Negotiating with the Lord of Wild Animals: Maya Ritual Practices and the Distinctive Life-Histories of Animal Bones

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Supernatural Gamekeepers and Animal Masters: A Cross-Cultural Perspective" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

In various contemporary Maya communities, hunting involves careful negotiations among various active agents – human and other-than-human – involved in the hunt. A pivotal actor in these negotiations is the deity known as the Lord of Wild Animals, the supernatural gamekeeper of the wild species in the forest. Hunters must maintain strong reciprocal relations with the Lord of Wild Animals, who must be approached, propitiated and appeased via proper ritual channels before and after a hunt. Ethnographic records of the activities and objects associated with the hunter’s ceremonial obligations suggest that despite regional variability, some actions and objects are consistent across the Maya area. Among these is the special treatment and disposition of bones from successfully hunted creatures. Archaeological iconography documents a great antiquity for these negotiations suggesting that material markers, in the form of evidence for distinctive animal bone life-histories, might also be recognized in the archaeological record. In this paper, we examine contemporary hunting-related ritual practices and how they might impact deposition and recovery of materials including animal bones and associated artifacts. We use these data to suggest archaeological material markers that could point to the role of supernatural animal guardians in the past.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 84th Annual Meeting, Albuquerque, NM (2019)   •
• Supernatural Gamekeepers and Animal Masters: A Cross-Cultural Perspective

Keywords

Spatial Coverage

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 22897