Ongoing Lab Analyses

 During the 1997-1998 year, the focus at the ROM has been on:

- Analysis of the informal lithics from Tipu: Lisa Hilborn, Institute of Archaeology, London.

- Coordination of the architectural and contextual data from the site of Tipu: Elizabeth Graham.

- Customizing the data-base software, Superbase 8, and coordinating the artifact data bases from Lamanai, Tipu, and the sites on Ambergris Caye: Heidi Ritscher, University of Toronto.

- Identification of the faunal material from Lamanai: Norbert Stanchly, Institute of Archaeology, London.

- Coordinating the burial data bases from Belize sites, with a focus on the burials from Ambergris Caye in conjunction with skeletal analyses directed by Dr. Christine White at the University of Western Ontario.

The Royal Ontario Museum is home to over 12 000 stone artifacts from the site of Tipu in west-central Belize. Until recently, lithic (stone tool) studies by archaeologists working at sites world-wide have been dominated by aesthetically pleasing formal or standardized tools, such as "axes" or "spear points." Formal or standardized tools are generally abundant at Maya sites. I have chosen to study the relatively newly recognized informal or expedient tool technology. "Expedient" refers to the products of chert or flint knapping -- most often flakes -- that conform to no apparent standardized shape but still function as tools. They often appear to be waste flakes. An expedient tool can also be a form that was made for one particular purpose and was later adapted for another use, sometimes because the original tool broke, in the way that one might use a broken knife blade as a screwdriver.

Expedient tools were used extensively at Maya sites along with formal, standardized tools such as projectile points, adzes, stemmed macroblades and other bifacial and unifacial artifact forms that have dominated lithic studies. Debitage studies have focused on lithic reduction (knapping) techniques employed by ancient peoples during the manufacture of formal tools. The word "debitage" refers to the chipping debris that results from the production of a formal tool. Many archaeologists have categorized expedient flake tools as debitage.

Expedient flake tool.

Informal flakes can indeed be the by-product of the knapping of a formal tool, or they can be the result of the direct production of flakes of non pre-determined form from a chert or flint nodule. One problem that can result from classifying flakes as debitage, however, is that they are usually subjected to no further scrutiny for signs of use-wear. In this way, informal tools can often be overlooked.

The intensive recovery of what appeared to be largely chert "debitage" at Tipu has led to my current use-wear analysis on a grand scale. Advances in the study of wear patterns on stone tools over the past few years have aided in the isolation of specific differences between expedient tools and debitage as the true byproducts of tool manufacture.

My goal in analyzing the expedient tools from Tipu is to distinguish among the uses to which these tools were put, and thereby to establish lithic tool categories that might prove helpful in our understanding of the development and changes in lithic technology through time at other sites. To realize this goal, I am utilizing micro-wear analysis to help me determine how expedient tools were used. I am also engaged, to the extent possible, in determining the conditions for the production of expedient tools. Greater knowledge of expedient tool production and function will aid in our understanding of the range of cultural behavior and the social conditions that provide the context for the technology.

During the 1997-98 year I have been working on the final report of the excavations that took place at Negroman-Tipu in 1984, 1986, and 1987. The results of the historic-period excavations directed by Robert Kautz from 1980 to 1982 will also be included. In addition, because the Spanish colonial-period excavations at Lamanai so closely parallel the conditions at Tipu, we are working towards reporting the architectural excavations and the artifacts from Lamanai and Tipu in the same publication. This has involved re-organization of our data bases to standardize the recording and cataloguing of buildings, features, stratigraphic lots, and artifacts. Although this is turning out to require a considerable investment of time and effort, we believe it will be well worth the trouble to combine reporting of the results from the two sites.

We learned a great deal about 16th century domestic and ceremonial architecture from the work at Tipu and Lamanai; at Tipu, however, except for the 16th century church, only portions of structures were excavated. Therefore much remains to be known about how the buildings "worked" in terms of the spaces in which different activities were carried out, and how the relationships among buildings may have changed from prehispanic to colonial times. Changes in building styles as well as apparent changes in the relationship of subsidiary to main structures suggests that the Spaniards had some effect on the economics of residential households and hence on residential layout (see Hanson, Craig, Incorporating the Sixteenth Century Periphery: From tributary to Capitalist Production in the Yucatecan Cuchabal of Tiquibalon. Paper presented at the Society for Historical Archaeology, Corpus Christi, Texas, 1997).

Further information on the work at Tipu and on mission archaeology can be found in the following list of publications. (Lamanai publications are listed under the "History of the Excavations at Lamanai.") As this web site develops, we hope to be able to make architectural and artifact drawings available for the use of others working on mission sites.

Graham, Elizabeth.
In press Mission Archaeology. Annual Review of Anthropology 27.
1997 Our Images, Their Idols: The Christianization of the Ancient Maya. Que Pasa 2(4):10-12.
1995 A Spirited Debate. Rotunda, The Magazine of the Royal Ontario Museum 28(2):18-23.
1991 Archaeological Insights into Colonial Period Maya Life at Tipu, Belize. In Columbian Consequences, Volume 3: The Spanish Borderlands in Pan-American Perspective, ed. by David H. Thomas, pp. 319-335. Smithsonian Institution Press.
1987 Terminal Classic to Historic-Period Vessel Forms from Belize. In Maya Ceramics: Papers from the 1985 Maya Ceramic Conference, ed. by Prudence M. Rice and Robert J. Sharer, pp. 73-98. BAR International Series 345(i):73-98.

Graham, Elizabeth, Grant D. Jones and Robert R. Kautz.
1985 Archaeology and Ethnohistory on a Spanish Colonial Frontier: The Macal-Tipu Project in Western Belize. In The Lowland Maya Postclassic, ed. by Arlen F. Chase and Prudence M. Rice, pp. 206-214. University of Texas Press, Austin.

Graham, Elizabeth, David M. Pendergast and Grant D. Jones.
1989 On the Fringes of Conquest: Maya-Spanish Contact in Early Belize. Science 246:1254-1259, 8 December.

Lambert, Joseph B., Elizabeth Graham, Marvin T. Smith and James S. Frye.
1994 Amber and Jet from Tipu, Belize. Ancient Mesoamerica 5:55-60.

Pendergast, David M., Grant D. Jones and Elizabeth Graham.
1993 Locating Spanish Colonial Towns in the Maya Lowlands: A Case Study from Belize. Latin American Antiquity 4(1):59-73.

Smith, Marvin T., Elizabeth Graham and David M. Pendergast.
1994 European Beads from Spanish Colonial Lamanai and Tipu, Belize. Beads: Journal of the Society of Bead Researchers 6:27-49.

My involvement with the Mesoamerican collections at the Royal Ontario Museum began in September of 1996, when I was given the opportunity to streamline the "Small Finds" or "Artifacts" database from Negroman-Tipu, on the Macal River in western Belize. I have reorganized and standardized the computer records, originally entered in dbase III+ format, in order to facilitate both intra-site and inter-site comparisons and analyses.

In April of 1997 a systems upgrade took place, and SuperBase (v.8) was installed in place of dbase III+. SuperBase is a highly sophisticated software program that offers great flexibility in database design, management and implementation. SuperBase is also by far a more "user-friendly" program, operating in the Windows (as opposed to the DOS) environment. Given these advantages, the existing dbase III+ records of the Tipu "Small Finds" collection were downloaded into SuperBase and restructured for greater efficiency in terms of data inquiry (i.e., search and retrieval). We soon recognized that the application of the SuperBase program would provide significant benefits to the management of data from other Maya sites as well.

Current projects involving the use of SuperBase include: the development of a database specific to locational information from the Tipu site; the development of a database specific to burial information for the Marco Gonzalez and San Pedro sites; and entry of artifact data from Lamanai. We expect that the computerization of the data from these collections will greatly assist access and retrieval of information for the purposes of scholarly research and publication.

In addition to the above database management efforts, the application of the "Fieldworker" software program (intended for use on the Apple Newton product) significantly improved data collection in the field at Lamanai and Middle Caye, Belize, during the 1997 field season. The design elements of this program are easily interfaced with most desktop database programs (PC and Mac), and the Newton itself may be used in conjunction with a G.P.S. (Global Positioning System) for accurate recording of locational information. The advantages of "Fieldworker" and the Apple Newton relate to both efficiency and accuracy of recording data in the field, and the use of the program greatly reduces lab time spent on traditional data entry.

With an eye to the future, we are currently investigating other software programs for application on Maya site data. They include AutoCad (v.14) for the creation of 3-D reconstructions, and a G.I.S. (Geographic Information System) for mapping purposes and spatial analysis.

Excavations at Lamanai have produced a faunal assemblage that is among the larger recovered from lowland Maya sites. Well over 20,000 bone and shell remains were found in various domestic and ceremonial contexts that represent all periods of occupation. The bulk of the assemblage was retrieved from Postclassic and Colonial period contexts, which were a special focus of research at the site.

My dissertation examines Postclassic animal utilization at Lamanai. The research will include both traditional subsistence concerns related to diet and what can best be described as a social zooarchaeology. I am interested in examining not just the question of what the inhabitants of Lamanai were eating, but also who was eating what and why.

Preliminary results of the analysis reflect the importance of the site's location adjacent to New River Lagoon. A large percentage of the assemblage is represented by various species that inhabit the lagoon, including turtles, fish, crocodiles, and freshwater snails such as the apple snail and jute. As is true of many Maya faunal assemblages there is a great amount of species diversity represented within the sample. In addition to the reptiles and fishes, mammals and birds are present in large numbers. Some of the mammals identified include deer, tapir, peccary, felids, agouti, paca, and armadillo. Curassows and turkeys are among the birds identified to date.

Future analysis of the assemblage will also include an examination of the large quantity of bone and shell artifacts recovered as well as research related to issues of taphonomy in Maya zooarchaeology. Not only is this assemblage among the larger ones recovered, it is also one of the better preserved. The excellent preservation of the sample, represented by the large quantity of both complete and identifiable bones, will allow us to assemble an excellent comparative collection for future use. Our plans are to house this collection on site in Belize.

Palaeodemographic analysis has been carried out by Cathy Walper, University of Western Ontario, who presented her findings at the Canadian Association for Physical Anthropology meetings in London, 1997 in a paper entitled "A Preliminary Paleodemographic Analysis of Marco Gonzalez and San Pedro, Belize". Cathy found that San Pedro was more stressed than Marco Gonzalez, but that both groups show patterns similar to those at Libben.
Cathy is now comparing dental morphology between the two sites in order to determine the genetic relatedness of the two groups and their relationship to the previously studied sites of Tipu and Lamanai.

An analysis of dental calculus was undertaken by Angelique Mohring, University of Western Ontario, who presented the results of her work at the 1997 meeting of the Canadian Association for Physical Anthropology. Angelique found that calculus deposition was high for both sites, but greater for San Pedro.

Paul O'Neal, University of Western Ontario, has developed a method of stature estimation using metacarpals from Marco Gonzalez and San Pedro. He combined the data generated from the formula with long bone data to determine that the coastal Maya of the two communities were similar in stature to those found by Glassman and Garber at San Juan and Chac Balam at the northern tip of Ambergris Cay, but relatively tall compared with the Maya from many inland sites.