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Excavations in house mounds at Mayapán II
Abstract
During the 1952 season we excavated in house mounds where depressions in benches or any visible constructions below bench level, such as exposed capstones or bared vault or walls, were noted. These constructions had one, two, or three benches (Ruppert and Smith 1952). In the 1953 season our excavations were confined to four structures: An altar shrine, and three buildings that showed four benches in the front room. In two buildings a shrine room appeared as an extension of the back room. In the third building were two subfloor chambers, one with a stairway. These two chambers had been cleared by pothunters at some time in the past. Trenches were also dug at the base of the platforms supporting Groups K-52 and Q-119. R. E. Smith examined all ceramic material and furnished the data thereon in this report. It is interesting to note that of the 1952 sherd material from house mounds, 4.5 percent is of the Puuc period; the 1953 material is 0.08 percent Puuc. In 1952, sherds of censers constituted 6.2 percent; in the 1953 excavations the same type of sherds accounted for 20.8 percent. The increase in censer material is seen in structures with shrine rooms and especially in Str. K-52a, thus suggesting a correlation between building type and pottery. Conforming to an agreement with the Mexican Government, we filled all trenches and pits at the completion of the work. © 2009 by the University Press of Colorado. All rights reserved.
... Although we cannot reconstruct in detail the complex set of processes that created the burials at Xuenkal's Platform FN-183, we can identify some common patterns among the interred individuals. First, all the evidence indicates that Platform FN-183 was not only a residential structure, but also probably served as place of funerary cult behavior and associated (Ruppert and Smith 1956), but not in the same detail and complexity as at Xuenkal. The demographic distribution by sex and age at Xuenkal is inconsistent with a normal mortuary population. ...
Following a brief introduction to mortuary practices in Prehispanic Maya society, we outline the analytical procedures followed during the excavation and laboratory investigation of five burial assemblages from the Late Classic period site of Xuenkal, Yucatán, Mexico. A detailed account of a sequence of primary and secondary interments is provided with a focus on taphonomic and biovital information, emphasizing the importance of an interdisciplinary approach, especially human taphonomy, for the reconstruction of complex Maya mortuary treatments. Our results show that bodies of the dead or their parts followed surprisingly long and complex funerary paths.
This chapter considers Postclassic period (1150–1500 CE) object histories and their value and meaning for social relationships and social action. It explores applications of Graeber’s treatise, Toward an Anthropological Theory of Value: The False Coin of Our Dreams Palgrave, 2001), on the value of ritual and artisanal craft production contexts of this period. Despite the fact that artifacts existed along a continuum of elaboration in relation to other things of similar form, predicting the social or symbolic importance of objects based on quality is far from straightforward. In ritual contexts, ordinary things may bear a weighty symbolic load, whether by standing in for cosmological concepts or due to meaningful histories tying them to individuals. Analyzed here is a mortuary context at Mayapan with an assemblage of exquisite and worn or broken things interred with a child. Such funerary contexts represented conjunctions involving the performance and commemoration of multiple facets of social identity for the interred and their families. Additional burial accompaniments of artisanal crafters (or their caches) further shed light on the value of things, creative action, and the status accorded to producers. Also considered is a case of an extraordinary object removed from its Classic period context (a flint K’awiil scepter) that assumed new, reimagined historical importance in a humble Postclassic ritual setting, centuries later.
A series of figurines, known in the archaeological literature as Mazapan-style, was recently discovered at the site of El Palacio, Michoacan, Mexico, in strata radiocarbon dated from the Early Postclassic ( a.d. 900–1200/1250). Considered diagnostic markers for Early Postclassic cultural and economic dynamics, these artifacts raise questions regarding the role of this settlement at both regional and interregional scales prior to the rise of the Tarascan state. We study the specimens found at El Palacio through a thorough examination of the archaeological contexts, technological and iconographic characteristics, and compare them to cases from the literature. By demonstrating their local production and their association with other artifacts or iconographic traits characteristic of the Early “Postclassic international style,” we bring new elements to the definition of these artifacts and underline the capacity of local elites to connect culturally and economically with other regions of Mesoamerica.
We investigated the evolution of inequality in ancient Maya society using the sizes of houses as a proxy for household wealth. We used several mathematical and statistical methods to study the distribution of wealth at four major archaeological sites in the Maya lowlands: Komchén, Palenque, Sayil, and Mayapán. We calculated the Gini coefficient and the probability density function of the distribution of the house sizes as a measure of the wealth distribution at each site. We found that the wealth distributions had some characteristics of an approximate power law at all the sites, yet the exact distributions were statistically different from each other. The results indicate that the evolution of Maya culture across these sites cannot be understood as simply dependent on a monotonic evolution of the wealth distribution with time but should rather be explained by the historical circumstances surrounding each community. Specifically, the analyses show that, before the evolution of urban, state-level society, significant inequality existed in the Late Preclassic period, but a Pareto distribution either had not emerged or was incipient. In the Late and Terminal Classic periods, economic inequality became increasingly pronounced, while in the succeeding Postclassic period inequality ameliorated, although it seems that poverty prevailed.
The complexity of the organization of craft production mirrors multiple aspects of the larger political economies of premodern states. At the late Maya urban center of Mayapán, variation in the social contexts of crafting within a single settlement defies simple classificatory models that once held sway in the literature of nonWestern state societies. Most surplus crafters were independent and affluent commoners; notable exceptions include artisans working under direct elite supervision or elites who were directly engaged in crafting. Although household workshops concentrated around the city’s epicenter, others were dispersed across the site in unassuming residential neighborhoods or near outlying monumental groups. We consider the significance of pronounced household and regional economic interdependencies founded on well-developed surplus crafting practices, imported raw materials, market exchange, and tribute obligations at Mayapán. As for other premodern states, craft production also gave rise to greater opportunities for wealth differentiation within the commoner class. Producers in this urban political capital contributed in significant ways to a stable political economy by supplying goods that were required at all levels of the social hierarchy.
Here we present a bioarchaeological analysis of a Postclassic (ca. A.D. 950-1524) Maya mass grave from the site of Zacpetén in northern Guatemala. Osteological and spatial analyses (including a Ripley's K function) found evidence of cutting, drilling, and grinding of long bones and teeth as well as the intentional removal and manipulation of skeletal elements based on the left or right sides of the body. The remains were enveloped in layers of cut blocks and fist-sized chunks of white limestone and were placed in a depression on the western side of the ceremonial core of the site. The western orientation of the depression was explicitly associated with the underworld in contrast with the temple on the eastern side of the ceremonial core. The grave was the product of exhumation and violation of enemies' bodies, sacrifice, or the burial of war dead (or some combination thereof) and was created when the Kowoj group emerged as a political force in the Petén lakes region. It served to symbolically rupture the past inhabitants' links to the site and to create an enduring symbol of their defeat.
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