Publisher Summary This chapter describes a series of arguments and counterarguments through which the ambivalence about analogy noted by recent commentators took definite shape. The chapter focuses on an increasingly acute concern that analogy seems to be both indispensible to interpretation and always potentially misleading. At a more fundamental level, these debates can be seen to express a fundamental dilemma that archaeologists confront whenever they seriously undertake to use their data as evidence of the cultural past, namely, that any such broadening of the horizons of inquiry seems to be accomplished only at the cost of compromising actual or potential methodological rigor. Each of the critical reactions against analogy and each of the ameliorating responses represent an attempt to come to grips with this dilemma. Each either endorses one of the methodological options it defines, accepting that research is unavoidably limited or unavoidably speculative, or rejects these options and attempts to show how one or another of the premises yielding the dilemma may be amended and the dilemma itself escaped.

The reaction against analogy

Skywatchers of Ancient Mexico

For nearly a century, scholars have used astronomical evidence to explain the Lowland Maya architectural type known as “E-Groups” as solar observatories and, by extension, as locations for rituals related to solar and agricultural cycles. This article departs from the usual focus on the observational properties of E-Groups and places them in the context of early Maya monumentality during the Middle Preclassic period. Specifically, E-Groups are seen as the earliest monumental social spaces in the Maya Lowlands, with multifaceted functions and placements that indicate a shared social map of the landscape. Geographic information systems viewshed analysis of Middle Preclassic E-Group sites demonstrates that populations constructed E-Groups in places that maximized visibility of the nearby landscape. Viewsheds conducted at sites with Middle Preclassic E-Groups in the central Maya Lowlands suggest that the large plazas and similar monumental architecture represent the centers of comparable, mutually visible communities. Settlers founding these communities consciously created distance from neighboring monumental centers, perhaps as means of defining and buttressing group identity and undergirding spatial claims to political authority. Recent archaeological evidence affords clues that such spaces were civic, allowing architectural settings for social gatherings and access to resources.

Regroup On “E-Groups”: Monumentality and Early Centers in the Middle Preclassic Maya Lowlands

This paper focuses on the discoveries of the last decade in Maya archaeology, and assesses their impact on previous models and synthetic frameworks. Although the bibliography includes 700 items published during the last 10 years, it is not exhaustive; on the contrary, a frustratingly large number of discoveries had to be omitted. Two areas exploding with new research are (1) the elicitation of a greater variety of data from hieroglyphic texts, and (2) a series of chemical and biological breakthroughs in the analysis of human burials. The former make it easier to assess the role of elite actors or “agents” in processes of sociopolitical change. The latter hold out the hope of documenting warfare (through skeletal trauma), migration (by tracing tooth enamel isotopes to ground water), status or gender differences in diet (through bone chemistry), and biological connections of individuals to each other and to earlier populations (through DNA). By combining these new data, we are on our way to integrating humanism and science, and to treating Maya polities as case studies in primary or secondary state formation.

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Recent Advances in Maya Archaeology

In this study, I develop a theory of landscape archaeology that incorporates the concept of "animism" as a cognitive approach. Current trends in anthropology are placing greater emphasis on indigenous perspectives, and in recent decades animism has seen a resurgence in anthropological theory. As a means of relating in (not to) one's world, animism is a mode of thought that has direct bearing on landscape archaeology. Yet, Americanist archaeologists have been slow to incorporate this concept as a component of landscape theory. I consider animism and Nurit Bird-David's (1999) theory of "relatedness" and how such perspectives might be expressed archaeologically in Mesoamerica. I examine the distribution of marine shells and cave formations that appear incorporated as architectural elements on ancient Maya circular shrine architecture. More than just "symbols" of sacred geography, I suggest these materials represent living entities that animate shrines through their ongoing relationships with human and other-than-human agents in the world. (Maya architecture, animism, relational ontology, landscape archaeology, agency)

Architecture as animate landscape: circular shrines in the ancient Maya lowlands.

Round structures are considered a rarity in Maya architecture. Four late Middle Preclassic period (650-300 B.C.) round structures excavated at the Maya site of Cahal Pech demonstrate that this was a common architectural form for the Preclassic Maya of the upper Belize River Valley. These open platforms are described, and compared to similar forms in the Belize Valley and elsewhere. An interpretation of their significance is offered that uses information from artifacts, burials, and ethnohistory as well as analogy with round structures in other parts of the world. We suggest that these small round platforms were used for performance related to their role as burial or ancestor shrines.

Preclassic round structures of the Upper Belize River Valley

Elaborate human effigy censers are widely distributed at sites across the Maya lowlands in the Late Postclassic period (ca. 1250-1540 AD). These censers represent people dressed in costumes, combining martial and supernatural elements. They may have been broken at various sites as part of rituals associated with pilgrimage, but details of their production, movement across the landscape, and meaning remain unclear. A stylistically varied assemblage of fragmented censers of this type has been recovered from Lamanai, Belize, and has been subjected to detailed stylistic, iconographic, and petrographic examination. The results of this study have revealed a higher level of variability in visual and compositional characteristics than has been recognised previously, demonstrating connections to both local and foreign producers, and to several geographically distant production localities. These results have important implications for the current understanding of the nature and meaning of these vessels, specifically as concerns associated patterns of production and deposition. A central focus of our paper is to discuss methodological issues relating to the integration of extensive data sets characterising compositional and stylistic/iconographic attributes, including the interplay of variability in technological and provenance characteristics and style. We also explore the significance of such integrated approaches to understanding Maya interregional interaction just prior to the Spanish conquest.

50 left feet: The manufacture and meaning of effigy censers from Lamanai, Belize

What are we to make of Apocalypto ? The actors are riveting, and the action engages the audience nonstop, which is a tribute to Mel Gibson's directorial talents. Gibson's choice of Yucatec for the dialogue is also effective in drawing viewers into the film's world. The violence is nonstop, which has offended some viewers, but even if Apocalypto is ultimately classified as just another blood-filled Hollywood chase film, the larger issue for us is its significance in influencing popular perceptions of the Maya. The action starts, appropriately, in a cornfield, but quickly moves to dense bush during a tapir hunt (an odd choice, since tapir is rarely found in middens). The hunters return to a "village" that is about as Maya as the shacks of ice fishermen in northern Ontario. No house platforms, no garden plots, no corn, no woven cotton clothing (except for what look like sacks), no looms, no processing areas, no fruit trees. The Classic southern lowland Maya world was one of the most orderly and densely populated preindustrial landscapes on earth. So who are these people? They seem more Yanomamo than Maya. We gather that Gibson's intent is to present Rousseau's noble savages living in harmony with the forest and with each other in a state of (very) rustic simplicity. But even small Maya settlements were much more architecturally substantial, socially complex, and of course agricultural.

James J. Aimers

Papers

Preclassic round structures of the Upper Belize River Valley

50 left feet: The manufacture and meaning of effigy censers from Lamanai, Belize

Noble Savages Versus Savage Nobles: Gibson’s Apocalyptic View of the Maya. Apocalypto. Mel Gibson, director. Touchstone Pictures, 2006.

Type-Variety on Trial