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Ecology and Ritual: Water Management and the Maya

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 January 2017

Vernon L. Scarborough
Vernon L. Scarborough*
Affiliation:
Department of Anthropology, University of Cincinnati, Cincinnati, OH 45221
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Abstract

How the ancient Maya of the central Yucatecan Lowlands managed their water and land resources remains poorly known, although crucial to an understanding of ancient political economy. Recent archival research and field data suggest the widespread use of artificially altered, natural depressions for the collection and containment of water, both for potable consumption and agricultural ends. During the Classic period (A. D. 250-900) several of the principal cities in the Maya area constructed their largest architecture and monuments at the summit of hills and ridges. Associated with these elevated centers—”water mountains”—were sizable, life-sustaining reservoirs quarried into their summits. The effect of this town-planning design was the centralization of a primary and fundamental resource. Although elite managers controlled the water source, other decentralizing forces prevented anything similar to Wittfogel's “total power.” However, by ritually appropriating the everyday and mundane activities associated with water by the sustaining population, elites used high-performance water ritual as manifest in the iconography to further centralize control. The significance of modifying the urban landscape in the partial image of the ordinary water hole defines the extraordinary in Maya ritual.

El tema de cómo los mayas antiguos de las tierras bajas del centro de Yucatán administraron sus recursos de agua y tierra permanece raquíticamente explicado, aunque esto se considera muy importante para llegar a entender la economía política antigua. Recientes investigaciones de los archivos e información del campo insinúan el extenso uso de las depresiones naturales modificadas artificialmente, para la recolección, y el represamiento del agua, para los consumos domésticos y agrícola. Durante el período Clásico (250-900 d. C.) varias de las ciudades principales en el área Maya construyeron la arquitectura mayor y los monumentos en la cima de los cerros y lomas. En asociación con estos centros elevados—“las montañas de agua”—había grandes depósitos de agua, las reservas de sostenimiento de vida excavados en sus cimas. El efecto de este diseño de planificación de asentamientos fue la centralización de un recurso principal y fundamental. Aunque los administradores de la élite controlaban la fuente del agua, otras fuerzas descentralizadoras prevenían cualquier cosa que fuera similar al "poder totalizador" de Wittfogel. Sin embargo, al apropiarse ritualmente de las actividades cotidianas y mundanas asociadas con el agua por parte de la populación a la que mantenían, los administradores de la élite usaron ritos acuáticos sofisticados, como se manifiesta en la iconografía para controlar centralmente más y más. El significado de la modificación del paisaje urbano a través de la imagen del pozo ordinario de agua define lo extraordinario del ritual maya.

Type
Articles
Information
Latin American Antiquity , Volume 9 , Issue 2 , June 1998 , pp. 135 - 159
Copyright
Copyright © The Society for American Archaeology 1998

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