Postclassic Peten Podophilia

Summary

In 1996, Fredy Baldizon (a CUDEP student) brought a box of 87 Postclassic tripod plate supports that he collected from a single location on the Tayasal peninsula to the Proyecto Maya Colonial’s laboratory. It was not until 2014 that I discovered that another large set (n=66) of tripod supports was associated with a single structure (2034) at Ixlú. Statistical analyses (based on height, form, and paste characteristics) indicate statistically-significant differences between the supports at the two sites.

These two collections of tripod supports may represent fragment enchainments or hoards. In either case, the sets reflect social practice and interactions of the cultures that made and transported the pottery fragments as they do not represent pottery smashed in place. As such, the Postclassic Maya from Tayasal and Ixlú may have emphasized their social and/or political interactions, perhaps feasting events, with the deliberate collection and deposition of these tripod supports.

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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