Presented online only, Zoom details below.

During the Late Classic period, the city of Coba was one of the largest and most powerful cities in the Maya lowlands. While previous research at the site did not uncover much evidence of settlement prior to the sixth century CE, recent data suggest that there was a sizable Terminal Preclassic town around the Coba Lake system prior to Late Classic urbanization processes starting. This paper will discuss these recent lidar data and how they fit into the broader settlement dynamics across the region. Data suggest that foundational events in the Nohoch Mul group, called Deer Mountain on a recently found monument, were integrally tied into how the sixth-century changing political landscape in northern Quintana Roo impacted the three-century dominance of Coba as an urban center.

Speaker bio:
Professor Travis Stanton’s primary research interests are in Mesoamerican archaeology (with a focus in the Maya area), state formation and collapse, ceramic technology, landscape archaeology, memory, violence and warfare, settlement patterns, remote sensing, ethnoarchaeology, and experimental archaeology. 

He currently co-directs the Proyecto de Interacción Política del Centro de Yucatán with Dr. Traci Ardren and the Proyecto Sacbé Yaxuná-Cobá, with Dr. Aline Magnoni and Dr. Traci Ardren, and has worked recently on the Island of Cozumel (Mexico). These projects aimed at understanding how the Maya employed different strategies of social, political, and economic integration throughout the Prehispanic and early Colonial periods in the northern Maya lowlands. 

Professor Stanton also works with indigenous Maya potters in the town of Muna in a collaborative project designed to understand ancient Maya pottery technology.

Zoom:https://anu.zoom.us/j/81582699284?pwd=anaQzQAm43VTJ9DdSCu3BBxBDv3a4u.1

Meeting ID: 815 8269 9284
Password: 932745