Exotics for the Gods: Lowland Maya Ritual Consumption of European Goods along a Spanish Colonial Frontier.

Summary

As a number of researchers who have focused attention on Maya – Spanish interaction along the Belize colonial frontier have noted, the relationship between these two contrasting cultures was anything but amicable. As a result of this bellicose relationship, few material goods of European origin were traded into frontier settlements. The only exception were a few objects that were brought in by overzealous friars as gifts to the "heathen" Maya they sought to convert to their Christian faith. And while ethno-historic reports of the missionizing adventures of Spanish priests provide us with important data on Maya life during the early colonial period, the Spanish entradas provide precious little information about the material goods they gifted to the Maya, and even less about how the Maya utilized these foreign goods. In this paper, I discuss how archaeological discoveries in Belize have been filling this void, and how the evidence suggests that a variety of objects of European origin were ritually decommissioned in sacred places.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Material Encounters and Indigenous Transformations in the Early Colonial Americas   •
• Society for American Archaeology 82nd Annual Meeting, Vancouver, BC (2017)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 16645