Examining Intermediate Elite Relationships with Apical Elite Polity Rulers through Ritualization, Ancestor Veneration and District-Scale Identity Formation at the Late Classic Maya Polity of Lower Dover, Belize

Summary

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Traditionally anthropologists envisioned ritual as playing a functional role in the formation and ongoing cohesion of ancient complex societies. More recent perspectives consider ritual to represent a powerful tool of resistance, and therefore pivotal not just to the integration, but also the disintegration of polities. Situations in which a higher order polity forms among autonomous local elites can be insightful for investigating this dynamic. We reconstruct diachronic changes in ritual through examination of public architecture and associated artifact assemblages at the intermediate elite centers of Tutu Uitz Na, Floral Park and BR-180/168, before and after the rise of the Late Classic Maya (AD 600-900) polity of Lower Dover, Belize. We show that some intermediate elites changed their traditional ritual practices to promulgate apical elite polity-scale identities and ritualized narratives, whereas other intermediate elites eschewed polity-scale ritual traditions and continued traditional ancestor veneration to legitimize their lineage and augment district-scale ties with commoner subordinates. The case study provides a glimpse into the ways in which local intermediate elite ritual and ceremony can either buttress or undermine the ideologies of their suzerains.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 86th Annual Meeting, Online (2021)   •
• SAA 2021: General Sessions

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 32968