Title

Changes In Maya Religious Worldview: Liminality And The Archaeological Record

Abstract

By focusing on Maya ritual symbolism found in the iconography and archaeology of the pre-contact New World, it is possible to isolate elements that significantly changed following the advent of the Spaniards. Among the aspects of Maya religion to be modified following contact were several key components of Maya worldviews-specifically, the symbolism and beliefs relating to life and death. Maya concepts of death were at odds with those stressed by the Catholic Church in the New World, and these indigenous belief systems were affected almost immediately upon contact-so much so that standard ethnohistoric references appear to reflect changes within a generation following the conquest of the Maya by the Spanish. However, other aspects of Maya religion remained or were transformed with less modification. The changes that occurred in Maya religion are most readily visible when iconographic and archaeological data are compared with historic and ethnographic information. Although both Maya and Spanish cultures believed in some form of upper and lower realms, the implementation of these concepts was quite different in each society. A Maya underworld existed beneath the ground surface and within or beneath bodies of water (especially the sea); Maya underworld symbolism related to watery creatures is common in Preclassic (900 B.C.-A.D. 250), Classic (A.D. 250-A.D.900), and Postclassic (A.D. 900-A.D. 1542) period iconography, as well as in archaeologically recovered caches and burials. However, such watery underworld symbolism is not common in historic or contemporary Maya death ritual, which is instead dominated by considerations and descriptions Diane Z. Chase and Arlen F. Chase of Christian-inspired heaven and hell, polar opposites that were at odds with traditional considerations of the Maya afterlife. The rapidity of the change involved in Maya religious concepts of death contrasts greatly with Maya symbols and belief systems that could be more easily incorporated into Western models. Indeed, certain aspects of contemporary and historic Maya ritual and worldviews appear to have closer ties with an ancient Maya past and can be related to the archaeological and iconographic data. This includes symbolism relating to four directions and the conjoined concept of center (e.g., Coe 1965; Freidel et al. 1993; Pugh 2001b; Rice 2004). The nuanced nature of this syncretism is apparent in considerations of continuity as well as disjunction (Watanabe 1990). Similar functions may also be achieved by different actions and symbols, as is the case with materially distinct Classic and Postclassic period caching practices (D. Chase 1988). Although religion is generally thought to be a conservative aspect of culture, changes and replacements in Maya concepts of death make sense in the context of the forced religious conversion of the Maya by sixteenth- And seventeenth-century Catholic priests (see also D. Chase and A. Chase 2001). Yet, it makes uncritical consideration of many historic texts, be they written in Spanish or Maya, problematic for two reasons: first, the Maya themselves were sometimes coerced into conforming (at least outwardly) to a new religious paradigm on pain of torture (Clendinnen 1982, 1987; Greenleaf 1994; Tedlock 1993); and, second, priests were actively attempting to identify evidence for prehispanic Christianity (Tozzer 1941:207) and, thus, misrepresented or misunderstood Maya religious symbols, instead translating them into their own frame of reference. Of further concern is the authenticity of Landa's Relacion de las cosas de Yucatan (Restall and Chuckiak 2002). Similarly, it is evident that Maya culture and religion also changed from the Contact period to the present day (Chance 1996; Chance and Taylor 1985); at no time were the Maya completely uniform in all aspects of culture. These findings underscore the difficulty in the simple application of analogies derived from contemporary or historic ritual practices to the interpretation of past behavior. © 2009 by University Press of Colorado. All rights reserved.

Publication Date

12-1-2009

Publication Title

Maya Worldviews at Conquest

Number of Pages

219-237

Document Type

Article; Book Chapter

Personal Identifier

scopus

Socpus ID

84862296767 (Scopus)

Source API URL

https://api.elsevier.com/content/abstract/scopus_id/84862296767

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