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Situated at the intersection of cultural heritage and local community, this book enlarges our understanding of the Indigenous peoples of southern México and northern Central America who became detached from “the ancient Maya” through colonialism, government actions, and early twentieth-century anthropological and archaeological research. Through grass-roots heritage programs, local communities are reconnecting with a much valorized but distant past. Maya Cultural Heritage explores how community programs conceived and implemented in a collaborative style are changing the relationship among, archaeological practice, the objects of archaeological study, and contemporary ethnolinguistic Mayan communities. Rather than simply describing Maya sites, McAnany concentrates on the dialogue nurtured by these participatory heritage programs, the new “heritage-scapes” they foster, and how the diverse Maya communities of today relate to those of the past.

Contributors to this landmark volume demonstrate that ancestor veneration was about much more than claiming property rights: the spirits of the dead were central to domestic disputes, displays of wealth, and power and status relationships. Case studies from China, Africa, Europe, and Mesoamerica use the evidence of art, architecture, ritual, and burial practices to explore the complex roles of ancestors in the past. Including a comprehensive overview of nearly two hundred years of anthropological research, The Archaeology of Ancestors reveals how and why societies remember and revere the dead. Through analyses of human remains, ritual deposits, and historical documents, contributors explain how ancestors were woven into the social fabric of the living.

Increasingly, economists have acknowledged that a major limitation to economic theory has been its failure to incorporate human values and beliefs as motivational factors. Conversely, the economic underpinnings of ritual practice are under-theorized and therefore not accessible to economists working on synthetic theories of human choice. This book addresses the problem by bringing together anthropologists with diverse backgrounds in the study of religion and economy to forge an analytical vocabulary that constitutes the building blocks of a theory of ritual economythe process of provisioning and consuming that materializes and substantiates worldview for managing meanings and shaping interpretations. The chapters in Part I explore how values and beliefs structure the dual processes of provisioning and consuming. Contributions to Part II consider how ritual and economic processes interlink to materialize and substantiate worldview. Chapters in Part III examine how people and institutions craft and assert worldview through ritual and economic action to manage meaning and shape interpretation. In Part IV, Jeremy Sabloff outlines the road ahead for developing the theory of ritual economy. By focusing on the intersection of cosmology and material transfers, the contributors push economic theory towards a more socially informed perspective.

Textiles have been a highly valued and central part of the politics of human societies across culture divides and over millennia. The economy of textiles provides insight into the fabric of social relations, local and global politics, and diverse ideologies. Textiles are a material element of society that fosters the study of continuities and disjunctions in the economic and social realities of past and present societies. From stick-loom weaving to transnational factories, the production of cloth and its transformation into clothing and other woven goods offers a way to study the linkages between economics and politics. The volume is oriented around a number of themes: textile production, textiles as trade goods, textiles as symbols, textiles in tourism, and textiles in the transnational processes. Textile Economies appeals to a broad range of scholars interested in the intersection of material culture, political economy, and globalization, such as archaeologists, cultural anthropologists, economists, museum curators, and historians.

Occupation of the lowlands by groups of Mayan-language speakers during the Archaic and Formative periods is poorly understood, partly because of a lack of sufficient data. This problem is exacerbated by the fact that early deposits often are discovered at the base of deep test excavations and, as such, yield a \"window\" to the past that is limited in terms of understanding settlement colonization, growth, and differentiation. The southern portion of the site of K'axob, which is located in northern Belize, contains substantial Middle and Late Formative period construction that is relatively accessible under Classic-period plaza surfaces. The results of seven large-scale excavations conducted in both large and small platform complexes are reported here. A suite of radiocarbon assays and ceramic analysis indicate initial construction at K'axob shortly after 800 B.C. Ceramic complexes presented here are typified by a diversity of Middle Formative pottery types (devoid of jar forms), followed by Late Formative pottery featuring a significant increase in vessel volume and local innovations in surface finish. At K'axob, Middle Formative domiciles were large and well equipped, and they featured a separate ancillary kitchen structure to the west. Around 200 B.C., settlement expanded from a nuclear Middle Formative core, and differentiation in residential construction became apparent. A significant aspect of Formative domestic architecture is the inclusion of human remains, which reveal longitudinal trends in the elaboration of mortuary ritual indicative of ancestor-linked social and economic differentiation. El poblamiento de las tierras bajas mayas, el origen de sus primeros habitantes y la fecha en que ocurrió dicho fenómeno son algunas de los diversos interrogantes a los que se enfrentan los investigadores cuando estudian el período formativo en esta zona. Los interrogantes aparecen por la falta de evidencia arqueológica y por el hecho de que los datos arqueológicos más tempranos proceden, generalmente, de pozos de sondeo, limitando nuestra visión de los primeros pobladores de estas tierras. En el norte de Belize, entre la parte sur de Pulltrouser Swamp y el Río Nuevo, existió un asentamiento de tamaño moderado, que hoy en día denominamos K'axob. Las excavaciones en este sitio dieron como resultado una imagen detallada de su ocupación a lo largo de casi dos milenios. Una serie de fechas de radiocarbono y la cronología cerámica proveen la evidencia necesaria para afirmar que la fundación de K'axob tuvo lugar hacia 800 a.C. La cronología existente permite abordar diferentes temas que van desde el análisis de los modelos que explican el origen de los primeros pobladores del norte de Belize, hasta el establecimiento de las diferencias temporales que se presentan en la arquitectura, la práctica ritual y la producción cerámica en este sitio durante el formativo medio y tardío. El análisis de la información recuperada revela que existió una aldea consolidada, con una población inmersa en los preceptos y tradiciones que conforman el mundo maya del período formativo.

Increasingly, economists have acknowledged that a major limitation to economic theory has been its failure to incorporate human values and beliefs as motivational factors. This book explores how values and beliefs structure the dual processes of provisioning and consuming.

Ongoing controversy over the identification of mesoamerican centers as the locus for specialized production of stone tools is addressed by reference to a consumer locality in the eastern Maya Lowlands. Lithic data from Pulltrouser Swamp are used to shed light on the production intensity and scale of a distribution system centered at Colha, Belize. Debitage analyses of technological attributes, use wear, and metric dimensions contrast two contexts of lithic procurement at Pulltrouser Swamp: direct procurement of raw material and indirect procurement of finished tools. Each procurement context results in debitage with different variable states. Characterization of the Colha chert lithic material at Pulltrouser Swamp as a consumer assemblage is supported further by the results of a discriminant analysis in which an experimental \"consumer\" assemblage is classified with the Colha chert. Such characterizations of lithic assemblages are more robust methodologically and more informative substantively than attempts at the quantification of production or usage rates. The implications of scalar differences in production systems are discussed.

The lithics from Pulltrouser Swamp, Belize provide the data for a study of intensive agriculture and exchange in the eastern Maya lowlands. Pulltrouser Swamp, located in an extensive wetland zone, is an important locale for the prehistoric raised field agricultural system that supported the dispersed Maya populations of the Classic period. The residential structures ringing Pulltrouser Swamp represent the interstitial settlement that is found between the spectacular elite centers--settlement that formed the backbone of Maya society. This study seeks to go beyond a mere classificatory treatment of Maya lithic technology in order to integrate technology with the subsistence base of society and a system of interpolity exchange. An inferential framework is constructed from the ethnographic literature pertinent to an organizational understanding of ancient Maya subsistence and exchange. The stone tools and debitage retrieved from archaeological contexts at Pulltrouser Swamp are evaluated in light of this information. An attribute analysis was performed on over 6000 stone tools and pieces of debitage. Temporal and contextual variables derived from ceramic lots and excavation contexts are utilized to place the lithics within a chronological and spatial frame of reference. Lithic attributes indicative of use wear, maintenance, tool recycling, and tool production are assessed for changes through time. Substantive results of this study suggest that agricultural intensification was achieved with relatively little change in the tool technology. Patterns of tool use-wear and breakage, however, do change correlative to changes in agricultural practices. The consumer role of Pulltrouser Swamp in an interpolity exchange network is suggested by the absence of debris generated by tool production. This information is contrasted with the evidence for specialized stone tool production at the nearby site of Colha. Attribute analyses point to a stable, small-scale sphere of economic interaction among Maya polities in the eastern lowlands. This study demonstrates the significant potential of lithic studies to contribute to our understanding of the structure of ancient Maya society, and the critical role played by technology and production in the evolution of civilization in the tropical lowlands of Mesoamerica.