Politicizing Post-Humanism: Elite and Commoner Household Excavations at the Ancient Maya City of Aventura, Belize

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Materializing Political Ecology: Landscape, Power, and Inequality" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Post-humanism importantly considers active roles of nonhuman entities in society. However, it is crucial that power relationships between people do not fall by the wayside when studying past societies. In this paper, I approach geological features at the ancient Maya city of Aventura, Belize, from a perspective that intertwines post-humanism and political ecology. “Pocket *bajos” are geological features that provided important resources to the people living at Aventura, and their roles in activities such as ancestor veneration suggests they were active members in community building. Additionally, they cut across hierarchical lines of power within the city. Even though there was inequality at Aventura, it was not structured by access to pocket *bajo resources. This paper presents excavation data from recent research at Aventura and juxtaposes two households—one elite and one commoner—on the edges of pocket *bajos. I argue that although the landscape was indeed an active part of ancient Maya society, power relationships between humans is what (re)produced inequalities between humans at Aventura.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 86th Annual Meeting, Online (2021)   •
• Materializing Political Ecology: Landscape, Power, and Inequality

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 32416