Craft Production by Classic Maya Elites in Domestic Settings: data from Rapidly Abandoned Structures at Aguateca, Guatemala (original) (raw)
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Bone, shell, and lithic evidence for crafting in elite Maya households at Aguateca, Guatemala
Ancient Mesoamerica, 2007
The site of Aguateca, Guatemala, was rapidly abandoned at the beginning of the ninth century A.D. (approximately A.D. 830), leaving a Pompeii-style assemblage scattered on the floors of elite residences. Horizontal excavation of these residences has revealed ancient elite activity and household-level craft-production areas, including in situ evidence for the manufacture of bone and shell artifacts using stone tools. Here, bone/shell-production sequences that identify artifact-crafting stages are combined with lithic microwear analyses using highpower microscopy that identifies lithic manufacturing tools. A combined distributional analysis of lithic manufacturing tools, bone and shell debitage, and finished products reveals the location and nature of bone/shell-artifact manufacture in the households of the Classic Maya elite. The evidence indicates that Aguateca nobility carried out part-time animal-product crafting, the specific nature of which varied among households. Household room-use distributions also hint that both women and men were involved in crafting most animal products.
Latin American Antiquity, 2002
The Aguateca Archaeological Project conducted extensive excavations of elite residences at the Maya center of Aguateca, which was attacked by enemies and abandoned rapidly at the end of the Classic period. Burned buildings contained rich floor assemblages, providing extraordinary information on the domestic and political lives of Classic Maya elites. Each elite residence served for a wide range of domestic work, including the storage, preparation, and consumption of food, with a relatively clear division of male and female spaces. These patterns suggest that each of the excavated elite residences was occupied by a relatively small group, which constituted an important economic and social unit. In addition, elite residences were arenas where crucial processes of the operation of the polity and court unfolded through political gatherings, artistic production, and displays of power.
Ancient Mesoamerica, 2022
This study examines artifact production using lithic, animal bone, and shell materials at the lowland Maya site of Ceibal, Guatemala, to explore the emergence and societal role of early crafting specialists. During the Middle Preclassic period (1000-350 b.c.), ancient Maya society went through a critical transition to sedentary settlements, including the development of large-scale monumental construction endeavors for ceremonial activities, increasingly nucleated settlement patterns, and the differential control of prestigious objects. Excavations across Ceibal recovered one of the largest Middle Preclassic assemblages of lithic and faunal material to date. We examine these materials in order to understand the nature of their manufacturing processes, the association between lithic production and bone/shell processing for meat and artifact production, and compare these activities with evidence from other Middle Preclassic sites and from the later Classic period. We find that Middle Preclassic middens are often disturbed or incorporated into later construction episodes over many generations, making the identification of such activities difficult, although not impossible, to identify archaeologically. Evidence for crafting is often found near ceremonial structures where Ceibal's early elite would have been present, suggesting that they were closely involved in the production process.
Journal of Anthropological Archaeology, 2009
This paper explores the nature of utilitarian bone-artifact crafting from the perspective of an unusual assemblage of manufacturing debitage dated to the Terminal Classic. This large assemblage contains unprecedented quantities of debris from the production of utilitarian artifacts, primarily bone perforators (needles, pins, awls). The collection was recovered from Group L4-3, a small, non-elite, Late and Terminal Classic residential complex located adjacent to the central palaces and residences of the ruling nobility of the ancient Maya site of Dos Pilas, Petexbatún, Guatemala. This study evaluates the standardization of raw materials, methods, and finished artifacts of the assemblage based on criteria used in discussions of scale of production and craft specialization. These evaluations are used to explore whether the L4-3 bone crafters were part-or full-time specialists, whether they produced their products on a large or a small scale and for domestic or external consumption, and for whom they crafted these products. The continuous occupation of the L4-3 complex through the transition from Late to Terminal Classic, a time of social change, offers a rich background for this evaluation of Maya utilitarian bone-artifact crafting.
Journal of Field Archaeology, 2017
This article examines Preclassic Maya ritual practices and craft production by means of a study of ritual deposits containing obsidian artifacts dated mostly to the late Middle Preclassic period (700-350 B.C.) at Ceibal, Guatemala. New ritual practices developed at Ceibal during this period, possibly through political interactions and negotiation involving emerging elites and other diverse community members. Common objects in ritual deposits in the public plaza shifted from greenstone celt caches to other artifacts, including those made of obsidian. The inhabitants of Ceibal engaged in various kinds of craft production, including the manufacture of obsidian prismatic blades. They also conducted public rituals in the Central Plaza, depositing exhausted polyhedral obsidian cores and other artifacts with symbolic significance in caches and as offerings in incipient elite burials and interments of sacrificed individuals. These cores clearly demonstrate the use of a sophisticated blade technology. Like greenstone objects, exhausted polyhedral obsidian cores deposited in cruciform arrangements along the east-west axis of the central E-Group plaza were used as symbols and markers of the center and four cardinal directions within the Maya cosmos. Public rituals were important for creating collective identities and for processes of political negotiation within the community. Emerging elites likely came to play an increasingly important role in public rituals as principal performers and organizers, setting the stage for later public events centered on rulers.
Latin American Antiquity, 2024
The archaeological study of craft production investigates the role of household activities in broader social and political networks. In the Maya area, the production and distribution of ceramics, especially prestige ceramics including polychrome and fine ware pottery, relate to broader transformations in Maya society from the Classic to Terminal Classic periods. However, direct evidence for ceramic production in the form of kilns, workshops, or associated detritus can be elusive. We report the identification, excavation, and preliminary analysis of a large deposit of fine paste ceramics, including sherds representative of the Fine Orange and Fine Gray wares in the type-variety system of Maya ceramics, from a household group at the archaeological site of Benemérito de las Américas Primera Sección, located near the confluence of the Lacantún and Usumacinta Rivers. Discarded ceramics from this context exhibit several signs of overfiring consistent with pottery production. This deposit challenges notions of functional versus symbolic activity, as the members of this household used this deposit to dedicate a group of three burials accompanied by offerings including a figurine ensemble. We discuss the implications for this deposit in the context of economic shifts taking place across the Maya Lowlands during this period.
Elite Maya Pottery and Artisans as Social Indicators
Archeological Papers of the American Anthropological Association, 2008
Pre-Columbian Maya Classic period (A.D. 250-850) polychrome pottery underwent a metamorphosis during the sixth century A.D. to become a polyvalent pictorial and hieroglyphic narrative phenomenon whose transformation is tied directly to the period's sociopolitical developments. These specialized ceramics, created for and sometimes by members of the ruling stratum, are important indicators of the social and political dynamics of the Late Classic period (A.D. 550-850). This pictorial pottery informs on the heightened sociopolitical role of specialized crafting and also on that of the artists during this dynamic period. The elevated social identities of some of these artisans, in part created by a perceived connection between them and the gods of Creation, lent prestige to their crafted items. This constructed identity increased the social value of these crafted objects in their role as important accouterments of the sociopolitical power structures of the Late Classic period.
Journal of Field Archaeology
This article examines Preclassic Maya ritual practices and craft production by means of a study of ritual deposits containing obsidian artifacts dated mostly to the late Middle Preclassic period (700-350 B.C.) at Ceibal, Guatemala. New ritual practices developed at Ceibal during this period, possibly through political interactions and negotiation involving emerging elites and other diverse community members. Common objects in ritual deposits in the public plaza shifted from greenstone celt caches to other artifacts, including those made of obsidian. The inhabitants of Ceibal engaged in various kinds of craft production, including the manufacture of obsidian prismatic blades. They also conducted public rituals in the Central Plaza, depositing exhausted polyhedral obsidian cores and other artifacts with symbolic significance in caches and as offerings in incipient elite burials and interments of sacrificed individuals. These cores clearly demonstrate the use of a sophisticated blade technology. Like greenstone objects, exhausted polyhedral obsidian cores deposited in cruciform arrangements along the east-west axis of the central E-Group plaza were used as symbols and markers of the center and four cardinal directions within the Maya cosmos. Public rituals were important for creating collective identities and for processes of political negotiation within the community. Emerging elites likely came to play an increasingly important role in public rituals as principal performers and organizers, setting the stage for later public events centered on rulers.
The discovery of mural paintings at the Classic Maya site of Xultun, Guatemala, provides an important context for the study of ancient literacy and writing in practice. The mural chamber was a place of writing where the hands of multiple scribes recorded events and astronomical tabulations on walls that were also painted with portraits of ritual specialists and the reigning king. We present evidence suggesting that creation and inscription of indigenous Maya books, called codices, also took place onsite by a specific cohort of ritual specialists called taaj. In this article, we seek to archaeologically “situate” these codex-like inscriptions in the mural room—revealing a crucial and distinctly Precolumbian window (as opposed to colonial Spanish view) into Maya bookmaking, its practitioners, and the physical contexts in which it was carried out. Together, the images, texts, and archaeological materials found in and around the chamber enable us to contextualize acts of writing and their authorship as well as engage larger questions regarding the social and political structures shaping literacy in Maya society during the eighth century.
ABSTRACT Research at Wits Cah Ak’al (WCA), a heretofore unexcavated site near Belize City, Belize, has produced evidence of a salt extraction and pottery production industry in a non-residential setting. The artifact assemblage of the salt-production component bears strong resemblance to other salt production sites found along the Caribbean coast of Belize during the past two decades. Solid clay cylinders and other briquetage signify the use of a method of salt extraction commonly called sal cocida. Despite site utiliza- tion extending back conservatively to the Late Preclassic period (400 BC – AD 250), salt production is confined to Late/Terminal Classic periods (AD 600 – 950), a finding that concurs with production at other known salterns in Belize. Results of excavation and recording of briquetage reveal at least one in situ salt-boiling pit furnace that likely involved an array of seven pottery vessels. During the Late Preclassic, pottery production took place at Wits Cah Ak’al. Excavation and artifact analyses satisfy multiple criteria for the identification of a pottery production locale; thus, WCA is one of the most firmly identified––and the first specialized––pottery production locales documented for the Maya lowlands. Currently WCA is located in a mangrove landscape; pollen evidence presented here indicates that this landscape has considerable antiquity. This finding may explain why the site lacks evidence for residential occupation. On the other hand, the area is rich in organic and inorganic resources—such as clay, brine, chert, limestone, sand, and fuel wood—which may have attracted ancient Maya potters and salters to this distinctive landscape. This research integrates multiple lines of evidence from archaeological survey, magnetometry, excavation, palynology, geomorphology, artifact analysis, replicative experiments, AMS dating, INAA, ICP-MS, thin section petrography, micromorphology, SEM, FTIR, and GIS. Furthermore, this study answers recent calls by archaeologists to consider the importance of all types of production (not just specialized production), to focus on producers and contexts in which production occurred, to explore the interaction of multiple crafting practices, and to generate much needed empirical data upon which better constructed theories of craft production may stand.