Community Identity and Shared Practice at Actuncan, Belize

Abstract

Shared identities create deep historical ties to community spaces and can facilitate or constrict political expansion. This research examines the relationship between the ways in which families engaged local landscapes and developed shared identities at Actuncan, Belize, during the Terminal Classic period, a time when the city experienced population growth as surrounding centers declined. The nature and location of activity patterns in and around three residential groups allow inferences about shared practices and the expression of identities that those activities enabled and constrained. Importantly, this research includes investigations of both residential groups and architecturally free areas. It uses multiple methods to explore activities and to produce overlapping datasets, including excavation and analysis of macroartifacts, microartifacts, and soil chemical residues. The results suggest that Actuncan residents used not only the formal patio spaces of residential groups but also the interstitial spaces between them. Moreover, one residential group, Group 1, appears to have been a locus for distinct activities including sequential burials and, possibly, affiliative ritual practices connected to ancestral landscape use. Understanding relationships among residents is an important foundation for exploring broader political dynamics, including relationships between residents and rulers and how rulers created, legitimized, and maintained power and authority.