Digital Companion to 'Late Nineteenth and Early Twentieth-Century Animal Use by San Pedro Maya and British Populations at Holotunich, Belize'

Project Note

This content pertains to the chapter 'Late Nineteenth and Early Twentieth-Century Animal Use by San Pedro Maya and British Populations at Holotunich, Belize' in The Archaeology of Mesoamerican Animals (Christopher Götz and Kitty F. Emery, eds.), published by Lockwood Press. The Archaeology of Mesoamerican Animals is an edited volume that links many of its chapters to rich digital content published open access with Open Context. The authors have chosen to link their chapters to related online content (including primary data, maps, and additional images) in order to provide additional research resources in their subject area. The Archaeology of Mesoamerican Animals is available for purchase from ISD.

Overview

In comparison to Prehispanic sites, relatively few zooarchaeological assemblages from Colonial and Historic-period Mesoamerica have been reported. Although a few faunal studies have focused on subsistence and economic changes associated with the Spanish Colonial period during the sixteenth and early-seventeenth centuries, there are hardly any assemblages from lowland Maya and non-Maya settlements dating to the eighteenth–twentieth centuries. The dataset presented here reports the archaeological animal remains recovered from the site of Holotunich in northern Belize, which was occupied as a San Pedro Maya settlement in the late-nineteenth century and as a seasonal British logging camp in the early-twentieth century. The dataset only includes non-artifactually modified faunal remains, but photos are provided of select number bone artifacts, which were analyzed in a separate study. The site map shows the small spatial extent of the site, where there is extensive overlap in San Pedro Maya and later British logging camp habitation areas. Although the Holotunich faunal assemblage is relatively small, it provides preliminary information about animal-use patterns for this understudied period within the Maya cultural region.

Site Name

Holotunich

Period

1865 to 1930 CE

Creators

Thornton, Erin Kennedy, Dept. of Anthropology, Washington State University, Pullman, WA 99164 USA, erin.thornton@wsu.edu

Ng Cackler, Olivia, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, New York District Planning Division, 26 Federal Plaza, Room 2145, New York, NY 10278, USA, olivia.n.cackler@usace.army.mil