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Ritual among the Masses: Deconstructing Identity and Class in an Ancient Maya Neighborhood

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 January 2017

Chelsea Blackmore
Chelsea Blackmore*
Affiliation:
Department of Anthropology, University of California, Santa Cruz, CA 95064 ([email protected])
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Abstract

Equating a single cultural group to a classificatory scheme has implications for not only how archaeologists develop the concept of cultural identity but how we investigate and theorize about internal social dynamics within that same society. For the ancient Maya, social organization remains largely understood as a two-class system—that of commoner and elite. While these categories reflect the extreme ends of known social strata, they inadequately characterize the reality of day-to-day interactions. This has led to tacit assumptions that commoners did not participate in or comprehend the political and social complexity of the world around them. This paper examines how occupants of a Late Classic Maya neighborhood employed ritual and public practices as a means of social differentiation. Excavations at the Northeast Group, part of the ancient Maya site of Chan, Belize, identified considerable diversity between households, suggesting that occupants shaped status and identity through the control and centralization of ritual. Understanding how people distinguished themselves within the context of a neighborhood provides direct evidence of class complexity, challenging traditional models of commoner behavior and more importantly the role they played in ancient Maya society as a whole.

Resumen

Resumen

Comparar una cultura con un esquema clasificatorio tiene implicaciones no sólo para la manera en que los arqueólogos desarrollan el concepto de la identidad cultural, sino para la manera en que realizamos investigaciones y desarrollamos teoría sobre las dinámicas culturales dentro de esa misma sociedad. Por ejemplo, la organización social de los antiguos maya sigue siendo entendida, en gran medida, como si fuera un sistema de dos clases: la de los pobres y la de las élites. Aunque las categorías señaladas con las palabras "pobre" y "élite" sí reflejan los lados extremos de las condiciones sociales, no describen o explican, de manera adecuada, la rutina y la realidad diaria de los seres humanos. Esta situación tiene como resultado el presumir que la gente común no llegó a participar en, ni comprender, la complejidad del mundo socio-político que le rodeaba. Este estudio tiene como propósito examinar la manera en que los habitantes de un barrio maya del Clásico Tardío utilizaron el ritual y otras prácticas públicas como un medio para enfatizar diferencias en el estatus social. Las excavaciones llevadas a cabo en el Grupo del Nordeste, en la antigua ciudad maya conocida como Chan, en Belice, tuvieron como resultado la identificación de un alto nivel de diversidad entre los hogares. Esto indica que los ocupantes formaron su identidad y estatus social a través del control y la centralización del ritual. Entender la manera en que grupos culturales se distinguen desde el contexto y perspectiva de una investigación de un barrio proporciona una evidencia directa de la complejidad de clase social, desafiando los modelos tradicionales utilizados por antropólogos y arqueólogos para explicar la vida y las prácticas de la gente común. Aún más importante es la manera en que tal estudio reconsidera el papel que desempeñaron los comuneros en la sociedad de los antiguos mayas.

Type
Articles
Information
Latin American Antiquity , Volume 22 , Issue 2 , June 2011 , pp. 159 - 177
Copyright
Copyright © 2011 by the Society for American Archaeology.

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