Mortuary Vessels at the Maya City of El Peru-Waka'

Summary

Residential burials are useful tools that help archaeologists better understand domestic ritual practices at the household level. With the household acting as a unit of social identity, funerary practices help archaeologists relate said practices to prominent trends of the time. These include, but are not limited to social and religious structures, identity, power, and social reproduction. One of the many types of artifacts that often appear in Classic Maya burials that are significant to burial practices are ceramic vessels. Through the utilization of several whole ceramic vessels uncovered during the 2017 field season at the Maya city of El Peru Waka', this poster will attempt to explore the use of ceramics in funerary contexts at the site. In looking at mortuary vessels recently excavated in El Peru’s Chok Group, funerary contexts can help to reveal domestic ritual trends and purposes. After recovery of the vessels in the 2017 field season, they were brought to the lab where they were cleaned and analyzed. By using the type variety method, examining the vessels for presence of use ware, and original funerary context (through drawings and photographs) a better narrative of ceramic use in domestic funerary contexts is revealed.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 83rd Annual Meeting, Washington, DC (2018)

Keywords

Spatial Coverage

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 21888