Household Shrines, Caches, and Burials: The Role of Ritual in Domestic Economy at Dos Hombres, Northwestern Belize

Summary

Household economies have been addressed from several perspectives in northwestern Belize. The resource specialized community model (Scarborough and Valdez 2003; 2009) emphasizes locally available resources in production and consumption at the community scale. The model has great validity in the hinterland communities and is clearly evidenced in household investigations near Dos Hombres Belize in the form of the raw materials utilized in stone tool production. In addition, the function of those tools is clearly related to manipulating mostly local resources. While this economic model is still being tested in the Dos Hombres civic ceremonial center, it is also possible that many local resources are being utilized for producing much of what was needed in the kingdom. What this paper is concerned with is the proportion of both local and non-local material culture recovered in domestic contexts that are specifically related to domestic ritual: burial goods, shrines, and caches. These ritual assemblages make up a significant proportion of the overall domestic assemblages both at Dos Hombres and its hinterlands highlighting the importance of ritual goods in the domestic economy of northwestern Belize.

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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