A Good, Old-Fashioned Patio-Group Raising: Domestic Architecture as Ritual among the Classic-Period Maya

Summary

As anthropological and archaeological scholarship attests, household ritual has a potent role in forging and maintaining sociopolitical relationships both within the household as well as with the communities, cities, and states of which it forms a part. Archaeological research in the Classic Maya area has revealed evidence of feasts, ancestor veneration, dedication and termination caches, and other ritual practices taking part within the limits of the house. The most substantial remnant of Classic Maya domestic ritual, however, may be the patio group itself, whose construction and renovation--much like the barn raisings of nineteenth-century North America--united households and communities in ritual activity. This paper will consider domestic architecture as ritual among the ancient Maya, and how the ritualized aspects of homebuilding may have changed over the course of the Classic period (ca. 200 - 900 CE). As its driving question, this paper asks, "How did the Classic Maya build their homes, and how did homebuilding build the Maya?" Evidence will be drawn from both archaeological excavation, consisting primarily of non-elite residences in the Central Peten, as well as ethnographic data from modern Maya communities.

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This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 80th Annual Meeting, San Francisco, CA (2015)   •
• Household Rituals in the Ancient Americas – from Patio Groups to Pueblos

Keywords

Spatial Coverage