[Aztlan] Day of the Dead - Maya Style

[Clifford T. Brown]

> The reporter is right that the origins are murky.  The
> Ancient Maya of the northern lowlands buried their
> dead beneath the house floors, rarely in cemeteries.
> Villa Rojas documented the forced change from house
> burials to graveyard burials in Q. Roo - enforced by
> the Catholic priests.

> However, the practice of secondary burial (exhuming
> the bones of a family member and re-interring them in
> an ossuary or other religious deposit), can be traced
> back much further in both the Maya and Spanish
> Catholic traditions.

There was an M.A. thesis from Mississippi State written some years ago in
which it was argued--fairly convincingly, I thought--that the practice of
exhumation and the use of ossuaries went back to the Romans.

Cliff

Clifford T. Brown
Assistant Professor
Florida Atlantic University
777 Glades Road
Boca Raton, FL 33431
(561) 297-3232
ctbrown at fau.edu