Quality of Life Changes in an Ancient Maya Community: Longitudinal Perspectives from Altar de Sacrificios, Guatemala

Summary

Inequality is a prominent and persistent feature of all large-scale human societies that has significant impacts on everyday life. Variation in material wealth and social capital as well as differential access to specialized knowledge and other resources directly impacts household quality of life (QOL) within ancient and contemporary communities. For the ancient Maya, the establishment of political institutions centered on divine rulership significantly contributed to QOL changes during the Preclassic and Classic periods (ca. 950 BCE – 950 CE). However, tracking these variations and measuring their effects pose specific challenges for archaeology. Well-documented settlements with an extensive and long-term occupation like Altar de Sacificios provide important contexts to investigate the rapid transformations associated with the emergence of institutionalized inequality and concomitant changes in QOL across diverse domestic settings. This poster presents the results of ongoing analysis of ritual deposits excavated by the Altar de Sacrificios Archaeological Project (2016-present) and previous investigations conducted by Harvard University (1958-1963) to gain a better understanding of the wealth variations and distribution of specialized knowledge within this ancient Maya community over a span of about 2000 years.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

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

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 20873