Bundled Time: An Analysis of an Intrasite Sac-Be Assemblage at Punta Laguna, Yucatan, Mexico

Summary

This is an abstract from the "The Vibrancy of Ruins: Ruination Studies in Ancient Mesoamerica" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

After Mexico declared its independence from Spain in 1821, foreign explorers began traveling throughout the Maya area and documenting sites, structures, and monuments then unknown in the United States and Europe. In photographs, drawings, and written reports, these explorers depicted Maya ruins as deserted and lifeless, and suggested that the passage of time had rendered them mute and ineffective. This presentation challenges such a Western, Romantic understanding of Maya ruins. It argues instead that these ruins are effective, consequential, and shape human actions, and that the passage of time often increases, rather than decreases, their potency. Roads offer a particularly useful case study: They both connect and divide people and things, simultaneously generating and dismantling sociomaterial entanglements. Specifically, this presentation considers an intrasite sac-be, or white road, at Punta Laguna, Yucatan, Mexico. Rather than focusing on spatial connections and divisions, however, this presentation considers temporal ones. How has this road—originally built during the Late Preclassic period (300/350 CE–550/600 CE) and continuing to exist in the present—interacted over time with a larger assemblage of human, material, climatic, and other actors?

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• The Vibrancy of Ruins: Ruination Studies in Ancient Mesoamerica   •
• Society for American Archaeology 88th Annual Meeting, Portland, OR (2023)

Keywords

Spatial Coverage

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 35915.0