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A STORY OF AWE AND CLAY: MOLD-MADE HIEROGLYPHS FROM ALTA VERAPAZ, GUATEMALA

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 May 2021

Erin L. Sears*
Affiliation:
Smithsonian Institution National Museum of Natural History, Department of Anthropology, 10th Street and Constitution Avenue NW, Washington, DC 20560
Nikolai Grube
Affiliation:
Department for the Anthropology of the Americas (Abteilung für Altamerikanistik), Institut für Archäologie und Kulturanthropologie Universität Bonn, Oxfordstraß. 15, 53111 Bonn, Germany
Alejandro Garay
Affiliation:
Department for the Anthropology of the Americas (Abteilung für Altamerikanistik), Institut für Archäologie und Kulturanthropologie Universität Bonn, Oxfordstraß. 15, 53111 Bonn, Germany
Brent K. S. Woodfill
Affiliation:
Winthrop University, Department of Sociology and Anthropology, 336 Kinard Hall, Rock Hill, South Carolina 29733
Alexander E. Rivas
Affiliation:
Washington University, Department of Anthropology, 1 Brookings Drive, St. Louis, Missouri 63130
*
E-mail correspondence to: [email protected]

Abstract

The recent discovery of an ancient Late Classic ceramic production facility in a valley floor, east of the current capital of Cobán in Guatemala, reveals a new ceramic form and provides data concerning regional chronology. Among the remains are thin, mold-made fragments identified as ceramic plaques that have epigraphic information providing a Long Count date for the first time in the Alta Verapaz region. These data correlate with the preliminary ceramic sequences and assist with understanding political-economic interactions that occurred at a time of societal collapse within the southern lowland region.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press

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