If Ocarinas Could Talk: The Biographies of Ceramic Wind Instruments Used in a Late Classic Maya Funerary Ceremony at Pacbitun, Belize

Summary

The Classic Maya crafted a wide variety of music instruments from clay and other materials. Numerous depictions of musicians on vase paintings and murals attest to the important role of music in ceremonial occasions. Music instruments were also interred with the deceased during funerary ceremonies; although their comparative rarity in burials suggests that their inclusion was not a common practice. At the site of Pacbitun, music instruments have been recovered from multiple Classic period burials, yet the complement of instruments, their placement within the grave and other characteristics is unique in each case. In this paper, we employ a biographical approach to examine the life histories of a group of ceramic wind instruments interred with a Maya woman who was laid to rest in a Late Classic residential building at Pacbitun. By integrating contextual data with the results of detailed macroscopic and petrographic analyses, we trace and compare the manufacturing origins, use lives and final treatment of these instruments. We investigate the nature of their transition from objects used by the living to possessions of the dead and examine what they reveal about the life of the deceased and the funeral rites that were conducted upon her death.

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): 20406