Gathered for the Feast: Community and Polity Ceremony in the Lower Río Verde Valley

Summary

Among Payson Sheets’ many contributions to archaeological method and theory is a long-term commitment to examining the actions and relationships of commoners. Taking inspiration from his work at Cerén on community ceremony, in this paper we examine collective ceremonial practices at two Terminal Formative period (C.E. 100 – 250) sites in the lower Río Verde valley of Pacific coastal Oaxaca, Mexico. The site of Yugüe, like Cerén, was a small site that was located only four kilometers away from a regional political center—in this case, the site of Río Viejo. Middens located in public spaces at both Yugüe and Río Viejo attest to collective food consumption in conjunction with ceremonial activity. While lacking in the remarkable preservation that characterizes Cerén, the Yugüe and Río Viejo middens offer an opportunity to compare the community ceremony of commoners with that of the inhabitants of an urban center. Our results incorporate contextual, ceramic, faunal, and botanical remains to explore the degree to which commoner ceremony at Yugüe was entangled with more encompassing ritual practices at Rio Viejo and consider the implications of these entanglements for the constitution of regional political affiliations.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 81st Annual Meeting, Orlando, FL (2016)   •
• After the Volcano Erupted: Papers in Honor of Payson Sheets (Part 2)

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