Maya archaeology and the political and cultural identity of contemporary Maya in Guatemala

La colonización dejó en una posición desigual a las personas de ascendencia Maya comparada con las personas ladinas en los aspectos sociales, políticos, y culturales en Guatemala. Esta experiencia no es diferente de la de otras naciones indígenas en América Latina. Los personas Maya, así como otras naciones indígenas, tienen una historia de resistencia que ha continuado desarrollándose a medida que cada generación crea nuevas estrategias para superar su posición de desventaja. La arqueología puede ser usada para escribir una historia que provee beneficios esenciales o atribuye estereotipos perjudiciales a las comunidades Maya. Los/as arqueólogos/as que trabajan en Guatemala tienen el compromiso de ser más éticos/as con las comunidades en las que trabajan, particularmente en el campo de la interpretación y creación de teorías sobre la historia maya. Los Maya han sido afectados por los estudios realizados en arqueología y tienen und derecho inherente de forjar su propia identidad a través de la historia.

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Résumé Comparée aux hispanophones, la colonisation a laissé les Mayas dans une position inégale dans les domaines économiques, sociaux, politiques et culturels au Guatemala. Cette expérience n'est pas différente de celle des autres autochtones en Amérique latine. Comme ces autres groupes, les Mayas ont une histoire de résistance qui a poursuivi son développement alors que chaque génération a créé de nouvelles stratégies pour surpasser sa position désavantageuse. L'archéologie peut être utilisée pour écrire l'histoire procurant des bénéfices essentiels ou des stéréotypes négatifs des communautés mayas. Les archéologues qui pratiquent au Guatemala sont appelés à être plus éthiques à l'égard des descendants des communautés avec qui ils travaillent, en particulier dans le domaine de l'interprétation et de la création de théories au sujet de l'histoire maya. Les Mayas sont affectés par les connaissances produites en archéologie et ont le droit inhérent de forger leur propre identité à travers leur histoire.

     

At peace in the corn: Maya narratives and the dynamics of fieldwork in Guatemala

Between 1961 and 1996 civil war in Guatemala claimed the lives of an estimated 200,000 people, over 80% of whom (according to a United Nations Truth Commission) were Maya Indians. The experience of one Maya family, whose story is narrated, raises questions pertaining to continued insecurity, lack of justice, and uninvestigated crimes, the combined effects of which still haunt and charge community life throughout the countryside. Telling about the experience of one family also raises issues concerning the vicissitudes of representation and how fieldwork can, on occasion, yield unanticipated but rewarding returns.     

Tecolote,Guatemala: Archaeological Evidence for a Fortified Late Classic Maya Political Border

Abstract

Settlement pattern data in the lower Salt River valley of central Arizona, near Phoenix, have led to different models of Hohokam political community organization during the early Classic period (ca. A.D. 1150–1300). The “focal village” model posits political communities centered on a single large village with monumental architecture surrounded by smaller settlements. The “linear community” model envisions an elongated arrangement integrating populations distributed along the routes of irrigation canals. Each model has implications for the nature of cooperation within and between settlement clusters and the degree to which large-scale irrigation management influenced the development of Hohokam community organization. In this analysis, ceramic sourcing studies are used to outline networks of interaction to examine the different models. Our results provide some evidence for a crosscutting patchwork of geographically dispersed social groups which fits most comfortably within the linear community model.     

Queering the pitch: race,class, gender and nation in the Indo-Australian encounter

Recent cricket contests between Australia and India offer a fascinating theatre to examine issues of race, class, nation, and gender. I chart their protean character as they are performed and deployed in these encounters. Instead of exploring relations between already extant and singular entities called “India” or “Australia,” it might be more useful to see the performative practices of those situated at different loci of enunciation by which those categories are momentarily congealed and given meaning or content. While there is a surfeit of charged cricketing encounters between the two nations, I focus on two in this essay: (a) Rahul Dravid's speech at the annual Bradman Oration in 20111, and (b) what has come to be called ‘Monkeygate’ – a bitter and acrimonious cricket test match between India and Australia in 2007 played in Sydney.     

Nahua Patterns of Colonization in Maya Towns of Guatemala, 1524 to 1582: The Indigenous Records

This article seeks to further contribute to our understanding of the outcomes of earlier Nahua-Spanish alliances after Guatemala was pacified. The richly documented struggles of the Maya-Pok'omam communities around Lake Amatitlan in Guatemala between 1524 and 1580 reveal - in microcosm - the larger processes some of them stretching back into the pre-contact period that Mesoamerican scholars call ‘conquest-after-conquest.’ As this essay highlights, fifteen years after the initial phase of the Spanish conquest of Guatemala had ended, Nahua conquistadors from Central Mexico initiated their own colonization of Maya-Pok'omam towns, mobilizing both Nahua and Kaqchikel migrant groups to settle there. Within these Maya towns, the Nahua conquistadors impinged upon Maya economic assets, sharing them with their Dominican allies while maintaining political and social control over their local Maya subjects. Nahua economic and political encroachment of Maya assets finally brought about distinct and recognizable currents of Maya dissent against their foreign overlords, in parallel to the revival of local historical legacies of self-rule.     

Evidence for volcanic ash fall in the Maya Lowlands from a reservoir at Tikal,Guatemala

Powder X-ray diffraction and petrographic analyses of reservoir sediments from Tikal, Guatemala have identified significant quantities of decomposed volcanic ash in the form of smectite and euhedral bipyramidal quartz crystals. X-ray fluorescence trace element content analysis was used to eliminate distant Sahara-Sahel and Antilles sources. The Zr/Y and Ni/Cr ratios of reservoir sediment from Tikal are consistent with a source from Central American volcanism (e.g., Guatemalan and Salvadoran). AMS radiocarbon dating of the smectite and crystalline quartz-rich reservoir sediments show that volcanic ash fell during the Preclassic, Classic, and Postclassic Maya cultural periods. It may now be possible to develop an effective chronology of ash fall at Tikal and the greater Peten.     

Chemical composition of architectural plaster at the Classic Maya kingdom of Piedras Negras,Guatemala

Architectural plaster from elite masonry structures at the Classic Maya kingdom of Piedras Negras, Guatemala, is examined. Chemical composition is determined through X-ray fluorescence and compared statistically. Based on this sample, it was observed that any single masonry building was coated with plaster made from a single source of limestone and limestone-based aggregate, but that architectural plaster from different buildings across the site varied in chemical composition. It is concluded that this pattern is best accounted for by a model of rotational labor obligations to the state, with spatially distinct groups being responsible for manufacturing plaster for specific buildings.     

Making children,making chiefs: gender,power and ritual legitimacy

"This article explores indigenous notions of power and chiefly legitimacy among the Ihanzu, a relatively small Bantu-speaking community located in north central Tanzania. Particular attention is paid to local ideas and ideals of gender...in an effort to show the complex ways in which gender categories, when combined, are powerful and capable of effecting transformations of different sorts.... It is suggested that the strategic combination of the cultural categories ?male' and ?female' provides the underlying transformative model both for sexual reproduction and for rainmaking." (EXCERPT)     

Epidemiologists explain pellagra: gender,race, and political economy in the work of Edgar Sydenstricker

Between 1900 and 1940, at least 100,000 individuals in the southern United States died of pellagra, a dietary deficiency disease. Although half of these pellagra victims were African-American and more than two-thirds were women, contemporary observers paid little attention to these gender and racial differences in their analyses of disease. This article reviews the classic epidemiological studies of Joseph Goldberger and Edgar Sydenstricker, who argued that pellagra was deeply rooted in the political economy of cotton monoculture in the South. The methods that Sydenstricker brought to epidemiology from early work on political economy obscured the role of gender inequalities in pellagra, and his focus on economic underdevelopment led him to ignore the prominent role of African-Americans as pellagra's principal victims. Research methods and traditions, no less than more overt ideologies, played a role in maintaining the subordinate social position of women and African-Americans in the southern United States.     

Postclassic Maya slips and paints and their relationship to socio-political groups in El Petén,Guatemala

LA-ICP-MS analysis of the chemical composition of the exterior slips and red and black pigments used for painted decoration of the three Postclassic Maya slipped ceramic wares suggests that the Itzá and Kowoj used different pigments for exterior slips and decorative motifs. Additionally, different slips and paints were used depending on vessel form and decorative program (red, black, or red-and-black painting or incising). When examined with previous ceramic paste chemical analyses, the data aid in better understanding the changing socio-political alliances and dominance relations in central Petén at the eve of Spanish contact.     

Pottery politics: Late Classic Maya palace production at Motul de San José, Petén,Guatemala

Archeologists often rely heavily on stone monuments, architecture, settlement patterns, and written texts to reconstruct ancient political systems. In this paper we focus on the role of polychrome pottery as both a reflection of and critical component in the production of power relations. We present rare direct evidence of polychrome pottery production recovered from the Maya site of Motul de San José, the presumed Late Classic (ca. 600–900 AD) capital of the epigraphically-recognized Ik’ polity. Our contextual analysis of production debris and tools complement on-going polychrome vessel style and chemical analyses of Ik’ Style polychrome vessels to suggest that Motul de San José’s royal court was an important center in the manufacture of Ik’ Style polychrome pottery. These elaborate vessels indexed the political history, power, and networks of the Ik’ polity. By combining archeological, iconographic, and epigraphic data of polychrome pottery, we shed light on Motul de San José’s internal political-economic dynamics as well as its macro-political alliances and tensions with other polities.     

Establishing Ground: Representing gender and race in a mixed housing development

In this paper we explore the sociospatial transformation of the Columbia Point public housing project in Dorchester, Boston to Harbor Point, a mixed-income, multiethnic community. We examine gender, race, class and cultural representations of public housing generally, and of Columbia Point specifically, in order to understand the origin and significance of these representations for the physical and social designs of the new community. African-American women residents were and continue to be largely responsible for the transformation of the public housing project. We suggest how the combined representations of African-American women, the welfare system, single motherhood and public housing underlie media misperceptions of what the new Harbor Point is .     

Resisting mothers,making gender: teenage girls in the United States and the articulation of femininity

Much of the feminist literature on teenage girls in the west has tended to polarize around the issues of girls' gendered agency and victimization. In contrast, this article explores the ambiguous relationship between gender resistance and compliance. I argue that while girls clearly articulate their own agency, they do so through a reliance on gendered and heterosexual norms, identities, and categories. The article draws on examples from my research with girls in South Carolina, USA, in particular girls' narratives about their mothers. I suggest that girls situate their gendered practices and evaluate femininity in part via evaluations of their mothers' gender, sexual and nurturing practices. Mothers often stand in as representatives of normative and traditional femininity for the girls; yet girls do not realize that they reproduce, rather than resist, aspects of femininity, even as they criticize generational differences and their mothers' versions of feminine and gendered behaviors.     

Mapping race and gender in the academy: the experiences of women of colour faculty and graduate students in Britain,the US and Canada

This paper examines the experiences of women of colour in geography. An analysis of qualitative, open‐ended questionnaires with women of colour geography faculty and graduate students in North America and Britain suggests that policies and practices within geography departments continue to reflect a pervasive persistence of racialized and gendered inequities in the workplace. There has been relatively little application of theoretical work on race and gender to the minority experience within geography. Some strategies suggested to challenge racialized and gendered barriers that limit women of colour's full participation in geography include a proactive recruitment programme, diversification of the curriculum and development of mentoring.     

Ecology,equality and change: Mayan Indians in Guatemala

Douglas E. Brintnall. Revolt against the Dead: The Modernization of a Mayan Community in the Highlands of Guatemala. New York: Gordon and Breach, Science Publishers, Inc., 1979. xxiii + 199 pp. Maps, tables, photographs, appendices and references. $21.00.     

Spatiality,sweatshops and solidarity in Guatemala

Uneven development in Guatemala has been fuelled by international investment flows and a 1984 law that established a patchwork pattern of each factory as its own free-trade zone. The spatial and social flexibility of this form of labour regulation requires workers to be creative in defending their rights. Our paper explores the creative potential of transnational worker/consumer/student alliances, or mixed coalitions as we call them, to influence global production. We analyse one international solidarity campaign (1991-1999) focused on a shirt factory of Phillips-Van Huesen, the world's largest manufacturer of men's shirts. A co-ordinated strategy linking Guatemalan workers with the US-based anti-sweatshop movement led to the approval of the first collective bargaining agreement in the maquila sector in Guatemala, yet long-term results proved illusive. The factory shut down shortly after the contract was signed and production moved to lower-wage maquilas in the same city. The struggle at the Phillips-Van Huesen shirt factory illustrates the importance of critical geographical knowledge for labour organizing and solidarity politics.