Wendy Ashmore

Archaeologies of landscape : contemporary perspectives

1. Archaeological Landscapes: Constructed, Conceptualized, Ideational: A. Bernard Knapp and Wendy Ashmore. Part I: Ethnographic and Historical Cases:. 2. Identifying Ancient Sacred Landscapes in Australia: From Physical to Social: Paul S. C. Tacon. 3. Creating Social Identity in the Landscape: Tidewater, Virginia 1600--1750: Lisa Kealhofer. 4. Conceptual Landscapes in the Egyptian Nile Valley: Janet E. Richards. 5. Buddhist Landscapes in East Asia: Gina L. Barnes. 6. Mountains, Caves, Water: Ideational Landscapes of the Ancient Maya: James E. Brady and Wendy Ashmore. Part II: Protohistoric / Ethnohistoric Cases:. 7. The Inca Cognition of Landscape: Archaeology, Ethnohistory, and the Aesthetic of Alterity: Maarten van de Guchte. 8. The Ideology of Settlement: Ancestral Keres Landscapes in the Northern Rio Grande: James E. Snead and Robert W. Preucel. Part III: Prehistoric Cases:. 9. Centering the Ancestors: Cemeteries, Mounds and Sacred Landscapes of the Ancient North American Midcontinent: Jane E. Buikstra and Douglas K. Charles. 10. Ideational and Industrial Landscape of Prehistoric Cyprus: A. Bernard Knapp. 11. The Mythical Landscapes of the British Iron Age: John C. Barrett. Part IV: Commentaries:. 12. Sacred Landscapes: Constructed and Conceptualized: Carole L. Crumley. 13. Exploring Everyday Places and Cosmologies: Peter van Dommelen. Index.

Site-Planning Principles and Concepts of Directionality among the Ancient Maya

Many societies use architecture for symbolic expression, and often buildings or other constructions constitute maps of a cultures worldview. Archaeological identification of such ideational expressions is receiving renewed attention, in the Maya area as in many other regions. Excavations in 1988-1989 in Groups 8L-10 through 8L-12, Copan, Honduras, were designed to examine a particular model of ancient Maya site planning and spatial organization, in which the principles of architectural arrangement and their directional associations derive from Maya cosmology. This paper describes the model and its archaeological evaluation at Copan and discusses interpretive implications of the specific results obtained, in the context of other ongoing studies in epigraphy, iconography, and archaeology.

Spatial Orders in Maya Civic Plans

Ancient civic centers materialize ideas of proper spatial organization, among the Maya as in other societies. We argue that the position and arrangement of ancient Maya buildings and arenas emphatically express statements about cosmology and political order. At the same time, the clarity of original spatial expression is often blurred in the sites we observe archaeologically. Factors responsible for such blurring include multiple other influences on planning and spatial order, prominently the political life history of a civic center. Specifically, we argue here that centers with relatively short and simple political histories are relatively easy to interpret spatially. Those with longer development, but relatively little upheaval, manifest more elaborate but relatively robust and internally consistent plans. Sites with longer and more turbulent political histories, however, materialize a more complex cumulative mix of strategies and plausibly, therefore, of varying planning principles invoked by sequent ancient builders. We examine evidence for these assertions by reference to civic layouts at Copan, Xunantunich, Sayil, Seibal, and Tikal.

Pine, prestige and politics of the Late Classic Maya at Xunantunich, Belize

Comparing the source of a commodity with the social levels of the people amongst whom it is found can reveal important aspects of social structure. This case study of a Maya community, using archaeological and ethnographic data, shows that pine and pine charcoal was procured at a distance and distributed unevenly in settlements. The researchers deduce that this commodity was not freely available in the market place, but was subject to political control.

Interpreting Ancient Maya Civic Plans: Reply to Smith

In response to Smiths critique, we situate our work within the scientific method. We review how our hypotheses arose, how and by whom they have been tested, and with what results. Like Smith, we focus on whether Maya civic centers include emphatic expression of a north-south axis, and on the inference of a partially cosmological basis of Maya axial orders. We indicate sources of our inferences and review explicitly the criteria that Smith faults us for having omitted. We reaffirm that these ideas merit further testing, and welcome renewed and expanded collaboration as to the best methods for doing so. In the spirit of collaboration, we offer specific programmatic suggestions for how this inquiry might proceed.

The Late Postclassic Eastern Frontier of Mesoamerica: Cultural Innovation Along the Periphery [and Comments and Replies]

A far-reaching frontier culture area emerged along the eastern periphery of southern Mesoamerica during the Late Postclassic. Here linguistically diverse peoples (e.g., Rabinal, Pokom, Akahal, Xinca) shared a pattern in material culture. With the frontier commencing along the borders of the Quinche and Cakchiquel conquest states, it is theorized that a principal variable in the development of the frontier cultural pattern was militaristic expansionism. Ethnohistory chronicles that the Quiche and Chakchiquel displaced Pokom and Akahal peoples, who in turn displaced others. Migrations into these borderlands from the Epiclassic onward had established a frontier cultural base that was reformulated under the pressures generated by Late Postclassic expansions. Adaptation to militaristic pressures is suggested by sites demonstrating linear regression in various indexes of political centralization/militarization. Proximity to conquest states is more signifant than ethnicity in predicting the values of these indexes. Additional variables, such as trade and population growth/local ecology, are assessed for their contribution to the formation of a distinctive frontier pattern.

MESOAMERICAN LANDSCAPE ARCHAEOLOGIES

Abstract Landscapes figure centrally in conceptions and writings about ancient Mesoamerica. This selective review considers four interrelated kinds of landscapes investigated archaeologically in Mesoamerica: ecology and land use, social history, ritual expression, and cosmologic meaning. The literature on each topic is large, and from its inception, Ancient Mesoamerica has contributed significantly. Discussion here focuses on how we got to where we are in Mesoamerican landscape archaeology, important current developments, and directions for the decades ahead.

CONTINGENT ACTS OF REMEMBRANCE: ROYAL ANCESTORS OF CLASSIC MAYA COPAN AND QUIRIGUA

Abstract Classic Maya history is deeply political, and religious and political activities frequently inseparable. This essay advocates directly comparing mortuary practices over time for rulers at politically and economically linked centers. Most specifically it outlines an experimental model of how acts of remembrance in royal ancestor veneration articulate with local and regional politico-economic dynamics, and to do so with respect to acts attested in archaeological, bioarchaeological, textual, and iconographic sources. The particular case here pairs Classic-period Copan and Quirigua, where for centuries, the former was overlord to the latter. The evidence suggests that while treatment of royal ancestors draws on a set of established Maya practices, scale, elaboration and choice among those practices was contingent on the role each of the decedents held at particular points in political history, and the temporal orientation of those who commissioned remembrance acts.