Contrasting Cartographies: Mapping a Maya Site Using Multiple Perspectives

Summary

Archaeologists routinely engage with concepts of space and materiality as we inscribe meanings onto the architecture and objects left behind by past peoples. However, in doing so, we bring explicitly modern sensibilities to our interpretations. In this paper, we consider alternative interpretations of space and materiality as described by Classic Maya people (250-900 CE). We ask: In what ways do categorizations and interpretations of space at Maya archaeological sites change when traditional archaeological spatial analyses are augmented by ones based on Classic Maya characterizations? What can be learned from identifying places of convergence and divergence between these two datasets? As part of our excavations of the site of Say Kah, Belize we have developed and used a recording system that allows us to document excavated artifacts and features simultaneously within conventional archaeological frameworks and also using Classic Maya categories. These parallel classifications, when visualized as distributions of artifacts and features within GIS, allow us to compare and contrast two sets of spatial documentation at a detailed and site wide level and explore the cultural meanings in spaces that would not otherwise appear in studies of the site created using solely modern, Western spatial and artifactual classifications.

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): 21767