Place-Making and Elite Maya Identity at Ucanha, Yucatan, Mexico

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Place-Making in Indigenous Mesoamerican Communities Past and Present" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

During the Late Classic period, ancient excavators at an elite residence at Ucanha, Yucatan, Mexico, broke through several stucco floors and peeled away rocky fill before partially exposing two earlier buildings dating back to the Late Preclassic. Centuries separated the initial burial of these Preclassic buildings and their subsequent excavation in the Late Classic, indicating that Ucanha’s leaders passed down the precise locations of the buried architecture over several generations. This paper explores (1) why elites invested considerable effort to expose the earlier construction phases, (2) why the Late Classic afforded the opportune historical moment to carry out excavations within their residence, (3) how engaging with ancestral buildings connected Late Classic leaders with earlier histories at Ucanha, and (4) how exposing earlier building episodes redefined their Late Classic place of residence. I argue that Ucanha’s Late Classic leaders used the excavations to assert ancestral links to their predecessors and the Preclassic buildings they used. By lengthening the temporal fabric of their place of residence, Late Classic leaders could anchor their authority to a distant, localized past.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 86th Annual Meeting, Online (2021)   •
• Place-Making in Indigenous Mesoamerican Communities Past and Present

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 32083