Dusk and Dawn: Change and Continuity in Funerary Programs in the Maya Lowlands during the Ninth and Tenth centuries CE

Summary

This is an abstract from the "The Movement of People and Ideas in Eastern Mesoamerica during the Ninth and Tenth Centuries CE: A Multidisciplinary Approach Part II" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

During most of the Classic era (250–900 CE), Maya funerary practices were locally defined. Particularly in the Maya Lowlands, burial programs would shift from one capital to the next, while remaining well-codified on a local level. The modes of positioning, orientation, and burial define archaeologically identifiable norms of mortuary behavior. Nevertheless, if less volatile than exchange networks of goods, mortuary ideologies also evolve and travel. Whether during times of subtle changes or through more drastic collective sociopolitical crises, even the codification of an act as intimate as burying dead relatives is prone to suffer rupture. A systematic survey of 7,000 Late and Terminal Classic Lowland Maya burial contexts upholds our present examinations of the changes versus continuities in Lowland Maya mortuary programs toward and after the close of the eighth century, a time when the threads of the social tapestry began to draw new motives. Further discussion addresses specific questions, such as, Do the population dynamics accompany shifts and replacements of formerly held mortuary parameters? Where and what are the new burial practices introduced past the fall of Maya kingdoms? Do the remnant communities of the post-collapse era cling to preexisting ideologies, or do they detach from them?

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• The Movement of People and Ideas in Eastern Mesoamerica during the Ninth and Tenth Centuries CE: A Multidisciplinary Approach Part II   •
• Society for American Archaeology 88th Annual Meeting, Portland, OR (2023)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 37093.0