person hood, agency, and mortuary ritual gillespie

Journal of Anthropological Archaeology 20, 73–112 (2001)doi:10.1006/jaar.2000.0369, available online at http://www.idealibrary.com on

Personhood, Agency, and Mortuary Ritual:A Case Study from the Ancient Maya

Susan D. Gillespie

Department of Anthropology, University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign,109 Davenport Hall, Urbana, Illinois 61801

Received August 4, 1999; revision received June 28, 2000; accepted June 30, 2000

The archaeological identification of individuals has been an important component of bothprocessual attempts to characterize social organization by the treatment of individuals inmortuary ritual and more recent agency theory applications to studies of political economy andsocial change. Both approaches have been critiqued for failing to adequately define the indi-vidual, instead applying the Western concept of the individual to other societies. These short-comings are shown to be part of a larger problem in social theory: the continuing polarizationbetween individualism and holism. They point to the need for renewed interest in the anthro-pological analysis of the “person”—a socially shaped construct—in order to better understandsocial relationships and recognize the collective aspects of agency. A case study from the ClassicMaya civilization illustrates how emphasis on the individual, as represented in mortuary events,artistic depictions, and texts, has resulted in interpretive difficulties that can be avoided byviewing these data from the perspective of the social collectivity from which personhood wasderived. Maya corporate kin-based groups, known as “houses,” were a major source of thesocial identities expressed in political action and represented in mortuary ritual and monumen-tal imagery. © 2001 Academic Press

Key Words: agency; house society; individualism; Maya; Mesoamerica; mortuary ritual; per-sonhood.

labled “methodological holism” (Ritzer
Social science theories have tended tocluster around two polar oppositions, “ho-lism” and “individualism” (Agassi 1960:244; Gellner 1968; Ritzer and Gindoff1994:3; Varenne 1984:295). Holistic theo-ries, the first to develop, consider societyas an entity that exists beyond the individ-uals who compose it. As a self-regulatingsystem, society constrains or determinesindividual behaviors and beliefs, treatingindividuals as epiphenomena and down-playing their role in social change (Ritzerand Gindoff 1994:12; Sztompka 1994a:30).Theories such as the Durkheimian super-organic, functionalism, structuralism,structural Marxism, behaviorism, systemstheory, and cultural materialism lean to-ward this end of the polarity (Morris 1985:724; Sztompka 1991:3). They have been
73

and Gindoff 1994:11) or “metaphysical ho-lism” (Brodbeck 1968:283; Sztompka1994b:258). Some are still used today, in-cluding in archaeology, along with suchholistic theories as Darwinian selection-ism and sociobiology.

In reaction to the overemphasis in ho-lism on the social collectivity, the diversetheories labeled “methodological individ-ualism”1,* were formally developed be-ginning in the 1950s, in which explana-tions of all social phenomena are based onindividuals and their actions (Lukes 1970:77; Ritzer and Gindoff 1994:11). Alsogrouped at this end of the polarity areinterpretive sociology and phenomenol-

* See Notes section at end of article for all foot-notes.

0278-4165/01 $35.00Copyright © 2001 by Academic PressAll rights of reproduction in any form reserved.

74 SUSAN D. GILLESPIE

ogy, approaches that consider society tobe constructed from human actions (Ar-cher 1982:455). Methodological individu-alism was a radical paradigm shift thatwas equally biased, but in the oppositedirection (Sztompka 1991:4). Inevitably anew class of theories emerged—a “thirdsociology”—to bridge the dichotomy be-tween individualism and holism, examin-ing the integrative relationships that linksociety and its members (1991:4; Ritzerand Gindoff 1994:13). Variously known astheories of agency, action, practice, andpraxis, they have been widely adopted inanthropology since the 1980s (Ortner 1984:144) and form an important component ofpostprocessual archaeology (Dobres andRobb 2000; Hodder 1986:73–77). The inte-gration of society and individuals—now interms of structure and agency—has be-come the central problem of modern so-cial theory (Archer 1982:455; Giddens1984:35).

Agency theories in Europe and theircounterparts in micro–macro sociology inAmerica began to take shape by the 1970s(Ritzer and Gindoff 1994:6). These ap-proaches have been labeled “methodolog-ical relationism,” in which “neither socialindividuals nor social wholes can be ex-plained without analyzing the social rela-tionships between them” (Ritzer andGindoff 1994:14). In this country, Gid-dens’s (1979, 1984) structuration theoryand Bourdieu’s (1977) habitus have be-come popular, especially in archaeology,although there are competing theories[Archer’s (1982, 1996) morphogenesis andSztompka’s (1991, 1994b) social becomingamong others; see Ritzer and Gindoff1994:9–10; Sztompka 1994a]. These theo-ries typically posit a dynamic recursiverelationship linking structure and agency.They contend that human action createsor reproduces “structure” (e.g., socialstructural relations, cultural categories,and customary practices) such that societyis always in process. However, actors are

constrained and conditioned to act, and tovalidate actions and their consequences,by their sociocultural circumstances.Structure is thus both shaping of andshaped by actors, who are both producersand products of structure (Sztompka1994a:43).

Despite this advance over earlier theo-ries, continuing problems in agency ap-proaches have prevented the develop-ment of a satisfactory solution to theholism–individualism polarity. These in-clude the lack of consistency in definingboth structure and agency (Dobres andRobb 2000:8–9; Ritzer and Gindoff 1994:9–10) as well as in identifying actors oragents. Agents are often considered to beindividuals, but sometimes agency isgranted to taxonomic groups within soci-ety, such as a class, faction, age group, andgender, or to actual collectivities and in-stitutions. In some perspectives, agency isa property limited only to dominant indi-viduals or groups.

In archaeology, one result of the failureto adequately define structure and agencyis that purported case studies in agencytheory actually constitute a retreat back tomethodological individualism (McCall1999:16), whose limitations agency theoryis supposed to overcome. Agents are typ-ically seen as dominant individuals actingin their own self-interests, which are fre-quently antithetical to society (Dobres andRobb 2000:9; cf. Sassaman 2000:149). Hod-der (2000:23) recently suggested that forarchaeologists to move beyond such “bigman aggrandizer” models, they shouldconcentrate on the microscale biographi-cal analysis of individual “lived lives.”This approach renders society as epiphe-nomenal as it leans even more toward theindividualism pole.

In large part this inability to reconcilestructure and agency, and the falling backon individual actions (with society orstructure as mere backdrop), reflects thecontemporary Western fascination with

75PERSONHOOD, AGENCY, AND MORTUARY RITUAL

the individual as an autonomous, self-in-terested actor (Johnson 1999:83; Meskell1996:11). This has been called the “illusionof egocentrism” (Sztompka 1994b:271).While some archaeologists (e.g., Bender1993:258; Hodder 2000:23; Johnson 1999:82;Knapp and Meskell 1997:189) recognizethat the idea of the “individual” is a his-torically contingent and quintessentiallymodern social and political construct—and this is not at all a new idea in socialtheory (Morris 1985:723)—a different con-cept has not yet been proposed to replacethe individual that incorporates the socialdimension of actors to thereby bridge thedivide between people and society.

I suggest that one useful approach tothis dilemma is to reexamine an old liter-ature on “personhood.” Personhood, asopposed to the casual use of the term in-dividual, is a topic that is infrequentlymentioned (e.g., Dobres and Robb 2000:11) and more often left unexamined inarchaeology, although hints of this con-cept survive in such contexts as the recog-nition of social persona expressed in mor-tuary ritual. Personhood, and the relatedbut distinct concept “selfhood,” can be an-alyzed in terms of objective (behavior andstructure) and subjective (mind and cul-ture) relationships or some combinationof both (Ritzer and Gindoff 1994:14).While studies of the “person” should notreplace those of the individual or self, theymay provide a more balanced perspective,leaning more toward the side of societyand collective representations.

A major component of personhood de-rives from the enactment of relationshipswithin a society, typically as part of every-day experience or practice. These includerelationships between different persons,persons and groups, different groups, theliving and the dead, and people and ob-jects, since personhood is not confined toliving human beings.2 Furthermore, per-sonhood need not be relegated to theolder view of social structure as composed

of groups and roles, but can be integratedwithin the contemporary perspective ofsociety as a “system of contexts, or forms,of social action,” when such relationshipscome into play and are open to negotia-tion, subversion, and transformation(Harrison 1985:128). The “emergent” qual-ity of the human subject (Morris 1985:724)becomes apparent in social interactions,as people act in the capacity of persons,thereby internalizing structure as theyengage in actions to reproduce or trans-form it.

Recent calls in archaeology for the in-creased focus on the individual or the selfin terms of “lived lives” and psychologicalconstructions have emphasized three in-vestigative domains. In decreasing orderof archaeological accessibility, these are(1) burials, in which actual physical re-mains are usually present together withmaterial signifiers of the individual’s ex-periences and identities in life (Hodder2000; Meskell 1996); (2) imagery of hu-mans (Knapp and Meskell 1997; Meskell1996); and (3) written information on theintentions, actions, and selfhood of indi-viduals (Houston and Stuart 1998; John-son 1989, 2000). All three of these domainscome together in rare instances such asthat of the Classic Maya civilization ofsouthern Mexico and northern CentralAmerica, where textual information andimagery concerning certain high-rankingpersons is being linked to actual skeletalremains of individuals found in royaltombs. As I will show, current interpreta-tions that treat these Maya figures as his-torically documented agents have reliedtoo greatly on the Western concept of theindividual. The elaborate tombs havebeen assumed to reflect individual sta-tuses and aspirations. Actions and eventsdetermined from portraiture or texts havebeen credited to the unique motivations ofindividual rulers. However, controversiesand disagreements have arisen concern-ing how to interpret who did what and

ACCOUNTING FOR THE


why. One reason for these disagreementsis the explanatory poverty of the notionthat Maya rulers acted as individualswhose motivations can only be conjec-tured. This article develops the proposalthat much of this explicit archaeologicalevidence for “individuals” consists of pur-poseful representations of persons, whoseidentities, actions, and motivations wereespecially shaped by their membership ina social unit. For the Maya aristocracy inparticular, this social unit was a multigen-eration kin-based, hierarchically orga-nized corporate group known as the“house.”

In order to show the need for a rethink-ing of individuals in the past as “persons,”as a means to bridge the structure–agencydivide, I discuss how the earlier mortuaryarchaeology and later agency theory fo-cused on individuals in order to investi-gate society and how both have been crit-icized for their failure to pay sufficientattention to the relationships between in-dividuals and groups. The concept of“person” as devised by the French sociol-ogist Mauss is then introduced to contrastpersonhood with individual and self, in-dicating how “individual” is a historicallyspecific construct. Personhood, which rec-ognizes the important social and collectivecomponent of one’s identity, is not incon-sistent with an actor-oriented or agencyapproach. On the contrary, it provides acritical sociocultural context for elucidat-ing the recursive relationship betweenpeople and groups. The second half of thearticle provides the case study from theClassic period Maya to demonstrate howquite different interpretations will resultpertaining to both grave treatment andsymbolic evidence for agency when thecontextually defined “person” is substi-tuted for the generic “individual.” The re-consideration of Maya actors as personswill ultimately entail a rethinking of Mayasociopolitical organization and history.

INDIVIDUAL IN ARCHAEOLOGY

The Saxe–Binford Mortuary Program

Despite the by-now stereotyped viewthat processual archaeology consideredecomaterialist forces as determinants ofcultural stasis or change—typifying theholistic paradigm—a number of the“new” archaeologists were interested inidentifying individuals in prehistory.These attempts included recognizing theworks of individual craftsmen (e.g., Hilland Gunn 1977), but a major impetus forthis research was the classification of an-cient societies into political (evolutionary)types, specifically egalitarian vs hierarchi-cal, based on whether and how individu-als were treated differently upon theirdeaths. While this type of analysis wasoccasionally done in the 1940s and 1950s(Sears 1961:228-229), credit for this ap-proach is most frequently given to Saxe(1970, 1971) and Binford (1971), originatorsof what is now called the Saxe–Binfordresearch program (Brown 1981:28, 1995:9;see also Pader 1982:53; Tainter 1978:106).3

The basic assumption in their approachwas that status differences in life werereflected in differential treatment upondeath, such that burial variation, or itsabsence, would reflect the general struc-tural features of a society (Saxe 1971:39;see Binford 1971:18; O’Shea 1984:3;Peebles 1971; Peebles and Kus 1977; Roths-child 1979). In other words, social organi-zation was considered the “primary deter-minant of variation in mortuary practicesand burial form” (Carr 1995:106). Diagnos-tic differences in burial treatment includethe expense of grave preparation, its loca-tion with respect to other features or de-fined spaces, the quantity and quality ofgrave furniture, and the position and ori-entation of the body.

Significantly, in order to clarify the so-cial phenomenon reflected in burial treat-


ment, both Saxe (1970) and Binford (1971)drew upon Goodenough’s (1965) innova-tion of the terms “social identity” and “so-cial persona,” concepts which he differen-tiated from “status” as previously definedby Linton (1936:113). Recognizing that allliving individuals assume several socialidentities, and not all at the same time,Goodenough (1965:7) coined the term “so-cial persona” for the composite of socialidentities selected as appropriate to anyspecific interaction. As used in mortuaryanalyses, the social persona was consid-ered dependent on such common deter-minants of identity as age, sex, relativerank or position in a social unit, and affil-iation of the deceased to other groups.Other archaeologists, however, used lesswell-defined concepts to indicate distinc-tions among grave treatments, includingstatus (e.g., Peebles 1971; Rothschild 1979),rank (e.g., Brown 1981; Peebles and Kus1977), and wealth (e.g., Rathje 1970; seePader 1982:57).

The early work of Saxe and Binford, andthe subsequent scholarship influenced bytheir research program, constituted a ma-jor advance in the archaeological analysisof social organization, parts of which aregaining newfound respect (e.g., Morris1991). Eventually, however, much of thiswork came under attack, the substance ofwhich can be only briefly discussed here(see also Brown 1995). A frequently notedshortcoming is the explanation of mortu-ary treatment as dependent on a singlevariable—social organization—a viewwhich is antithetical to the contemporaryemphasis in archaeology on cross-culturaland historical variability. For this reason,Ucko’s (1969) earlier caveat concerningthe diversity of mortuary beliefs and prac-tices is often cited (e.g., Chapman 1994:44;Pearson 1993:204). The assumption thatgraves are reflections of social order isconsidered simplistic and unworkable[but see Brown (1995) for a response], andfails to take into account such collective

representations as religious beliefs andworldviews (Carr 1995:110–111; Morris1991:147). Other studies have shown thatburial variability need not signify whethera society is egalitarian or ranked (Pearson1982; Huntington and Metcalf 1979:122).

In short, variablity in burial treatmentmay indicate something quite other thanthe usually assumed “fossilized terminalstatuses of individuals” (Peebles 1971:69).This has become an especially thorny is-sue where child burials have the kind oftreatment that, if found with an adult,would be taken to indicate a high rank.The initial assumption was that the childdid indeed have an ascribed status, evi-dence for a hierarchical society (Saxe1970:7; Rothschild 1979:661; Tainter 1978:106). This supposition was found not to beuniversally supported by archaeologicaland ethnographic evidence (Hayden 1995:49–50). An alternative view—that it ismore likely the status of the child’s par-ents that is being marked in this way—calls into question the operating assump-tion that grave treatment reflects thestatus of the deceased individual (Brown1995:8; Pader 1982:57).

Furthermore, there is the larger arena ofmortuary ritual that must be considered,of which the grave is only one part. Thecontext of mortuary practices extends farbeyond the cemetery or burial place(Pearson 1993:226–227). Grave furnituremay reference the burial ritual itselfrather than the social status of the de-ceased (Pader 1982:58). That which is as-sociated with the body represents only aportion of a series of actions, which mayserve to distort or mask social relationsand identities rather than accurately re-flect them (Hodder 1982:201). Mortuaryritual often includes multiple stages ofbody processing and prolonged second-ary funerary rites carried out in variouslocations, as first described in the classicstudy by Hertz (1960 [1907]).

In sum, mortuary rituals have more to


do with the relationships negotiated by thesurvivors between themselves and thedead and/or the ancestors the dead willbecome (Joyce 1999, n.d.; Pearson 1982:112, 1993:203). These rituals pertain to re-lationships within and among the socialunits that were involved with the de-ceased, including political and economicrelationships (Brown 1995:4; Goldstein1981:57). Items included with a child’sburial may better indicate the relationshipof the parents with their deceased child(Joyce 1999:21; Hayden 1995:44–45; Pader1982:62), and there is no reason why thesame marking of relationships should nothold for adults as well. Pader (1982:58)cites Edmund Leach on this point: “Ifgraves are in any way an index of socialstatus it is the social status of the funeralorganisers as much as the social status ofthe deceased that is involved.” Drawingespecially on ethnographic information,Joyce (n.d.:4) concludes that “ancient buri-als can be viewed as particularly chargedsites through which the living survivorsinscribed the dead into social memory inparticular ways, as part of an ongoing pro-cess of spinning webs of social relationsbetween themselves and others.”

Hertz’s thesis that mortuary practicesare determined by the relationships con-structed to link the corpse, the soul, andthe living mourners has been called theclosest thing to middle range theory inmortuary archaeology, amenable to cross-cultural applications (Carr 1995:176). Thedead, who are often transformed into an-cestors or other forms of spirits as theresult of funerary rites, are resignified atthe time of death rituals and also in sub-sequent actions that may involve handlingtheir curated remains and in rites of com-memoration that innovate social memo-ries of the dead for political ends (Chap-man 1994:46; Kuijt 1996; McAnany 1998;Morris 1991:156; Pearson 1982:101, 1993:203). Such ritual may purposely result inthe loss of individual identities as the

dead represent the social collectivity, forexample, becoming generic ancestors inthe oft-cited example of the Merina ofMadagascar (Bloch 1982:220; see alsoChapman 1994; Glazier 1984).

Thus, the critique of the early mortuaryarchaeology points to the need for a per-spective that relates the individual bodiesarchaeologists excavate to other personswithin the multidimensional contexts ofsocial dynamics beyond the grave itself.The social persona cannot be consideredan essentialized attribute of a single indi-vidual—a terminal status—but must takeinto consideration enacted links to otherpersons. This factor had not been ne-glected in the earliest studies (Binford1971:17; Peebles 1971:68; Saxe 1970:6, 9),but it subsequently had received less at-tention.

Brown (1995), in a recent review of theSaxe–Binford program, suggested that theimplicit focus in mortuary archaeology onidentifying the status of individuals re-sulted from the relatively common occur-rence of finding individual bodies in sep-arate graves. This situation called for theapplication of a theory that would linkindividual variability to social organiza-tion. Thus, Goodenough’s role theory wasadopted to characterize the identities ofthose individuals while living (1995:11).Brown (1995:5) further observed that thisintellectual framework reflects the con-temporary experience of the archaeolo-gists who devised it, namely, the commonEuro-American practice of assigning so-cial identities to individuals and interringthem in separate graves.

Agency Approaches

The concern for the individual, now asan actor and not a reflection of social or-der, is an important component of con-temporary archaeological theory (Hodder1986:6). The shift away from systemic orecological holism toward agency or actor-


centered approaches (Bell 1992:30; John-son 1989:189; Robb 1999:3) raised its ownseries of problems, for in archaeologyagency is often little more than a“buzzword” (Robb 1999:3; see Dobres andRobb 2000). The actor is seldom defined asa contextually relevant construct (e.g.,Gillespie 1999:225; Johnson 1989:190). Onereason for these shortcomings may be thecommon reliance on Giddens’s structura-tion theory, whose fullest exposition is inhis 1984 book The Constitution of Society(Giddens 1991:204).

Giddens’s approach differs significantlyfrom that of other agency theorists, whotend to lean toward the side of structure,in that it embodies agency in human ac-tors (Sztompka 1994a:38–39). “Structure,”idiosyncratically defined by Giddens asorganizing principles or rules and re-sources (Ritzer and Gindoff 1994:10), isdrawn upon by actors in their everydaylives, primarily as “practical knowledge”that is routine and taken for granted. Ac-tors engage this knowledge and then re-flect on the consequences of their actionsas they understand them—for they maybe at odds with intentions and expecta-tions—thereby reproducing or changingthe knowledge and conditions that origi-nally enabled their actions (Giddens 1984:2–4). Giddens thus proposed that

[t]he constitution of agents and structures arenot two independently given sets of phenom-ena, a dualism, but represent a duality. Accord-ing to the notion of the duality of structure, thestructural properties of social systems are bothmedium and outcome of the practices they re-cursively organize. Structure is not ’external’ toindividuals: as memory traces, and as instanti-ated in social practice, it is in a certain sensemore ‘internal’ than exterior to their activities ina Durkheimian sense. Structure is not to beequated with constraint but is always both con-straining and enabling. (1984:25)

As applied to archaeology, however,McCall (1999:16–17) observed that agencytheory has more frequently focused onactors’ intentions, which is a minor con-

cern in Giddens’s writings and outside ofthe more collective, less conscious natureof Bourdieu’s (1977:72ff) habitus. Conse-quently, such studies are not much differ-ent from competing theories of method-ological individualism and rational actors.Indeed, Ortner (1984:151) characterizedpractice approaches in anthropology as awhole as dominated by a concept of mo-tivation derived from “interest theory,”based on an “essentially individualistic,and somewhat aggressive, actor, self-in-terested, rational, pragmatic, and perhapswith a maximizing orientation as well.”This theory has been heavily criticizedand is too narrowly focused on rationalityand “active-ness” (1984:151).4 It assumespragmatic rationality as the universaldominant motivation for action, in con-trast to agency theory, which views actorsas “socially embedded, imperfect, and of-ten impractical people” (Dobres and Robb2000:4). Interest theory also disregards thegrowing literature that demonstratescross-cultural variation in the conceptionsof self, person, and motivation (Ortner1984:151).

This approach is apparent in several ap-plications of agency theory to culturalevolution in prehispanic Mesoamerica,provided here as just one example.5 Mar-cus and Flannery (1996:31) explicitlyadopted the “essentially individualistic,self-interested, rational, and pragmatic”actor from interest theory for their modelof the evolution of Zapotec civilization inOaxaca. Using Giddens’s concepts to ac-count for the rise of social inequality inlowland Mesoamerica, Clark and Blake(1994:28) concluded that societal changes“result from the purposive action of indi-viduals pursuing individual strategies andagendas within the structural constraintsof their cultural system.” Joyce and Win-ter (1996:33), in a similar study to accountfor the rise of social complexity in Oaxaca,also focused their interpretation on “indi-vidual-level behavioral strategies.” How-


ever, a more ambitious attempt by Blan-ton and colleagues (1996) to use agencytheory to account for evolutionary changethroughout Mesoamerican prehistory de-veloped two contrasting political-eco-nomic strategies, one more individualisticand the other more collective. The “net-work” strategy was based on “individual-centered exchange relations” (Blanton etal. 1996:4), while the “corporate” strategyemphasized “a corporate solidarity of so-ciety as an integrated whole” (1996:6; seealso Blanton 1998:149–150).

Some of these studies were criticized fortheir failure to adequately develop the so-cial context of human action. Joyce andWinter were accused of focusing “almostentirely upon autonomous, strategizingindividuals” without concern for “[s]ocialroles such as gender, occupation, and kin-ship” (Brumfiel 1996:49) that shaped theiridentities, motivations, and options.Criado (1996:54) remarked that the em-phasis on individual-centered strategiesincorporates a model of agency only as itoperates in postindustrial capitalist soci-ety. Thus, agency applications in archae-ology are being faulted for presuming theuniversality of the Western notion of theindividual, the same critique applied tothe more holistic mortuary archaeologyanalyses. However, the individual as aunit of investigation has become evenmore emphasized in the paradigm shift inAnglo-American archaeology from deter-minist to rational actor approaches (Hod-der 1986:6–8).

This situation is not unexpected giventhat the “individual as a self-motivatedagent” is fundamental to Euro-Americansocial philosophy (Varenne 1984:281). Infact, the same criticism has been lodgedagainst Giddens himself. His notion of theactor is derived from the Western conceptof the individual and is never sociocultur-ally constituted, only structurally situated(Pazos 1995:220). Giddens “is simply un-interested in the characteristics of the

noncapitalist formations and their subjec-tivity,” and his concepts are thus difficultfor anthropologists to utilize (Karp 1986:134, 132). Structuration theory was devel-oped in reference to “highly self-controlledindividuals in advanced industrialized soci-eties. But it is unable to show how this kindof individual came to develop in the firstplace: for Giddens, people have, apparently,always been the same since the dawn ofhistory” (Kilminster 1991:101). Archaeolo-gists who apply Giddens’s model to the pastshould not be unduly criticized for failing toadequately define the actor and for implic-itly assuming, as Giddens does, the contem-porary Western concept of the individual.

In seeing the individual as a self-con-tained entity, Giddens’s model of structu-ration—a process that depends upon in-teraction—has been faulted for its failureto consider the interdependence of actors:“individuals are seen here only in the firstperson, as positions. There is no concep-tual grasp of the perspective from whichthey themselves are regarded by others inthe total social web, nor of their combinedrelatedness” (Kilminster 1991:99; empha-sis in original). In a similar critique ofGiddens’s work, Sewell (1992:21) assertedthat “agency is collective as well as indi-vidual . . .The transposition of schemasand remobilizations of resources that con-stitute agency are always acts of commu-nication with others.” Sewell (1992:21)suggested shifting attention away fromthe individual toward relationships en-acted with others (see also Kilminster1991:100), which gets back to the core ofagency theory as “methodological rela-tionism.”

In short, a critical component missingfrom the influential works of Giddens is arecognition of the “[d]ifferences in per-sonhood” (Karp 1986:133; see also Devil-lard 1995). This comment refers to theearly anthropological literature on theconstitution of the “person,” concernedwith the construction of mutually identi-

iwagtdst(oiirmttwsccrisefiotbtw

Lstg


fying relationships linking people in soci-ety. It is worthwhile to review this litera-ture to determine where it might shedlight on the problems at hand, especiallyas it points specifically to the historicaldevelopment of the Western notion of theindividual within the more general notionof personhood.

PERSON, PERSONNAGE, ANDINDIVIDUAL

The idea of personhood has deep rootsn anthropology, going back to the timehen holistic approaches were dominant,

nd perhaps it has become somewhat ne-lected for that reason. In American an-hropology theorists were concerned withefining concepts such as status, role, andocial identity that later influenced the in-erpretations of Saxe and Binford. Linton1936:113) defined a status as a collectionf rights and duties constituting a position

n a particular pattern of reciprocal behav-or. Status cannot exist alone but only inelation to the overall societal pattern. Hu-ans enact these statuses as roles,

hereby reproducing society. Linton con-rasted this abstract meaning of a statusith the status of any individual as “the

um total of all the statuses which he oc-upies” (1936:113). In this usage, statusan refer to both a position in a network ofelationships and to individuals occupy-ng one or more of those positions, aource of confusion that Linton acknowl-dged: “Since these rights and duties cannd expression only through the mediumf individuals, it is extremely hard for uso maintain a distinction in our thinkingetween statuses and the people who hold

hem and exercise the rights and dutieshich constitute them” (1936:113).Goodenough (1965:2) complained that

inton and others had mistakenly mergedtatuses—combinations of rights and du-ies—with social positions and with cate-ories of persons, assuming that they all

formed an “indivisible unit of analysis.”He therefore introduced his own termi-nology—social identity and social per-sona—although their definitions are noteasy to apply to specific instances, partic-ularly in archaeology. Social identity is“an aspect of self that makes a differencein how one’s rights and duties distributeto specific others” (1965:3), to be distin-guished from “personal identity.” Socialpersona is “[t]he composite of severalidentities selected [by an individual] asappropriate to a given interaction” (1965:7). Archaeologists actually reframed thesedefinitions to make them workable withrespect to mortuary analysis and the rep-resentation of identities of a deceased in-dividual. Social identity now referred to acategory of person, social position, or sta-tus (Saxe 1970:4), lumping together thatwhich Goodenough tried to keep sepa-rate. Social persona was understood as the“composite of social identities maintainedin life and recognized as appropriate forconsideration at death” (Binford 1971:17),assuming that death must require the full-est representation of the deceased’s vari-ous social identities (Saxe 1970:6).

Across the Atlantic this issue was tack-led from a different angle by the Frenchsociologist Mauss, a student of EmileDurkheim, in a 1938 essay (Mauss 1985).Mauss examined empirical informationfrom Zuni Pueblo, the Kwakiutl, and otherpeoples concerning their clan organiza-tion. He observed that each clan owned aset of names—really titles relating to theclan totem—that were distributed to clanmembers, who also assumed kinship po-sitions that determined rank and author-ity, altogether forming a complex socialclassification system. He concluded, “onthe one hand, the clan is conceived of asbeing made up of a certain number ofpersons, in reality of ’characters’ (person-nages). On the other hand, the role of all ofthem is really to act out, each insofar as itconcerns him, the prefigured totality of


the life of the clan” (1985:5). Each person-nage was a metonymic referent to that to-tality, taking its position with respect to allthe others.

Independently, in the 1920s Franz Boaswas having problems classifying theKwakiutl local group (numayma) as a kindof clan. He ultimately suggested that

[t]he structure of the numayma is best under-stood . . . if we disregard the living individualsand rather consider the numayma as consistingof a certain number of positions to each of whichbelong a name, a ‘seat’ or ‘standing’ place, thatmeans rank, and privileges. Their number islimited, and they form a ranked nobility. . . .These names and seats are the skeleton of thenumayma, and individuals, in the course of theirlives, may occupy various positions and withthese take the names belonging to them. (inLevi-Strauss 1982:169)

From the perspective taken by Maussand Boaz, the embodiment of personnagesas “names” or “seats” reproduces socialunits that compose society, which shouldbe seen as much more than a collection ofclans or descent groups. Individuals atvarious stages in their lives assume thetitles and associated roles, ranked posi-tions, and ritual behavioral prescriptionsthat belong to the clan and thereby defineit and shape its relationships to otherclans. For the Kwakiutl, as Mauss (1985:8)explained:

[w]hat is at stake in [the keeping of titles withinthe clan] is thus more than the prestige and theauthority of the chief and the clan. It is the veryexistence of both of these and of the ancestorsreincarnated in their rightful successors, wholive again in the bodies of those who bear theirnames, whose perpetuation is assured by theritual in each of its phases. The perpetuation ofthings and spirits is only guaranteed by the per-petuating of the names of individuals, or per-sons. These last only act in their titular capacityand, conversely, are responsible for their wholeclan, their families and their tribes.

The subsequent ethnographic literaturethat makes use of the notion of person-hood further reveals its important fea-tures (e.g., Barraud 1990; Fortes 1973;

Graeber 1996; Howell 1989; Kan 1989;Strathern 1981). The social persona is seenas an intersection of different qualities—gender, age, birth order, kin groups ofparents and affines, life experiences, andmetaphysical essences—but personhoodis something more. It is often encom-passed by a title or name and materializedby insignia, totemic crests, or badges ofoffice. They signify a category of beingthat may be coextensive with specificgroups, property, and places. Personhoodhas rank or status implications vis-a-visother persons and may also be associatedwith estate/caste/class, religion, ethnicityor ancestral group, and occupation. InMauss’s conception, specific “persons”exist in perpetuity. They preexist thosehumans who take on these identities, andat certain times it is possible that no hu-man being will embody a specific person-nage, which nevertheless exists as a cate-gory and thus as a means of interrelating,or potentially interrelating, people, ances-tors, places, and things.

Personhood is not an automatic statusand often conjoins separate componentsacquired over a lifetime or beyond. Suchacquisition is the focus of a great deal ofritual as well as utilitarian effort and ex-penditure of resources, usually involvingmany people because their own identitiesare impacted by their relationships withothers (LaFontaine 1985:132). Individualswho embody a specific person represent-ing a unique constellation of features may,by dint of effort or luck, add to or subtractfrom those features. Biographies of per-sons are always changing, based on real“lived lives” and on how these are memo-rialized later. Conversely, some people ina society may never be recognized as hav-ing achieved full personhood, especiallyslaves and children (Fortes 1973:304ff; Kan1989:64), so the coincidence of human be-ing and person is not always complete.

Mauss’s concept of personnage mightseem to place too much emphasis on the


social collectivity and on determinativesocial constructionism, of which theDurkheimian school has long been ac-cused (Goody 1962:27). However, Fortes(1973:287), in reviewing Mauss’s ideas,more explicitly linked “person” to “theperennial problem of how individual andsociety are interconnected in mutual reg-ulation,” which is the central problem insocial theory. Fortes (1973:286) asked: “Ifpersonhood is socially generated and cul-turally defined, how then is it experiencedby its bearer, the individual?” In response,he observed that the analyst must keepdistinct the

two aspects of personhood. Looking at it fromthe objective side, the distinctive qualities, ca-pacities and roles with which society endows aperson enable the person to be known to be, andalso to show himself to be the person he issupposed to be. Looked at from the subjectiveside, it is a question of how the individual, asactor, knows himself to be—or not to be—theperson he is expected to be in a given situationand status. The individual is not a passive bearerof personhood; he must appropriate the quali-ties and capacities, and the norms governing itsexpression to himself. (Fortes 1973:287)6

As in practice or agency theory, the po-sitions themselves, and the interdepen-dent or oppositional relationships withothers that they entail, do not exist exceptwhen “person” and “other” are defined insocial interaction and in the reflection anddiscourse that follow from it. The actordoes not simply play a role society hasdetermined for him: “he has not simplyput on the mask but has taken upon him-self the identity it proclaims. For it issurely only by appropriating to himselfhis socially given personhood that he canexercise the qualities, the rights, the du-ties and the capacities that are distinctiveof it” (Fortes 1973:311).

Incorporating the notion of personhoodis one means for better comprehendingstructuration as the mutual constitution ofsociety and individual. Structure is inter-nalized by individuals in the context of

their interdependence within the total so-cial web as a collective medium foragency, by their assumption of the status(in the Lintonian sense) of personnages tobecome a person. This complex social sys-tem is instantiated in practice, includingdaily routines involving the navigation ofthe constructed landscape (e.g., Barrett1994; Bourdieu 1973), the exchange of ob-jects (e.g., Barraud et al. 1994; Howell1989), and other social interactions. It isespecially prominent at life-crisis rituals,such as funerals, when people are most“invested with the capacities of person-hood specific to defined roles and sta-tuses” (Fortes 1973:287).

Mauss’s original intention was to de-velop an evolutionary outline for theseconcepts. From the personnages of tradi-tional societies, he traced the develop-ment in Western thought, beginning withthe Romans, of the personne as a juridicaland later moral entity that is autonomousand subject to rights and duties (Mauss1985:18). It need not be a human being butcan refer to corporations, cities, or univer-sities as a “collective person” (1985:19). Aneven more recent development since theReformation and Enlightment was theemergence of the category Mauss called“self” (moi) and its coincidence with per-sonne (1985:20–22) in Western philosophy.This combined category is the basis of theWestern concept of the “individual” as aself-contained, autonomous moral entity.

Mauss’s 1938 article had little impact onAnglo-American anthropology and wasgenerally neglected in ethnography (LaFontaine 1985:123; Morris 1985:736). How-ever, it may have influenced Radcliffe-Brown’s 1940 essay “On Social Structure”(reprinted 1952), which distinguished “in-dividual” from “person” as follows: everyhuman being as an individual is a “bio-logical organism” and as a person is “acomplex of social relationships.” The fail-ure to distinguish the two is “a source ofconfusion in science” (1952:193). However,

cmhe1

hidsl

tptutsivaosspecasopd

tmmseatefmsowa(lsasrttTfeo


it was Mauss’s pupil, Dumont, and hisfollowers who have maintained the dis-crimination in Mauss’s original essay be-tween the person as a feature of manytraditional societies and the Western no-tion of the individual as a value, a mergerof “person” and “self” in Mauss’s terms.This contrast is now more usually labeledthe dichotomy between person and indi-vidual. Dumont (1970:11) traced the devel-opment of the individual to the Europeanintroduction of the social division of laborand the French Revolution. Others see itsorigin in the bureaucratic nation-state (LaFontaine 1985:136–138) or as early as theMedieval period (Barraud et al. 1994:4).While this terminology introduces the as-sumption that the Western “individual” isan essentialized concept, and there islikely variability in the notion of the selfamong Westernized societies (Sokefeld1999:418), the contrast between individualand person remains a useful heuristic de-vice.

Whatever its developmental trajectory,in Western society, characterized as indi-vidualistic versus holistic, or as modernversus traditional (Barraud 1990:215; Du-mont 1970:9), the individual is “a particu-lar cultural type (of person) rather than aself-evident analytical category” (Strath-ern 1981:168). In individualistic societieslike ours, “society is constituted of auton-omous, equal units, namely separate indi-viduals and . . . such individuals are moreimportant, ultimately, than any largerconstituent group . . . . The Western con-ept of the individual thus gives jural,oral and social significance to the mortal

uman being, the empirically observablentity” (Alan MacFarlane in La Fontaine985:124).If in our own society the individual

as absolute value, then not surpris-ngly, it is difficult for us to maintain theistinction between individual and per-on (La Fontaine 1985:125). Neverthe-ess, anthropologists, who spend most of

heir efforts studying non-Western peo-les, should be paying more attention to

his issue (Barraud et al. 1994:4) becausendue emphasis on the individual dis-

orts our interpretations of non-Westernocieties (Dumont 1975). This distinctions particularly critical to the holism/indi-idualism duality that agency theoriesre struggling with: “In Western notionsf personhood, bounded units of thepecies are seen as ipso facto morallyelf-contained, and further are set in op-osition to nature and society. Social sci-nce notions of personhood that emi-ally oppose ‘the individual’ to ‘society’re best understood as flowing from thispecifically Western conception. But inther cultures, the ethical entity, theerson, may be conceived along ratherifferent axes” (Strathern 1981:168 –169).In considering representations of sta-

us or social persona in mortuary treat-ent, and in judging the contexts andotivations for agency, archaeologists

hould be aware of the profound differ-nce between “person” and “individual”s culturally specific constructions andhat the individual in this sense did notxist for most of the past. They shouldurther consider that “the practices by

eans of which actors construct theirocial world, and simultaneously theirwn selves and modes of being in theorld, are . . . symbolically constituted

nd themselves symbolic processes”Munn 1986:7). As I suggest in the fol-owing case study, what have often beeneen as individualistic representationsnd actions may be better understood asocial constructions that symbolicallyefer to “persons,” whose identities, sta-uses, and motivations were shaped byheir linkages to others in a collectivity.he interpretive differences that result

rom this perspective are significantnough to warrant serious considerationf the personhood of actors in the past.

asn


MAYA REPRESENTATIONSOF PERSONHOOD

Representations of Maya Individuals

The archaeological concerns for identi-fying individuals in mortuary analysesand in other actor-centered contexts ac-cessible through imagery and text havecoincided in interpreting events of theClassic Maya civilization of southern Me-soamerica (ca. 250–1000 A.D.; Fig. 1). Datafrom the Late Classic site of Palenque,Mexico, are highlighted here, although asimilar analysis could be carried out forany center with equivalent information ondynastic history and royal tomb occupa-tion. I emphasize how the value implicitly

FIG. 1. Map of the Maya area (southern Mexicond northern Central America) showing major Clas-ic period sites mentioned in the text. Maya languageames are in italics.

assigned to the individual has resulted insome interpretive difficulties. An analyti-cal shift away from the individual as anatural unit toward the relationships thatare created and maintained among inter-acting persons may alleviate some ofthese difficulties and allow prehistoriansto broaden their understandings of socialdynamics.

The Maya are an interesting case forthis purpose7 because they created manyhuman images juxtaposed with writtentexts which, since the pioneering work ofProskouriakoff (1960), have been inter-preted as depicting named historical indi-viduals, namely rulers and their closefamily members or high-ranking subordi-nates, the most powerful agents in Mayasociety (Coe 1984:166). The monumentalinscriptions are thus thought to record the“grand assertions of kings” (Freidel 1992:129). Sculpted in bas-relief on stone stelae,lintels, panels, and similar objects used inassociation with architecture or definedspaces, these images are typically not por-traits in the usual sense of depicting exactphysiognomy. Instead, the textual andiconographic symbols identify the personsand show them engaged in some ritualaction (Schele and Miller 1986:66). Someof the artworks from Palenque, however,are an exception for they are believed tobe lifelike portraits (1986:64–66). Becauseof the huge effort and expense devoted todescribing and picturing the activities ofindividual kings—the “public glorificationof named rulers”—and also to buildingtheir palaces and tombs, Blanton and col-leagues (1996:12) considered the ClassicMaya to exemplify the individualizing“network” political strategy: “Elite fami-lies promoted the cults of named rulersand the rhetoric of royal descent and an-cestor veneration” (Blanton et al. 1996:12),especially with the erection of impressivepyramids for the tombs of rulers in theLate Classic (600–1000 A.D.).

By the time of Welch’s (1988) survey of


lowland Maya mortuary practices, theskeletal remains in about a dozen suchtombs had been matched with the namesof rulers mentioned in the inscriptions(1988:Table 99), and that number contin-ues to grow. Being able to associate aunique individual known from the writtenrecord with specific physical remains pre-sents obvious advantages to the archaeol-ogist. Moreover, text-aided archaeologyhas been suggested as a means to betterunderstand the “theoretical question of’the individual’” (Johnson 1989:190; seeMeskell 1996:11ff). Nevertheless, the situ-ation can actually become more cloudedthan in nonliterate societies, as Trinkaus(1984) noted. Not only is mortuary ritualnow seen as an opportunity for manipu-lating statuses and identities (e.g., Joyce1999:22; Pearson 1982), but “writtenrecords are acts of symboling in them-selves . . . [and] the use of written recordsas factual notation and as powerful ma-nipulators of fact is fundamental to theorganization of the complex societies thatproduce them. Those which describe ritu-als therefore pose, at the very least, a dou-ble blind for interpretation” (Trinkaus1984:675). This problem has been recog-nized for the Maya in the sense that thesurviving texts would have been commis-sioned only by successful lords to touttheir achievements (Schele and Freidel1990:55), and the promulgation of what wecall “propaganda” is thought to have beena major function of writing in Me-soamerica (Marcus 1992:16).

The “double blind” of the manipulativeuses of both mortuary ritual and writingappears in certain continuing controver-sies concerning the famous royal tomb inthe Temple of the Inscriptions atPalenque.8 Although these argumentsseem simplistic today, they succinctlycharacterize the difficulties that may arisewhen considering the individual as a self-interested rational actor. The Temple ofthe Inscriptions is a massive pyramidal

platform with a masonry building (a tem-ple or shrine) on top. In 1952 Ruz Lhuillierdiscovered a hidden stairway descendingfrom the temple floor over 20 verticalmeters into the interior of the platform tobelow ground level, terminating in avaulted chamber. Nearly filling this cham-ber is a massive limestone box hollowedout to hold the remains of a single adultmale, in correct anatomical position(Davalos Hurtado and Romano Pacheco1992:333).9 The four sides of this sarcoph-agus are sculpted with images of 10named men and women, identifiable frominscriptions as predecessors of the sar-cophagus’s occupant. He is depicted infull figure on the separate, nearly 4-m-long limestone slab that forms the sar-cophagus lid (Robertson 1983:57, 65). Hisname was read phonetically as Pakal, andhis biography as written in Palenque’s in-scriptions was first analyzed in a seminaldecipherment by Mathews and Schele[1974; the name was later more completelyread as Hanab-Pakal (Schele and Mathews1998:95)]. The entire structure was appar-ently made to house the sarcophagus be-cause the tomb chamber and sarcophagushad to be in place before the pyramidalplatform was constructed above.

Who built this grandiose funerary ar-chitecture has become a subject of dis-agreement. When Ruz Lhuillier first exca-vated the Temple of the Inscriptions, helikened its construction to that of the OldKingdom pyramids of Egypt and pre-sumed that the occupant commissioned itfor his personal use (Ruz Lhuillier 1992:285). More specific arguments to provethat Pakal built his own tomb and templeinclude the fact that the articulated bodywas surely placed in a prepared coffinsoon after death (Sabloff 1997:187). Thesloppy execution of part of the sarcopha-gus bas-relief must mean that death oc-curred after the carving had begun butbefore it was finished (Schele and Freidel1990:468–469). Furthermore, why was a


fine stairway needed from the templedown to the tomb except to inter the bodyafter the platform and temple were fin-ished (Robertson 1983:24)? The supposi-tion that Pakal designed his tomb some 10years before his death—the time neededto build it—has generally prevailed (Coe1988:234; Robertson 1983:23–24; Scheleand Freidel 1990:225; Schele and Mathews1998:97). Foncerrada de Molina (1974:78,my translation) called the structure a“monument to individuality, in this case,that of a ruler . . . who could exercise hisauthority over the inhabitants of thePalenque area, even attaining, for his per-sonal glory, the erection of the most spec-tacular mausoleum in all the Maya area.”In this supposition we see the usual pre-sumption that grave treatment reflects thestatus of the deceased—a great tomb isthe sign of a great man.

Palenque’s rulers, like those elsewherein the Maya world (e.g., for Tikal, Havi-land 1992), are further seen to have hadpolitical motivations to commission build-ings and monuments “designed to gainpersonal glory” and to fulfill their “per-sonal agendas” (Schele and Freidel 1990:244, 261). The attribution of a building orstone monument is typically given towhoever’s name or image appears mostprominently on it. However, the assump-tion that Pakal was motivated by self-in-terest to build his tomb presupposes thatit was not in anyone else’s greater interestto do so. Most of the Maya evidence indi-cates that survivors typically built or ren-ovated structures to house the dead(Bassie-Sweet 1991:75; Welsh 1988:186),the death often triggering new construc-tion (McAnany 1998:276). At Caracol, Bel-ize, however, some tombs were built be-fore they were needed, and of these, somewere never used (Chase and Chase 1998:311), indicating variability in Maya prac-tices.

Bassie-Sweet (1991:75) proposed acounterargument that the Temple of the

Inscriptions was built after Pakal’s de-mise. She noted that the body could havebeen placed within the hollowed-outlimestone container, quickly sealed with aplain inner lid, soon after death, beforethe sarcophagus sides were carved andthe temple-pyramid constructed over thetomb. The stairway was needed for thefinal rituals, when the great sculptedcover, which was housed beside the sar-cophagus, was finally moved into place.Her scenario thus introduces a long timespan between death and the final inter-ment ritual. She further suggested thatthis building project was undertaken tofulfill the personal political aspirations ofPakal’s successor, Snake-Jaguar (Kan-Balam in Yucatec Maya; his name was notwritten phonetically). Despite the promi-nent portrait of Pakal on the sarcophaguslid, and the recounting of his life events inthe inscriptions in the temple above histomb, that text does end with the state-ment of the accession of Kan-Balam(Schele and Mathews 1998:104–108). Kan-Balam also is believed to have commis-sioned the three temples in the adjacentCross Group complex, which prominentlydisplay his image, as “the monument tohis personal accession to the throne”(Freidel 1992:124; see Robertson 1991:9;Schele and Freidel 1990:237).

Other evidence for the actions and mo-tivations of these two important Palenquerulers comes from the unusually promi-nent retrospective dynastic information inthe texts and images of the Temple of theInscriptions and the Cross Group. Thehistory of the ruling house takes the formof king lists rather than a genealogy. AsSchele and Freidel (1990:220) remarked,“[t]he very existence of these king listsraises questions about their context andmotivations of the men who made them.What so fascinated and troubled thesemen that they felt compelled to presentsuch a comprehensive treatise on their dy-nasty on such important monumental


space?” The answer, they suggested, ispolitical manipulation. Palenque, likesome (but not all) Maya centers, displaysfemale images and names in the monu-ments. However, at Palenque womenwere said to have achieved paramountstatus [ch’ul ahaw, “holy lord” (Freidel1992:130)], considered a serious breach ofthe presumed strict rule of patrilineal suc-cession and inheritance (Schele andFreidel 1990:84–85). The woman named asPakal’s mother, Sak-K’uk’ (White Quetzalbird), was one such female ruler named inthe retrospective texts. She is thought tohave been a “masterful politician, able tomanipulate the rival interests of her pa-ternal clansmen” as she managed to be-queath the throne to her own son while hewas still a child (Schele and Freidel 1990:220). Having inherited the throne underinauspicious circumstances, Pakal, andlater his son Kan-Balam, needed to “jus-tify this departure from the normal rules.”Thus they invested much effort and ex-pense in these monumental constructions(1990:221).

Here we see projected onto Pakal andKan-Balam the motivations of a self-inter-ested, rational, and pragmatic agent en-gaging in actions to further an individualagenda against the established sociopo-litical order. This is the typical approachin agency applications in archaeology,now with the advantage of knowing thenames, dates, and historical events ofthese protagonists. From this individual-istic perspective alone, it is difficult to de-cide which of the two gained the mostfrom building the Temple of the Inscrip-tions and so to whom it should be attrib-uted. A similar disagreement concerns theidentification of the human images in theCross Group buildings. Each of the threebuildings has a bas-relief wall panel de-picting two recurring figures, one tall andone short, each holding objects. Assumingthat the Cross Group is Kan-Balam’s ac-cession monument, it made sense to iden-

tify the short figure as the deceased Pakalhanding the insignia of rulership to his liv-ing son (Schele and Freidel 1990:242, 470–471). However, others (Floyd Lounsbury inSchele and Freidel 1990:470; Bassie-Sweet1991:203) have suggested, on the basis of theidentifying text adjacent to the short figure,that this is Kan-Balam as a child. He wasshown in each panel at two different timesin his own life, heir-designation and acces-sion, with Pakal’s role visually invisible.

A more acrimonious argument, relatedto the same issues of symbolic represen-tation, concerns the age of Pakal at death.The physical anthropologists who exam-ined the skeletal remains in the sarcoph-agus reported in 1955 that the man died atan age between 40 and 50 (Davalos Hur-tado and Romano Pacheco 1992:333). Twodecades later, epigraphers deciphered thehieroglyphic inscriptions and read Pakal’sname and his birth and death dates(Lounsbury 1974; Mathews and Schele1974). These indicate that he was born in603 A.D., acceded to the paramountcy ofPalenque in 615 at age 12, and died in 683,making him 80 years old at his death,twice the age determined from the physi-cal examination (Mathews and Schele1974:Table 1; Robertson 1983:23). RuzLhuillier (1977), who had excavated thetomb, then called for new skeletal analy-ses, which yielded the same result as be-fore. He therefore soundly criticized theepigraphers for failing even to considerthe physical evidence of age in their re-construction of Pakal’s life-history giventhe huge discrepancy presented by thesetwo sources of information (see alsoAcosta 1977:285).

Stepping into the controversy, Carlson(1980) suggested that the inscriptions—which are heavily weighted toward calen-drical and astronomical cycles—shouldnot be so literally interpreted. He ob-served (1980:199) that Palenque’s inscrip-tions are known to have linked events inthe lives of the ruling family to earlier


actions by ancestors and gods through theuse of contrived dates to place thoseevents in equivalent positions withincalendrical cycles (Lounsbury 1976). Suchcontrived dates may have taken prece-dence over historical accuracy in record-ing royal biographies (Carlson 1980:202;Lounsbury 1991:819). Nevetheless, Pakal’sage discrepancy remains an “apparentcontradiction yet to be resolved” in Mayaarchaeology (Sharer 1994:280; also Carlson1980:203). In a final response, Schele andMathews (1998:342–344) referred to morerecent studies that contest the age-deter-mination techniques of the 1950s–1970s,and reiterated the “incontrovertible”arithmetic used to arrive at Pakal’s agefrom his birth and death dates. They ar-gued that unwillingness to accept thesedates would call into question all that isknown about the Maya Long Count calen-dar at every Maya site (1998:343).

Social Death

The arithmetic is not in doubt, andmore sophisticated techniques for agingmature adults are now available (e.g.,Schwartz 1995:185–222), but the contro-versy cannot so easily be resolved. A ma-jor source for the discrepancy in Pakal’sage may be the identification of the bodyin the sarcophagus with Pakal as a personrepresented in inscriptions and images.The same type of identification has re-sulted in interpretive problems at otherMaya centers. For example, at Copan,Honduras, archaeologists at first believedthey had found the tomb of the Early Clas-sic founder of the ruling dynasty, namedYax K’uk’ Mo’ (First Quetzal Macaw) inthe later retrospective texts. The prepon-derance of the evidence in terms of tomblocation, chronology, iconography, andgrave goods pointed to that identification(Stuart 1997:75). Yet the physical analysislater showed that the body was that of awoman, leaving archaeologists to conjec-

ture she was the wife of the founder (1997:82), the only female likely to have sharedthe symbolic references that designatedthis ruler.

In other cases the identity of a tomboccupant has been made from a nameinscribed on included grave goods, suchas the name (currently read YikomYich’ak’ K’ak’) on a pottery vessel inTomb 4 of Calakmul, Mexico. The excava-tors used this vessel to identify the man inthe tomb, despite earlier readings of otherinscriptions that the same named individ-ual had been killed (and buried) at Tikal,Guatemala (Carrasco Vargas et al. 1999:49). Stuart (1989:158) has sounded a noteof caution regarding this practice becausepottery vessels were widely traded andshow up in graves far from their point ofmanufacture. He had already confrontedthis same problem in deciphering the lifehistory of an important woman, as in-scribed on four shell plaques in Burial 5 atPiedras Negras, Guatemala, a grave whichturned out to house an adult male ratherthan the expected female (Stuart 1985).Nevertheless, the operating assumption,overturned only in the face of irrefutablephysical evidence, is that names on gravegoods should coincide with the individualin the grave because it is believed that thedeceased’s status should be most promi-nently marked in mortuary contexts. Aone-to-one correspondence is presumedbetween the skeletal remains and thesymbolic references to social identity.

However, many Maya tombs were reen-tered and also reused, housing multiplebodies in differing states of articulation, sothese graves cannot easily signify the sta-tus and identity of a single individual at afixed point in time following immediatelyafter death.10 At Caracol, tombs servedmultiple uses and were not always thefinal resting place, as bodies were sub-jected to several stages of processing indifferent locales (Chase and Chase 1996:76, 1998:311), and the same practice may

psibilttmpdltkdely


explain empty tombs found elsewhere. Inaddition to the physical evidence for suchsecondary mortuary rituals, which some-times involved the curation of body parts(Chase and Chase 1996:77; Welsh 1988:216), there are ethnohistoric descriptionsof similar practices from late prehispanicYucatan (Landa 1982:59). Thus, only atcertain times or for certain persons wereMaya tombs sealed (Chase and Chase1994:56) in a ceremony that “reflects sev-eral things: the end of mourning, continu-ity, and a reaffirmation of the social order”(Chase and Chase 1996:77).

Such a ritual or class of rituals to thedead may be indicated in inscriptions at anumber of sites by a hieroglyph that Stu-art (1998:396–397) suggested may readmuknal. It refers to activities directed at aplace for the dead, and muknal is the Yu-catec Maya word for tomb (muk is not read

honetically). Stuart (1998:398) furtheruggested that this ritual took place afternterment and apparently involved theurning of substances such as incense, ev-

dence for which has been found archaeo-ogically both within and outside ofombs. McAnany (1998:289), however, in-erpreted the muknal event as the inter-

ent of the deceased in the final restinglace, which may have required a greateal of time to gather the resources and

abor to construct. From sites where bothhe muknal and the death dates arenown, McAnany showed that the me-ian number of days between the twovents was 482, about 11

2 years, and theongest known elapsed period was 24ears.In McAnany’s hypothesis the muknal

event may be the ritual marking of “socialdeath.” The well-known dichotomy be-tween “biological” and “social” death(Bloch 1982:220) obligates us to analyti-cally separate the physical and social as-pects of persons as opposed to individu-als. This is especially the case intraditional societies in which physical in-

dividuality, experienced most obviouslyby death, is an obstacle to a social orderbased on the continuous incarnation byhumans of the legitimate positions (per-sonnages in Mauss’s term) that make upsociety (Bloch 1982:223; Goody 1962:27).Where succession or inheritance are con-cerned, social death can be more criticalthan biological death, since personhood(and hence rights to office or property)can extend beyond one’s demise. For ex-ample, in medieval France the dead kingwas treated as if he were alive, via themedium of an effigy, until his funeral—marking his social death and the legiti-mate accession of his successor—in orderto eliminate the conceptual problem of aninterregnum (Mayer 1985:211–212).

Hertz, another student of Durkheim,is credited with bringing the commonoccurrence of secondary mortuary ritu-als to anthropological attention with his1907 essay, in which he observed that insocial terms, death is “the object of col-lective representation” (Hertz 1960:28;see also Bloch 1982:224 –225). Whiledeath starts the process of physical de-composition, funerary and later com-memorative rituals are necessary to de-construct the social person as opposed tothe self and personal identity (Gluck-man 1937:118). They separate out thevarious parts that had come together,also by ritual means, throughout one’slifetime. These components include tan-gible and intangible elements contrib-uted by the father’s and mother’s kingroups, as well as identity relationshipsamalgamated through marriage andother social exchanges (e.g., Barraud1990:225; Goody 1962:273; Kan 1989:66;Munn 1986:164; Weiner 1976:8). TheMaya, like many other peoples, believedthat the corporeal aspect of the body wascomposed of two major essences (e.g., Bar-ley 1995:100; Bloch 1982:224–225; Levi-Strauss 1969:393). The bones, a dry endur-ing material, were contributed by the father

Ancestors and the “House”


representing the continuity of the patriline.The flesh or blood, a wet and perishable butlife-giving substance that influenced one’swell-being, was contributed by the moth-er’s or wife-providing group (e.g., Nash1970:109; Popol Vuh 1996:98–99; seeGillespie and Joyce 1997:199). In addition,each person had one or more “souls” orspiritual essences (Freidel et al. 1993:181–185; Vogt 1970) that connected them to theancestors and to the local setting of theirsocial group—collective representationsbeyond their individual destinies. The fi-nal disposition of the souls was also asubject of ritual concern.

Funerary and commemorative ritualsto “decompose” the social person simul-taneously serve to reorganize the rela-tionships of the survivors to one anotherto reaffirm order within the collectivity,as Hertz (1960) first observed. Kan (1989:289) similarly noted for the Tlingit ofAlaska: “To make the deceased into avaluable cultural resource, the ritualmust separate his perishable and pollut-ing attributes from the immortal andpure ones. The funeral begins this pro-cess, but time is needed for all the ele-ments constituting his total social per-sona to be separated from each other, forthe perishable and impure ones to bediscarded, and for the immortal ones tobe channeled back into the social orderof the living.” Thus, it is not suprisingthat a Maya Long Count date recordedfor social death—possibly the muknalevent—may be far removed from that ofbiological death. Among the Tlingit, forexample, the dead body was considered“unfinished” until the memorial pot-latch took place, which was necessary to“celebrate the end of a long process oftransformation of the deceased’s socialpersona” (Kan 1989:181–182). In Indone-sia, it is similarly the last prescribed ex-change prestation that “signifies the endof a person” (Barraud 1990:224).

If death precipitates “the removal of asocial person from society” (Humphreys1981b:2) and all the ritual entailed in thatprocess with its political and economicconsequences, then to get beyond the in-dividual in the grave requires some un-derstanding of the social classification ofthe populace into meaningful units andrelationships from which people, as per-sons, construct their identities. Maya set-tlement pattern analysis provides impor-tant evidence in this regard. The typicalresidential pattern was a grouping ofstructures around one or more patios,forming a compound that would havehoused a multifamily kin-linked unit overmultiple generations (Ashmore 1981). Outof the daily practice of shared living ar-rangements and economic and ritual ac-tivities, the group who occupied this spacemaintained a collective identity (Hendon1999). Some of these domestic compoundsinclude recognizable shrines, generally onthe east side, providing a localized reli-gious focus for group identity (Ashmore1981; Chase and Chase 1996; Haviland1981, 1988; McAnany 1995:66, 104; Tourtel-lot 1988; Welsh 1988:217).

These domestic structures were fre-quently renovated, their superstructuresrazed to make way for new buildings. Sig-nificantly, rebuilding episodes were usu-ally contemporary with the interment ofone or more persons within the substruc-ture (Coe 1956:388; Haviland et al. 1985:152; McAnany et al. 1999:141; Welsh 1988:7). While some of the interred humanremains are believed to be sacrificial vic-tims (Becker 1992:188), the main burials inelaborate graves suggest that the deathsof these persons motivated the renova-tions that followed (1992:188; Coe 1956:388; McAnany et al. 1999:141). This prac-tice began in the Formative (Pre-Classic)period (Adams 1977:99), and careful exca-vations at K’axob, Belize showed that


“Formative ’burials’ are so temporally andcontextually connected with constructionof a new structure that often they residestratigraphically in a place betwixt an oldand a new building” (McAnany 1995:161).On occasion, one or more “terminal” buri-als may have signaled abandonment ofthe structure (Haviland et al. 1985:150–151), a practice known historically in Yu-catan (Landa 1982:59) and ethnographi-cally in the Chiapas highlands (Blom andLaFarge 1926–1927:2:362).

The use of structures—predominantlyresidences—to house the graves of Mayaelite and nonelite persons is the one con-sistent pattern noted by Welsh (1988:166)among the great variety of burial treat-ments used by the Classic lowland Maya(Ruz Lhuillier 1965, 1968). Subfloor inter-ments were typically topped by a masonryaltar or bench (Welsh 1988:188–189). Someelite households used a special shrinebuilding rather than the dwelling for theirdead (1988:188–189; Haviland et al. 1985),and most rare are the temple-pyramidsbuilt completely de novo over a subsurfacetomb (Welsh 1988:190). Ritual activitiescontinued to be performed at all theselocations, as indicated especially by theevidence of incense burning. Thus, thedead were important to the living at alllevels of society (Chase and Chase 1994:54). The huge and disruptive architecturalinvestment in graves, the high number ofgraves within structures, the curation ofsome body parts, and evidence for contin-ued ritual veneration at those locationsshow how pervasive the dead were to thedaily practice of the living. Coe (1988:234)considered Maya centers to be “necropo-lises, in which the living were gathered toworship the honored dead.”

Nevertheless, other evidence showsthat it was not for the dead that thiseffort was expended but for ancestors,noncorporeal beings with whom the liv-ing, who transformed the dead into an-cestors, continued to interact (Gillespie

2000b; McAnany 1995:161, 1998; see alsoChapman 1994; Morris 1991). Maya archae-ological evidence supports ancestor vener-ation practices congruent with ethnohistoricand some ethnographic accounts [Landa1982:59; Las Casas 1967:2:526; see Gillespie(1999, 2000b) and McAnany (1995, 1998) onprehispanic Maya ancestor veneration;Nash (1970:22), Vogt (1969:298–301), andWatanabe (1990:139–141) on the contractualrelationships by which the modern Mayaengage with ancestors]. The shrines and al-tars were places for active commemora-tion of ancestors (Welsh 1988:186–193),whose bodily remains may have served toattract their spirits, the way analogoushouse shrines do today (Vogt 1964:499–500), as a means for maintaining theirsouls within the control of the residentialunit (Gillespie n.d.). The juxtaposition ofthe living with the dead and the continuedveneration of their spirits in domestic con-texts indicates that the house compounditself was a material means for signifyingthe group’s continuity with the ancestors[McAnany 1998:271, 276; see Chapman(1994:57) for an Old World example]. Theinterment of the dead contributed to thesacral quality of the house, to the pointthat temples or shrines sometimes re-placed the domestic structures (McAnany1995:161, 1998:279).

In the case of the ruling group, continu-ity with ancestors was also maintained viathe curation of predecessors’ monuments(Adams 1977:99). They formed a majormaterial means by which the dead wererecreated in memory as “an anchor formeaning” (Humphreys 1981a:272). Com-memorative activities would also havecontributed to what Halbwachs, anotherstudent of Durkheim, called “collective”memory, which is sustained within a spe-cific social group (Halbwachs 1980); it isnow more frequently referred to as “so-cial” memory (Connerton 1989; Fentressand Wickham 1992). Such memories,which legitimate a present order or inno-


vate a new one, are conveyed through rit-ual performances and commemorativeceremonies (Connerton 1989:3–4), for“memory is actively constructed as a so-cial and cultural process” [Melion andKuchler 1991:4; see Miller (1998) for Mayaexamples of social memory evokedthrough architecture].

The architectural evidence indicatesthat Maya society was divided into spa-tially separate kin-based groups main-taining ties to their ancestors as an impor-tant resource and symbol of continuitywith the past. Another important clue toidentifying these social units and theirlinks to personhood comes from thebuildings themselves, which were typi-cally called “houses” (na and otot/otoch).Houses had proper names that appear ininscriptions of dedication and terminationrituals for the structures (Freidel andSchele 1989; Schele 1990; Stuart 1998:376;Stuart and Houston 1994: Fig. 104). Theywere sometimes named for ancestors. Forexample, two of Palenque’s Cross Groupbuilding inscriptions relate the dedicationof the house (na and otot) of K’uk’(Quetzal). These texts have been inter-preted as naming the Cross Group as the“house” of K’uk’ (Schele 1990:149), a ref-erence to a legendary paramount ofPalenque, Balam-K’uk’ (Jaguar Quetzal),who apparently served as an “anchoringancestor” for the ruling dynasty by thetime of Kan-Balam’s reign (Freidel 1992:123–125; Schele 1987). Indeed, there ismuch evidence that “Maya rulers rebuilt,refurbished, and rededicated lineagehouses of their founding ancestors”(Freidel 1992:125).

Thus houses, which were named andwhose social births and deaths were ritu-ally marked, overlapped in these qualitieswith the people who occupied them.Moreover, despite the common presump-tion that monumental inscriptions werecommissioned to extol the life events ofrulers, Stuart (1998:375) has shown that

they instead served more precisely to“record the activities surrounding theplacement, creation, and activation of rit-ual things and places,” specifically ob-jects, monuments, and buildings, and thatthese “dedication events were among themost important events worthy of perma-nent record.” In this sense, stone monu-ments erected in front of or within thebuildings also served a commemorativefunction linking persons to those namedplaces, reiterating their co-identities.Other objects also preserve a record ofthese ritual events. For example, a vesselin a dedicatory cache in an Early Classicpalace structure at Tikal has an inscription“his house, Jaguar Paw, Ruler of Tikal, 9thRuler.” It makes explicit both the com-memorative nature of the ritual in whichthe cache items were deposited, in associ-ation with the erection of the building(Jones 1991:111) as well as the linking ofthe named ruler to his “house.”

The identification of persons withhouses extends beyond even these exam-ples, for the word “house” is used by theMaya to refer to their domestic groupsapart from the structures. Among themodern Tzotzil Maya, sna (house) is theterm for any named localized extendedfamily group that maintains a separateidentity which is objectified by a singlehouse shrine and continuously enacted bygroup participation in dedication rituals(Vogt 1969:140). The equivalent social unitfor the Chorti Maya is the otot (Wisdom1940:248). Similarly, the Postclassic QuicheMaya aristocracy were organized by mem-bership in a nimha (“great house”) (Car-mack 1981:160). The Classic period inscrip-tions also provide evidence for prehispanicsocial identity as referrring to a “house” as asocial group. In a Tamarindito, Guatemala,text the “house names” are provided for aruler’s mother and father, the woman beingof the “flower house” and the man from the“maize house” (Houston 1998:521). A wide-spread courtly title used by both males and

hrlis

laamfwSfttmt


females is read ah ch’ul na, “person of theoly house” (Houston 1993:130). This titleelates them to the ruler, ch’ul ahaw, “holyord,” the head of the royal (“holy”) housen which those persons claimed member-hip.

The organization of Maya society intoong-lived property-owning groups knowns “houses” is not unusual but conforms towidely distributed pattern also found inedieval Europe, whose aristrocracy

ormed noble houses to which commonersere attached (Gillespie 2000b). Levi-trauss (1982:174, 1987:152) first recognized,

rom ethnographic and historical descrip-ions of a wide range of ranked societies,hat the house is a recurring social unit that

ost frequently is emically referred to byhe word for a dwelling.11 He correspond-

ingly observed that anthropologists oftenmistakenly identified social “houses” bytheir own etic term, lineage (see also Mc-Kinnon 1991:29), thereby assuming that theseare strictly descent groups and missing thecritical point of the association of the socialunit with architecture, place, and property.From the various occurrences of what hecalled “house societies,” Levi-Strauss de-vised the following definition in which the“house” is treated as a “person” in the sensethat Mauss intended. The house is a per-sonne morale, usually translated as a corpo-rate body, “holding an estate made up ofboth material and immaterial wealth, whichperpetuates itself through the transmissionof its name, its goods, and its titles down areal or imaginary line, considered legitimateas long as this continuity can express itselfin the language of kinship or of affinity and,most often, of both” (Levi-Strauss 1982:174).

As a person, the subject of rights andreponsibilities, the “house” emerges asthe collective unit in exchange relations,particularly marriage, with other houses(Levi-Strauss 1982). While many house so-cieties have a unilateral basis for inheri-tance and succession, ties to spouses’“houses” are maintained. Property may

flow through both parents as well asthrough spouses, and noble “houses” typ-ically engage in strategic marriages to ac-quire property from affines (Gillespie2000a). The “house” is also a key source ofpersonhood for its members, providing aplace for them in the social nexus and acorresponding physical place in the spa-tial network of the settlement (Forth 1991:74). People’s identities are thereforeshaped by their “house” identity, andtheir relationships to others are based inpart on the relationships of their respec-tive “houses” (Barraud 1990:228). This isamply demonstrated in Indonesia wherehouse societies have been best studied byethnographers (e.g. Barraud 1990; Forth1991; Fox 1980; McKinnon 1991; Waterson1990).

Maya “Houses” and “Persons”

In the case of the Maya, several concreteexpressions of personhood as derivedfrom “house” affiliation are interpretablefrom the available evidence. They aremanifested by the “house’s” estate con-sisting of real and intangible property, bythe strategic “language” of consanguinealkinship and affinity to create relationshipsthat increase and perpetuate the estateover time, and by the maintenance of theestate over multiple generations.

Beginning with the “house” estate,among its important immaterial propertyis a set of names or titles, which may forma ranked classification system as thenames are disbursed to certain “house”members (e.g., the descriptions of Zuniand Kwakiutl above; Fortes 1973:312; Kan1989:70). These names are often attributedto real or legendary ancestors, and in as-suming them, the living house membersassume the ancestors’ position or part oftheir identity, and thereby perpetuate thatportion of the “house’s” estate. Manymodern Maya believe that the soul(s) ofthe dead are reincarnated in subsequently


born family members given the samename, such that the two share in impor-tant aspects of their identities (Carlsenand Prechtel 1991:29; Thompson 1930:82).Thus, the ancestral spirits as well as thenames should be considered immaterial“house” property that is curated acrossgenerations and reproduces the socialunit.

Mauss (1985:4–5) and Boas (in Levi-Strauss 1982:167) also emphasized how as-pects of personhood are acquired throughthe taking of various names at differentlife stages, a practice documented for thePostclassic Yucatec Maya (Roys 1940). Inthe 16th century, Landa (1982:58) reportedthat children were given different namesand that upon marriage they assumed adouble surname, taking both their moth-er’s and father’s names. This customwould have signified the continuity of thepatriline and the affiliation to the wife-giving group as embodied by each child.The use of multiple names and titles forClassic period paramounts at different lifestages was recorded in the inscriptions(Schele 1988a:67). Moreover, upon takingimportant captives in war, a victoriousMaya ruler would usurp the vanquished’stitles (Schele and Freidel 1990:143). Mauss(1985:8–9) described this same practiceamong the Kwakiutl, explaining that bykilling a captive or seizing his names, war-riors appropriated his “person.” As Kan(1989:71) argued, it is the name that is amember of the “house” more so than theindividual who is the current holder ofthat name.12

Palenque’s dynastic history, as it hasbeen tentatively reconstructed from kinglists (Bassie-Sweet 1991:242; Schele andFreidel 1990:222), reveals the repetition ofcertain names, demonstrating the concernto manifest the continuity of the royal“house.” It could be argued that the longretrospective historical texts were promi-nently erected as a material means bywhich the ruling house actively claimed

names and ancestors as its property. Spe-cifically, the texts name as royal personsHanab-Pakal, Kan-Balam, K’an-Hok’-Chi-tam, Akhal Mo’ Nab’, and K’uk-Balam(Schele and Mathews 1993; Stuart 1999).These same names were apparently ap-propriated by later paramounts, startingwith Hanab-Pakal buried in the Temple ofthe Inscriptions. New discoveries showthat Akhal Mo’ Nab’ erected texts specif-ically concerning two legendary para-mounts who shared his name. Akhal Mo’Nab’ is presumed to have been the son ofa high office-holder, for unlike the previ-ous two rulers (K’an-Hok’-Chitam andKan-Balam), he did not claim to be a de-scendant of Pakal. The newly found in-scriptions have been thought to reveal“some conniving to prove he had the rightto rule” (Robertson et al. 1999:3). How-ever, the fact that he could assume thename Akhal Mo’ Nab’, known from Kan-Balam’s earlier king list, demonstrates hismembership in the royal “house,” and it is“the language of kinship” rather thanstrict succession rules that can strategi-cally position someone as head of that“house.”

The material signifiers of “house” prop-erty and continuity are more readily ap-parent. The constant rebuilding or refur-bishing of houses and related structures,typically consonant with the death of animportant person, has already been notedas a common pattern at Maya sites. Theenlargement and embellishment of struc-tures are visible indications of a “house’s”success in maintaining or increasing itsprestige vis-a-vis others. The changes ex-perienced by domestic structures mayalso represent events in the life historiesof their inhabitants (Bloch 1995). Anotherimportant component of tangible prop-erty are named heirloomed valuables, of-ten attributed to the acquisitive exploits ofancestors in legendary or even primordialtimes. Accompanying such valuables areoral narratives of their history, which con-


tribute to their value and are constantlyadjusted as the objects are passed downwithin a social group or moved to anothergroup in marriage-based exchanges(Weiner 1992:37, 42). In this way, the ac-tions of individuals as persons become en-twined with the life histories of the itemsthat objectify the “house” as a social unit.

For the Classic Maya, there are textsand images that deal with these valuables,including the story of the acquisition ofroyal costume ornaments from gods, aswritten in Palenque’s Temple of the In-scriptions (Schele and Mathews 1998:102,107). In addition, inscriptions that pre-serve some of this history were written onthe valuables themselves. These includethe named stone stelae, which were oftenreerected, cached in buildings, or evenmutilated as part of their resignificationby later curators and also the fine costumeornaments recovered from buildingcaches and tombs. For these latter objects,Joyce (2000) has demonstrated that manywere deposited long after their initial cre-ation and sometimes far away, as theywere moved through exchange networks,such that their final disposition wouldhave signified the history of a “house(s),”and not simply the discrete individual inthe tomb. The Piedras Negras shellplaques described above fall into this cat-egory.

Mortuary ritual was a critical opportu-nity for “house” members to secure theinheritance of tangible and intangibleproperty attached to the person of the de-ceased. The transfer of property rights isan act of social continuity in itself, but totransfer them, they must be activelyclaimed. Ethnographic examples revealthat it is common for the “house” valu-ables to be put on display at the deaths ofimportant people. Barraud (1990:224) re-ported for the Kei Archipelago of Indone-sia that “all jewels and valuables belong-ing to the deceased’s house wereexhibited and hung inside and outside his

house in order to show both the greatnessof his name and the grief of his family. Forthe last time, the deceased was identifiedand represented by his house.” Kan (1989:63) has similarly shown for the Tlingit thatthe commemorative potlatches to thedead were major occasions when owner-ship of property was reasserted, the his-tories of the heirlooms were recited, andthe normally hidden objects were put onpublic display.

Heirloomed valuables are sometimesdepicted in Maya art as wrapped bundles,especially at Palenque and neighboringYaxchilan (Benson 1976; Tate 1992). Clothbundles have long usage in Mesoamericaas containers for curating that which isvaluable and/or sacred (Stenzel 1970).Such bundles were described as the in-alienable property (after Weiner 1992) ofthe aristocratic “great houses” of the Post-classic Quiche Maya, handed down fromlegendary ancestors, and it was said thatthey were never unwrapped (Popol Vuh1996:174). However, at Palenque there isimagery and text concerning opened bun-dles, their contents displayed, in the tab-lets of the three Cross Group buildings,the adjacent Temple XIV Tablet, and thePalace Tablet. Similar objects (without thecloth wrapping) are shown on the OvalPalace Tablet, the Tablet of the Slaves,and the Dumbarton Oaks Panel.13 In everycase but the three Cross Group tablets,the presentation is made to a paramountor high official by parents who wouldhave been deceased, showing transfer ofproperty rights across generations, al-though these are not meant to depict real-life events. For the Cross Group, it is theolder Kan-Balam himself who holds theopened bundle (ostensibly at his acces-sion).

Significantly, at least two of these pan-els (Temple XIV and the Dumbarton OaksPanel) have been interpreted as posthu-mous depictions of the paramount (Schele1988b; Schele and Miller 1986:272–276).


This is in keeping with the ethnographi-cally documented display of house his-tory—as encapsulated by its most valu-able heirlooms—at the death of a high-ranking member. We can suspect thataccession to the head of the royal “house”may have called for a similar display, as inthe case of the Cross Group tablets, aspart of the final events of ending the in-terregnum brought about by the death ofthe previous ruler. This pattern suggests thelikely commemorative purpose of the othertablets as well and indicates that they referto a collective identity, rather than to theself-promotion of an individual.

The depictions of the deceased parentsin these artworks is also significant, keep-ing in mind that these are symbolic rep-resentations. Many Maya inscriptionshave been interpreted as naming themother and father of an ego, usually theruler. However, I suspect that the concernwas not to identify a unique individualwith regard to his parents, but to positionhis person with respect to other personsand “houses.” In the case of the patrifilialMaya, one’s own “house” was referencedthrough the naming of the “father” or thehead of the “house” or even the “house”name, while the naming of the “mother”indicated the maternal or wife-giving“house,” the source of “blood” and thus oflife (Gillespie and Joyce 1997:199). Thepersons named as parents and the itemsthey hold would thereby represent thecontributions of their “houses” to thecomposite identity credited to the person-age receiving them (1997:202). Indeed, thevery names chosen to be displayed in theinscriptions and narrated in ritual eventsmay indicate the qualities that were con-tributed to the person of the paramount.As one example, we’ve seen the appella-tive K’uk’ applied to the founder of theking lists for both Palenque and Copanand to the mother of Pakal. In YucatecMaya, k’uk’ meant more than “quetzalbird.” It also referred to the sprout,

sucker, or shoot of trees and other plants,and the same word was applied to one’schildren and descendants (BarreraVasquez et al. 1980:420). This is an aptbotanic metaphor for a founder of a newline of kings, which in the case of Pakalwas a role assigned to a female (while thename of Pakal’s father indicates otherqualities).

Mortuary and commemorative ritualshave been interpreted since the time ofDurkheim as a necessary act of restoringthe cohesion of the group threatened bythe loss of a member (Goody 1962:30, 27–28). As Kan (1989:288–289) and Bloch(1982:218–219) have observed, however,death is sometimes the only opportunityfor social order per se to be ritually rep-resented. It is also an opportunity for re-shaping, and not just reifying, social order(Gluckman 1937:118). Positions within the“house” and between rival “houses” areshuffled, and heirlooms associated withthe deceased take on additional life his-tory, increasing their value and the com-petition for them. Sociopolitical relation-ships could be further manipulatedthrough secondary mortuary rituals toconstruct innovated social memories ofthe dead, thereby enhancing the status ofthe living.

At Palenque the person represented asPakal continued to be reshaped in socialmemory. Some artworks that name or de-pict him have been interpreted as postdat-ing his demise, such as the DumbartonOaks Panel, where he is shown with hisalso deceased son, K’an-Hok’-Chitam.Another prominent image of Pakal, on theOval Palace Tablet, may have served asimiliar commemorative function, al-though it is generally interpreted as Pa-kal’s accession monument, commissionedby him (Robertson 1985a:28, Fig. 92). It hasno date and does not use the Palenqueaccession verb, but it does name Pakal asan enthroned actor receiving a headdressheld out by Sak-K’uk’, elsewhere said to


be his mother. The assumption has beenthat only he would commission such ascene and that it refers to the transfer ofpower, symbolized by the headdress, di-rectly from the antecedent ruler, hismother (although he is shown as an adult,and according to the inscriptions, he was aboy when he became king). The sameheaddress is also shown being offered (bymales, considered to be fathers) on thePalace Tablet and the Tablet of the Slaves.

The Oval Palace Tablet was erected on awall of House E of the Palace, above thebench-throne that actually names a laterparamount, Akhal Mo’ Nab’ (Robertson1985a:31), who did not claim descent fromPakal. Both the throne and a painted textabove the Oval Palace Tablet refer toAkhal Mo’ Nab’s accession (Schele andMathews 1993:129). I suggest that the tab-let relates in imagery the remembered orinnovated history of the headdress as aspecific named heirloom by displaying itsactive transfer to the person representedas Pakal, for image production is a majorcomponent in the active construction ofmemory (Melion and Kuchler 1991:4). Inenhancing the value of the object, the tab-let also forms an important referent to thehigh status claimed by the ruling “house”after the death of Pakal, visually evidenc-ing ties to a known predecessor throughthe association of his person with theheaddress. In this way the headdress wasan important part of the imagery associ-ated with the throne, and both were re-lated by this juxtapostion to the personnageof the head of the royal “house” ofPalenque, who presumably sat on thatthrone.

Pakal was referred to by a title read “heof the pyramid” in an even later inscrip-tion, the Tablet of the 96 Glyphs (Robert-son 1991:79, Fig. 264). This title located hisperson spatially in the imposing Templeof the Inscriptions while also associatinghim with the powerful Maya earth-lordsor “grandfather” (ancestral) deities who

inhabit the mountains (Thompson 1930:57). The central figure named in the Tabletof the 96 Glyphs called himself Balam-K’uk’ (Jaguar-Quetzal), the name of afounding ancestor of Pakal’s “house.”However, he claimed to be a son of AkhalMo’ Nab’ and thus not a descendant ofPakal (Bassie-Sweet 1991:247; Schele1988a:103). Nevertheless, as with his puta-tive father, this last paramount associatedhimself with the same ruling “house” asPakal’s, most obviously by the assumptionof this important name, without the needto demonstrate agnatic descent from priorrulers.14 This Balam-K’uk’ additionallyclaimed other titles used by Palenque’sprevious rulers (Schele and Mathews1993:131). These monuments and their rit-ual usage reveal an intent to innovate orsustain a collective memory of the personof Pakal as an anchoring ancestor andmetonymic reference to the ruling“house,” to enhance its longevity, pres-tige, and power. History proved other-wise, and there are no surviving recordsfor any successors of Balam-K’uk’ to theparamountcy of Palenque.

CONCLUSION

This article has proposed that the so-cially constituted “person” may serve asone means to bridge the theoretical dividebetween “individualism” and “holism.” Itdraws on an earlier literature that, withthe proper perspective, can be updated tofit more contemporary practice or actor-oriented theories. In applying this conceptto the prehispanic Maya, I have focusedon how important aspects of personhoodwere derived from the organization of theMaya aristocracy into “houses,” long-lived property-owning groups, as can bedetermined from the archaeological andepigraphic evidence. I suggest that muchof the surviving imagery at Palenque inparticular served commemorative pur-poses in the sense that certain persons


were actively remembered, claimed, andreshaped even long after the deaths ofspecific name-holders in order to enhancethe identities and sociopolitical positionsof the living within the framework of al-lied noble “houses” and their commonerclients. Similar manifestations of com-memorative activities characterize otherMaya centers, although the organizationalprinciples by which royal persons wereconstructed and represented were not ex-actly the same, and new forms were inno-vated.

For example, the observation that fe-male images and names are far more com-mon in the western Maya area, along theUsumacinta River, than in the rest of theMaya lowlands, indicates more than a dif-ference in gender relations at these varioussites (cf. Haviland 1997:10). It also signalssignificant variation in the constructionof Maya personhood, including the contri-butions of agnatic, uterine, and affinal“houses” and the gendered association ofspecific qualities that make up a person(e.g., Joyce 1996:186–187). In addition to thegreater emphasis on females, these westernsites also reveal name repetition by mem-bers of the royal “house” and the imagery ofbundled valuables. Perhaps these symbolsand others form a specific historical com-plex that developed only in this part of theMaya lowlands. The likely implications ofsuch variabilty for Maya political organiza-tion need to be further explored.

The elaborate material evidence of mor-tuary and commemorative rituals also in-dicates the importance and complexity ofsocial identity as both created and decon-structed in a lengthy process that is notneatly confined to the biological events ofbirth and death. It signifies that identitieswere not isolable essences but werelinked systematically to others—both per-sons and “houses,” both the living and thedead—in the reproduction and transfor-mation of society. There were other im-portant interlocking components of Maya

personhood and selfhood beyond kinshipand “house” membership, notably gen-der, occupation or craft activities, and so-cial estate (“class”) (Joyce 1993, 1996), andnone of these should be treated in isola-tion. Studies of Maya artistic depictions ofhumans have revealed how gender wasvisually represented and manipulatedquite apart from the actual biological sexof individuals (Hewitt 1999:260; Joyce1996). Similar archaeological analyses ofgender imagery elsewhere have also ex-plained how appearance is “a means ofsocial communication between individu-als or groups [that] gives a unique under-standing of the construction and symbolicreflection of social categories” (Sørensen1991:122). Indeed, feminist literature hasargued against the idea that gender is anessentialized, ahistorical, transcultural,even natural category (Meskell 1996;Strathern 1981). The same type of analysisneeds to be applied to the notion of the“individual” in archaeology.

The metaphysical concepts of “self”highlighted in ethnopsychological ap-proaches (e.g., Hill and Fischer 1999;Houston and Stuart 1998) also may serveto relate people to a totality beyond theself. In Mesoamerica, in addition to the“souls” that link people to their ancestorsand related social collectivities, the ritualalmanac (a 260-day “calendar”) was ameans of linking cosmic forces to humanexperience. Monaghan (1998:140) inde-pendently suggested that in Mesoamerica,“personhood is not something that is anecessary property of the individual, butis a status that inheres in a collectivity.”He proposed that the Maya word for hu-man being, vinik (cognate winik), whichalso means “20,” is a reference to the 20day names and associated destinies of theMesoamerican ritual almanac by whichthe fate of every human is metaphysicallyentwined with specific cosmic forces. Inassuming one of these 20 names based onthe day of birth or baptism (social birth),

described ethnographically (e.g., Boon


each person therefore represents a neces-sary part of the larger cosmic system, suchthat “personhood is relational” (1998:140).Monaghan (1998:140) observed that thismakes sense given “the great emphasiswe see in Mesoamerican societies on themaintenance of corporate rights and theequally strong emphasis on collective ver-sus individual forms of worship.”

Blanton and colleagues (1996:14) hadcalled for more attention to be paid toprehistoric collectivities to understand thetrajectories of Mesoamerican cultural evo-lution because most archaeologists havetended to concentrate on the individualis-tic processes and outcomes of the networkstrategy. The pendulum has shifted too fartoward the “individual” pole in archaeol-ogy, and there is a need to model thebridging mechanisms between corporategroups and individuals, to explore the di-versity and transformation of politicaleconomies. I suggest that we first considerhow different strategies are best inter-preted from the available evidence. TheClassic Maya, considered to exemplify thenetwork strategy because of the emphasison pictures of named rulers and the costlyenshrinement of royal ancestors, can beseen to evince the same collective con-struction of person and agency that onewould expect to find with the corporatestrategy. The emphasis on representationsof named humans in Maya art cannot betaken as an emphasis on individual-cen-tered activities and self-glorification. Thepictures and texts may be references topersons, dependent for their identities oncollectivities, namely the ruling and majorsubroyal “houses.” The highly visibleroyal ancestral cults need not have en-tailed restrictions on group membershipbut may have had the opposite intent—toattract large numbers of clients lackingdescent ties to the authority of a corporateunit by their participation in ritual, polit-ical, or economic activities, as has been

1977:63–65; Feeley-Harnik 1991).A better approach to the unresolved is-

sue of who built Pakal’s tomb is first toconsider that it was the work of his“house,” whose members invested muchof their own identity and prestige in hisperson and his memorialization after hisdeath. The more interesting issue be-comes investigating why it was that insome, but not all, Mesoamerican culturessince the time of the Formative periodOlmecs (beginning ca. 1200 B.C.), power-ful corporate groups were sometimes rep-resented in artworks and mortuary con-texts as “persons” embodied by individuals,with aspects of “house” identity literallyconstructed upon the human figure(Gillespie 1993, 1999). Depictions of rulersmanipulating specific objects, wearing cer-tain costume items, or located in associationwith powerful places—all of which signalthe sacred qualities of their person—char-acterize the monumental art of the Olmecsand Maya, but are almost completely absentfrom the central Mexican highland civiliza-tions of Teotihuacan and the Aztecs. Thisabsence need not indicate the lack of sacredkingship and the embodiment of politicalpower, however. Even for the PostclassicAztecs, who exemplified the corporatestrategy par excellence, the totality of thestate was anthropomorphically referred toby the name (title) of the divine king Mo-teuczoma, as recorded in colonial docu-ments (Gillespie 1998:245).

As for the majority of archaeologicalcultures that have left few such directclues to social identities, it is neverthelessimportant in interpreting evidence foragency and status differences to recognizehow “personhood” was enacted within anetwork of social groupings. A call for in-creased consideration for collectivities, bywhich individuals’ lives are shapedthrough their interactions with others andtheir environment, is not a return to theDurkheimian assertion that people’s be-


haviors are determined by societal rulesand roles. Indeed, applications of the“house” model have dealt precisely withthe innovative and self-reflexive deci-sions made to maintain the house andincrease its prestige (Gillespie 2000a). Inparticular, the conscious deployment ofthe enabling principles of kinship— con-sidered a resource and utilized as a stra-tegic language—is what Levi-Strauss(1987:180) emphasized in proposing themodel of the “house” in contrast to thetraditional notion of lineages, which ispremised on the supposition that kin-ship rules had to be obeyed if negativeconsequences were to be avoided. Theconstruction of persons, a constant pro-cess throughout (even beyond) people’slives, puts into practice the organizingprinciples or generative schemata of so-ciety. It is one means by which structurebecomes internalized, even as its sourcelies outside of individual human beings.“Individual and collective are not mutu-ally exclusive but are rather two sides ofthe same structural complex” (Fortes1973:314), and it is their recursive rela-tionship, dynamically enacted in prac-tice, that produces society.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

An early version of this article was presented inthe symposium “Social Memory, Identity, andDeath: Intradisciplinary Perspectives on MortuaryRituals” organized by Meredith S. Chesson andIan Kuijt at the 96th Annual Meeting of the Amer-ican Anthropological Association in 1997, and Ithank them for the invitation to participate. Thisstudy of one of the many permutations of “house”organization among the Maya is part of a long-term collaborative effort with Rosemary A. Joyce. Ihave also benefited from discussions with Clark E.Cunningham, Linda K. Klepinger, and StevenLeigh. David C. Grove helped me to improve theclarity of my expression. The comments and sug-gestions of several anonymous reviewers are alsogratefully acknowledged.

NOTES

1 For a sample of views for and against method-ological individualism in social theory, see Agassi(1960, 1973), Brodbeck (1968), Gellner (1968), Lukes(1970), Stzompka (1994b), and Watkins (1968); forarchaeology specifically, see Bell (1992), Meskell(1996), and Sassaman (2000).

2 This last form of relationship was explained byMauss (1954:10) in his famous essay The Gift regard-ing the exchange of objects among the Maori: “It isclear that in Maori custom this bond created bythings is in fact a bond between persons, since thething itself is a person or pertains to a person. Henceit follows that to give something is to give a part ofoneself.”

3 For overviews see Bartel (1982), Brown (1981,1995), Carr (1995), Chapman and Randsborg (1981),Goldstein (1981), O’Shea (1984), Pader (1982), andTainter (1978).

4 As Gellner (1968:258) had earlier noted, “[b]y andlarge, institutions and social structures and climatesof opinion are not the results of what people wantand believe, but of what they take for granted.” Ort-ner (1984:150) observed that, whereas Bourdieu andGiddens joined other practice theorists in “opposinga Parsonian or Saussurian view in which action isseen as sheer en-actment or execution of rules andnorms . . . both recognized the central role of highlypatterned and routinized behavior in systemic re-production. It is precisely in those areas of life—especially in the so-called domestic domain—whereaction proceeds with little reflection, that much ofthe conservatism of a system tends to be located.Either because practice theorists wish to emphasizethe activeness and intentionality of action, or be-cause of a growing interest in change as againstreproduction, or both, the degree to which actorsreally do simply enact norms because ’that was theway of our ancestors’ may be unduly undervalued”(see also Dobres and Robb 2000:5).

5 For agency approaches that stress “practice” overthe conscious rationalizing actions of a few self-ag-grandizing individuals, see Lightfoot et al. (1998),McGuire and Saitta (1996), Yaeger (2000), and for aphenomenological approach utilizing Giddens’sconcepts, Barrett (1994).

6 Linton (1936:114) had made a similar distinctionin his discussion of status: “if we are studying foot-ball teams in the abstract, the position of quarter-back is meaningless except in relation to the otherpositions. From the point of view of the quarter-backhimself, it is a distinct and important entity. It deter-mines where he shall take his place in the line-upand what he shall do in various plays. His assign-ment to this position at once limits and defines hisactivities and establishes a minimum of things which

he must learn.” The issue is to move beyond a de-

CT11

dhttp

iT1mattd

the maintenance of continuity, and hence authoritya

bpSseDSwwc

fPisTlc


scription of society as composed of roles and exam-ine situations in social action when these are consti-tuted by actors.

7 See Stuart (1996:162) and Houston and Stuart(1998) for an ethnopsychological perspective onMaya “personhood” based on imagery and textualreferences to the “self.” They use the terms self,person, and individual interchangeably and alwaysin the Western senses, whereas the literature towhich I refer stresses culturally specific social con-structions, and these concepts are kept distinct.

8 Ever since the earliest scientific explorations atPalenque [Blom and LaFarge 1926–1927; Holmes1895–1897; Maudslay 1974 (1889–1902); Rands andRands 1961; Thompson 1895], archaeologists havecommented on the high number of well built graves,most of them “looted” in the past (empty when dis-covered), many with multistone slab sarcophagi inchambers under the floors of several temples, intru-sive into platforms, and in special burial construc-tions (Ruz Lhuillier 1965, 1968). Several temples hadaccess to subfloor chambers via a stairway or corri-dor, such as the Temple of the Lion (Holmes 1895–1897:189). However, the Temple of the Inscriptions isfar grander.

9 The proximal end of the right humerus hadmoved 6 cm (Davalos Hurtado and Romano Pacheco1992:333). A possible reason for this displacement,suggested by Linda K. Klepinger (personal commu-nication, 1997), is that the upper arm was invaded bynecrophagus flies. There would have been plenty ofopportunity for this to occur, especially as time wasneeded to glue the 200 pieces of a mosaic jade maskdirectly to the man’s face after his death (Ruz Lhuil-lier 1992:195).

10 Such evidence has been found at, e.g., Caracol,opan, K’axob, Palenque, Piedras Negras, Tikal, andonina (Becker 1992:189; Chase and Chase 1996:61,998; McAnany et al. 1999:135; Schele and Mathews998:128; Sedat and Sharer 1994; see also Blom 1954).

11 The material focus for the group need not be awelling, but may be a shrine, a tomb, the area ofouses and fields claimed by the local group [as in

he case of the Tzotzil sna, “house” (Vogt 1969:71)],he place where a building once stood, or even aortable object.

12 Multiple holders of the same name also appearn king lists at nearby Yaxchilan (Tate 1992:9). Atikal (Jones 1991:109) and Copan (Schele and Freidel990:311), however, continuity back to a founder wasaintained by numerically marking one’s position inline of succession back to the putative founder (see

he reference in the text to the Tikal ruler said to behe ninth paramount). These are important clues toifferences in the construction of personhood and

nd power, of the royal line.13 For the tablets of the three main Cross Group

uildings, see Robertson (1991: Figs. 9, 95, 153), Tem-le XIV Tablet (1991:Fig. 176), and Tablet of thelaves (1991:Fig.229); for the Palace Tablet, Robert-on (1985b:Fig. 271); for the Oval Palace Tablet, Rob-rtson (1985a:Fig. 92); and for the limestone panel atumbarton Oaks, Schele and Miller (1986:Fig. VII.3).tuart (1996:157) demonstrated that stone stelae,hich were also the property of named persons,ere wrapped in cloth or tied with rope for certain

eremonies.14 Bassie-Sweet (1991:249) called attention to the

act that although the Tablet of the 96 Glyphs namesakal and his second putative son who became ruler,

t does not name the elder son, Kan-Balam, whoucceeded Pakal and dedicated the “house” of K’uk’.his omission was also an act of reshaping the col-

ective memory of the ruling house and those asso-iated with it.

REFERENCES CITED

Acosta, Jorge R.1977 Excavations at Palenque, 1967–1973. In So-

cial process in Maya prehistory: Studies in ho-nour of Sir Eric Thompson, edited by NormanHammond, pp. 265–285. Academic Press,London.

Adams, Richard E. W.1977 Rio Bec archaeology and the rise of Maya

civilization. In The origins of Maya civilization,edited by Richard E. W. Adams, pp. 77–99.Univ. of New Mexico Press, Albuquerque.

Agassi, Joseph1960 Methodological individualism. The British

Journal of Sociology 11:244–270.1973 Methodological individualism. In Modes of

individualism and collectivism, edited by JohnO’Neill, pp. 185–212. Heinemann, London.

Archer, Margaret S.1982 Morphogenesis versus structuration: On

combining structure and action. The BritishJournal of Sociology 33:455–483.

1996 Culture and agency: The place of culture in so-cial theory, rev. ed. Cambridge Univ. Press,Cambridge, UK.

Ashmore, Wendy1981 Some issues of method and theory in low-

land Maya settlement archaeology. In Low-land Maya settlement patterns, edited byWendy Ashmore, pp. 37–69. Univ. of NewMexico Press, Albuquerque.

Barley, Nigel Greene Robertson, pp. 45–58. The Robert

Ba

B


1995 Dancing on the grave: Encounters with death.John Murray, London.

Barraud, Cecile1990 Kei society and the person: An approach

through childbirth and funerary rituals. Eth-nos 55:214–231.

Barraud, Cecile, D. de Coppet, A. Iteanu, and R.Jamous

1994 Of relations and the dead: Four societies viewedfrom the angle of their exchanges, translated byStephen J. Suffern. Berg, Oxford, UK.

Barrera Vasquez, Alfredo, J. Ramon BastarracheaManzano, W. Brito Sansores, R. Vermont Salas, D.Dzul Gongora, and D. Dzul Poot

1980 Diccionario Maya Cordemex: Maya-Espanol,Espanol-Maya. Ediciones Cordemex, Merida(Mexico).

Barrett, John C.1994 Fragments from antiquity: An archaeology of

social life in Britain, 2900–1200 B.C. Blackwell,Oxford, UK.

Bartel, Brad1982 A historical overview of ethnological and

archaeological analyses of mortuary prac-tice. Journal of Anthropological Archaeology1:32–58.

Bassie-Sweet, Karen1991 From the mouth of the dark cave: Commemora-

tive sculpture of the Late Classic Maya. Univ. ofOklahoma Press, Norman.

Becker, Marshall J.1992 Burials as caches, caches as burials: A new

interpretation of the meaning of ritual de-posits among the Classic period lowlandMaya. In New theories on the ancient Maya,edited by Elin C. Danien and Robert J.Sharer, pp. 185–196. University MuseumSymposium Series, vol. 3. University ofPennsylvania, Philadelphia.

Bell, James1992 On capturing agency in theories about pre-

history. In Representations in archaeology, ed-ited by Jean-Claude Gardin and Christo-pher S. Peebles, pp. 30–55. Indiana Univ.Press, Bloomington.

Bender, Barbara1993 Cognitive archaeology and cultural materi-

alism. Cambridge Archaeological Journal3:257–260.

Benson, Elizabeth P.1976 Ritual cloth and Palenque kings. In The art,

iconography and dynastic history of Palenque,Part III: Proceedings of the segunda mesa re-donda de Palenque 1974, edited by Merle

Louis Stevenson School, Pebble Beach, CA.

Binford, Lewis R.1971 Mortuary practices: Their study and their

potential. In Approaches to the social dimen-sions of mortuary practices, edited by James A.Brown, pp. 6–29. Memoirs of the Society forAmerican Archaeology No. 25, Washington,DC.

Blanton, Richard E.1998 Beyond centralization: Steps toward a the-

ory of egalitarian behavior in archaic states.In Archaic states, edited by Gary M. Feinmanand Joyce Marcus, pp. 135–172. School ofAmerican Research, Santa Fe, NM.

lanton, Richard E., G. M. Feinman, S. A. Kow-lewski, and P. N. Peregrine1996 A dual-processual theory for the evolution

of Mesoamerican civilization. Current An-thropology 37:1–14.

loch, Maurice1982 Death, women and power. In Death and the

regeneration of life, edited by Maurice Blochand Jonathan Parry, pp. 211–230. CambridgeUniv. Press, Cambridge, UK.

1995 The resurrection of the house amongst theZafimaniry of Madagascar. In About thehouse: Levi-Strauss and beyond, edited by Ja-net Carsten and Stephen Hugh-Jones, pp.69–83. Cambridge Univ. Press, Cambridge,UK.

Blom, Frans1954 Ossuaries, cremation, and secondary burials

among the Maya of Chiapas, Mexico. Journalde la Societe des Americanistes 43:123–135.

Blom, Frans, and O. LaFarge1926–1927

Tribes and temples. Middle American Re-search Institute Publication No. 1, 2 vols.Tulane University, New Orleans, LA.

Boon, James A.1977 The anthropological romance of Bali 1597–1972:

Dynamic perspectives in marriage and caste,politics and religion. Cambridge Univ. Press,Cambridge, UK.

Bourdieu, Pierre1973 The Berber house. In Rules and meanings: The

anthropology of everyday knowledge, edited byMary Douglas, pp. 98–110. Penguin, Har-mondsworth, UK.

1977 Outline of a theory of practice, translated byRichard Nice. Cambridge Univ. Press, Cam-bridge, UK.

Brodbeck, May1968 Methodological individualisms: Definition

and reduction. In Readings in the philosophy

of the social sciences, edited by May Brod-

C

C

C

C

CGM

C

C

C

ginia M. Fields, pp. 53–60. The Pre-Colum-

C

C

C

C

C

D

D

D

D


beck, pp. 280–303. Macmillan, New York.

Brown, James A.1981 The search for rank in prehistoric burials. In

The archaeology of death, edited by RobertChapman, Ian Kinnes, and Klavs Rands-borg, pp. 25–37. Cambridge Univ. Press,Cambridge, UK.

1995 On mortuary analysis—With special refer-ence to the Saxe–Binford research program.In Regional approaches to mortuary analysis,edited by Lane Anderson Beck, pp. 3–26.Plenum, New York.

Brumfiel, Elizabeth M.1996 Comment. Current Anthropology 37:48–50.

arlsen, Robert S., and M. Prechtel1991 The flowering of the dead: An interpretation

of highland Maya culture. Man 26:23–42.

arlson, John B.1980 On Classic Maya monumental recorded his-

tory. In Third Palenque round table, 1978, Part2, edited by Merle Greene Robertson, pp.199–203. University of Texas Press, Austin.

armack, Robert M.1981 The Quiche Mayas of Utatlan: The evolution of

a highland Guatemala kingdom. Univ. of Okla-homa Press, Norman.

arr, Christopher1995 Mortuary practices: Their social, philosoph-

ical-religious, circumstantial, and physicaldeterminants. Journal of ArchaeologicalMethod and Theory 2:105–200.

arrasco Vargas, Ramon, S. Boucher, P. Alvarezonzalez, V. Tiesler Blos, V. Garcıa Vierna, R. Garcıaoreno, and J. Vazquez Negrete1999 A dynastic tomb from Campeche, Mexico:

New evidence on Jaguar Paw, a ruler ofCalakmul. Latin American Antiquity 10:47–58.

hapman, John C.1994 The living, the dead and the ancestors:

Time, life cycles and the mortuary domainin later European prehistory. In Ritual andremembrance: Responses to death in human so-cieties, edited by Jon Davies, pp. 40–85. Shef-field Academic Press, Sheffield, UK.

hapman, Robert, and K. Randsborg1981 Approaches to the archaeology of death. In

The archaeology of death, edited by RobertChapman, Ian Kinnes, and Klavs Rands-borg, pp. 1–24. Cambridge Univ. Press,Cambridge, UK.

hase, Arlen F., and D. Z. Chase1994 Maya veneration of the dead at Caracol, Be-

lize. In Seventh Palenque round table, 1989,edited by Merle Greene Robertson and Vir-

bian Art Research Institute, San Francisco.hase, Diane Z., and A. F. Chase1996 Maya multiples: Individuals, entries, and

tombs in Structure A34 of Caracol, Belize.Latin American Antiquity 7:61–79.

1998 The architectural context of caches, burials,and other ritual activities for the Classic pe-riod Maya. In Function and meaning in ClassicMaya architecture, edited by Stephen D.Houston, pp. 299–332. Dumbarton Oaks,Washington, DC.

lark, John E., and M. Blake1994 The power of prestige: Competitive gener-

osity and the emergence of rank societies inlowland Mesoamerica. In Factional competi-tion and political development in the NewWorld, edited by Elizabeth M. Brumfiel andJohn W. Fox, pp. 17–30. Cambridge Univ.Press, Cambridge, UK.

oe, Michael D.1956 The funerary temple among the Classic

Maya. Southwestern Journal of Anthropology12:387–394.

1984 The Maya, 3rd ed. Thames and Hudson,New York.

1988 Ideology of the Maya tomb. In Maya iconog-raphy, edited by Elizabeth P. Benson andGillett G. Griffin, pp. 222–235. PrincetonUniv. Press, Princeton, NJ.

onnerton, Paul1989 How societies remember. Cambridge Univ.

Press, New York.riado, Felipe1996 Comment. Current Anthropology 37:53–55.avalos Hurtado, Eusebio, and A. Romano Pacheco1992 Estudio preliminar de los restos osteologi-

cos encontrados en la tumba del Templo delas Inscripciones, Palenque. Appendix in ElTemplo de las Inscripciones, Palenque, editedby Alberto Ruz Lhuillier, pp. 333–336. Fondode Cultura Economica, Mexico City. (origi-nally 1955)

evillard, Marie Jose1995 Individuo, sociedad y antropologıa social.

Revista Espanola de Antropologıa Americana25:223–238.

obres, Marcia-Anne, and J. E. Robb2000 Agency in archaeology: Paradigm or plati-

tude? In Agency in archaeology, edited byMarcia-Anne Dobres and John E. Robb, pp.3–17. Routledge, London.

umont, Louis1970 Homo hierarchicus: The caste system and its

implications, translated by Mark Sainsbury.Univ. of Chicago Press, Chicago.

1975 On the comparative understanding of non-

F

F

F

F

F

F

F

G

Giddens, Anthony

G

G


modern civilizations. Daedalus 104:153–172.

Feeley-Harnik, Gillian1991 Finding memories in Madagascar. In Images

of memory: On remembering and representation,edited by Susanne Kuchler and Walter Me-lion, pp. 121–140. Smithsonian InstitutionPress, Washington, DC.

Fentress, James, and C. Wickham1992 Social memory. Blackwell, Oxford, UK.

oncerrada de Molina, Marta1974 Reflexıones en torno a Palenque como

necropolis. In Primera mesa redonda dePalenque, 1973, Part 2, edited by MerleGreene Robertson, pp. 77–79. The RobertLouis Stevenson School, Pebble Beach, CA.

ortes, Meyer1973 On the concept of the person among the

Tallensi. In La notion de personne en Afriquenoire, edited by Germaine Dieterlen, pp.283–319. Editions du Centre National de laRecherche Scientifique, Paris.

orth, Gregory1991 Space and place in eastern Indonesia. Centre of

South-East Asian Studies Occasional PaperNo. 16. University of Kent, Canterbury.

ox, James J., (ed.)1980 The flow of life: Essays on eastern Indonesia.

Harvard Univ. Press, Cambridge, MA.

reidel, David A.1992 The trees of life: Ahau as idea and artifact in

Classic lowland Maya civilization. In Ideol-ogy and pre-Columbian civilizations, edited byArthur A. Demarest and Geoffrey W. Con-rad, pp. 115–133. School of American Re-search Press, Santa Fe, NM.

reidel, David A., and L. Schele1989 Dead kings and living temples: Dedication

and termination rituals among the ancientMaya. In Word and image in Maya culture:Explorations in language, writing, and represen-tation, edited by William F. Hanks and DonS. Rice, pp. 233–243. University of UtahPress, Salt Lake City.

reidel, David A., L. Schele, and J. Parker1993 Maya cosmos: Three thousand years on the sha-

man’s path. Morrow, New York.

ellner, Ernest1968 Holism versus individualism. In Readings in

the philosophy of the social sciences, edited byMay Brodbeck, pp. 254–268. Macmillan,New York.

1979 Central problems in social theory: Action, struc-ture and contradiction in social analysis. Mac-millan, London.

1984 The constitution of society: Outline of the theoryof structuration. Univ. of California Press,Berkeley.

1991 Structuration theory: Past, present and fu-ture. In Giddens’ theory of structuration: A crit-ical appreciation, edited by Christopher G. A.Bryant and David Jary, pp. 201–221. Rout-ledge, London.

Gillespie, Susan D.1993 Power, pathways, and appropriations in

Mesoamerican art. In Imagery and creativity:Ethnoaesthetics and art worlds in the Americas,edited by Dorothea S. Whitten and NormanE. Whitten, Jr., pp. 67–107. Univ. of ArizonaPress, Tucson.

1998 The Aztec triple alliance: A postconquesttradition. In Native traditions in the postcon-quest world, edited by Elizabeth Hill Booneand Tom Cummins, pp. 233–263. Dumbar-ton Oaks, Washington, DC.

1999 Olmec thrones as ancestral altars: The twosides of power. In Material symbols: Cultureand economy in prehistory, edited by John E.Robb, pp. 224–253. Center for Archaeologi-cal Investigations Occasional Paper No. 26.Southern Illinois Univ., Carbondale.

2000a Levi-Strauss: maison and societe a maisons. InBeyond kinship: Social and material reproduc-tion in house societies, edited by Rosemary A.Joyce and Susan D. Gillespie, pp. 22–52.Univ. of Pennsylvania Press, Philadelphia.

2000b Rethinking ancient Maya social organiza-tion: Replacing “lineage” with “house.”American Anthropologist 102 (in press).

n.d. Body and soul among the Maya: Keeping thespirits in place. In The space and place of death,edited by Helaine Silverman and DavidSmall. Archeological Papers of the AmericanAnthropological Association No. 11. (inpress)

illespie, Susan D., and R. A. Joyce1997 Gendered goods: The symbolism of Maya

hierarchical exchange relations. In Women inprehistory: North America and Mesoamerica,edited by Cheryl Claassen and Rosemary A.Joyce, pp. 189–207. Univ. of PennsylvaniaPress, Philadelphia.

lazier, Jack1984 Mbeere ancestors and the domestication of

death. Man 19:133–148.

Gluckman, Max

G

Haviland, William A., M. J. Becker, A. Chowning, K.


1937 Mortuary customs and the belief in survivalafter death among the South-Eastern Bantu.Bantu Studies 11:117–136.

Goldstein, Lynne1981 One-dimensional archaeology and multi-di-

mensional people: Spatial organisation andmortuary analysis. In The archaeology ofdeath, edited by Robert Chapman, IanKinnes, and Klavs Randsborg, pp. 53–69.Cambridge Univ. Press, Cambridge, UK.

Goodenough, Ward H.1965 Rethinking ‘status’ and ‘role’: Toward a gen-

eral model of the cultural organization ofsocial relationships. In The Relevance of mod-els for social anthropology, edited by MichaelBanton, pp. 1–24. ASA Monographs No. 1.Tavistock, London.

Goody, Jack1962 Death, property and the ancestors: A study of the

mortuary customs of the LoDagaa of West Af-rica. Stanford Univ. Press, Stanford, CA.

raeber, David1996 Beads and money: Notes toward a theory of

wealth and power. American Ethnologist 23:4–24.

Halbwachs, Maurice1980 The collective memory, translated by Francis J.

Ditter, Jr. and Vida Yazdi Ditter. Harper &Row, New York. (originally 1950)

Harrison, Simon1985 Concepts of the person in Avatip religious

thought. Man 20:115–130.

Haviland, William A.1981 Dower houses and minor centers at Tikal,

Guatemala: An investigation of valid unitsin settlement hierarchies. In Lowland Mayasettlement patterns, edited by Wendy Ash-more, pp. 89–117. Univ. of New MexicoPress, Albuquerque.

1988 Musical hammocks at Tikal: Problems withreconstructing household composition. InHousehold and community in the Mesoamericanpast, edited by Richard R. Wilk and WendyAshmore, pp. 121–134. Univ. of New MexicoPress, Albuquerque.

1992 From Double Bird to Ah Cacao: Dynastictroubles and the cycle of katuns at Tikal,Guatemala. In New theories on the ancientMaya, edited by Elin C. Danien and Robert J.Sharer, pp. 71–80. University MuseumMonograph 77, University of Pennsylvania,Philadelphia.

1997 The rise and fall of sexual inequality: Deathand gender at Tikal, Guatemala. Ancient Me-soamerica 8:1–12.

Dixon, and K. Heider1985 Excavations in small residential groups of Tikal:

Groups 4F-1 and 4F-2. Tikal Report No. 19.University Museum Monograph 58. TheUniversity Museum, Philadelphia.

Hayden, Brian1995 Pathways to power: Principles for creating

socioeconomic inequalities. In Foundations ofsocial inequality, edited by T. Douglas Priceand Gary M. Feinman, pp. 15–86. Plenum,New York.

Hendon, Julia A.1999 The Pre-Classic Maya compound as the fo-

cus of social identity. In Social patterns inPre-Classic Mesoamerica, edited by David C.Grove and Rosemary A. Joyce, pp. 97–125.Dumbarton Oaks, Washington, DC.

Hertz, Robert1960 A contribution to the study of the collective

representation of death. In Death and theright hand, translated by Rodney and Clau-dia Needham, pp. 27–86. The Free Press,Glencoe, IL. (originally 1907)

Hewitt, Erika A.1999 What’s in a name: Gender, power, and Clas-

sic Maya women rulers. Ancient Mesoamerica10:251–262.

Hill, James N., and J. Gunn, (eds.)1977 The individual in prehistory. Academic Press,

New York.

Hill, Robert M., II, and E. F. Fischer1999 States of heart: An ethnohistorical approach

to Kaqchikel Maya ethnopsychology. An-cient Mesoamerica 10:317–332.

Hodder, Ian1982 Symbols in action: Ethnoarchaeological studies

of material culture. Cambridge Univ. Press,Cambridge, UK.

1986 Reading the past: Current approaches to inter-pretation in archaeology. Cambridge Univ.Press, Cambridge, UK.

2000 Agency and individuals in long-term pro-cesses. In Agency in archaeology, edited byMarcia-Anne Dobres and John E. Robb, pp.21–33. Routledge, London.

Holmes, William H.1895–1897

Archaeological studies among the ancientcities of Mexico. Field Columbian Museum An-thropological Series (Fieldiana), Vol. 1, No. 1.

Houston, Stephen D.1993 Hieroglyphs and history at Dos Pilas: Dynastic

politics of the Classic Maya. Univ. of TexasPress, Austin.

1998 Finding function and meaning in Classic

H

H

H

H

J

J

J

J

ited by Rita P. Wright, pp. 167–195. Univ. of


Maya architecture. In Function and meaningin Classic Maya architecture, edited by Ste-phen D. Houston, pp. 519–538. DumbartonOaks, Washington, DC.

ouston, Stephen D., and D. Stuart1998 The ancient Maya self: Personhood and por-

traiture in the Classic Period. Res: Anthropol-ogy and Aesthetics 33:73–101.

owell, Signe1989 Of persons and things: Exchange and valu-

ables amongst the Li of eastern Indonesia.Man 24:419–438.

umphreys, S. C.1981a Death and time. In Mortality and immortality:

The anthropology and archaeology of death, ed-ited by S. C. Humphreys and Helen King,pp. 261–283. Academic Press, London.

1981b Introduction. In Mortality and immortality:The anthropology and archaeology of death, ed-ited by S. C. Humphreys and Helen King,pp. 1–13. Academic Press, London.

untington, Richard, and P. Metcalf1979 Celebrations of death: The anthropology of mor-

tuary ritual. Cambridge Univ. Press, Cam-bridge, UK.

ohnson, Matthew H.1989 Conceptions of agency in archaeological in-

terpretation. Journal of Anthropological Ar-chaeology 8:189–211.

1999 Archaeological theory: An introduction. Black-well, Oxford, UK.

2000 Self-made men and the staging of agency. InAgency in archaeology, edited by Marcia-Anne Dobres and John E. Robb, pp. 213–231.Routledge, London.

ones, Christopher1991 Cycles of growth at Tikal. In Classic Maya

political history: Hieroglyphs and archaeologicalevidence, edited by T. Patrick Culbert, pp.102–127. Cambridge Univ. Press, Cam-bridge, UK.

oyce, Arthur A., and M. Winter1996 Ideology, power, and urban society in pre-

Hispanic Oaxaca. Current Anthropology 37:33–47.

oyce, Rosemary A.1993 Women’s work: Images of production and

reproduction in pre-Hispanic southern Cen-tral America. Current Anthropology 34:255–274.

1996 The construction of gender in Classic Mayamonuments. In Gender and archaeology, ed-

Pennsylvania Press, Philadelphia.1998 Performing the body in pre-Hispanic Cen-

tral America. Res: Anthropology and Aesthetics33:147–165.

1999 Social dimensions of Pre-Classic burials. InSocial patterns in Pre-Classic Mesoamerica, ed-ited by David C. Grove and Rosemary A.Joyce, pp. 15–47. Dumbarton Oaks, Wash-ington, DC.

2000 Heirlooms and houses: Materiality and so-cial memory. In Beyond kinship: Social andmaterial reproduction in house societies, editedby Rosemary A. Joyce and Susan D.Gillespie, pp. 189–212. Univ. of Pennsylva-nia Press, Philadelphia.

n.d. Burying the dead at Tlatilco: Social memoryand social identities. In Social memory, iden-tity, and death: Intradisciplinary perspectives onmortuary rituals, edited by Meredith Chesson.Archeological Papers of the American An-thropological Association, No. 10. (in press).

Kan, Sergei1989 Symbolic immortality: The Tlingit potlatch of

the nineteenth century. Smithsonian Institu-tion Press, Washington, DC.

Karp, Ivan1986 Agency and social theory: A review of An-

thony Giddens. American Ethnologist 13:131–137.

Kilminster, Richard1991 Structuration theory as a world-view. In

Giddens’ theory of structuration: A critical ap-preciation, edited by Christopher G. A. Bry-ant and David Jary, pp. 74–115. Routledge,London.

Knapp, A. Bernard, and L. Meskell1997 Bodies of evidence in Cypriot prehistory.

Cambridge Archaeological Journal 7:183–204.

Kuijt, Ian1996 Negotiating equality through ritual: A con-

sideration of Late Natufian and PrepotteryNeolithic A period mortuary practices. Jour-nal of Anthropological Archaeology 15:313–336.

La Fontaine, J. S.1985 Person and individual: Some anthropologi-

cal reflections. In The category of the person:Anthropology, philosophy, history, edited byMichael Carrithers, Stephen Collins, andSteven Lukes, pp. 123–140. Cambridge Univ.Press, Cambridge, UK.

Landa, Friar Diego de1982 Relacion de las cosas de Yucatan, 12th edition.

Porrua, Mexico City. (originally ca. 1566)

Las Casas, Friar Bartolome de

L

Mathews, Peter, and L. Schele


1967 Apologetica historia sumaria, edited by Ed-mundo O’Gorman, 3rd ed., 2 vols. Univer-sidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico, Mex-ico City. (originally 1555–1559)

evi-Strauss, Claude1969 The elementary structures of kinship, rev. ed.,

translated by James Harle Bell, John Richardvon Sturmer, and Rodney Needham. Bea-con Press, Boston.

1982 The way of the masks, translated by SylviaModelski. Univ. of Washington Press, Seat-tle.

1987 Anthropology and myth: Lectures, 1951–1982,translated by Roy Willis. Basil Blackwell,Oxford, UK.

Lightfoot, Kent G., A. Martinez, and A. M. Schiff1998 Daily practice and material culture in plu-

ralistic social settings: An archaeologicalstudy of culture change and persistencefrom Fort Ross, California. American Antiq-uity 63:199–222.

Linton, Ralph1936 The study of man: An introduction. D. Apple-

ton–Century, New York.

Lounsbury, Floyd G.1974 The inscription of the sarcophagus lid at

Palenque. In Primera mesa redonda dePalenque, 1973, Part 2, edited by MerleGreene Robertson, pp. 5–19. The RobertLouis Stevenson School, Pebble Beach, CA.

1976 A rationale for the initial date of the Templeof the Cross at Palenque. In The art, iconog-raphy and dynastic history of Palenque, Part III:Proceedings of the segunda mesa redonda dePalenque 1974, edited by Merle Greene Rob-ertson, pp. 211–224. The Robert LouisStevenson School, Pebble Beach, CA.

1991 Distinguished lecture: Recent work in thedecipherment of Palenque’s hieroglyphicinscriptions. American Anthropologist 93:809–825.

Lukes, Steven1970 Methodological individualism reconsidered.

In Sociological theory and philosophical analy-sis, edited by Dorothy Emmet and AlasdairMacIntyre, pp. 76–88. Macmillan, NewYork.

Marcus, Joyce1992 Mesoamerican writing systems: Propaganda,

myth, and history in four ancient civilizations.Princeton Univ. Press, Princeton, NJ.

Marcus, Joyce, and K. V. Flannery1996 Zapotec civilization: How urban society evolved

in Mexico’s Oaxaca Valley. Thames and Hud-son, London.

1974 Lords of Palenque—The glyphic evidence.In Primera mesa redonda de Palenque, 1973,Part 1, edited by Merle Greene Robertson,pp. 63–75. The Robert Louis StevensonSchool, Pebble Beach, CA.

Maudslay, Alfred P.1974 Biologia Centrali-Americana; or, contributions

to the knowledge of the fauna and flora of Mex-ico and Central America, edited by F. DucaneGodman and Osbert Salvin. Archaeology,vols. 4 (plates) and 5 (text). Reprinted byMilpatron, London. (originally 1889–1902)

Mauss, Marcel1954 The gift: Forms and functions of exchange in

archaic societies, translated by Ian Cunnison.Cohen and West, London.

1985 A category of the human mind: The notionof person, the notion of self, translated byW. D. Halls. In The category of the person:Anthropology, philosophy, history, edited byMichael Carrithers, Stephen Collins, andSteven Lukes, pp. 1–25. Cambridge Univ.Press, Cambridge, UK. (originally 1938)

Mayer, Adrian C.1985 The king’s two thrones. Man 20:205–221.

McAnany, Patricia A.1995 Living with the ancestors: Kinship and kingship

in ancient Maya society. Univ. of Texas Press,Austin.

1998 Ancestors and the Classic Maya built envi-ronment. In Function and meaning in ClassicMaya architecture, edited by Stephen D.Houston, pp. 271–298. Dumbarton Oaks,Washington, DC.

McAnany, Patricia A., R. Storey, and A. K. Lockard1999 Mortuary ritual and family politics at For-

mative and Early Classic K’axob, Belize. An-cient Mesoamerica 10:129–146.

McCall, John C.1999 Structure, agency, and the locus of the so-

cial: Why poststructural theory is good forarchaeology. In Material symbols: Culture andeconomy in prehistory, edited by John E.Robb, pp. 16–20. Center for ArchaeologicalInvestigations Occasional Paper No. 26.Southern Illinois Univ., Carbondale.

McGuire, Randall H., and D. J. Saitta1996 Although they have petty captains, they

obey them badly: The dialectics of prehis-panic western Pueblo social organization.American Antiquity 61:197–216.

McKinnon, Susan1991 From a shattered sun: Hierarchy, gender, and

alliance in the Tanimbar Islands. Univ. of Wis-consin Press, Madison.

Melion, Walter, and S. Kuchler

P

Pearson, Michael Parker

P

P


1991 Introduction: Memory, cognition, and imageproduction. In Images of memory: On remem-bering and representation, edited by SusanneKuchler and Walter Melion, pp. 1–46.Smithsonian Institution Press, Washington,DC.

Meskell, Lynn1996 The somatization of archaeology: Institu-

tions, discourses, corporeality. NorwegianArchaeological Review 29:1–16.

Miller, Mary Ellen1998 A design for meaning in Maya architecture.

In Function and meaning in Classic Maya ar-chitecture, edited by Stephen D. Houston, pp.187–222. Dumbarton Oaks, Washington,DC.

Monaghan, John1998 The person, destiny, and the construction of

difference in Mesoamerica. Res: Anthropol-ogy and Aesthetics 33:137–146.

Morris, Brian1985 The rise and fall of the human subject. Man

20:722–742.

Morris, Ian1991 The archaeology of ancestors: The Saxe/

Goldstein Hypothesis revisited. CambridgeArchaeological Journal 1:147–169.

Munn, Nancy D.1986 The fame of Gawa: A symbolic study of value

transformation in a Massim (Papua NewGuinea) society. Cambridge Univ. Press,Cambridge, UK.

Nash, June1970 In the eyes of the ancestors: Belief and behavior

in a Mayan community. Yale Univ. Press,New Haven, CT.

Ortner, Sherry B.1984 Theory in anthropology since the sixties.

Comparative Studies in Society and History 26:126–166.

O’Shea, John M.1984 Mortuary variability: An archaeological investi-

gation. Academic Press, Orlando, FL.

ader, Ellen-Jane1982 Symbolism, social relations and the interpreta-

tion of mortuary remains. B.A.R. InternationalSeries 130. British Archaeological Reports,Oxford, UK.

Pazos, Alvaro1995 El modelo del actor en Giddens: Una ex-

posicion crıtica. Revista Espanola de Antropo-logıa Americana 25:205–221.

1982 Mortuary practices, society and ideology:An ethnoarchaeological study. In Symbolicand structuralist archaeology, edited by IanHodder, pp. 99–113. Cambridge Univ. Press,Cambridge, UK.

1993 The powerful dead: Archaeological relation-ships between the living and the dead. Cam-bridge Archaeological Journal 3:203–229.

eebles, Christopher S.1971 Moundville and surrounding sites: Some

structural considerations of mortuary prac-tices II. In Approaches to the social dimensionsof mortuary practices, edited by James A.Brown, pp. 68–91. Memoirs of the Societyfor American Archaeology No. 25, Washing-ton, DC.

eebles, Christopher S., and S. M. Kus1977 Some archaeological correlates of ranked

societies. American Antiquity 42:421–448.

Popol Vuh1996 Popol Vuh: The Mayan book of the dawn of life,

translated by Dennis Tedlock, rev. ed. Si-mon and Schuster, New York.

Proskouriakoff, Tatiana1960 Historical implications of a pattern of dates

at Piedras Negras, Guatemala. American An-tiquity 25:454–475.

Radcliffe-Brown, A. R.1952 Structure and function in primitive society. The

Free Press, New York.

Rands, Barbara C., and R. L. Rands1961 Excavationes [sic] in a cemetery at

Palenque. Estudios de Cultura Maya 1:87–106.

Rathje, William L.1970 Socio-political implications of lowland

Maya burials: Methodology and tentativehypotheses. World Archaeology 1:359–375.

Ritzer, George, and P. Gindoff1994 Agency–structure, micro–macro, individual-

ism–holism–relationism: A metatheoreticalexplanation of theoretical convergence be-tween the United States and Europe. InAgency and structure: Reorienting social theory,edited by Piotr Sztompka, pp. 3–23. Gordonand Breach, Yverdon Switz.

Robb, John E.1999 Secret agents: Culture, economy, and social

reproduction. In Material symbols: Cultureand economy in prehistory, edited by John E.Robb, pp. 3–15. Center for ArchaeologicalInvestigations Occasional Paper No. 26.Southern Illinois Univ., Carbondale.

Robertson, Merle Greene

R

Marcia-Anne Dobres and John E. Robb, pp.


1983 The sculpture of Palenque: Vol. 1. The Temple ofthe Inscriptions. Princeton Univ. Press,Princeton, NJ.

1985a The sculpture of Palenque: Vol. 2. The earlybuildings of the Palace and the wall paintings.Princeton Univ. Press, Princeton, NJ.

1985b The sculpture of Palenque: Vol. 3. The late build-ings of the Palace. Princeton Univ. Press,Princeton, NJ.

1991 The sculpture of Palenque: Vol. 4. The CrossGroup, the North Group, the Olvidado, andother pieces. Princeton Univ. Press, Prince-ton, NJ.

Robertson, Merle Greene, A. Morales, and D. Stuart1999 Cross Group project discovers tomb, throne

and limestone panel in Palenque. Pre-Co-lumbian Art Research Institute Newsletter 28:1–3.

Rothschild, Nan A.1979 Mortuary behavior and social organization

at Indian Knoll and Dickson Mounds. Amer-ican Antiquity 44:658–675.

oys, Ralph L.1940 Personal names of the Maya of Yucatan. In

Contributions to American anthropology andhistory 31:31–48. Carnegie Institution ofWashington Publication 523, Washington,DC.

Ruz Lhuillier, Alberto1965 Tombs and funerary practices in the Maya

lowlands. In Handbook of Middle AmericanIndians: Vol. 2. The archaeology of southernMesoamerica, Part 1, edited by Robert Wau-chope and Gordon R. Willey, pp. 441–461.Univ. of Texas Press, Austin.

1968 Costumbres funerarias de los antiguos mayas.Seminario de Cultura Maya. UniversidadNacional Autonoma de Mexico, MexicoCity.

1977 Gerontocracy at Palenque? In Social processin Maya prehistory: Studies in honour of Sir EricThompson, edited by Norman Hammond,pp. 287–295. Academic Press, London.

1992 El Templo de las Inscripciones, Palenque. Fondode Cultura Economica, Mexico City. (origi-nally 1973)

Sabloff, Jeremy A.1997 The cities of ancient Mexico: Reconstructing a

lost world, rev. ed. Thames and Hudson,New York.

Sassaman, Kenneth E.2000 Agents of change in hunter-gatherer tech-

nology. In Agency in archaeology, edited by

148–168. Routledge, London.

Saxe, Arthur A.1970 Social dimensions of mortuary practices. Un-

published Ph.D. dissertation, University ofMichigan, Ann Arbor.

1971 Social dimensions of mortuary practices in aMesolithic population from Wadi Halfa, Su-dan. In Approaches to the social dimensions ofmortuary practices, edited by James A. Brown,pp. 39–57. Memoirs of the Society for Amer-ican Archaeology No. 25, Washington, DC.

Schele, Linda1987 Notebook for the Maya hieroglyphic writing

workshop at Texas. Univ. of Texas, Austin.1988a Notebook for the Maya hieroglyphic writing

workshop at Texas. Univ. of Texas, Austin.1988b The Xibalba shuffle: A dance after death. In

Maya iconography, edited by Elizabeth P.Benson and Gillett G. Griffin, pp. 294–317.Princeton Univ. Press, Princeton, NJ.

1990 House names and dedication rituals atPalenque. In Vision and revision in Maya stud-ies, edited by Flora S. Clancy and Peter D.Harrison, pp. 143–157. Univ. of New MexicoPress, Albuquerque.

Schele, Linda, and D. Freidel1990 A forest of kings: The untold story of the ancient

Maya. Morrow, New York.

Schele, Linda, and P. Mathews1993 Notebook for the XVIIth Maya hieroglyphic

workshop at Texas. University of Texas, Aus-tin.

1998 The code of kings: The language of seven sacredMaya temples and tombs. New York: Scribner.

Schele, Linda, and M. E. Miller1986 The blood of kings: Dynasty and ritual in Maya

art. Kimbell Art Museum, Fort Worth, TX.

Schwartz, Jeffery H.1995 Skeleton keys: An introduction to human skeletal

morphology, development, and analysis. Ox-ford Univ. Press, New York.

Sears, William H.1961 The study of social and religious systems in

North American archaeology. Current An-thropology 2:223–231.

Sedat, David, and R. Sharer1994 The Xukpi stone: A newly discovered Early Clas-

sic inscription from the Copan Acropolis. Part 1:The archaeology. Copan Note 113. CopanAcropolis Archaeological Project and the In-stituto Hondureno de Antropologıa, CopanHonduras.

Sewell, William H. Stuart, George E.


1992 A theory of structure: Duality, agency, andtransformation. American Journal of Sociology98:1–29.

Sharer, Robert J.1994 The ancient Maya, 5th ed. Stanford Univ.

Press, Stanford, CA.

Sokefeld, Martin1999 Debating self, identity, and culture in an-

thropology. Current Anthropology 40:417–447.

Sørensen, Marie Louise Stig1995 The construction of gender through appear-

ance. In The archaeology of gender: Proceedingsof the twenty-second annual conference of theArchaeological Association of the University ofCalgary, edited by Dale Walde and NoreenD. Willows, pp. 121–129. University of Cal-gary Archaeological Association, Calgary.

Stenzel, Werner1970 The sacred bundles in Mesoamerican reli-

gion. In Proceedings of the 38th InternationalCongress of Americanists 1968, Stuttgart-Mu-nich, Vol. 2, pp. 347–352.

Strathern, Marilyn1981 Self-interest and the social good: Some im-

plications of Hagen gender imagery. In Sex-ual meanings: The cultural construction of gen-der and sexuality, edited by Sherry B. Ortnerand Harriet Whitehead, pp. 166–191. Cam-bridge Univ. Press, Cambridge, UK.

Stuart, David1985 The inscriptions on four shell plaques from

Piedras Negras, Guatemala. In FourthPalenque round table, 1980, edited by MerleGreene Robertson and Elizabeth P. Benson,pp. 175–183. The Pre-Columbian Art Re-search Institute, San Francisco.

1989 Hieroglyphs on Maya vessels. In The Mayavase book, edited by Justin Kerr, Vol. 1, pp.149–160. Kerr Associates, New York.

1996 Kings of stone: A consideration of stelae inancient Maya ritual and representation. Res:Anthropology and Aesthetics 29/30:148–171.

1998 “The fire enters his house”: Architectureand ritual in Classic Maya texts. In Functionand meaning in Classic Maya architecture, ed-ited by Stephen D. Houston, pp. 373–425.Dumbarton Oaks, Washington, DC.

1999 The name of the ruler. Pre-Columbian ArtResearch Institute Newsletter 28:3–4.

Stuart, David, and S. Houston1994 Classic Maya place names. Studies in Pre-Co-

lumbian Art and Archaeology No. 33.Dumbarton Oaks, Washington, DC.

1997 The royal crypts of Copan. National Geo-graphic 192(6):68–93.

Sztompka, Piotr1991 Society in action: The theory of social becoming.

Univ. of Chicago Press, Chicago.1994a Evolving focus on human agency in contem-

porary social theory. In Agency and structure:Reorienting social theory, edited by Piotr Sz-tompka, pp. 25–60. Gordon and Breach,Yverdon Switz.

1994b Society as social becoming: Beyond individ-ualism and collectivism. In Agency and struc-ture: Reorienting social theory, edited by PiotrSztompka, pp. 251–282. Gordon and Breach,Yverdon Switz.

Tainter, Joseph A.1978 Mortuary practices and the study of prehis-

toric social systems. In Advances in archaeo-logical method and theory, edited by MichaelB. Schiffer, Vol. 1, pp. 105–141. AcademicPress, New York.

Tate, Carolyn E.1992 Yaxchilan: The design of a Maya ceremonial

city. Univ. of Texas Press, Austin.

Thompson, Edward H.1895 Ancient tombs of Palenque. In Proceedings of

the American Antiquarian Society, Vol. 10, Part2, pp. 418–421. American Antiquarian Soci-ety, Worcester, MA.

Thompson, J. Eric S.1930 Ethnology of the Mayas of southern and central

British Honduras. Field Museum of NaturalHistory, Anthropological Series, Vol. 17, No.2. Chicago.

Tourtellot, Gair1988 Developmental cycles of households and

houses at Seibal. In Household and communityin the Mesoamerican past, edited by RichardR. Wilk and Wendy Ashmore, pp. 97–120.Univ. of New Mexico Press, Albuquerque.

Trinkaus, Kathryn Maurer1984 Mortuary ritual and mortuary research. Cur-

rent Anthropology 25:674–679.

Ucko, Peter J.1969 Ethnography and archaeological interpreta-

tion of funerary remains. World Archaeology1:262–280.

Varenne, Herve1984 Collective representation in American an-

thropological conversations: individual andculture. Current Anthropology 25:281–299.

Vogt, Evon Z.1964 Ancient Maya concepts in contemporary Zi-

nacantan religion. Sixth International Con-

gress of Anthropological and Ethnological Sci- the social sciences, edited by May Brodbeck,


ences, Vol. 2, Part 2, pp. 497–502. Musee del’Homme, Paris.

1969 Zinacantan: A Maya community in the high-lands of Chiapas. Belknap Press of HarvardUniv. Press, Cambridge, MA.

1970 Human souls and animal spirits in Zinacan-tan. In Echanges et communications: Melangesofferts a Claude Levi-Strauss a l’occasion de son60eme anniversaire, edited by Jean Pouillonand Pierre Miranda, Vol. 2, pp. 1148–1167.Mouton, The Hague.

Watanabe, John M.1990 From saints to shibboleths: Image, structure,

and identity in Maya religious syncretism.American Ethnologist 17:131–150.

Waterson, Roxana1990 The living house: An anthropology of architec-

ture in South-East Asia. Oxford Univ. Press,Singapore.

Watkins, J. W. N.1968 Methodological individualisms and social

tendencies. In Readings in the philosophy of

pp. 269–280. Macmillan, New York.Weiner, Annette B.

1976 Women of value, men of renown: New perspec-tives in Trobriand exchange. Univ. of TexasPress, Austin.

1992 Inalienable possessions: The paradox of keeping-while-giving. Univ. of California Press,Berkeley.

Welsh, W. Bruce M.1988 An analysis of Classic lowland Maya burials.

BAR International Series 409. British Ar-chaeological Reports, Oxford, UK.

Wisdom, Charles1940 The Chorti indians of Guatemala. Univ. of Chi-

cago Press, Chicago.Yaeger, Jason

2000 The social construction of communities inthe Classic Maya countryside: Strategies ofaffiliation in western Belize. In The archaeol-ogy of communities: A New World perspective,edited by Marcello-Andrea Canuto and Ja-son Yaeger. Routledge, London.

person hood, agency, and mortuary ritual gillespie

Documents