A Comparative Analysis of Ritual Architecture in the Northern Maya Lowlands

Summary

In the past as in the present, powerful people used the built environment to display and reinforce their power, so that structures play an important role in the development and maintenance of sociopolitical inequality. Iconography and material culture indicate that ancestor veneration played an important role in Maya society from the Formative period until the Post Classic period. Excavations over the last 15 years in the Ulum Plaza of Kiuic, a site in the Puuc hills, supports the importance of ritual space in the development of elite power. Our work demonstrates that, over time, the public spaces first associated with ancestor worship were gradually privatized and incorporated into an elite residential group. The ability of the elite residents to control access to the ritual space likely served as an important tool in their maintaining sociopolitical power. This paper will present a comparative analysis of elite ritual groups in the Northern Maya Lowlands, exploring the form of these groups, as well as how they evolved through time. Finally, it will discuss the link between the architectural forms of the ritual group and their role in the sociopolitical maintenance of power.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 81st Annual Meeting, Orlando, FL (2016)   •
• The Bolonchén Regional Archaeological Project: Sixteen Years of Investigating Maya Society in the Eastern Puuc Region from the Preclassic through the Historical Period

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