[Aztlan] MAYA RUINS AT AGUATECA SHOW ELITE ENGAGED IN DOMESTIC CRAFT

[michael ruggeri]

InsideUF

Florida Museum-led study counters ideas about Mayan elite craftworks
Filed under Top Stories, Announcements on August 29, 2007.
GAINESVILLE, Fla. — A new Florida Museum of Natural History study  
shows ancient Maya political elites likely crafted their own bone and  
shell products for domestic use, which counters previously held  
beliefs that the group depended on domestic servants or lower classes  
for everyday household items such as sewing pins, spatulas and shell  
bowls.
The study in the Aug. 14 print edition of the journal Ancient  
Mesoamerica provides clues to ancient Maya society and offers new  
insight into how elite status groups used and controlled animal bone  
and shell resources, says lead author Kitty Emery, an environmental  
archaeologist at the Florida Museum on the University of Florida campus.
“It is extremely difficult for archaeologists to establish strong  
links between the artifacts we excavate and the specific people who  
made or used them, but the unique preservation at this site provided  
us a rare break,” Emery said. “Because the city was abandoned so  
rapidly we’ve been able to pinpoint, for the first time, exactly who  
was doing what with bone and shell products among the upper classes  
and rulers of the Maya world.”
The study included extensive analysis of more than 20,000 bone and  
shell craft items and the stone tools used to make them. Scientists  
excavated the artifacts from elite homes in the core of the medium- 
sized ancient Maya city of Aguateca, located in the Petén region of  
the lowlands of modern-day Guatemala.
Aguateca was one of the most politically important cities of the  
Petexbatún region. An invasion of the city in about 830 A.D. set in  
motion a series of events leading to its very unusual preservation.  
Despite stone-wall reinforcements around the region where the elite  
lived, the invasion was so sudden that the powerful ruling class fled  
for their lives. In their haste, they left belongings scattered in  
their homes.
“The invaders burned the homes and as the structures caved in and the  
walls collapsed, they encapsulated a snapshot of the elite’s daily  
activities,” Emery said. “Conditions for preservation are normally  
poor in these lowlands, so this is unique. This is the first time  
we’ve been able to link a specific status group with the actual stone  
tools used to make individual bone and shell products.”
Based on glyphs in ancient Maya writing and artistic scenes depicted  
on vases, most archaeologists accept that the Maya elite were likely  
involved at some level in luxury craftworks, such as body and  
clothing adornments. But Emery’s study is the first to assert they  
also were making everyday household bone and shell crafts for their  
own use — or that of the community, or their rulers — such as awls,  
needles, pins, disks, plaques, carved-bone segments, tubes, rasps,  
paintbrush holders, bone hooks and grinders.
The site was excavated between 1989 and 1996 by the Aguateca  
Archaeology Project, directed by Takeshi Inomata and Daniela Triadan  
of the University of Arizona. Emery analyzed the bone and shell items  
and their distributions between 1991 and 2004, in large part at the  
Florida Museum. Co-author Kazuo Aoyama of Ibaraki University in Japan  
analyzed the stone tools, and all the artifacts were returned to  
Guatemala.
Emery’s prior research at Dos Pilas, an ancient Maya community near  
Aguateca, produced detailed records of the stages of bone and shell  
craft production, which she used to interpret the remains excavated  
in Aguateca. Co-author Aoyama’s prior studies of tell-tale microwear  
patterns etched into stone tools from repeated use (such as cutting  
leather, skinning and butchering animals, or shaping stone, bone or  
shell) also aided their interpretation.
“Without this backdrop of comparative evidence, and without linking  
Aoyama’s previous research with mine, we wouldn’t have been able to  
interpret the Aguateca elite activities in such detail,” Emery said.  
“Critics may counter the elite could have had domestic servants or  
independent artisans doing these activities, but the weight of the  
cumulative contextual evidence points to crafts being produced at  
every level of the elite class. Even the king’s family was working on  
final-stage production of things like shell adornments and  
leatherworking.”
Excavation work at the site has produced no evidence that other parts  
of the city were attacked before its ultimate abandonment. This was  
typical of Maya warfare tactics, Emery explained.
“The ancient Maya saw cities as animate beings, and if you wanted to  
kill a city you went straight for its spirit, or its leaders,” she  
said.. “Once the leaders were dead, the political power of the city  
was defeated. They considered it unnecessary to kill the lower classes.”
The ancient Maya also considered residences and buildings as animate  
beings, and their spatial layouts often symbolically reflected the  
left-right dichotomy of the human body. Modern ethnography indicates  
that past and modern Maya cultures associate the left side of  
residences with women and the right side with men.
Emery’s team consistently excavated certain craft activities in  
right- and left-side auxiliary chambers adjacent to a central room,  
leading her to hypothesize that women were executing the early stages  
of bone and shell crafting. Evidence for final-stage crafting, such  
as nearly finished adornments, was found in chambers associated with  
men, Emery said.
This study is one component of Emery’s more extensive research at  
Aguateca and other sites in Guatemala and Honduras detailing the  
courtly and humble lives of the ancient Maya throughout the Classic  
Maya time period.
She currently is tracing pathways of how animal products such as  
meat, bone, and shell entered Maya communities, how they were  
circulated and who controlled their production and distribution.  
Answers to these questions will help Emery and other scientists  
better gauge human impact to the lowland Maya environment, including  
effects on animals from hunting.






Mike Ruggeri's Ancient America and Mesoamerica News and Links
http://community-2.webtv.net/Topiltzin-2091/MIKERUGGERISANCIENT/ 
index.html

Mike Ruggeri's Maya Archaeology News and Links
http://community-2.webtv.net/Topiltzin-2091/MIkeRuggerisMaya/index.html

Mike Ruggeri's The Ancient Americas Blog
http://web.mac.com/michaelruggeri

Mike Ruggeri's Casas Grandes and Turquoise Road
http://tinyurl.com/3bbhdf

Mike Ruggeri's The Olmec World
http://tinyurl.com/2nknjf

Mike Ruggeri's Teotihuacan; City of the Gods
http://tinyurl.com/2nrs9d

Mike Ruggeri's Mesoamerica after the fall of Teotihuacan
http://tinyurl.com/2xhvwk

Mike Ruggeri's Zapotec World
http://tinyurl.com/2n8ndy

Mike Ruggeri's Ancient West Mexico from the Pre-Classic to the Tarascans
http://tinyurl.com/32uo5m

Mike Ruggeri's Aztec and Toltec World
http://tinyurl.com/yqypej

Mike Ruggeri's Mississippians and Mound Builders including the Adena  
and Hopewell
http://tinyurl.com/276d8z