Beekeeping, Ancestral Knowledge, and Interspecies Relationships: Exploring Place-Based Heritage in Yucatán

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Adventures in Beekeeping: Recent Studies in Ecology, Archaeology, History, and Ethnography in Yucatán" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

In her article “Saving the Other Bees,” Eve Bratman (2020) explores the successful reintroduction of beekeeping practices associated with the stingless species Melipona beecheii in the Yucatán Peninsula, which has resulted in the species thriving following near extinction. She attributes this success to grassroots initiatives undertaken to address biodiversity losses that emphasize cultivating intergenerational and interspecies relationships. This paper explores these topics through a multifaceted approach that focuses on ancestral knowledge of beekeeping practices encoded in the prehispanic (likely fifteenth century) Madrid Codex, and how communities today are engaging with these knowledge systems through intergenerational events that strengthen place-based heritage. We consider what the Madrid beekeeping almanacs—arguably created by scribes from the northern Yucatán Peninsula—reveal about stingless bee care and management, interspecies relationships, and cosmology; and how communities of eastern Yucatán, once a thriving region of honey production, identify with the beekeeping tradition documented in the codices and later postcontact sources, incorporating study of the Maya codices into secondary school education and displays at community museums. This connection to their ancestral past—and to the intangible heritage incorporated in the almanacs painted by the ah tz'ib' (scribes)—provides a source of pride and identity for communities in the region.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Adventures in Beekeeping: Recent Studies in Ecology, Archaeology, History, and Ethnography in Yucatán   •
• Society for American Archaeology 89th Annual Meeting, New Orleans, LA (2024)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 39063.0