Ear Ornaments and Childhood in the Making of Maya Personhood

Houses and lineages are both named, corporate units of social organization defined in part on the connection between people and place. They are distinguished from one another by the relative emphasis on biological descent in societies organized on the basis of corporate group membership. Over the past 15 years, researchers have debated whether ancient Maya social organization was characterized by house or lineage organization. Drawing on ethnographic, epigraphic, and archaeological data, researchers have concluded that the ancient Maya had some characteristics of house societies, but that biological descent was an important principle. One relevant line of evidence conspicuously absent from this debate is biological distance analysis as a means of identifying patterns of biological relatedness within sites. In this chapter we review intracemetery analyses from Mesoamerica, focusing on the Maya area, and discuss what, if any, insight such analyses of biological spatial organization might bring to bear on the house versus lineage debate. We suggest that the use of biological distance analysis will not resolve debates about the relevant importance of house and biological lineage in ancient Maya society, but increasing incorporation of intracemetery analyses within existing research programs will help identify those the circumstances in which biological kinship was emphasized in Maya society. As such, intracemetery biodistance adds an important and independent line of evidence that is currently underutilized in studies of ancient Maya social organization.

Este trabajo proporciona nuevos datos osteológicos y taxonómicos sobre el sacrificio humano por extracción del corazón, practicado entre los mayas del Clásico, así como sobre los tratamientos del cuerpo humano asociados con aquella ceremonia. El estudio está basado en una propuesta de evaluación de los pasos rituales integrados con la práctica. El modelo se aplica a la reconstrucción e interpretación de las marcas de violencia perimortem encontradas en cuatro osamentas de Palenque, Calakmul y Becán, México. Los presentes resultados, interpretados conjuntamente con fuentes etnohistóricas e iconográficas, nos permite plantear que la extracción cardiaca sólo formaba parte de un conjunto de pasos rituales concertados y dirigidos tanto a la occisión de la vida humana como a la ofrenda de sus esencias vitales. En un plano metodológico concluimos que la evidencia ósea directa sobre la operación siempre será escasa en el registro regional.

Realizing potentiality. Donut stones in ancient Maya society

On the vulnerability of the ancient Maya society to natural threats

We investigated the evolution of inequality in ancient Maya society using the sizes of houses as a proxy for household wealth. We used several mathematical and statistical methods to study the distribution of wealth at four major archaeological sites in the Maya lowlands: Komchen, Palenque, Sayil, and Mayapan. We calculated the Gini coefficient and the probability density function of the distribution of the house sizes as a measure of the wealth distribution at each site. We found that the wealth distributions had some characteristics of an approximate power law at all the sites, yet the exact distributions were statistically different from each other. The results indicate that the evolution of Maya culture across these sites cannot be understood as simply dependent on a monotonic evolution of the wealth distribution with time but should rather be explained by the historical circumstances surrounding each community. Specifically, the analyses show that, before the evolution of urban, state-level society, significant inequality existed in the Late Preclassic period, but a Pareto distribution either had not emerged or was incipient. In the Late and Terminal Classic periods, economic inequality became increasingly pronounced, while in the succeeding Postclassic period inequality ameliorated, although it seems that poverty prevailed.

Głównym celem artykułu jest analiza roli obrzędów przejścia w konfliktach religijnych między katolikami i protestantami we wczesnonowożytnym Krakowie. W artykule znalazło się kilka studiów przypadku tumultów religijnych zorganizowanych przez studentów Uniwersytetu Krakowskiego przeciwko protestanckim procesjom pogrzebowym, ślubom lub po prostu przeciwko zborom. Kluczową tezą artykułu jest to, że zakłócanie rytuałów przejścia było sposobem na pozbawianie protestantów ich tożsamości społecznej i - poprzez proces dehumanizacji - ich człowieczeństwa. Poprzez przerywanie ślubów i przechwytywanie ciał podczas pogrzebów katoliccy sprawcy próbowali pozostawić swoich przeciwników w stanie, używając zwrotu Victora Turnera " between and betwixt", tj. w stanie gdy nie posiadali już swojego poprzedniego statusu, ale gdy nie uzyskali jeszcze nowego. Przeszkadzając najważniejszym protestanckim ceremoniom w tak upokarzający sposób, katolicy starali się wykazać, że ich przeciwnikom brakowało Bożego wsparcia, a ich wiara zasługiwała na to, by być obiektem kpin. Uważamy, że z punktu widzenia sprawców, ich działania były kontynuacją rytualnych działań zapoczątkowanych podczas świąt katolickich - przeniesieniem kosmicznej walki między Chrystusem a szatanem na ulice ówczesnego Krakowa. Uczestnictwo studentów w tych aktach przemocy nie tylko świadczyło o ich przekonaniu do przynależenie do wyznania lepszego od wyznania ich przeciwników, ale także przyczyniało się do tworzenia tożsamości grupowej. Z tej perspektywy przemoc otaczająca rytuały przejścia może być interpretowana jako rytuał przejścia dla samych studentów.

New Perspectives on Human Sacrifice and Postsacrificial Body Treatments in Ancient Maya Society: An Introduction.- Funerary or Nonfunerary? New References in Identifying Ancient Maya Sacrificial and Postsacrificial Behaviors from Human Assemblages.- The Creation and Sacrifice of Witches in Classic Maya Society.- Empowered and Disempowered During the Late to Terminal Classic Transition: Maya Burial and Termination Rituals in the Sibun Valley, Belize.- Posthumous Body Treatments and Ritual Meaning in the Classic Period Northern Peten: A Taphonomic Approach.- Human Sacrifice in Late Postclassic Maya Iconography and Texts.- Skeletons, Skulls, and Bones in the Art of Chichen Itza.- Sacrifice and Ritual Body Mutilation in Postclassical Maya Society: Taphonomy of the Human Remains from Chichen Itza's Cenote Sagrado.- Sacred Spaces and Human Funerary and Nonfunerary Placements in Champoton, Campeche, During the Postclassic Period.- Human Sacrificial Rites Among the Maya of Mayapan: A Bioarchaeological Perspective.- Nutrition, Lifestyle, and Social Status of Skeletal Remains from Nonfunerary and Problematical Contexts.- Victims of Sacrifice: Isotopic Evidence for Place of Origin.- The Bioarchaeology of Maya Sacrifice.

Textiles formed a major part of any ancient Mesoamerican economy. Based on ethnohistory and iconography, the Maya were great producers of cloth for both internal and external use. However, the archaeological identification of textile production is difficult in any tropical area because of issues of preservation. This paper examines the evidence for the production and distribution of cloth that is found in the pre-Columbian Maya area and then focuses on archaeological data relative to textiles from the ancient Maya city of Caracol, Belize. Archaeology at Caracol has been carried out annually from 1985 to the present and has resulted in the collection of data that permits insight into the economic production and social distribution of cloth at the site. This is accomplished through examining the contexts and distributions of spindle whorls, bone needles, bone pins and hairpins, bone awls, and limestone bars. All of these artifacts can be related to weaving, netting, or cloth in some way. Importantly, perforated ceramic disks are not included in this grouping because of contextual information from the archaeological record that these artifacts likely functioned as backings for ear assemblages. Spindle whorls are the artifacts most clearly associated with textile production and 57 of these have been recovered at Caracol, 38 of them in 20 different burials. Several of these interments are of high-status women placed in the most important architectural constructions at the site. The contextual placement of these burials stresses not only the link between women and weaving, but also the high status associated with such an activity, thus signaling the importance of cloth and spinning in ancient Maya society. The prevalence of female interments in the major ritual buildings at Caracol also reflects the importance of women to Maya social structure during the Classic period (a.d.250–900), pointing to difficulties in hieroglyphically based interpretations of ancient Maya social organization and suggesting that the traditional focus on males in the sociopolitical organization of the Classic Maya is incorrect.

Paleoclimate research in the Maya region of Mesoamerica provides compelling evidence of drought during key periods of cultural transition in Maya society. These include the transition from the Preclassic to the Classic, and from Classic to the Postclassic. Previous research emphasized a causal relationship between drought and cultural change, or so-called “collapse” in the Maya region. Recent advances in the range and precision of climate-sensitive proxies and the development of new archives have enabled quantitative reconstructions of past hydroclimate, as well as providing evidence of high impact, short-duration events, such as tropical cyclones. Simultaneously, archaeological research has unearthed widespread evidence of technologies used by the Maya to exert control over water resources in urban, rural, and agricultural settings. Evidence suggests that many of these water features were in use for multiple generations, possibly centuries, and many were constructed during the Terminal Preclassic and Terminal Classic periods. We suggest that, given the availability of new archaeological and paleoclimate records, these data can be combined to identify the full complexity of Maya adaptation to hydroclimate variability to emphasize adaptation and resilience to both water scarcity and over-abundance (e.g., flooding). Such syntheses, which can offer lessons for present-day efforts to grapple with regional climate change, will benefit from additional studies in data-poor zones of the Maya region, as well as public archiving of paleoclimate and archaeological data.

Worldwide, witch persecution occurs in times of trouble including untimelydeaths, drought, floods, famine, and disease (e.g., Bacigalupo, 2005; Krug et al.,2002; Sanders, 2003). Supplications are made to no avail. It is not the fault ofgods or ancestors; consequently, there is no other way to explain the disastrousevents other than to blame mortals (Evans-Pritchard, 1979). Someone has broughtmisfortune to the community, and they must pay, often violently. Witches,whether or not the term exists in any given society, can be defined as people whoare blamed and punished for perceived or real problems by community census.We explore this phenomenon in ancient Maya society after a brief discussion ofwitches and their treatment cross-culturally.Throughout the world, latent jealousies and fears are first expressed in rumorsand gossip that quickly can develop into witchcraft accusations “at times ofunusual or epidemic deaths” (Stewart and Strathern, 2004:7). In sixteenth andseventeenth century England, for example, the belief in witches “helped toaccount for the misfortune of daily life” (Thomas, 1970:54), as well as the unex-plainable. One had no recourse if it was God’s will; however, if a person believedthat a witch was at fault, they could do something about it (Thomas, 1970:68).In Central America, misfortune and disease often are attributed to witchcraft(Pitt-Rivers, 1970). The search for scapegoats then begins (Stewart and Strathern,2004; e.g., Krug et al., 2002:128).Who is accused of witchcraft and why? Sometimes it is people on the fringesof society or strangers; sometimes it is people who are too successful(Gluckman, 1965:59) or too miserly (p. 69). Un-neighborly behavior can leadto witchcraft accusations, and those accused typically were those who weredependent on others such as elderly women and widows and the indigent(Macfarlane, 1970; Thomas, 1970). Or sometimes it is healers or shamans; afterall, “. . . the same power(s) harnessed today in a healing ceremony may be used

is a brilliant book. In fact, it is probably one of the best books ever written about the ancient Maya and certainly one of the most important. . . . The quality and originality of [McAnany's] work have given us a whole new context for consideration and laid the groundwork for a level of discussion unfamiliar to Maya archaeology. I look forward to the exciting dialogs this book will generate. --Journal of Field Archaeology A much needed effort to pull together disparate information into a coherent model of ancient Maya society that, without ignoring the elite segment of society, gives due attention to people at the 'grass roots' without whose resources and labor the Maya elite could not have existed. It is thus a more holistic account of ancient Maya society than most. . . . This well-written book will repay reading by Mayanists and non-Mayanists alike. --American Anthropologist A well-developed interpretation of Maya social organization based on the effective integration of diverse sets of data. This volume is a useful addition to the expanding literature on the role of ideology in the development and maintenance of ancient social stratification and centralized authority. [It] also contributes fresh perspectives to discussions of the importance of nonelite strata in Mesoamerican society and related topics, such as the economics of the pre-Hispanic household and the archaeology of domestic structures. --Journal of Anthropological Research

This article describes a group for domestic violence survivors to help them move past a "liminal" state in which their social identity is characterized by being "victim" or "survivor" to one of "incorporation" defined by "thriving" and joy. Through the creation and use of healing rituals, blessings, poetry, art and music, the women in the group establish "communitas" and support each other in the work of self-reclamation and healing. The group, "Rites of Passage" is intended for women who have completed shelter-based crisis interventions, and uses a structured curriculum that integrates theoretical and philosophical concepts from anthropology, post-modernism, humanistic psychology, social work, and existentialism. Through the Rites of Passage group, women identify and traverse a healing trajectory to construct an identity founded on strength and fulfillment. Patterned after non-western sex-segregated rites of transition, those who go through the group celebrate its conclusion with a defining ritual that publically marks their change in identity and status.

This article attempts to make sense of the clinical psychology training experience, as a negotiation of personal and professional identity. It suggests that the training, particularly in the first year, is a rite of passage, in many respects similar to an initiation process. Rites of passage can be seen as processes marking shifts in status and social identity. In the case of training to be a psychologist this change involves the movement from lay to professional status. There are three phases involved in the transitional process. The first involves separation from other groups of postgraduate students, and also in different ways from friends and family through involvement in course material that is often both esoteric and confidential. The second phase is marked by a fluid and often confusing marginal state between student and professional identity. The third phase involves a reintegration back into society as a fully-fledged professional, once the training is over. This article focuses on the ambiguities of the marginal state as the primary identity position during training, and explores the implications of this, both for those being trained and for trainers.

In recent years, the Ivorian school system has been confronted with a troubling phenomenon that tarnishes the image of the educational system: the sexual tontine. This unhealthy and socially deviant practice has emerged among students, gaining momentum and gradually eroding moral values within schools. The sexual tontine is characterized by an organized behavior among groups of adolescents who regularly pool funds, estimated at around 2,000 FCFA per day per individual, into a common fund. In turn, each group member uses the collected money to pay for sexual relations with girls, typically in a hotel, a furnished residence, or any other location of their choice. Faced with this phenomenon, we undertook a study in several schools to better understand its mechanisms and implications. The objective of this research is to analyze whether the sexual tontines practiced among school-aged adolescents in Abidjan represent a new form of rite of passage or whether they constitute a manifestation of sexual perversion. This study is based on a sample of six adolescents, aged 16 to 18. To achieve this objective, a qualitative methodology was adopted, utilizing semi-structured interviews to gather the necessary data. These data were then analyzed using a content analysis approach, allowing us to identify the main trends and dynamics at play. The results of the study show that sexual tontines play a significant role as a rite of passage among school-aged adolescents in Abidjan. They serve as a mechanism for integration within social groups, facilitating the recognition and belonging of young people through participation in collective and ritualized sexual activities. By allowing adolescents to assert themselves and validate their status within the group, these practices reflect social integration processes and identity formation characteristic of traditional rites of passage. Keywords: Sexual Tontines, Adolescence, Rites Of Passage, Sexual Perversion

The present study reports on the cultural marks encountered in three (possibly four) skeletons retrieved from primary deposits of the Maya Classic period at Palenque, Calakmul, and Becán, Mexico. We propose that the patterns of cut and stab lesions encountered in the trunks of these individuals stem from perimortem violence that accompanied heart removal from below the rib cage rather than from postmortem evisceration. We confirm the feasibility of this procedure by experimental replication in modern corpses. The interpretation of those procedures synthesizes information obtained from osteological, archaeological, and iconographic sources and leads to a broader discussion concerning the techniques, impact, and meanings of human heart sacrifice and associated body manipulations in Classic period Maya society. Methodologically, we conclude that direct skeletal evidence of heart sacrifice can be rare, imposing a cautionary caveat on the current discussion of mortuary remains in the Maya area.