Abstract
Archaeological comparisons of Classic and Postclassic contexts from the Central Precinct at Lamanai, northern Belize, reveal that the community managed to maintain economic and social stability at the same time that the material culture underwent significant change. A key element during this transition was economic reorganization, which benefited from access to trade facilitated by a riverine location and a cosmopolitan culture established in the Classic period. The aim of this paper is to use dental morphology to test whether the Early Postclassic cultural changes reflected in the appearance of Zakpah ceramics and distinctive mortuary treatments among elites signal an influx of nonlocal people.
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Acknowledgments
We would like to extend our thanks and appreciation to David Pendergast for his help with organizing his Lamanai excavation data. The Chau Hiix data would not have been available without Anne Pyburn, Robert Fry, Della Cook, Christopher Andres, Patti Cook, Thomas Cuddy, Sarah Wille, and all of the other staff, students, and workman who contributed to that project. We also thank the villages of Crooked Tree, Indian Church, and San Pedro. Thanks too to Andrea Cucina for his editorial work.
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Wrobel, G., Graham, E. (2015). The Buk Phase Burials of Belize: Testing Genetic Relatedness Among Early Postclassic Groups in Northern Belize Using Dental Morphology. In: Cucina, A. (eds) Archaeology and Bioarchaeology of Population Movement among the Prehispanic Maya. SpringerBriefs in Archaeology. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-10858-2_8
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