The Vibrancy of Ruins: Ruination Studies in Ancient Mesoamerica

Part of: Society for American Archaeology 88th Annual Meeting, Portland, OR (2023)

This collection contains the abstracts of the papers presented in the session entitled "The Vibrancy of Ruins: Ruination Studies in Ancient Mesoamerica" at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

The purpose of this symposium is to generate discussions on the ways in which ruined and decaying buildings contributed to the ongoing constitution of communities in ancient Mesoamerica. Symposium participants will use archaeological and historical data and recent ideas advanced by ruination studies and the material turn to examine the life history of ruins in precolumbian times and their relations to the materiality of community. Ruination studies recognize that ruins persist and can affect people long after buildings fall to ruin. The material turn focuses on the durability and ever-changing materiality of ruins and their active role in relations with people in ways that can both facilitate and disrupt human projects. This symposium will bring together a group of scholars to challenge a Western/Romantic view of ancient Mesoamerican ruins as deserted spaces, devoid of vibrancy and meaning for precolumbian Indigenous peoples. The participants in this session will offer a glimpse of an Indigenous perspective on ruins, where ruins were places that were important in the constitution of community life and sources of cultural identity in ancient Mesoamerica.

Other Keywords
Landscape Archaeology • Ruins • Materiality • Maya: Classic • Highland Mesoamerica: Postclassic • Ideology • Architecture • Ceramic Analysis • ontology • and Memory

Geographic Keywords
North America (Continent) • United Mexican States (Country) • Peten (State / Territory) • Cayo (State / Territory) • Stann Creek (State / Territory) • Toledo (State / Territory) • Belize (Country) • Yucatan (State / Territory) • Orange Walk (State / Territory) • Corozal (State / Territory)

Resources Inside This Collection (Viewing 1-11 of 11)

  • Documents (11)
Documents
  • Agency and Pilgrimage in a Living Landscape: Contemporary Lacandon Maya Visits to Ancient Ruins (2023)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Josuhé Lozada. Joel Palka. Alice Balsanelli.

    This is an abstract from the "The Vibrancy of Ruins: Ruination Studies in Ancient Mesoamerica" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In this presentation, we analyze Lacandon Maya communication with nonhuman forces through pilgrimages to ritual landscapes, particularly ancient Maya ruins in the lowlands of Chiapas, Mexico, and Petén, Guatemala. Through archaeological and ethnographic evidence we examine these spaces where Lacandon Maya have undertaken...

  • Ancestors and the Power of Ruins in Nejapa and Tavela, Oaxaca (2023)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Stacie King. Elizabeth Konwest. Marijke Stoll.

    This is an abstract from the "The Vibrancy of Ruins: Ruination Studies in Ancient Mesoamerica" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. There are numerous examples across the Nejapa region of Oaxaca that demonstrate the ways archaeological ruins retain meaning and power through time. This paper highlights ruins in the sites of Majaltepec, Los Picachos, Cerro del Convento, Hacienda San José, and the modern town of Santa Ana Tavela to show how ruined,...

  • Ancient and Contemporary Maya Ruins as Living Landscapes (2023)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Christina Halperin.

    This is an abstract from the "The Vibrancy of Ruins: Ruination Studies in Ancient Mesoamerica" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Ruination studies allow one to see the past not as a fixed “thing” but as living landscapes that emerge from, enliven, and incorporate temporal dimensions, ancestors, and animating forces young and old, near and far. Furthermore, over the past two decades Mesoamerican scholars have increasingly recognized that ruins were an...

  • Bundled Time: An Analysis of an Intrasite Sac-Be Assemblage at Punta Laguna, Yucatan, Mexico (2023)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Nicholas Puente. Sarah Kurnick.

    This is an abstract from the "The Vibrancy of Ruins: Ruination Studies in Ancient Mesoamerica" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. After Mexico declared its independence from Spain in 1821, foreign explorers began traveling throughout the Maya area and documenting sites, structures, and monuments then unknown in the United States and Europe. In photographs, drawings, and written reports, these explorers depicted Maya ruins as deserted and lifeless, and...

  • Creating Ruins, Creating Heritage at Actuncan, Belize (2023)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only David Mixter.

    This is an abstract from the "The Vibrancy of Ruins: Ruination Studies in Ancient Mesoamerica" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The precolonial Maya city of Actuncan was occupied as a monumental center, then a city, for approximately 2,000 years from its establishment prior to 1000 BC until its abandonment around AD 900. As at any long-occupied urban center, the city grew when it thrived economically and politically, while it contracted and became...

  • Going Up, Coming Down: Ruins, Verticality, and Time in the Postclassic Mixteca (2023)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Jamie Forde.

    This is an abstract from the "The Vibrancy of Ruins: Ruination Studies in Ancient Mesoamerica" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. For peoples of the Postclassic Mixtec highlands, ruins of earlier civilizations were often found on mountaintops outside some of the most politically prominent communities in the region. These ruined hilltop sites came to be viewed as places of primordial origin and were sites of religious pilgrimage. In this paper, drawing...

  • Introducing the Vibrancy of Ruins in Ancient Mesoamerica (2023)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Roberto Rosado-Ramirez. Arthur Joyce.

    This is an abstract from the "The Vibrancy of Ruins: Ruination Studies in Ancient Mesoamerica" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This paper introduces the session by discussing recent ideas advanced by ruination studies and the material turn, as well as the role of ruins in Mesoamerican communities. Combining concepts from ruination studies and the “New Materialist” perspective helps us to understand ancient communities as formed by assemblages of...

  • Memory, Pilgrimage, and Social Life in an Ancient Maya City: Waka’s City Temple as a Compendium of Political History (2023)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Olivia Navarro-Farr. Rachel Horowitz. Keith Eppich.

    This is an abstract from the "The Vibrancy of Ruins: Ruination Studies in Ancient Mesoamerica" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Long-term research at Waka’s City temple (Structure M13-1) demonstrates it was an important locale for ritual commemoration by local people as well and those from afar. Extensive and diversely constituted deposits throughout the building’s surface demonstrate it was venerated publicly by non-elites throughout Waka’s final...

  • Persistence in Ruins: Animation, Remembrance, and Rupture at Etlatongo, Oaxaca (2023)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Jeffrey Blomster. Cuauhtémoc Vidal Guzmán.

    This is an abstract from the "The Vibrancy of Ruins: Ruination Studies in Ancient Mesoamerica" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Rather than static vestiges of the past, we view ruins and material objects from the past as important generative components of communities and human projects. Informed by a relational ontology that views some objects and matter as charged and animate, we situate our research at Etlatongo in broader Mixtec and Mesoamerican...

  • The Power of Monuments in Ruin in Prehispanic Oaxaca (2023)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Arthur Joyce.

    This is an abstract from the "The Vibrancy of Ruins: Ruination Studies in Ancient Mesoamerica" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This paper examines the materiality of two ruined monumental architectural complexes in prehispanic Oaxaca: the Main Plaza of the mountaintop city of Monte Albán in the Oaxaca Valley and the acropolis of Río Viejo located on the Río Verde’s coastal floodplain. Both of these impressive complexes were important political and...

  • Ruins in the Daily Life of San Antonio La Baeza from the Prehispanic Past to the Modern Day (2023)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Elizabeth Konwest. Marijke Stoll.

    This is an abstract from the "The Vibrancy of Ruins: Ruination Studies in Ancient Mesoamerica" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. What role do ruins play in the lives of descendant peoples? Surrounding the small mountain pueblo of San Antonio La Baeza are numerous ruins dating to different time periods. For example, below the modern pueblo are large, deep rockshelters that have been occupied from the Late Formative up until today and are covered in...