The great Maya center of Piedras Negras, Guatemala, is justly famous for its sweat baths, which are both numerous and monumental in scale. Eight are known from the site core, most located near palace structures, and Tatiana Proskouriakoff famously imagined how one of these was used (Fig. 1). Figure 1 Proskouriakoff's reconstruction (from Proskouriakoff 1978:29)…
Draining the swamp….
For any situation, there’s a suitable swamp for the evidence. unattributed quote from the internet From the moment that I began to study the ancient lowland Maya, I learned about the ground-breaking research conducted at Pulltrouser Swamp in northern Belize by Peter Harrison and B. L. Turner II in the 1970s and 80s (see Harrison…
Invictus: The Plight of Collecting Ground Survey Data
As Maya archaeology enters the age of lidar, it risks disregarding earlier settlement data gathering endeavors. Lest such efforts now be deemed superseded, we suggest that it remains profoundly incumbent to recognize, digitize, and analyze the ground survey efforts so doggedly and painstakingly acquired using traditional “boots on the ground” methods. These vital data can…
Ancient Maya Settlement 