Ritual, Violence, and the Fall of the Classic Maya Kings

The idea and practice of sacrifice play a profound role in religion, ethics, and politics. This book explores the meaning and implications of sacrifice, developing a theory of sacrifice as an offering and examining the relationship between sacrifice, ritual, violence, and love. The book also looks at the place of self-sacrifice within ethical life and at the complex role of sacrifice as both a noble and destructive political ideal. In the religious domain, Halbertal argues, sacrifice is an offering, a gift given in the context of a hierarchical relationship. As such it is vulnerable to rejection, a trauma at the root of both ritual and violence. An offering is also an ambiguous gesture torn between a genuine expression of gratitude and love and an instrument of exchange, a tension that haunts the practice of sacrifice. In the moral and political domains, sacrifice is tied to the idea of self-transcendence, in which an individual sacrifices his or her self-interest for the sake of higher values and commitments. While self-sacrifice has great potential moral value, it can also be used to justify the most brutal acts. The book attempts to unravel the relationship between self-sacrifice and violence, arguing that misguided self-sacrifice is far more problematic than exaggerated self-love. Through the book's exploration of the positive and negative dimensions of self-sacrifice, it also addresses the role of past sacrifice in obligating future generations and in creating a bond for political associations, and considers the function of the modern state as a sacrificial community.

Download Full-text

The Power and Ideology of Artistic Creation: Elite Craft Specialists in Classic Maya Society

Current Anthropology ◽

10.2307/3596621 ◽

2001 ◽

Vol 42 (3) ◽

pp. 321 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Inomata

Keyword(s):

Classic Maya ◽

Artistic Creation

Download Full-text

BUILDING HIGH-PRECISION AMS 14C BAYESIAN MODELS FOR THE FORMATION OF PERI-ABANDONMENT DEPOSITS AT BAKING POT, BELIZE

Radiocarbon ◽

10.1017/rdc.2021.30 ◽

2021 ◽

pp. 1-26

Author(s):

Julie A Hoggarth ◽

Brendan J Culleton ◽

Jaime J Awe ◽

Christophe Helmke ◽

Sydney Lonaker ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Bayesian Models ◽

Ninth Century ◽

Eighth Century ◽

Classic Maya ◽

Faunal Remains ◽

Maya Lowlands ◽

Human Skeletal Remains ◽

Late Ninth Century ◽

Baking Pot ◽

Group B

ABSTRACT Deposits linked to abandonment have been widely recorded across the Maya lowlands, associated with the final activities occurring in ceremonial areas of Classic Maya centers. Various models have been applied to explain the activities that lie behind the formation of these contexts, including those linked to rapid abandonment (e.g., warfare) and others focused on more protracted events (termination rituals, and/or pilgrimages). Here, we assess Bayesian models for three chronological scenarios of varying tempo to explain the formation of peri-abandonment deposits at Baking Pot, Belize. Using stratigraphic information from these deposits, hieroglyphic dates recovered on artifacts, and direct dates on human skeletal remains and faunal remains from distinct layers in three deposits in Group B at Baking Pot, we identify multiple depositional events that spanned the eighth to ninth centuries AD. These results suggest that the processes associated with the breakdown of institutionalized rulership and its command of labor to construct and maintain ceremonial spaces were protracted at Baking Pot, with evidence for the final depositional activity dated to the mid-to-late ninth century. This interval of deposition was temporally distinct from the earlier deposition(s) in the eighth century. Together, these data offer a detailed view of the end of the Classic period at Baking Pot, in which the ceremonial spaces of the site slowly fell into disuse over a period of more than a century.

Download Full-text