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Marilyn Masson (born 1958) is a Maya archaeologist whose research has focused on social transformation and political economy of ancient Mesoamerican cultures in Mexico and Belize. She is a professor of Mesoamerican archaeology at the University at Albany, SUNY. [1] She is a co-director of the PEMY (Proyecto los Fundamentos Ecónomico de Mayapán/Economic Foundations of Mayapán Project ) project at the site of Mayapan in the Northern Yucutan Peninsula of Mexico. [2]
According to her curriculum vitae Marilyn Masson earned her Bachelor of Arts in anthropology from Texas A&M University in 1982, her Master of Science in anthropology from Florida State University in 1987, and her Ph.D. in anthropology from the University of Texas at Austin in 1993. Her Ph.D dissertation is titled Changes in Maya Community Organization from the Classic to Postclassic Periods: A View from Laguna de On, Belize. Her Master's thesis focused on lithic production changes in Late Classic Maya workshops at the site of Colha in Belize. She has a wide array of archaeological interests including household archaeology, ancient urbanism, archaeological political economy, craft production, zooarchaeology, lithic and ceramic analysis, and the archaeology of religion. [3]
Most of her academic career has been spent teaching as an Assistant Professor (1996-2002), an Associate Professor (2002–2011) and as Professor (2011 to present) at the University of Albany SUNY. She has taught and teaches a variety of undergraduate and graduate level classes, including Aztec Inca Maya, Maya Art and Archaeology, Stone Tool Analysis, Zooarchaeology, Archaeological Lab Methods, The Archaeology of Urban Life, Current Theories on the Ancient Maya, and Ethnohistory and Archaeology.
Prior to earning her Ph.D., she spent time working as an archaeologist in Florida and Texas.
Masson has worked extensively throughout the southern Mexico/Maya region. She has directed the Belize Postclassic Project (1996-2002) and the Economic Foundations of Mayapan project (2001 to present). Earlier in her career, she participated in research at sites in Belize such as Colha, Kichpanha, K'axob, and also in Oaxaca.
The newest phase of her research focuses on regional and temporal variation in the northern Plains of Yucatán in the environs of the city of Mayapan. This focus examines rural-urban relationships of the Classic to Postclassic period, specifically to determine degrees of wealth, trade dependency, and occupational diversification at rural houselots and commoner dwellings at minor centers. These provide an important complement to her team's prior work within the walled urban zone of Mayapan that exhibits considerable inter-household and inter-regional dependencies on exchange, as well as pronounced commoner wealth and occupational variation. Reconstructing ancient economies must consider urban-rural dependencies and patterns for a more robust view. In 2013 she co-directed the Mayapan LiDAR project with Tim Hare (Morehead State University, Carlos Peraza (INAH Yucatán) and Brad Russell (College of St. Rose). This work identified abundant, nearly continuous (low density) distributions of houses (of multiple time periods) across a 40 km2 zone beyond the city walls. Her work in 2015 with this team excavated eight houses (four Terminal Classic, four Postclassic) in the hinterland outside of the city walls. These efforts to document and compare rural economies to urban ones, and to adopt a regional, rather than site-level approach, will continue in forthcoming years.
Current work at Mayapan is conducted within the scope of the Economic Foundations of Mayapán Project (PEMY), funded by the Foundation for the Advancement of Mesoamerican Studies, the National Science Foundation, National Geographic, the Center for Social and Demographic Analysis, and the College of Arts and Sciences (UAlbany SUNY).
Mayapan is a Pre-Columbian Maya site a couple of kilometers south of the town of Telchaquillo in Municipality of Tecoh, approximately 40 km south-east of Mérida and 100 km west of Chichen Itza; in the state of Yucatán, Mexico. Mayapan was the political and cultural capital of the Maya in the Yucatán Peninsula during the Late Post-Classic period from the 1220s until the 1440s. Estimates of the total city population are 15,000–17,000 people, and the site has more than 4,000 structures within the city walls, and additional dwellings outside.
Mesoamerican chronology divides the history of prehispanic Mesoamerica into several periods: the Paleo-Indian ; the Archaic, the Preclassic or Formative (2500 BCE – 250 CE), the Classic (250–900 CE), and the Postclassic (900–1521 CE); as well as the post European contact Colonial Period (1521–1821), and Postcolonial, or the period after independence from Spain (1821–present).
Lamanai is a Mesoamerican archaeological site, and was once a major city of the Maya civilization, located in the north of Belize, in Orange Walk District. The site's name is pre-Columbian, recorded by early Spanish missionaries, and documented over a millennium earlier in Maya inscriptions as Lam'an'ain. Lamanai is renowned for its exceptionally long occupation spanning three millennia, beginning in the Early Preclassic Maya period and continuing through the Spanish and British Colonial periods, into the 20th century. Unlike most Classic-period sites in the southern Maya lowlands, Lamanai was not abandoned at the end of the 10th century AD.
Kukulkan, also spelled K’uk’ulkan, is the name of a Mesoamerican serpent deity that was worshipped by the Yucatec Maya people of the Yucatán Peninsula before the Spanish Conquest of the Yucatán. The depiction of the Feathered Serpent is present in other cultures of Mesoamerica. Kukulkan is closely related to the deity Qʼuqʼumatz of the Kʼicheʼ people and to Quetzalcoatl of Aztec mythology. Little is known of the mythology of this Pre-Columbian era deity.
fish, squash, yams, corn, honey, beans, turkey, chocolate drinks; raw materials such as limestone, marble, jade, wood, copper, and gold; and manufactured goods such as paper, books, furniture, jewelry, clothing, carvings, toys, weapons, and luxury goods. The Maya also had an important service sector, through which mathematicians, farming consultants, artisans, architects, astronomers, scribes and artists would sell their services. Some of the richer merchants sold weapons, gold and other valuable items.
Chunchucmil was once a large, sprawling pre-Columbian Maya city located in the western part of what is now the state of Yucatán, Mexico.
The Maya civilization was a Mesoamerican civilization developed by the Maya peoples, and noted for its logosyllabic script—the most sophisticated and highly developed writing system in pre-Columbian Americas—as well as for its art, architecture, mathematics, calendar, and astronomical system. The Maya civilization developed in the area that today comprises southeastern Mexico, all of Guatemala and Belize, and the western portions of Honduras and El Salvador. It includes the northern lowlands of the Yucatán Peninsula and the highlands of the Sierra Madre, the Mexican state of Chiapas, southern Guatemala, El Salvador, and the southern lowlands of the Pacific littoral plain. "Maya" is a modern term used to refer collectively to the various peoples that inhabited this area. They did not call themselves "Maya" and did not have a sense of common identity or political unity. Today, their descendants, known collectively as the Maya, number well over 6 million individuals, speak more than twenty-eight surviving Mayan languages, and reside in nearly the same area as their ancestors.
The Pre-Columbian Belize history is the period from initial indigenous presence, across millennia, to the first contacts with Europeans - the Pre-Columbian or before Columbus period - that occurred on the region of the Yucatán Peninsula that is present day Belize.
Various sorts of dogs are known to have existed in prehispanic Mesoamerica, as shown by archaeological and iconographical sources, and the testimonies of the 16th-century Spaniards. In the Central Mexican area, there were three races: the medium-sized furred dog (itzcuintli), the medium-sized hairless dog (xoloitzcuintli), and the short-legged, (tlalchichi) based in Colima and now extinct. Apart from other, more obvious functions, dogs were also used for food and ritual sacrifice.
Although the Maya were once thought to have been peaceful, current theories emphasize the role of inter-polity warfare as a factor in the development and perpetuation of Maya society. The goals and motives of warfare in Maya culture are not thoroughly understood, but scholars have developed models for Maya warfare based on several lines of evidence, including fortified defenses around structure complexes, artistic and epigraphic depictions of war, and the presence of weapons such as obsidian blades and projectile points in the archaeological record. Warfare can also be identified from archaeological remains that suggest a rapid and drastic break in a fundamental pattern due to violence.
The San Estevan archaeological site is located in northern Belize 1 km from the modern community of San Estevan, Belize. The site is a Maya civilization site occupied during the Formative and Classic eras of Mesoamerican chronology. San Estevan is located on the New River halfway between the sites of Cerros and Lamanai. Beginning in the Late Formative period, San Estevan was a regional political center.
Colha, Belize is a Maya archaeological site located in northern portion of the country, about 52 km. north of Belize City, near the town of Orange Walk. The site is one of the earliest in the Maya region and remains important to the archaeological record of the Maya culture well into the Postclassic Period. According to Palma Buttles, “Archaeological evidence from Colha allows for the interpretation occupation from the Early Preceramic (3400-1900B.C.) to Middle Postclassic with population peaks occurring in the Late Preclassic and again in the Late Classic ”. These peaks in population are directly related to the presence of stone tool workshops at the site. Colha's proximity to an important source of high quality chert that is found in the Cenozoic limestone of the region and well traveled trade routes was utilized by the inhabitants to develop a niche in the Maya trade market that may have extended to the Greater Antilles. During the Late Preclassic and Late Classic periods, Colha served as a primary supplier of worked stone tools for the region. It has been estimated that the 36 workshops at Colha produced nearly 4 million chert and obsidian tools and eccentrics that were dispersed throughout Mesoamerica during the Maya era. This made it an important player in the trade of essential good throughout the area.
The extensive trade networks of the Ancient Maya contributed largely to the success of their civilization spanning three millennia. The Maya royals control and wide distribution of foreign and domestic commodities for both population sustenance and social affluence are hallmarks of the Maya visible throughout much of the iconography found in the archaeological record. In particular, moderately long distance trade of foreign commodities from the Caribbean and Gulf Coasts provided the larger inland Maya cities with the resources they needed to sustain settled population levels in the several thousands. Though the ruling class essentially controlled the trade economy, a middle merchant class supervised import and export from cities and trade ports. Not much is known of the Maya merchant class; however, merchants of royal lineage are sometimes represented in the iconography. Notably, a canoe paddle often accompanies the royal merchant depictions, signifying their association with marine resources.
Robert M. Rosenswig is a Mesoamerican archaeologist born Oct. 30, 1968 in Montreal, Canada. He earned a B.A at McGill University in 1994, an M.A. at the University of British Columbia in 1998 and Ph.D. in 2005 from Yale University. Rosenswig currently conducts research projects Mexico, Belize, and Costa Rica. His research explores the emergence of sociopolitical complexity and the development of agriculture.
The Archaic period, also known as the preceramic period, is a period in Mesoamerican chronology that begins around 8000 BCE and ends around 2000 BCE and is generally divided into Early, Middle, and Late Archaic periods. The period is preceded by the Paleoindian period and followed by the Preclassic period. Scholars have found it difficult to determine exactly when the Paleoindian period ends and the Archaic begins, but it is generally linked with changing climate associated with the transition from the Pleistocene to the Holocene epochs, and absence of extinct Pleistocene animals. It is also generally unclear when the Archaic period ends and the Preclassic period begins, though the appearance of pottery, large-scale agriculture, and villages signal the transition.
David Freidel is a U.S. archaeologist who studies the ancient Maya. He is known for his research at El Perú-Waka’ and his books with epigrapher Linda Schele. He is currently Professor at Washington University in Saint Louis.
Chetumal, or the Province of Chetumal was a Postclassic Mayan state in the Yucatan Peninsula.
The Preceramic Period of Belizean and Mesoamerican history began with the arrival of the first Palaeoindians during 20000 BC – 11000 BC, and ended with the Mayan development of ceramics during 2000 BC – 900 BC.
The Preclassic or Formative Period of Belizean, Mayan, and Mesoamerican history began with the Mayan development of ceramics during 2000 BC – 900 BC, and ended with the advent of Mayan monumental inscriptions in 250 AD.
The periodisation of Belizean history is the division of Belizean, Mayan, and Mesoamerican history into named blocks of time, spanning the arrival of Palaeoindians to the present time. The pre-Columbian era is most often periodised by Mayanists, who often employ four or five periods to discuss history prior to the arrival of Spaniards. The Columbian era is most often periodised by historians, and less often by Mayanists, who often employ at least four periods to discuss history up to the present time.
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