Precious People: Indigenous Medical-Spiritual Relations in the Archaeology of Maya Childhood

Summary

This is an abstract from the "The Marking and Making of Social Persons: Embodied Understandings in the Archaeologies of Childhood and Adolescence" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Previous studies of bodily ornaments from burial contexts have often fixated on notions of wealth, social inequality, and prestige. Although we consider analyses focused on economic wealth, we turn, in particular, to Indigenous and ladino (mestizo) medical-spiritual understandings of bodily ornaments. We find that this perspective is best understood from the perspective of children. This paper examines the marine shell, bone, ceramic, and stone bracelets and necklaces of children from Late and Terminal Classic burials at the Maya site of Ucanal, Petén, Guatemala, and compares them to burials from a range of time periods throughout the Maya Lowlands. By incorporating ethnographic and ethnohistoric research on Indigenous Maya and ladino medical-spiritual practices and acts of care, we underscore the relational understandings of Maya ornaments worn by children and their role in the articulation of caring relations between parents and their precious children, in repelling spiritual forces and winds carrying illnesses, and in the making of social persons. While attention and respect for Indigenous medical-spiritual practices are slowly but increasingly recognized in contemporary medical practices in Guatemala, Mexico, and elsewhere, archaeological perspectives also benefit from multivocal perspectives on children and their well-being.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• The Marking and Making of Social Persons: Embodied Understandings in the Archaeologies of Childhood and Adolescence   •
• Society for American Archaeology 89th Annual Meeting, New Orleans, LA (2024)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 38616.0