Place Making and Remaking: Early Classic Mortuary Rites at the Ancient Maya Site of Chan Chich, Northwest Belize

Summary

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Funerary customs and monumental architecture in the Maya Region are viewed by archaeologists as markers of social status and complexity. The intersection of mortuary rituals and the built environment gives us a window through which to understand the development of social complexity. Excavations at Chan Chich, a medium-sized city located in northwest Belize, have shown evidence of complex mortuary rituals in its monumental center between AD 250 and 380, a pivotal moment for consolidation of power by divine kings and their lineages in the area. Evidence for divine kingship at Chan Chich was found in 1997 in Tomb 2, a Terminal Preclassic/Early Classic mortuary context containing a jade bib-helmet ornament. A second bib-helmet ornament was found in 2016 within a stone crypt containing the skeletal remains of at least three individuals, one primary burial whose interment resulted the disarticulation of the other two. This presentation focuses on these contexts and their relationship with other mortuary contexts in northwest Belize during the Early Classic. The construction of mortuary architecture on top of a Middle Preclassic floor, burial goods, and reuse of the crypt suggests that these individuals were the metaphorical and literal foundation of local elite.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts   •
• Society for American Archaeology 88th Annual Meeting, Portland, OR (2023)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 37205.0