Desperate Times, Distinctive Places: Human Landscape Interaction at Tzak Naab, Belize

Summary

Located in northwestern Belize, the ancient Maya site of Tzak Naab lay at the intersection of an urban polity and vital agricultural space during the Terminal Classic, a period of considerable ecological and economic stress. The monumental architecture of the site strays from regional grammars with an atypical spatial syntax that emphasizes a connection to an adjacent bajo, a seasonally inundated wetland significant to the regional political economy. Attention to site planning and experiential aspects of place suggest that Tzak Naab served as a nexus for community ritual practices related to agricultural fecundity. By contextualizing the site within the greater political

landscape—and critically evaluating the degrees of difference in built environments as well as the object assemblages—this paper demonstrates that localized cosmology is capable of permeating the material milieu. We argue that the idiosyncrasies present at Tzak Naab constitute meaningful and distinctive choices that represent a transformation in the religious and ritual priorities of a community negotiating the anxieties of changing environmental conditions.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Quintessential Places: Analyzing the Character of Precolumbian Sites   •
• Society for American Archaeology 82nd Annual Meeting, Vancouver, BC (2017)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 15141