Materialized Cosmology among Ancient Maya Commoners.

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158 Journal of Social Archaeology 10(1)To summarize, even though SC-18 and SC-85 are relatively small houses,their construction histories are dense with symbolism. Deposits at SC-78and SC-3 show that all Maya practiced dedication, funerary and terminationrites; the differences lie in the quality, quantity, and diversity of offerings(Lucero, 2006). We exposed several color-coded aligned clusters withpartial, complete or rimless vessels, inverted and upright ones, some poorlyfired vessels, and heirloom fragments. Beyond the halved and quarteredvessels, we found several sherd clusters stacked in layers of three. Thequadripartite placement of the burned and smashed inverted vessels showshow commoners created their own universe in the home. The penetrationof the earth or living surface not only served as a repository for cacheditems and deceased family members, but opened a portal into anotherworld.■ DISCUSSIONAs interpreter, I focus on what artifacts’ color, arrangement, and associationwith other artifacts signify. These structured deposits were embedded indaily living and ‘. . . one of the things we engage when we talk about structureddeposits or ritual deposition is a moment or moments of more explicitdiscourse, for which the material deposits became a continued touchstone’(Joyce, 2008: 35). This was the case for the Maya.Creating their universe did not stop at the walls, roof, support posts, andfloors, but encompassed objects used or placed within their homes. Thus, inevaluating depositional practices, we need to keep in mind two things: 1)placement was important and related to both aesthetic and cosmologicalissues; and 2) once placed and buried, the objects, whole or broken,disappeared from sight but not memory. The only time the Maya would seethem again was when they dug through floors to inter the deceased (e.g.Burials 7 and 11) and de-animated things. By doing so, they rewrote orrevised history to highlight recent events, especially since funerary riteswere followed by termination rites and the building of a new house overthe old – requiring its own dedication caches and cosmological designation.They updated history; the floor underneath their feet thus enfolded theirfamily story.The Maya used ‘transformative technologies’ (Jones, 2002), whereby theyinteracted with charged elements to manufacture things of a particularshape and color; their creation of vessels, just like the building of theirhouses, was a means for them to play a creator role in manufacturing itemsfor their domestic universe. I expand this concept to encompass the transformativequalities of placement – how the deposition of things createdmore than a home, but rather, their place in the cosmos, their own planeDownloaded from http://jsa.sagepub.com at UNIV OF ILLINOIS URBANA on March 28, 2010
LuceroMaterialized cosmology159with which to reach ancestors and gods (Benson, 1985). Basically, they livedwithin a universe of their own making (Ashmore, 1991; Hanks, 1990: 297–9;Vogt, 1993: 58).All contexts included notched obsidian blade fragments, which may haveserved as smaller, commoner versions of eccentrics, or perhaps were deanimatedin this manner (Lucero, 2006: 111). Other common artifacts wereshell, which was linked to water, life and fertility, and groundstone, whichserved as the main tool for preparing maize as food for people – and thegods.Clearly the visual senses mattered (Houston and Taube, 2000). The visual‘killing’ of things and buildings was part of the de-animation process. In thissense, incantations and the burning of incense were inadequate in and ofthemselves for de-animation (see also Vogt, 1993: 187, 205). The visualdisfigurement or disarming – the burning, smashing, and final placement –would have been a sight to behold and remember. The face sherd at SC-78was de-animated twice; first the Maya broke the vessel in such a way as topreserve the face, then placed it with its face away from viewers.Cached vessels often are inverted, over human remains, a living surface,or another vessel lip-to-lip. Inverted vessels, as Pollard (2008: 57) suggests,could represent ‘a process of negation, or . . . intended to keep somethingin, perhaps dangerous essences or supernatural agencies . . .’. Uprightvessels could have contained organic materials that did not preserve in thehumid tropics. Inverted vessels thus represented death or the end ofsomething, whereas upright vessels containing living matter representedsustenance or offerings to supernatural protectors. This interpretationwould explain why vessels in burial contexts are often inverted.While some deposits lack red wares, perhaps the use of orange ones indicatesthat the Maya did not conceptually distinguish orange and red, just asthey did not distinguish green and blue (Houston et al., 2006: 25). Red andorange slipped flared bowls or plates are commonly found as lip-to-lip offerings(Guderjan, 2004). Red’s association with east could signify the kinds ofofferings vessels contained – items likely having to do with fecundity andprosperity. Burning blackens and smokes; the latter rises to the gods, andwhat remains sustains the underworld. The same could be said for blackslipped jars, even though they are noticeably few in number and lacking inburials altogether; perhaps the Maya only wanted to use colors in the homethat were associated with the realm of the living. For instance, one depositincluded 10 clusters (stratum 115, SC-85) with green (serpentine disk) andwhite (stone) in the center, and orange and black elsewhere (burned andunburned broken and largely rimless vessels). If we attempt a translation,green represents the center of the universe, white rain, orange sunrise andlife, and black death. While yellow (sun) is not represented, maize is by thepresence of the metate fragment. These items in place became part of thefamily’s lived experience.Downloaded from http://jsa.sagepub.com at UNIV OF ILLINOIS URBANA on March 28, 2010
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