Out With The Old and In With The New: The Termination and Reoccupation of Outlying Temples at Ceibal, Guatemala

Summary

Recent research in outlying residential groups at Ceibal, Guatemala has contributed to our understanding of ritual practices carried out by different segments of society. More specifically, the termination of minor temples located in the peripheries of Ceibal reveals information about ritual destruction and reutilization of ceremonial buildings in the Maya area. At the end of the Protoclassic period (ca. AD 1-225), many temples in outlying residential groups were completely buried and the nearby domestic buildings were deserted. Following this apparent abandonment of the peripheries, the occupation of Ceibal was limited to the site core, and the city was abandoned at the end of the Early Classic (ca. AD 225-450). This practice of terminating the outlying temples appears to have been important to the process of abandonment of the site between AD 450 and AD 600. During the Late Classic (ca. AD 600-830) and Terminal Classic (ca. AD 830-950), many residential groups were reoccupied and the local temples were reused in a different manner, but often not rebuilt. More broadly, this research provides pertinent information about termination rites, the relationships between the cores and peripheries of lowland Maya centers, and settlement patterns in the Petexbatun region.

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This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 80th Annual Meeting, San Francisco, CA (2015)

Keywords

Spatial Coverage