Abstract:
This study incorporated a landscape-scale geophysical approach to locate and excavate buried households in the commoner settlement area at the Maya site of Actuncan, Belize. The goal of this study is to provide a better understanding of the organization and spatial patterning of commoner Maya housing groups in the northern settlement area at Actuncan, Belize. To accomplish this, I have sought to use anomaly signatures from a magnetometry survey of this area to locate buried patio-focused groups and other structures not visible from the surface. The excavations targeted anomalies in areas that most resembled the areas of enhanced magnetism corresponding to patio-focused groups visible on the ground surface. Interpretations of the excavated remains was then made by considering the nature of architectural features, analysis of the artifact assemblages, and previously discovered remains in the vicinity of the excavations.
