Morir para renacer: Funerary Rituals of Pregnant Women in Chunhuayum, Yucatan

Summary

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

The lives of women have been a focus of recent research in Maya Archaeology, finding that they fulfilled important roles as mothers, wives, priestesses, members of the elite and even as rulers. Within each social stratum, women lived diverse identities, however they shared similar biological processes, such as pregnancy, which was ruled by diverse beliefs and natal care practices. This was especially true because of the Mesoamerican belief that the duality of life and death governed women during pregnancy, because at the moment of birth their status was equivalent to that of a warrior. In 2016 as part of the excavations of the Ucí Regional Integration Project (UCRIP) at the Chunhuayum site, we found three female funerary contexts deposited in cists built continuously in an apparently domestic structure. Two of the females contained the remains of an unborn child in the pelvis and all the contexts were revisited with evident manipulation of the left extremities and bony segments near the pelvis. Our presentation will interpret the symbolism expressed in the funerary ritual, investigating the status of women as possible dead warriors in childbirth as well as discussing the ritual nature of the domestic unit in which they were buried.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 84th Annual Meeting, Albuquerque, NM (2019)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 26279