During April and May 2013, a total of 1057 km² of LiDAR was flown by NCALM for a consortium of archaeologists working in West-central Belize, making this the largest surveyed area within the Mayan lowlands. Encompassing the Belize Valley and the Vaca Plateau, West-central Belize is one of the most actively researched parts of the Maya lowlands; however, until this effort, no comprehensive survey connecting all settlement had been conducted. Archaeological projects have investigated at least 18 different sites within this region. Thus, a large body of archaeological research provides both the temporal and spatial parameters for the varied ancient Maya centers that once occupied this area; importantly, these data can be used to help interpret the collected LiDAR data. The goal of the 2013 LiDAR campaign was to gain information on the distribution of ancient Maya settlement and sites on the landscape and, particularly, to determine how the landscape was used between known centers. The data that were acquired through the 2013 LiDAR campaign have significance for interpreting both the composition and limits of ancient Maya political units. This paper presents the initial results of these new data and suggests a developmental model for ancient Maya polities.

The examination of the internal frontiers between ancient Maya polities is a topic that has received little focused attention. This article explores various topics associated with frontiers and frontier communities, including: (1) how they might be located archaeologically; (2) what their material correlates might be; and, (3) what we might expect in terms of their sociopolitical characteristics. Special attention is paid to the role that collective memory plays in both the definition and reaffirmation of territorial limits and in the production and reproduction of frontier identities. The ancient Maya center of Minanha is used as a case study.

Little is known about the lifeways of the commoner populations that supported the expansive pre-industrial cities of Southeast Asia. Archaeologically driven understandings are constrained by the fact that the architecture and much of the material culture utilized by ordinary citizens were made from perishable materials, and many living floors were also raised above the actual ground surface on piles. The challenges associated with searching for and interpreting these quotidian remains, once they are found, can be mitigated to some degree through the integration of ethnoarchaeological insights. This study outlines the results of detailed ethnoarchaeological investigations within ten traditional Myanmar villages located in proximity to the remains of ‘classical’ Bagan’s walled and moated royal city. We then explore how these findings have helped our excavation team recognize and interpret a range of residential remains associated with the ancient city’s peri-urban support population.

The IRAW@Bagan project is aimed at developing an integrated socio-ecological history for residential patterning, agricultural practices, and water management at the classical Burmese (Bama) capital of Bagan, Myanmar (11th to 14th centuries CE). As part of this long-term research program investigations have been initiated in the Tuyin-Thetso uplands, located 11 km southeast of Bagan’s walled and moated epicenter. This mountainous area figures prominently in the chronicles of early Bagan, given that it was one of five places around the city that a royal white elephant carrying a Buddhist tooth-relic kneeled down, prompting King Anawrahta (1044-1077 CE) to build a pagoda (i.e., temple) there. Numerous 13th century religious monuments were subsequently built on the Tuyin Range. Recent explorations in these uplands have drawn attention to an additional feature of historical significance, a rock-cut tank located along the eastern edge of the Thetso-Taung ridge. Referred to by local villagers as Nat Yekan (Spirit Lake), this reservoir appears to have been integral not only to the initial collection and subsequent redistribution of water across the Bagan plain via a series of interconnected canals and reservoirs, but also, through its associated iconographic imagery, it may have been intended to symbolically purify this water, enhancing its fertility prior to its flowing into the city’s peri-urban zone. Hydrological modelling, excavations, and both iconographic and epigraphic analysis are used to build a multilayered understanding of Nat Yekan’s economic, political, religious, and ideological significance during Bagan’s classical era.IRAW Bagan စီမံကိန္◌းသည္ ၁၁ရာစ0မွ ၁၄ရာစ0အ4တင္◌း စ789ငန: ္◌းကားခ့ေဲ ◌သာ◌ျမ@Aာတိ0႔၏ ပ0ဂံႏ◌ိ◌0ငGံေ◌တာ◌္4တင္ ဘက္ေ◌ပါင္◌းစံ◌0ေ◌ပါင္◌းစည္◌းထားေ◌သာ လLမႈေ◌ဂဟ သမင0ိ ္◌းေ◌ၾကာင္◌း◌ျဖစ္ေ◌သာ လLေ◌နထ0ိငႈA ပံ◌စ0 ံ၊ စ0ိကး8် ေိ ◌ဳ ရး ေဓလစ့ ႐0ိကA်ား◌ႏ◌ွင္◌ ့ ေ◌ရအရင◌္ းအျမစသV ံ◌0◌းခ်မႈမ်ားအား ◌ျပ@Wည္ေ◌ဖာ◌္ထ0တXန ္အဓိကရY7Xယ8ါသည္။ အဆိ0ပါ ေ◌ရရွည္ သ0ေ◌တသန စီမံကိန္◌း ေ◌လ့လာေ◌ရးအားဗဟ0ိအခ်ကV ခ်ာ◌ျဖစ္ေ◌သာ ပ0ဂံၿမိေဳ႕ဟာင္◌း၏ ေအရွေ႕တာငက` ္ ၁၁ကီလ0ိမီတာေ◌ဝး4ကာေ◌သာ တ0ရင္ ◌ႏ◌ွင◌္ ့ သကbိcးေ◌တာင္ ဧရိယာမွ စတငWcပ္ေ◌ဆာငပeဲ ့ ါသည္။ေ၎တာငgန္◌းဧရိယာသည္ ပ0ဂံရာဇဝ9ငgင္ ေအနာ◌္ရထာမင္◌းႀကီး (၁၀၄၄-၁၀၇၇ AD)အဓိဠာန္◌ျပဳ၍ လႊတW ိcက္ေ◌သာ ဗ0ဒၶျမYတbယ္ေ◌တာ◌ ္ တင္ေ◌ဆာငqည္◌ ့ဆင္◌ျဖဴေ◌တာ◌္ကိန္◌းဝပXာ ငါးေ◌နရာ4တင္ တစecအပါအဝင္◌ျဖစqည္◌ ့ထငာX းs ေအရးပါသည◌္ ့ ေ◌နရာလဲ ◌ျဖစ8ါသည္။ မ်ားြစာေ◌သာ ၁၃ရာစ0...

Maya kings who failed to ensure the prosperity of their kingdoms were subject to various forms of termination, including the ritual defacing and destruction of ...