestern Belize during the transition from Archaic (8000 to 4000 B.P.) to Preclassic periods (4000 B.P. to 2000 B.P.). Specifically, the transition of subsistence strategies from nomadic hunter-gatherer to more sedentary food production, which we still do not fully understand in the tropical lowlands of the Maya region. It is during this pivotal era that early to mid-Holocene humans domesticated a wide variety of plants and animals, establishing a new human niche strategy that dramatically changed environments around the world. This report considers how human niche construction, a theoretical framework that expressly attributes populations with deliberate ecosystem engineering strategies, plays an integral role in the Anthropocene. I present my plans for analyzing sediments and microbotanical remains to contribute to knowledge about paleoenvironment and human-landscape interactions to provide direct evidence for transformative behavior by humans.Item A household perspective : ceramics from a domestic structure at Kichpanha, Belize(2010-05) Root-Garey, Emily Donna; Rodriguez-Alegría, Enrique R.; Valdez, FredResearch at Kichpanha, Belize, has primarily focused on the Late Preclassic, elite contexts, and the regional economic and political roles of the site. This study is an initial step in expanding qualitative research at Kichpanha across the Classic period and into the smaller scale of domestic contexts, analyzing ceramics recovered in association with a Late Classic mound structure and Late Preclassic lithic workshop. Drawing on literature in household archaeology and pre-Columbian Maya commoners, I focus on structure function and social status of occupants. Additionally, I examine how the ceramics fit into the established chronology at Kichpanha, and address the spatiotemporal relationship between the mound structure and lithic workshop.Item Hun Tun hinterland complexity : investigations of a commoner settlement in northwestern Belize(2016-05) Dodge, Robyn Leigh; Valdez, Fred, Jr., 1953-; Creel, Darrell; Menchaca, Martha; Moore, Allan; Trachman, RissaThis dissertation focuses on hinterland social complexity in northwestern Belize. The archaeological site of Hun Tun was investigated to understand ancient Maya life ways in a household context. The site itself contributes to the institutions that form social complexity during the Late Classic Maya Chronology. Hun Tun is located on the Rio Bravo Conservation and Management Area in northwestern Belize and serves as the location for this dissertation research. Hun Tun research is part of a collaborative research endeavor aimed at understanding the various institutions that form Maya society. Initial data for this project began with the creation of a site map and cursory test-pit excavations. Survey expeditions yielded an abundance of information regarding the potential for long- term research poised to answer questions about social complexity at the household level. Settlement pattern studies began as the first priority of research following the traditions of following in the traditions of Willey (1953), Ashmore (1981, 1991), Ashmore and Sabloff (2002), Villamil (2007) and others. Whereas, ancient Maya commoner studies focuses on the support groups and their roles participating in ancient Maya society became a long-tern research endeavor at Hun Tun. Ancient Maya commoners serve as a focus for this study due to the size and scale of Hun Tun. Commoners are appropriate for a study regarding social complexity because they successfully adapt “to their social environments,” responding to external forces and pressures applied by others (Lohse and Valdez 2004). These adaptations can be observed in the Hun Tun archaeological record Other examples of Hun Tun social complexity at the household level include the recruitment of high quality limestone material, complex architecture, storage and maintenance of clay, and various examples of commoner rituals. Hun Tun is an agent of social formation, which challenges preconceived notions of household social complexity in a Late Classic hinterland context.Item Initial archaeological investigations of the North Courtyard Group, Las Abejas, Belize(2020-12-11) Stanyard, Zachary William; Valdez, Fred, Jr., 1953-In the summer of 2019, preliminary archaeological investigations were performed at the North Courtyard group of Las Abejas. The site represents a middle-level settlement unit within the cultural landscape of the Three Rivers Region. The North Courtyard group comprises five residential structures situated at the northernmost margin of the site. While previous work was performed on the site, there is very little information regarding the formation and occupation of this group. Excavations were undertaken within the center of the courtyard and each of the surrounding structures with the intention of providing a meaningful understanding of the role of the group’s occupants relative to the rest of the site. The purpose of this report is to present the data collected and to begin to define the social organization of the site at a local scale.Item Knowledge-Base Benchmarking for Belize Education, Science & Technology (BEST) Park(IC² Institute, The University of Texas at Austin, 2004) Gibson, David V.; Cotrofeld, MargaretFeasibility study for the development of an educational, science, and technology park to be located near Belize City, Belize. Includes comparative data on the economic devlopment potential of Belize and other locations in the Caribbean region.Item Maya muon tomography, muon tracking, and muon simulation(2007-12) Hui, CheukKai Becket, 1981-; Schwitters, Roy F.The Mayan Muon Tomography Project of the UT High Energy Physics Laboratory is in collaboration with UT Mesoamerican Archaeological Laboratory to explore a Maya pyramid in Belize. The detectors in this project will use cosmic ray muons, and thus unintrusively, to create tomographic images of the internal structures of the pyramid. A prototype muon detector has been completed and commissioned in early 2007. Currently, the Maya Muon group is studying various aspects of the detector in preparation for its service in Belize. Muon track reconstruction, imaging technique and data simulation have been studied and will be discussed here.Item Methods and simulations of muon tomography and reconstruction(2016-05) Schreiner III, Henry Fredrick; Schwitters, Roy F.; Dicus, Duane; Lang, Karol; Onyisi, Peter; Navratil, PaulThis dissertation investigates imaging with cosmic ray muons using scintillator-based portable particle detectors, and covers a variety of the elements required for the detectors to operate and take data, from the detector internal communications and software algorithms to a measurement to allow accurate predictions of the attenuation of physical targets. A discussion of the tracking process for the three layer helical design developed at UT Austin is presented, with details of the data acquisition system, and the highly efficient data format. Upgrades to this system provide a stable system for taking images in harsh or inaccessible environments, such as in a remote jungle in Belize. A Geant4 Monte Carlo simulation was used to develop our understanding of the efficiency of the system, as well as to make predictions for a variety of different targets. The projection process is discussed, with a high-speed algorithm for sweeping a plane through data in near real time, to be used in applications requiring a search through space for target discovery. Several other projections and a foundation of high fidelity 3D reconstructions are covered. A variable binning scheme for rapidly varying statistics over portions of an image plane is also presented and used. A discrepancy in our predictions and the observed attenuation through smaller targets is shown, and it is resolved with a new measurement of low energy spectrum, using a specially designed enclosure to make a series of measurements underwater. This provides a better basis for understanding the images of small amounts of materials, such as for thin cover materials.Item Mortuary Chocolate among the Ancient Maya: An Iconographic Analysis of the Exemplar from the Spouted Vessels of Colha(2019) Davenport Clark, Morgan; Valdez, Fred Jr.In this thesis, I investigate the iconography on a Preclassic spouted vessel (“chocolate pot”) from the Maya site of Colha, Belize. I begin by historically contextualizing the vessel’s form, which is generally believed to have been used to froth nonalcoholic chocolate drinks, and culturally contextualizing the ritual use of cacao, which appears in mortuary contexts because of its association with rebirth. I then discuss the association between chocolate drinks and gourd containers—an association that is mythologically based in early and contemporary Maya creation myths—which continues to bear out with the use of ceramic vessels that imitate gourds. Finally, I move on to the case study vessel, the iconography of which I break into three parts: the punctated band on the vessel’s shoulder, the quatrefoil extending from the punctated band, and the volutes extending from the lobes of the quatrefoil. I argue that the punctated band is an index of gourd skeumorphy, as the incising visually corresponds to a recent decipherment for gourd in the Classic Mayan hieroglyphs. The quatrefoil and volutes together represent an animated flower or cave mouth, or perhaps both, given that one represents life, and the other, supernatural communication with ancestors and deities. After discussing these parts discretely, I discuss how they function as a single unit. The punctated band opens toward the spout, highlighting the rituality of the act of blowing into the vessel to produce froth. By doing so, the preparer breathed life into the drink so the drink might give new life to the partaking deceased. At the same time, the preparer’s breath animated the vessel’s iconography, activating its invocation to link the realms of the living and the supernatural and allowing the deceased to be born again into the world of the ancestors.Item A Petrographic Analysis of Ceramics from the Prehistoric Maya Site of Hun Tun in Northwestern Belize(2020) DeMario, Jeffrey Daniel; Valdez, Fred Jr.A petrographic analysis was conducted on sherd samples from the small prehistoric Maya site of Hun Tun, located in the hinterlands of the larger elite polity, La Milpa, in Northwestern Belize. Hun Tun contains a chultun, an archaeological feature in the ground which was filled with a clay which was lacking in inclusions. Dr. Robyn Dodge, the archaeologist who first investigated Hun Tun, interpreted the chultun as being used for ritual storage. Twenty-three sherds, as well as four clay samples were made into thin sections, before being viewed under a Zeiss Axioskop 40 polarizing microscope in the Graduate Microscopy Lab in the Jackson School of Geosciences at the University of Texas at Austin. Quantitative and qualitative analysis has shown two distinct petrofabrics at Hun Tun, which I have called the Sand-Carbonate Fabric, and the Carbonate Fabric. These two distinct groups are both dominated by calcite or dolomite inclusions, with grog (crushed pottery), hematite, and quartz in much lower percentages. Clay samples taken from the chultun, as well as sherds from Hun Tun excavations, are compared to show if the clay which was ritually stored at Hun Tun was also used in ceramic production.Item Research report on archaeological investigations at Hun Tun(2010-05) Dodge, Robyn Leigh; Valdez, Fred, Jr., 1953-; Wilson, SamuelThis paper examines the archaeological data collected during the 2008 and 2009 seasons at the Maya settlement, Hun Tun, in northwestern Belize. Hun Tun was initially identified in 2008 where preliminary investigations have focused on survey, mapping and testing courtyard spaces. Architectural evidence and material culture will be discussed generally in terms of chronology and possible function. Ceramic analysis suggests a single occupation with a Late Classic hiatus. Analysis of field research will be limited to studies of settlement patterns, chronological sequencing of courtyard spaces and proposed function of limestone features. These initial field seasons have yielded information pertaining to socioeconomic status, sociopolitical interaction and potential hypotheses related to these topics. Future research at Hun Tun is presented with an emphasis on household archaeology.