Brent K. S. Woodfill’s research while affiliated with Georgia State University and other places

How do we understand religious spaces? What is their role or function within specific religious traditions or with respect to religious experience? This handbook brings together thirty-seven authors who address these questions using a range of methods to analyze specific spaces or types of spaces around the world and across time. Their methods are grounded in many disciplines: religious studies and religion, anthropology, archaeology, architectural history and architecture, cultural and religious history, sociology, gender and women’s studies, geography, and political science, resulting in a distinctly interdisciplinary collection. These chapters are snapshots, each offering a specific way to think about the religious space(s) under consideration: Roman shrines, Jewish synagogues, Christian churches, Muslim and Catholic shrines, indigenous spaces in Central America and East Africa, cemeteries, memorials, and others. They are organized here by geographical region, rather than tradition, to emphasize the cultural roots of religion and religious spaces. Several overarching principles emerge from these snapshots. The authors demonstrate that religious spaces are simultaneously individual and collective, personal, and social; that they are influenced by culture, tradition, and immediate circumstances; and that they participate in various relationships of power. Most importantly, these essays demonstrate that religious spaces do not simply provide a convenient background for religious action but are also constituent of religious meaning and religious experience; that is, they play an active role in creating, expressing, broadcasting, maintaining, and transforming religious meaning and experience. Browse it at https://bit.ly/3VpmCdI

For ancient and contemporary Indigenous populations in Mexico and northern Central America, the landscape is populated by living beings who exert real authority over the people who depend on them. Mountains, caves, springs, and other geological idiosyncrasies are named individuals with drives, desires, and personalities, and their human neighbors need to actively maintain a relationship with them through ceremonies and gift-giving. Sacred places are therefore persons in Mesoamerica and the recipients of ritual events, not simply stages where events occur. Since continued access to these beings is an essential component of nearly every aspect of well-being, they become central to local identity and often become a tool of conquest and resistance. Rival states, the Spanish empire, and modern corporations, intentionally or not, have taken over these places, forcing locals to submit to their authority to be able to access them. But they also become the focus of independence movements.

After groundbreaking work by multiple archaeologists in the latter half of the 20th century, caves in the Maya world are currently acknowledged as fundamentally ritual rather than domestic spaces. However, a more nuanced read of the anthropological literature and conversations with Indigenous collaborators in the past and present pushes us to move still farther and see caves not as passive contexts to contain ceremonies directed elsewhere but animate beings with unique identities and personalities in their own right. This article combines archaeological, ethnohistoric, and ethnographic documentation of Maya cave use in central Guatemala to build a foundation for examining caves as living beings, with particular attention played to the role they play as active agents in local politics and quotidian life. Through ritual offerings, neighboring residents and travelers maintain tight reciprocal relationships with specific caves and other geographic idiosyncrasies dotting the landscape to ensure the success of multiple important activities and the continued well-being of families and communities.

The recent discovery of an ancient Late Classic ceramic production facility in a valley floor, east of the current capital of Cobán in Guatemala, reveals a new ceramic form and provides data concerning regional chronology. Among the remains are thin, mold-made fragments identified as ceramic plaques that have epigraphic information providing a Long Count date for the first time in the Alta Verapaz region. These data correlate with the preliminary ceramic sequences and assist with understanding political-economic interactions that occurred at a time of societal collapse within the southern lowland region.

Collaborative or community archaeology as a methodological approach has a long history and is becoming increasingly common in the Maya world. This article draws from the authors’ experiences on three distinct archaeological projects to discuss the benefits and obstacles we confronted while conducting collaborative research with contemporary Maya communities as well as lessons we learned that can increase the odds of a mutually beneficial partnership. After summarizing the history of the research projects and the expectations for and contributions of the scientific and community stakeholders, we propose several characteristics that were particularly helpful. These include the need for all parties to engage in sincere and sustained dialogue, to be flexible, and to take others in account when making any plans that affect them. Most importantly, we urge archaeologists to collaborate with community endeavors beyond those that are directly related to their research, offering a few examples of how archaeological skills, equipment, and social capital can be used to address a wide range of local concerns beyond patrimony and heritage.

Empowering Communities through Archaeology and Heritage: The Role of Local Governance in Economic Development. PETER G. GOULD. 2018. Bloomsbury, New York. xvi + 182 pp., 16 figures. $94.00 (hardcover), ISBN 978-1-35003-622-2. - Volume 31 Issue 2 - Brent K. S. Woodfill

Chapter 3, presented by Brent K. S. Woodfill and Marc Wolf, introduces Salinas de los Nueve Cerros, a site located at the highland-lowland nexus in western Guatemala, best known as being the largest of the ancient Maya saltworks in the southern lowlands. The site’s natural and constructed monumental landscape defined not only the city’s layout but also its economy and political structure. The most obvious of the saltworks were the brine stream and salt flats, but the salt industry changed the landscape in other ways—it was fueled by fires that needed a constant supply of firewood and allowed for the large-scale production of other commodities including dried, salted fish, which were harvested in large quantities from the Chixoy River and associated streams and oxbow lakes. All of these resources appear to have been tightly controlled by the local elite, who marked their presence with large administrative and public ritual structures.