The next scheduled meeting will be held Saturday, October 10 at 1:30 pm Eastern Daylight Time (EDT). The speaker will be Dr Johann Begel. He will give a talk entitled “The Emergence, Diffusion, and Codification of Maya Ritual Traditions.”
The earliest evidence of Maya rituals dates back to the very beginnings of sedentary settlement, as well as to the construction of vast ritual platforms as early as the Middle Preclassic (at Aguada Fénix and Ceibal, for example, from around 900 BCE). These earliest “ritual deposits” were clearly inspired by Olmec traditions, but the Maya very quickly began to innovate and distinguish themselves, eventually developing their own ritual liturgies. An explosion in the diversity of ritual practices occurred during the Early Classic (ca. 200–600 CE), probably under the impetus of emerging theocratic dynasties. Gradually, a common repertoire of caches, sacrificial deposits, termination rituals, and pyric ceremonies took shape and spread throughout the Maya area. The same ritual protocols can be observed, as can recurring associations of artifacts and materials (Ritual Complexes), sometimes with local variations.
At the same time, however, most Maya city-states also developed their own traditions and experimented with new formulas. Some of these took root and became established as local Ritual Complexes, while others apparently failed to achieve the desired results or to convince practitioners of their efficacy, surviving only as unique, non-repeated deposits. These rituals, which combined offerings to non-human entities with agentive devices—where a deposit was expected to produce a particular effect without the mediation of a supernatural being—still find echoes today in the ceremonies practiced by Maya communities throughout the region.
Johann Begel obtained his PhD in Archaeology from Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne University, specializing in ritual deposits in the Maya region and Mesoamerica. He is involved in the Proyecto Plaza Este de Tikal (Penn Museum) and the Guatemalan PACUNAM LiDAR Initiative for the Naachtun region. He is also consulting scholar at the Penn Museum of Philadelphia. As part of his current postdoctoral research at the Instituto de Investigaciones Estéticas at the UNAM México, his other research topic concerns Jean-Frédéric Waldeck’s expedition diaries written during his trip in Palenque and Yucatán (1832-1836).
The next meeting will be online via Zoom. To join the meeting, click here. The Meeting ID is 380 468 5493.