Andrew K. Scherer, Charles Golden, Ana Lucía Arroyave and Griselda Pérez Robles - Danse Macabre: Death, Community, and Kingdom at El Kinel, Guatemala (original) (raw)
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Danse Macabre: Death, Community, and Kingdom at El Kinel, Guatemala
We explore the inhumation (and occasional exhumation) of the dead within the framework of ritual practice at El Kinel, Guatemala. Over the course of this chapter, we argue that mortuary rites served to both (re)constitute society at El Kinel and reified that community’s participation within the greater Yaxchilan polity of the eighth century AD. To make our case, we reconstruct the ideology of these mortuary practices through the study of 12 burials from El Kinel. In our analysis, we draw on data from archaeology, osteology, taphonomy, iconography, ethnohistory, and ethnography. Although the veneration of ancestors and perhaps the validation of lineage are evident in our analysis, more salient in our results is a ritual tradition that reflected localized (at the level of kingdom) interpretations of pan-Maya beliefs regarding the treatment of the dead. We conclude that in the eighth century AD, funerary rites served as an integrative mechanism within the Yaxchilan kingdom, uniting king and commoner through shared ritual practice.
Journal of Anthropological Archaeology, 2020
We explore Maya social organization after the Classic-period "collapse" using mortuary and osteological patterns. Our data consist of 78 burials from the Freshwater Creek drainage of northern Belize: 24 dating to the Terminal Classic period (AD 800-1000) and 54 to the Postclassic period (AD 1000-1500). These mortuary data allow us to infer continuity in the populations occupying a single river drainage between these periods. During the Postclassic, a greater diversity of grave inclusions interred with individuals at Caye Coco are consistent with the higher status of some of its residents who had greater access to wealth items and more elaborate domestic architecture compared to inhabitants of the smaller settlement of Laguna de On island. These grave inclusion results are consistent with cross-cultural patterns defined by the Saxe/Binford hypothesis that social organization can be inferred from mortuary patterns. A new development in Postclassic burial customs in our study region was the establishment of formal cemeteries. Consistent with the Saxe/Goldstein hypothesis, we interpret this change as the increased importance of local, lineage-based authority after large, Classic-period kingdoms had dissolved. Considering mortuary and osteological patterns together allows for a fuller understanding of Postclassic Maya social organization than either type of data would alone.
The peri- and postmortem treatment of human remains speaks directly to social and political conditions as both Verdery (1999) and Weiss-Krejci (2004) have shown. Unfortunately, the ability of archaeologists and osteologists to correctly link human remains with political and social circumstances has been limited by under-developed and under-applied forensic techniques compounded by the poor preservation of skeletal remains in the humid, tropical Maya lowlands (see Tiesler in this volume, for expanded discussion). Another factor — insufficient analysis of archaeological context — often hinders a full appreciation of the political and social circumstances surrounding the treatment and deposition of human remains. Elsewhere, McAnany (1995) has drawn attention to the methodological ambiguity surrounding the distinction between the remains of human sacrifice and those of protracted, but reverential, mortuary practices. The joint biocultural approach advocated in this volume and followed in t ...
Valentino Nizzo (ed.), Archeologia e antropologia della morte: 1. La regola dell’eccezione, Atti del 3° Incontro Internazionale di Studi di Antropologia e Archeologia a confronto, 2018
In this work we wish to discuss some of the multi-layered native meanings of ritualized violence and human sacrifce among the ancient Maya and their mortuary expressions. This text surrounds a number of elements of debate that are key in detecting and understanding the transformation of the body and the individual in ritualized violence, along with their mortuary signatures. En este trabajo deseamos discutir algunos de los significados nativos de múltiples capas de la violencia ritualizada y el sacrificio humano entre los antiguos mayas y sus expresiones mortuorias. Este texto involucra una serie de elementos de debate que son claves para detectar y comprender la transformación del cuerpo y del individuo en la violencia ritualizada, junto con sus firmas mortuorias.
Latin American Antiquity, 2021
Inspired by life course and osteobiography approaches, this article explores the life and death of an individual associated with the lakam title (“banner” in Colonial Yukatek Maya; thus, a “standard-bearer”), a nonroyal elite of Late Classic period Maya society (AD 600–850). Although these elites are depicted on polychrome vessels and carved monuments, little is known about their life experiences and mortuary practices. The present analysis centers on an individual found at Structure GZ1, a temple with a hieroglyphic stairway, at the Maya archaeological site of El Palmar, Mexico. Using osteological, archaeological, and epigraphic data as different lines of evidence, we examine the relationship of the individual to his affiliated group. At the time of interment, there were a wide array of social, cultural, and political events both shaping and reshaping the body and identities of the individual during a period of political turbulence.
From the Classic period to the present, scholars have documented the widespread Maya belief in a supernatural guardian of the animals who must be appeased in hunting rituals. Despite this resilience, features and deposits entering the archaeological record as a result of hunting ceremonies remain largely unknown. I describe several contemporary and nineteenth-century shrines used for hunting rites in the Maya highlands of Guatemala. These sites contain a unique feature, a ritual fauna cache, which consists of animal remains secondarily deposited during hunting ceremonies. The formation of these caches is informed by two beliefs with historical time depth: (1) the belief in a guardian of animals and (2) the symbolic conflation of bone and regeneration. The unique life history of remains in hunting-related ritual fauna caches suggests a hypothesis for puzzling deposits of mammal remains recovered archaeologically in lowland Maya caves. These may have functioned in hunting rites designed to placate the animal guardian and ensure the regeneration of the species via ceremonies that incorporated the secondary discard of skeletal remains. A review of the ethnographic literature from the Lenca, Huichol, Nahua, Tlapanec, and Mixe areas reveals similar hunting rites indicating a broader Mesoamerican ritual practice. Desde la época prehispánica hasta el presente, los estudiosos han notado la amplia creencia Maya en un guardián supernatural de los animales que debe ser apaciguado con rituales antes y después de la cacerí. Mientras que esta documentación, los tipos de rasgos o artefactos que se han encontrado en los contextos arqueológicos durante las ceremonias siguen siendo desconocidos. Describo varios santuarios del siglo diecinueve y contemporáneos que documentan la ritual cacería Maya del altiplano de Guatemala. Ellos contienen rasgos especiales, unos de escondites de fauna ritual, los cuales indican el uso en el ceremonialismo de la cacería. La formación de estos escondites es indicada por la refundición simbólica de hueso, semilla, y regeneración. Esta creencia es evidente en los textos coloniales que sugieren una historia profunda en la zona Maya. La vida historia de los huesos en escondites rituales sugiere una hipóteis por huesos de mamíferos excavados en cuevas en las tierras bajas. Es posible que estos fueron depositados en ritos de la cacería para apaciguar al guardián de los animales y promover la regeneración de las especies. La literatura etnográfica nota patrones similares de cacería que incluyen el desecho ritual, lo cual sugiere una práctica mesoamericana más amplia.
Cambridge Archaeological Journal, 2017
Recent investigations at the Maya centre of Nakum (in Guatemala) enabled the study of the evolution of an interesting complex of buildings that started as the so-called E-Group, built during the Preclassic period (c. 600–300 BC). It was used for solar observations and rituals commemorating agricultural and calendrical cycles. During the Classic period (AD 250– 800), the major building of the complex (Structure X) was converted into a large pyramidal temple where several burials, including at least one royal tomb, were placed. We were also able to document evidence of mortuary cults conducted by the Maya in the temple building situated above the burials. The architectural conversion documented in Structure X may reflect important religious and social changes: a transformation from the place where the Sun was observed and worshipped to the place where deceased and deified kings were apotheo-sized as the Sun Deity during the Classic. Thus the Maya transformed Structure X into one of the most sacred loci at Nakum by imbuing it with a complex solar and underworld symbolism and associating it with the cult of deified ancestors.
Personhood, Agency, and Mortuary Ritual: A Case Study from the Ancient Maya_Susana Guillespie
The archaeological identification of individuals has been an important component of both processual attempts to characterize social organization by the treatment of individuals in mortuary ritual and more recent agency theory applications to studies of political economy and social change. Both approaches have been critiqued for failing to adequately define the individual, instead applying the Western concept of the individual to other societies. These shortcomings are shown to be part of a larger problem in social theory: the continuing polarization between individualism and holism. They point to the need for renewed interest in the anthropological analysis of the "person"-a socially shaped construct-in order to better understand social relationships and recognize the collective aspects of agency. A case study from the Classic Maya civilization illustrates how emphasis on the individual, as represented in mortuary events, artistic depictions, and texts, has resulted in interpretive difficulties that can be avoided by viewing these data from the perspective of the social collectivity from which personhood was derived. Maya corporate kin-based groups, known as "houses," were a major source of the social identities expressed in political action and represented in mortuary ritual and monumental imagery.