Power, Placemaking, and the Production of Sacred and Political Landscapes at La Milpa North, Northwestern Belize

Summary

Although ethnographic and ethnohistoric sources offer insights into the practices of producing political and sacred landscapes among contemporary and colonial era Maya, the scarcity and separation in time and space of written sources from most Classic period contexts complicates the examination of placemaking strategies in more ancient settings. In the near absence of written sources, landscapes, which are inscribed by built environments and the material remains of inhabitation, may be read as texts to discern ancient practices used to produce meaning and make places. Integrating traditional archaeological methods with digital reconstructions and phenomenological approaches, this paper explores the deliberate efforts of ancient Maya elites to control processes of placemaking at the site of La Milpa North, northwestern Belize. La Milpa North, a Late to Terminal Classic hinterland palatial compound, functioned as an important node within sacred and political landscapes of the La Milpa polity. Through analyses of avenues of movement, arrangements of buildings and monuments on the landscape, and the placement of features within structures, La Milpa North can be read as a text, or perhaps multiple texts, each designed to craft embodied experiences of place and convey subtly divergent meanings to a diverse array of interactants.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 81st Annual Meeting, Orlando, FL (2016)   •
• Understanding Visual Culture Without Textual Sources: What Are the Possibilities for Analysis?

Keywords

Spatial Coverage