Provisioning a 19th Century Maya Refugee Village; Consumer Culture at Tikal, Guatemala.

Summary

In the late-nineteenth century Maya refugees fleeing the violence of the Caste War of Yucatan (1847-1901) briefly reoccupied the ancient Maya ruins of Tikal.  Unlike the numerous Yucatec refugee communities established to the east in British Honduras, those who settled at Tikal combined with Lacandon Maya, and later Ladinos from Lake Petén Itza to form a small, multiethnic village in the sparsely occupied Petén jungle of northern Guatemala.  This paper discusses the analysis of the mass-produced consumer goods found at Tikal in households and in vast midden deposits around this short lived village, and includes a discussion on what the villagers may have been trading to obtain the copious foreign made products. The Petén assemblage suggests that different patterns of consumer choice were practiced at Tikal in regards to the eastern Yucatec refugee villages, and may reflect refugee behaviors that are recognized in the modern era.     

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for Historical Archaeology 2018   •
• Colonialism’s End? The archaeological consequences of the Grito de Dolores

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Contact(s): Society for Historical Archaeology

Record Identifiers

PaperId(s): 130