{"id":190,"date":"2009-08-06T16:30:54","date_gmt":"2009-08-06T20:30:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/motul-archaeology.stage.williams.edu\/?page_id=190"},"modified":"2022-09-07T08:47:35","modified_gmt":"2022-09-07T12:47:35","slug":"archaeological-investigations-at-motul-de-san-jose","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/motul-archaeology\/overview\/publications\/motul-reports\/archaeological-investigations-at-motul-de-san-jose","title":{"rendered":"Archaeological Investigations at Motul de San Jose"},"content":{"rendered":"

PART II: ARCHAEOLOGICAL INVESTIGATIONS AT MOTUL DE SAN JOSE<\/span><\/strong><\/h3>\n

Chapter 2:<\/span>
\nHistory and Politics: The Polychrome Pottery of Yajaw Te\u2019 K\u2019inich, Divine Lord of the Ik\u2019 Polity
\nBy Dorie Reents-Budet and Ronald L. Bishop
\nAbstract:\u00a0 The 8th-century A.D. ruler Yajaw Te\u2019 K\u2019inich employed a number of mechanisms to augment his social, political and economic power as part of his efforts to expand the boundaries and influence of the Ik\u2019 polity, centered at Motul de San Jose.\u00a0 One of these may have been the sponsorship of elaborate feasting events held in honor of his accession, war victories and other ritual affairs.\u00a0 Feasting events are implied by the contents of middens surrounding the elite residential compounds in the city\u2019s central precinct and by a large corpus of special drinking vessels painted with representations of Yajaw Te\u2019 K\u2019inich.\u00a0 Yet the dramatic difference in quality of the painted images indicates that many different painters created these wares, although the number of workshops and their locations remain unknown.\u00a0 However, these can be inferred by combining the data sets from paste chemical compositional analysis, art historical research and hieroglyphic decipherment.\u00a0 This paper presents the results of our multi-disciplinary analysis of the specialized 8th-century Ik\u2019 ceramics that includes pottery excavated at the site and unprovenienced whole vessels. When combined with archaeological field data, we can achieve a better understanding of the sociopolitical history of the Ik\u2019 polity during the reign of Yajaw Te\u2019 K\u2019inich.<\/p>\n

Chapter 3:<\/span>
\nExcavations in the Epicenter of Motul de San Jose: Architecture, Volumetrics and Social Stratification
\nBy Antonia E. Foias, Christina T. Halperin, Elly Spensley
\nAbstract: This chapter explores the stratification in the epicenter of Motul de San Jose from social, economic, and political perspectives from the excavations undertaken as part of the test pitting program and more extensive horizontal excavations. The involvement in different economic activities by the inhabitants of plaza groups that varied in architectural volumetrics and elaboration are modeled to reconstruct the levels of elite control over the infrastructure.<\/p>\n

Chapter 4: <\/span>
\nFigurine Economies at Motul de San Jose: Multiple and Shifting Modes of Valuation
\nBy Christina T. Halperin
\nAbstract: Recent archaeological research on economic systems have moved from static models of goods manufacture and exchange to those that emphasize the social practices and symbolic meanings that shape (and are, in turn, shaped by) the value, production, and circulation of goods.\u00a0 This chapter examines 2,767 ceramic figurines from the Motul de San Jos\u00e9 region in relation to such shifting modes of valuation and meaning.\u00a0 It assesses figurine manufacturing techniques, the context of production, and figurine density distributions across the social landscape in relation to their imagery and performative use.\u00a0 The combination of these data indicate that while some figurines may have served as prestige goods or indicators of hierarchical social difference, most figurines were widely circulated and easily accessible to elite and common peoples.\u00a0 These groups, and especially women and children, incorporated them into their domestic and public performances, rituals, and entertainment.\u00a0 Furthermore, variability in their distribution between the Motul de San Jos\u00e9 region and other Maya sites reveal that the social meanings and roles of figurines were not uniform across the Maya area, and point to the value of examining artifacts from multiple scales and types of analyses.<\/p>\n

Chapter 5:<\/span>
\nMotul de San Jos\u00e9 Palace Pottery Production: Reconstructions from Wasters and Debris.
\nBy Christina T. Halperin and Antonia E. Foias
\nAbstract: An understanding of the social contexts of Maya pottery production has been relatively elusive due to the dearth of archaeologically detected pottery workshops, areas, or centers.\u00a0 Midden prospecting and test excavations at Motul de San Jos\u00e9 provide rare evidence of pottery production from large middens located at the edge of the site\u2019s royal and elite residential and administrative structures.\u00a0 While ceramic kilns and in situ production materials were not located, the pottery production debris from the midden contexts point to the crafting of fine polychrome pottery and ceramic figurines by palace artisans.\u00a0 These data provide archaeological contexts for the epigraphic, iconographic, and chemical research on Ik style polychrome vessel production by Reents-Budet and Bishop and broaden our understandings of the social and technical nature of pottery production during the Late Classic period.<\/p>\n

Chapter 6:<\/span>
\nThe Lithic Industry of Motul de San Jose
\nBy Scott Brian
\nAbstract: This chapter presents the methods and results of the lithic analysis of the chert tools and artifacts excavated at Motul de San Jose. The functional typology used in this analysis will be critically discussed with the aim to better apprehend the uses or functions of these chert artifacts, and their methods of production.\u00a0 I then follow the distribution of the stone tools across the landscape to examine the activities that were carried out in the different residential groups at Motul.<\/p>\n

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PART II: ARCHAEOLOGICAL INVESTIGATIONS AT MOTUL DE SAN JOSE Chapter 2: History and Politics: The Polychrome Pottery of Yajaw Te\u2019 K\u2019inich, Divine Lord of the Ik\u2019 Polity By Dorie Reents-Budet and Ronald L. Bishop Abstract:\u00a0 The 8th-century A.D. ruler Yajaw Te\u2019 K\u2019inich employed a number of mechanisms to augment his social, political and economic power … Continue reading “Archaeological Investigations at Motul de San Jose”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":8364,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-190","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/motul-archaeology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/190","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/motul-archaeology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/motul-archaeology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/motul-archaeology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/motul-archaeology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=190"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/motul-archaeology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/190\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":555,"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/motul-archaeology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/190\/revisions\/555"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/motul-archaeology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/8364"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/motul-archaeology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=190"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}