Ecology and Ritual: Water Management and the Maya
Ecology and Ritual: Water Management and the Maya
复制标题
生态与仪式：水管理和玛雅人
DOI：
10.2307/971991
复制
发表时间：
1998
影响因子：
0.9
通讯作者：
V. Scarborough
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
V. Scarborough
尽管对于理解古代政治经济至关重要，但尤卡坦低地中部的古代玛雅人如何管理其水和土地资源仍然鲜为人知。最近的档案研究和实地数据表明，人们广泛使用人工改造的自然洼地来收集和储存水，用于饮用水和农业目的。在古典时期（公元250-900年），玛雅地区的几个主要城市在山顶和山脊上建造了最大的建筑和纪念碑。与这些高地中心“水山”相关的是在山顶开采的大型水库，这些水库可以维持生命。这种城镇规划设计的效果是集中了主要和基础资源。尽管精英管理者控制了水源，但其他分散力量阻止了类似于维特福格尔的“总权力”的任何事情。然而，通过仪式性地占用与水相关的日常和世俗活动，精英们利用图像中所体现的高性能水仪式来进一步集中控制。普通水坑的局部意象中对城市景观的改造意义，定义了玛雅仪式中的非凡。
How the ancient Maya of the central Yucatecan Lowlands managed their water and land resources remains poorly known, although crucial to an understanding of ancient political economy. Recent archival research and field data suggest the widespread use of artificially altered, natural depressions for the collection and containment of water, both for potable consumption and agricultural ends. During the Classic period (A. D. 250-900) several of the principal cities in the Maya area constructed their largest architecture and monuments at the summit of hills and ridges. Associated with these elevated centers—”water mountains”—were sizable, life-sustaining reservoirs quarried into their summits. The effect of this town-planning design was the centralization of a primary and fundamental resource. Although elite managers controlled the water source, other decentralizing forces prevented anything similar to Wittfogel's “total power.” However, by ritually appropriating the everyday and mundane activities associated with water by the sustaining population, elites used high-performance water ritual as manifest in the iconography to further centralize control. The significance of modifying the urban landscape in the partial image of the ordinary water hole defines the extraordinary in Maya ritual.