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Danse Macabre: Death, Community, and Kingdom at El Kinel, Guatemala

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The Bioarchaeology of Space and Place

Abstract

We explore the inhumation (and occasional exhumation) of the dead within the framework of ritual practice at El Kinel, Guatemala. Over the course of this chapter, we argue that mortuary rites served to both (re)constitute society at El Kinel and reified that community’s participation within the greater Yaxchilan polity of the eighth century AD. To make our case, we reconstruct the ideology of these mortuary practices through the study of 12 burials from El Kinel. In our analysis, we draw on data from archaeology, osteology, taphonomy, iconography, ethnohistory, and ethnography. Although the veneration of ancestors and perhaps the validation of lineage are evident in our analysis, more salient in our results is a ritual tradition that reflected localized (at the level of kingdom) interpretations of pan-Maya beliefs regarding the treatment of the dead. We conclude that in the eighth century AD, funerary rites served as an integrative mechanism within the Yaxchilan kingdom, uniting king and commoner through shared ritual practice.

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Acknowledgments

We thank the community of La Técnica for permitting us to carry out our research at El Kinel. We would like to acknowledge the contributions of our research team, particularly our codirector, Rosaura Vásquez, and those who participated in the 2006 and 2007 field seasons: Selket Callejas, Betsy Marzahn-Ramos, Juan Carlos Meléndez, Mauro Montejo, Fabiola Quiroa, and Claudia Valenzuela. Our work depended on the invaluable assistance of our local guides and excavation collaborators from the community of Santa Rita, especially Julián Aju Hitos, Pánfilo Regino Hernández, and Ambrosio Hernández Ixcayau. Our work at El Kinel was conducted with support from the Foundation for the Advancement of Mesoamerican Studies, Inc. (# 05027), the NSF Senior Research Grant Program (BCS-0715463), the H. John Heinz III Charitable Trust Grants for Latin American Archeology, and the Norman Fund and the Jane’s Fund for Faculty Travel of the Latin American Studies Program at Brandeis. We thank the Defensores de la Naturaleza for their support and assistance, and IDAEH and CONAP for permission to carry out our research in and around the Parque Nacional Sierra del Lacandón. Marc Zender and Gabriel D. Wrobel provided valuable comments on an earlier draft of this paper. All errors and omissions are ours.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Anthropology, Brown University, Box 1921, Providence, RI, 02912, USA

    Andrew K. Scherer

  2. Department of Anthropology, Brandeis University, 415 South Street, MS006, 02454, Waltham, MA, USA

    Charles Golden

  3. Universidad de San Carlos de Guatemala, 12 avenida 11-11, Zona 1, Guatemala City, Guatemala

    Ana Lucía Arroyave & Griselda Pérez Robles

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  1. Andrew K. Scherer
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  2. Charles Golden
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  3. Ana Lucía Arroyave
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  4. Griselda Pérez Robles
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Correspondence to Andrew K. Scherer .

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  1. Department of Anthropology, Michigan State University, East Lansing, Michigan, USA

    Gabriel D. Wrobel

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Scherer, A., Golden, C., Arroyave, A., Robles, G. (2014). Danse Macabre: Death, Community, and Kingdom at El Kinel, Guatemala. In: Wrobel, G. (eds) The Bioarchaeology of Space and Place. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4939-0479-2_8

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