Dwelling, Identity, and the Maya

Dwelling, Identity, and the Maya
Author: Scott Hutson
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
Total Pages: 256
Release: 2010
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780759119208

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Dwelling, Identity, and the Maya offers a new perspective on the ancient Maya that emphasizes the importance of dwelling as a social practice. Contrary to contemporary notions of the self as individual and independent, the identities of the ancient Maya grew from their everyday relations and interactions with other people, the houses and temples they built, and the objects they created, exchanged, cherished, and left behind. Using excavations of ancient Chunchucmil as a case study, it investigates how Maya personhood was structured and transformed in and beyond the domestic sphere and examines the role of the past in the production of contemporary Maya identity.

Social Identities in the Classic Maya Northern Lowlands

Social Identities in the Classic Maya Northern Lowlands
Author: Traci Ardren
Publisher: University of Texas Press
Total Pages: 223
Release: 2015-04-15
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0292768117

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Social Identities in the Classic Maya Northern Lowlands plumbs the archaeological record for what it can reveal about the creation of personal and communal identities in the Maya world. Using new primary data from her excavations at the sites of Yaxuna, Chunchucmil, and Xuenkal, and new analysis of data from Dzibilchaltun in Yucatan, Mexico, Traci Ardren presents a series of case studies in how social identities were created, shared, and manipulated among the lowland Maya. Ardren argues that the interacting factors of gender, age, familial and community memories, and the experience of living in an urban setting were some of the key aspects of Maya identities. She demonstrates that domestic and civic spaces were shaped by gender-specific behaviors to communicate and reinforce gendered ideals. Ardren discusses how child burials disclose a sustained pattern of reverence for the potential of childhood and the power of certain children to mediate ancestral power. She shows how small shrines built a century after Yaxuna was largely abandoned indicate that its remaining residents used memory to reenvision their city during a time of cultural reinvention. And Ardren explains how Chunchucmil's physical layout of houses, plazas, and surrounding environment denotes that its occupants shared an urban identity centered in the movement of trade goods and economic exchange. Viewing this evidence through the lens of the social imaginary and other recent social theory, Ardren demonstrates that material culture and its circulations are an integral part of the discourse about social identity and group membership.

Constructing 'commoner' Identity in an Ancient Maya Village

Constructing 'commoner' Identity in an Ancient Maya Village
Author: Chelsea Blackmore
Publisher: BAR International Series
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2014
Genre: History
ISBN: 9781407312842

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Research at the Northeast Group explores how the malleability of commoner identity is crucial to interpretations of ancient Maya society. This volume has two main aims: first to demonstrate how residents of the Northeast Group used materials and architecture to distinguish themselves from others in the neighborhood, and second to examine the implications of commoners as agents of history. Fundamental to this is the deconstruction of what archaeologists mean by commoner and the theoretical and methodological assumptions built into these definitions. Regardless of extensive research in settlement and household studies, interpretations of ancient Maya society continued to be framed with reference to elites. As elites are defined as the motor of change within civilization, commoners, in contrast, are characterized as static and passive. This books seeks to demonstrate that these models do not accurately reflect who commoners were and their impact in the construction of ancient Maya society as a whole.

Embodied Lives:

Embodied Lives:
Author: Rosemary A. Joyce
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 212
Release: 2014-02-25
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1317724542

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Examining a wide range of archaeological data, and using it to explore issues such as the sexual body, mind/body dualism, body modification, and magical practices, Lynn Meskell and Rosemary Joyce offer a new approach to the Ancient Egyptian and Mayan understanding of embodiment. Drawing on insights from feminist theory, art history, phenomenology, anthropology and psychoanalysis, the book takes bodily materiality as a crucial starting point to the understanding and formation of self in any society, and sheds new light on Ancient Egyptian and Maya cultures. The book shows how a comparative project can open up new lines of inquiry by raising questions about accepted assumptions as the authors draw attention to the long-term histories and specificities of embodiment, and make the case for the importance of ancient materials for contemporary theorization of the body. For students new to the subject, and scholars already familiar with it, this will offer fresh and exciting insights into these ancient cultures.

Ancient Maya Gender Identity and Relations

Ancient Maya Gender Identity and Relations
Author: Lowell S. Gustafson
Publisher: Praeger
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2002-07-30
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 089789877X

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The first book to examine how the ancient Maya defined gender. Contributors explain what it meant to be male and female. They show how gender was experienced and what the bases were for gender designations. They demonstrate how gender relations affected other areas of Mayan life, such as the arts, cosmology, economics, politics, religion, and social structure. And they analyze the changes in Mayan gender relations and identities that were fostered by evolving historical systems. There was no single Mayan polity nor was there a unitary cultural approach. Certain similarities in culture account for the observation of a general commonality among the ancient Maya, but there clearly were significant differences between Mayan sites, within the same site over time, and even between social sectors at the same site in any given time—this is no less true for ancient Maya gender identity and relations. Thus, the authors seek to explain why emphasis upon bilateral inheritance of power and prerogative was emphasized in artwork at some periods and some sites and not at others. Avoiding the vain attempt to provide a single explanation, they seek to offer a clearer sense of the richness of their topic.

Identity Formation Among the Ancient Maya as Reconstructed from Late Preclassic to Early Classic Domestic Contexts at the Site of Actuncan, Belize

Identity Formation Among the Ancient Maya as Reconstructed from Late Preclassic to Early Classic Domestic Contexts at the Site of Actuncan, Belize
Author: Borislava Simova Simova
Publisher:
Total Pages: 140
Release: 2013
Genre: Electronic dissertations
ISBN:

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This research examines the visual properties of household ceramics to gain an understanding of domestic ritual construction and the diacritics of kinship, socio-economic status, and polity at the site of Actuncan, Belize. Ritual deposits associated with dedications, terminations, and burials are considered to be the remains of performances in which material markers of identity may have been deployed to foreground social identities including kin, status, and polity affiliations. In the absence of clear iconological emblems, more subtle variations in the physical appearance of ceramic vessels, including vessel size, surface finish, and color, are explored as potential markers of social identity. Comparisons of these variables are made between households and across socio-economic status categories and time periods. The evidence presented here provides a better understanding of ritual and the selective use of ceramic bowls, dishes, and plates during its enactment. Two categories of domestic ritual, dedications and terminations, were found to follow distinct patterns in their display of shared cosmological constructs, particularly in the use of surface color, luster, and style (as measured by ceramic type). Additionally, these types of rituals are considerably different in their degree of malleability over time. Termination rituals, in particular, were more flexibly constructed and stood out as venues for demonstrating social differentiation among Actuncan households as the site underwent political and ideological shifts in the Early Classic period. Differences in the use of surface color and luster in open vessel forms, rather than closed forms, speak to internalized cosmological and social orders. Exploring these further will assist archaeologists in identifying emic categories of social identification.

Building Identities

Building Identities
Author: Matthew S. Mosher
Publisher: BAR International Series
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2010
Genre: City planning
ISBN: 9781407306520

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This thesis examines the evidence for ancient Maya "superstates" as gleaned from an analysis of ancient Maya city plans.

Foreigners Among Us

Foreigners Among Us
Author: CHRISTINA. HALPERIN
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2023-07-11
Genre:
ISBN: 9781032263229

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Assessing key questions such as who the foreigners and outsiders in ancient Maya societies were and how was the foreign a generative component of identity, Foreigners Among Us reassess the arrival of foreigners as part of archaeological understandings of Pre-Columbian Maya and questions not only who these foreigners might have been but who were making such designations of difference in the first place. Drawing from identity studies, standpoint theory, and ideas on alterity, Foreigners Among Us highlights the diverse ways being foreign was constituted, imitated, and marked - from quotidian practices of making corn tortillas to ceremonial acts between king and captive and their memorialization in scenes on sculpted stone monuments. Rather than treat the foreign as axiomatically determined by geographical distance or fixed at birth, the book considers the foreign as much performed as inherited. It examines practices of captivity, cuisine, body ornamentation and dress, diasporic objects, relationships with deities, migration, and pilgrimage. The book focuses, in particular, on diverse peoples in the Maya area during the Classic and Postclassic periods, but also necessarily peers into contacts, engagements and relations throughout Mesoamerica, the Americas more broadly, and with Europeans during the Colonial period - all the while insisting that outsider status must be approached as multi-scalar, relational, and intersectional rather than as neutral, intrinsic, and static. Contributing broadly to intellectual investigations on foreign identities from an anthropological perspective, this book enriches the understanding of Maya society for students and researchers of Mesoamerican archaeology and art history.

Transcendent Wisdom of the Maya

Transcendent Wisdom of the Maya
Author: Gabriela Jurosz-Landa
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Total Pages: 224
Release: 2019-03-26
Genre: Body, Mind & Spirit
ISBN: 1591433355

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An initiate’s inside account of ancient Maya spiritual practices alive today • Includes a Foreword by José Luis Tigüilá NABÉ kaxbaltzij, spokesperson of the Maya municipality • Details the initiation process the author went through to become a Maya shaman-priestess, including rituals, prayers, and ceremonies • Explains the foundational spiritual wisdom of the Maya calendar as a living entity, its cycles of time, and the significance of “the counting of the days”, which helps keep time itself alive • Examines the power of dance and Maya ceremonies, Maya future-telling, and communication with ancestors through the sacred fire Offering an insider’s experiential account of ancient Maya spiritual wisdom and practices, initiated Maya shaman-priestess Gabriela Jurosz-Landa opens up the mysterious world of the Maya, dispelling the rampant misinformation about their beliefs and traditions, sharing the transcendent beauty of their ceremonies, and explaining the Maya understanding of time, foundational to their spiritual worldview and cosmology. The author, an anthropologist, details the initiation process she went through to become a Maya shaman-priestess in Guatemala, including rituals, prayers, the presence of numinous forces, and the transmission of sacred knowledge. She explains the spiritual wisdom of the Maya calendar as a living entity, its cycles of time, and the significance of “the counting of the days,” which helps keep time itself alive. She examines Maya spiritual and cosmological concepts such as how the universe is shaped like a triangle over a square. She reveals the profound power of dance in Maya tradition, explaining how ritual dance halts the flow of time, reactivates primordial events, and captures vital energies that keep the Maya spiritual tradition vital and alive. Exploring other Maya secret knowledge, she also details Maya ritual attire, Maya future-telling with the calendar, the reading of the Tzi’te beans, and how the Maya communicate with ancestors through the sacred fire. Illustrating how contemporary Maya life is suffused with spiritual tradition and celebration, the author shares the teachings of the Maya from her initiate and anthropologist point of view in order to help us all learn from the ancient wisdom of their beliefs and worldview. Because, to truly understand the Maya, one must think like the Maya.