Resignification: Public Ritual and Changing Cultural Landscapes at Actuncan, Belize

Summary

Across the Maya Lowlands, dedication ritual served a vital role in endowing public and household spaces with meaning and function. Through ritual, structures acquired the soul-force, or k’ulel, necessary to sustain activity within their walls. However, many structures lived (at least) two ritual lives: one associated with their original intended function, and a second following the abandonment of their initial use. We argue that through ritual resignification the original meanings of public spaces were harnessed and reshaped to match new uses and the changing needs of the local populace. In this presentation, we specifically discuss three locations originally vested with value through royal, elite, and exclusive forms of ritual. Each is later resignified to establish powerful locations for community-oriented inclusive ritual to meet the needs of shifting social and political institutions. The loci of interest are an elite residential structure, a palace compound, and the plaza of a triadic temple group at the site of Actuncan, Belize. Parallels and deviations in the structure of ritual deposits within these loci speak to shifting access and their examination clarifies how the architectural vestiges of Preclassic royal power were differentially incorporated into the Terminal Classic, post-royal landscape of Actuncan.

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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