Classic Maya Temples, Politics, and the Voice of the People

2007 ◽  
Vol 18 (4) ◽  
pp. 407-427 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lisa J. Lucero

Temples provide sanctuary, a home for the gods, a place to worship, a stage for ceremonies, a depository for offerings, and a place to redistribute goods. Finally, temples provide an arena for political competition. The role of Maya temples, however, is not so clear. Inscriptions, when present, detail who built some temples, but not if nonroyals built them, if they were built for specific gods, and why the Maya built so many. The presence of several temples in any given center might indicate that various groups built them and that they served as arenas to compete for status, prestige, and power. If this were the case, then people may have had a choice at which temple to worship and support. To explore the politics of temple construction, I compare temple size, location, construction patterns, and ritual deposits at temples at the secondary center of Yalbac, Central Belize. Preliminary results from temple looters' trenches have exciting implications regarding temple histories in the southern Maya Lowlands during the Late Classic period (ca. A.D. 550-850).

2003 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
pp. 179-191 ◽  
Author(s):  
Armando Anaya Hernández ◽  
Stanley P. Guenter ◽  
Marc U. Zender

AbstractThe ancient Maya hieroglyphic inscriptions of the upper Usumacinta region record an intensive interaction that took place among its regional capitals. The precise geographic locations of some of these sites are presently unknown. Through the application of the Gravity Model within the framework of Geographic Information Systems (GIS), we present the probable locations and possible territorial extents of a few of these: Sak Tz’i’, Hix-Witz, and the “Knot-Site.” On this occasion, however, we concentrate our discussion on the role that the kingdom of Sak Tz’i’ played in the geopolitical scenario of the region. It is our belief that this case study constitutes a good example of how, through a conjunctive approach that integrates the archaeological with the epigraphic data, GIS can represent an excellent analytical tool to approach archaeological issues such as the political organization of the Maya Lowlands during the Late Classic period.


Author(s):  
Marcello A. Canuto ◽  
Tomás Barrientos Q.

Chapter 9 explores the political landscape of the Late Classic Kaanul kingdom. Marcello A. Canuto and Tomás Barrientos Q. consider the role of secondary centers in the geopolitical landscape of the lowlands during the Late Classic period, using La Corona, Guatemala as a case study. In Chapter 9, Canuto and Barrientos Q. demonstrate that the relationship between the Kaanul hegemony and La Corona was much more complicated than simple political alliance. Kaanul’s complex interaction with its secondary center reveals some of the tools it used to create a monumental political landscape, including, in the case of La Corona, manipulating the local power structure, the community’s social organization, and even its sacred history.


Author(s):  
Mariya Aleksandrovna Akimenkova

The article shows that in career development, the use of acting techniques opens up new opportunities. The author traces the development of the Russian acting school, created by K.S. Stanislavsky and later revised and supplemented by his students, in the modern socio-economic situation. The article demonstrates that despite the fact that for many years this school was aimed exclusively at educating and training people who want to connect their lives with the theater, it had a significant impact on amateurs as well. Passion for the performing arts was traced among people of a wide variety of professions, which contributed to the creation of numerous amateur theaters. This tendency was especially evident in educational institutions. Pupils and students under the guidance of an experienced director tried to take steps in the stage space, received grateful responses, but continued to be content with the role of an amateur actor, without encroaching on the laurels of a professional. Nevertheless, after that, their main activity, regardless of the direction, moved to a completely different level. Without any psychotherapeutic interventions, the attitude to oneself, to the people around, and to situations changed, the speech apparatus and the timbre of the voice were transformed, phobias and depressive tendencies disappeared. As a result, participants in amateur theaters acquired a new circle of friends and promotions, or they radically changed their field of activity, opening completely new prospects for themselves. The article examines these possibilities in the framework of the modern situation, when the entire range of theater and acting means may be in demand by representatives of other professions.


Antiquity ◽  
1980 ◽  
Vol 54 (212) ◽  
pp. 206-214 ◽  
Author(s):  
R. E. W. Adams

The recent radar mapping discovery of widely distributed patterns of intensive agriculture in the southern Maya lowlands provides new perspectives on classic Maya civilization. Swamps seem to have been drained, modified, and intensively cultivated in a large number of zones. The largest sites of Maya civilization are located on the edges of swamps. By combining radar data with topographic information, it is possible to suggest the reasons for the choice of urban locations. With the addition of patterns elicited from rank-ordering of Maya cities, it is also possible to suggest more accurate means of defining Classic period Maya polities.


1984 ◽  
Vol 49 (4) ◽  
pp. 815-820 ◽  
Author(s):  
Norman Hammond ◽  
Mary D. Neivens ◽  
Garman Harbottle

Forty-nine obsidian artifacts from a Classic period residential group at Nohmul, northern Belize, have been analyzed by neutron activation analysis. The majority of the samples originated from Ixtepeque, and the remainder from El Chayal. Increasing prominence of the Ixtepeque source from the Late Classic into the Terminal Classic (i.e., before and after ca. A.D. 800) suggests greater use of a coastal distribution route known to have originated in the Formative and to have remained in use through the colonial period.


2005 ◽  
Vol 16 (2) ◽  
pp. 291-304 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kazuo Aoyama

To provide some insights into the nature and role of warfare in the rise, development, and decline of Classic Maya civilization, this article discusses spear, dart, and arrow points used by the Classic Maya elites at the rapidly abandoned fortified city of Aguateca, Guatemala, and their temporal and spatial distribution patterns in and around Copan, Honduras. Both the royal family and elite scribes/artists at Aguateca used spear and dart points for intergroup human conflict as well as for artistic and craft production under enemy threat. An important implication is that the ruler and elite scribes/artists were also warriors. The unusually high concentrations of identifiable weaponry at the Early Classic hilltop center of Cerro de las Mesas as well as the Acropolis and other Late Classic locations in the Copan Valley, along with other lines of evidence, indicate that warfare was critical in the development and downfall of Classic Maya civilization at Copan.


1976 ◽  
Vol 41 (4) ◽  
pp. 430-448 ◽  
Author(s):  
David F. Potter

Analysis of the style of architecture and related sculpture, contemporaneous with part of the Late Classic period, prevalent in what have traditionally been designated as the Rio Bee and Chenes regions of the Maya lowlands, suggests the advisability of reconsideration of these regional designations. The Rio Bee and Chenes styles cannot readily be differentiated either in time or space and are, therefore, appropriately no more than substyles in a wider Central Yucatan regional style. In this style, internal distinctions are markedly less than those between other regional styles of the Maya lowlands. Further, on the basis of these same architectural and sculptural considerations, the Central Yucatan style is more appropriately the first phase of the Florescent period of Yucatan than the middle of the Late Classic period of the Peten with which it is contemporaneous.


2001 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 149-166 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kevin J. Johnston ◽  
Andrew J. Breckenridge ◽  
Barbara C. Hansen

Magnetic, palynological, and paleoecological data indicate that in the Río de la Pasión drainage, one of the most thoroughly investigated areas of the southern Maya lowlands, a refugee population remained in the Laguna Las Pozas basin long after the Classic Maya collapse and the Terminal Classic period, previously identified by archaeologists as eras of near-total regional abandonment. During the Early Postclassic period, ca. A. D. 900 to 1200, agriculturalists colonized and deforested the Laguna Las Pozas basin for agriculture while adjacent, abandoned terrain was undergoing reforestation. After discussing the archaeological utility of magnetic analyses, we conclude that following the Maya collapse, some refugee populations migrated to geographically marginal non-degraded landscapes within the southern lowlands not previously occupied by the Classic Maya.


2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 8-12
Author(s):  
N. Amutha Priya ◽  
S. Sahaya Sathesh Raj ◽  
K. Siva ◽  
R. Vetha Jebarson ◽  
P. Vignesh

Visual impairment burdens the people heavily in today’s fast-moving culture. Although there are several measures for this impairment, many people skip such chances in fear of their economic condition. In view of helping those people, a sophisticated stick is designed using sensors like ultrasonic sensor, IR sensor and Arduino ICs. Electronically designed walking stick helps to trace the locations using GPS module and to avoid collisions through detection of objects at a certain range of distance from the person in all directions. Sensor placed beneath the bottom of the stick enables the identification of pits/hindrances on the ground. The visually impaired person will be alerted with a voice message generated using the voice recorder which records the response of all the sensors operating in different tracks. In this paper, GSM and sensors together have initiated the role of smart walking stick in the life of several human kinds.


Author(s):  
Amy R. Michael ◽  
Gabriel D. Wrobel ◽  
Jack Biggs

Bioarchaeology frequently investigates dental health in burial populations to make inferences about mortuary variability within and between ancient groups. In this chapter, micro- and macroscopic dental defects were examined in a series of ancient Maya mortuary cave and rockshelter burials in Central Belize. The nature of mortuary cave ritual use and funerary performance in the Late Classic is widely debated in the literature. This study utilizes two analytical approaches, mortuary practice and paleopathology, to better understand mortuary variability between two site types that may be distinguished by social status in life. Ethnohistoric accounts focused on mortuary activities in the Late Classic period have described sacrificial victims as individuals originating outside of the elite population. To test these accounts, this study compares the dental health data of individuals from non-elite (rockshelter) populations to elite (cave) burial contexts.


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