Breaking with Tradition? Terminal Classic and Postclassic Developments Across the Guatemala – Belize Border

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Making and Breaking Boundaries in the Maya Lowlands: Alliance and Conflict across the Guatemala–Belize Border" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Following the Classic Maya "collapse" a clustering of traits appear at sites in the Peten – Belize area of the Southern Maya Lowlands. These include new architectural forms, such as circular and colonnaded buildings and the introduction of distinctive portable goods such as molded-carved ceramics, as well as phallic and turtle effigies, among other material forms. These "new" assemblages embody "old" Classic Maya narratives concerning captive-taking, penis bloodletting, ancestor conjuring and replacement, and the sacrifice and rebirth of the Maize Lord. We examine these elements in the context of new alliances and conflicts that arose in this area during the Terminal Classic and Postclassic periods (ca. AD 830-1525). We conclude that an emphasis on masculinity is undergirded by a concurrent focus on the maternal line as an important element of elite legitimation in the Southern Maya Lowlands, echoing concerns expressed at the distant Maya capitals in northern Yucatán during this time.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 84th Annual Meeting, Albuquerque, NM (2019)   •
• Making and Breaking Boundaries in the Maya Lowlands: Alliance and Conflict across the Guatemala–Belize Border

Keywords

Spatial Coverage

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 24977