The Role of Maize and the Theoretical Approaches of Archaeology to the Food Resources in the Ancient Maya Culture

Abstract

Several theoretical approaches exist for the study of ancient Maya cultures. In the beginning, only limited information was available for these cultures and the early portrayals were greatly influenced by European concepts of antiquity. After this period of Early Maya archaeology, however, the newly-developed processual archaeology was applied. Processualist theory focused on understanding the process of cultural change and relating it to environmental adaptation. Soon after its inception, criticism of this approach led to the emergence of post-processual archaeology, which stressed the importance of pre-Columbian Maya symbolism. In this case, the popularity of post-processualism was spearheaded by the decipherment of Maya glyphs and new information supporting cultural continuities between ancient and past Maya groups.Problems related to both approaches are well exemplified by the meaning of maize in the ancient Maya culture. Processual archaeology treats maize as merely a food source, while post-processualism regards maize as one of the most important sym-bols of the ancient Maya, a plant with a special status. Thus, research on ancient Maya subsistence and the meaning of maize in ancient belief systems have been based on interpretations that were constructed from a single perspective. However, to fully understand the role of maize in the Maya culture, we must integrate and apply different perspectives, multidisciplinary appro-aches and methodological dialectics. It is postulated that, in the future, past approaches will be complimented by newly retrieved information thanks to a new paradigm called symmetric anthropology.