Classic Maya history was rife with shifting political coalitions and disputes with the key antagonists, Tikal and the Kaan regime, at the center. Understanding how power dynamics and political shifts were experienced among subordinate polities is best viewed from multiple perspectives. We employ elements of Graeber and Sahlins' (2017) stranger-king model, focusing on exogamous marriage practices in relation to two Snake Queens ruling at Waka’. They served as direct links between the Kaan regime and the subordinate Wak polity. We focus on the political and diplomatic nature of their roles in crafting Waka's place in the overarching narratives of alliance and conquest during the sixth through the early part of the eighth centuries. The pairing of archaeological and textual data surrounding Ix Ikoom in the sixth century and Lady K'abel during the seventh century permit interrogation of women's prominence with respect to Kaan regime-building strategies during these centuries.

Sea-level rise and settlement are investigated at Ta'ab Nuk Na, an ancient Maya salt works in Belize, by examining samples from wooden posts and marine sediment. The samples included Post 145 of Building B and the Nunavut beam, along with marine sediment columns cut from beside both wooden posts. The sediment columns were sampled at 2 cm intervals. Loss-on ignition confirmed the presence of organic material. Identifying the organic content involved removing nonorganic material from the sediment and sorting the organic material under magnification. This procedure established that most of the organic material was red mangrove (Rhizophora mangle). Red mangroves tolerate salt water, but under conditions of sea-level rise, the plants grow vertically to keep their leaves above water. Sediment, leaves, and detritus trapped in the prop roots form mangrove peat, which serves as a proxy for sea-level rise. AMS dating of fine red mangrove roots determined that the local sea levels rose at Ta'ab Nuk Na throughout the Late Classic period and continued into the Postclassic period. Radiocarbon dates obtained from the wood-post samples yielded Late Classic–period dates. Comparing the radiocarbon dates from the wooden posts and the sediment core samples determined that the site was abandoned before the rising seas flooded the area. Evidently, sea-level rise did not play a role in site abandonment.

Settlement scaling theory predicts that higher site densities lead to increased social interactions that, in turn, boost productivity. The scaling relationship between population and land area holds for several ancient societies, but as demonstrated by the sample of 48 sites in this study, it does not hold for the Northern Maya Lowlands. Removing smaller sites from the sample brings the results closer to scaling expectations. We argue that applications of scaling theory benefit by considering social interaction as a product not only of proximity but also of daily life and spatial layouts.

In embedded economies where multiple modes of production and exchange exist, artifact distributions in households alone do not reflect the strength of specific modes. We use a diachronic perspective tied to changes in political economies and artifact class densities standardized by excavation volume at the Maya site of Actuncan, Belize, to elucidate changes in the strength of individual production and exchange modes in the Preclassic and Classic periods. We focus on ground stone densities as a measure of grinding intensity across elite and common households. Data indicate that common households always ground more maize than elites, but intensity peaked in the Late Classic when tax and tribute demands and market exchanges were greatest. In the Terminal Classic, common household grinding intensity decreased by half as tribute burdens diminished, illustrating the impact of political hierarchies on household economies.

In this study, we present new data from the ancient Maya site of Yaxnohcah in southern Mexico. These data, which are drawn from lidar-based GIS analysis, field inspection, and the excavation of two small, closed depressions, suggest that many of this site's features served a dual function. Quarrying to extract construction materials left behind closed depressions that were then sealed to create household reservoirs. We classify these water-storage features as quarry-reservoirs. The ubiquity of these small quarry-reservoirs represented an important community water source outside the sphere of direct elite control.

Often understudied by archaeologists, ground stone tools (GST) were ubiquitous in the ancient Maya world. Their applications ranged from household tools to ceremonial equipment and beyond. Little attention has been focused on chemically sourcing the raw stone material used in GST production, largely because these tools were fashioned out of igneous or sedimentary rock, which can present characterization challenges. And, although portable X-ray fluorescence (pXRF) has been applied widely to source obsidian, the utility of pXRF for geochemically sourcing other kinds of stone remains underexplored. We present a small-scale application of pXRF for determining granite provenance within a section of the Middle Belize Valley in Belize, Central America. Belize is an ideal location to test chemical sourcing studies of granite because there are only three tightly restricted and chemically distinct sources of granite in the country, from which the overwhelming majority of granite for ancient tool production derived. The method described here demonstrates that successful and accurate geological characterizations can be made on granite GST. This cutting-edge sourcing technique has the potential to be more widely applied in other regions to reveal deeper connections between the sources of GST production and sites of consumption across space and through time.

Paleodemographic simulations are rare in the Maya region, because generally the skeletal collections do not represent well the ancient living population, are poorly preserved, and lead to flawed age-at-death estimations. The skeletal collection of Xcambó, however, is suitable for paleodemographic analysis and is large enough to enable comparison of paleodemographic trends between the Early (AD 250–550) and Late Classic (AD 550–750) periods. Three demographic simulations were generated; two relied on growth rates calculated from the site's previous archaeodemographic data, and a third simulation was based on a stationary scenario by applying Weiss's (1973) and Séguy and Buchet's (2013) models. All simulations indicate that Xcambó’s Late Classic population was growing faster than its Early Classic peers, with higher rates of survivorship and more severe mortality rates. We argue that the differences are more likely due to shifts in lifestyle and wealth than to environmental changes, as is confirmed by other bioarchaeological and skeletal indicators.

The cave of Kayuko Naj Tunich is believed to have been the location of the accession ceremonies for the royal dynasty of the ancient Maya Uxbenká polity in southern Belize. Little is known, however, about the structures referred to as the Kayuko Mound Group that lie close to the cave. Excavations have now provided evidence for the date of this complex, and experimental research has estimated the labour costs involved in its construction. The results suggest that while both the mound group and the cave were involved in the celebration of royal accession, the former acted as a short-lived festival site in contrast to the enduring significance of Kayuko Naj Tunich.

Archaeologists have traditionally relied upon relative ceramic chronologies to understand the occupational histories of large and socially complex polities in the Maya lowlands. High-resolution accelerator mass spectrometry (AMS) radiocarbon dating can provide independent chronological control for more discrete events that reflect cultural change through time. This article reports results of AMS 14C dating of stratified sequences at the residential group Tzutziiy K’in, associated with the major Maya polity of Cahal Pech in the Belize Valley. Cahal Pech is one of the earliest permanently settled sites in the Maya lowlands (1200 cal BC), and was continuously occupied until the Terminal Classic Maya “collapse” (~cal AD 800). We use Bayesian modeling to build a chronology for the settlement, growth, and terminal occupation of Tzutziiy K’in, and compare our results to chronological data from the monumental site core at Cahal Pech. The analyses indicate that Tzutziiy K’in was first settled by the Late Preclassic period (350–100 cal BC), concurrent with the establishment of several other large house groups and the growth of the Cahal Pech site core. Terminal occupation by high-status residents at this house group occurred between cal AD 850 and 900. This study provides a framework for interpreting patterns of spatial, demographic, and sociopolitical change between households and the Cahal Pech site core.