The Role of Ritual in the Emergence of Classic Maya Leaders

在国家科学基金会的支持下，丽莎·卢塞罗博士将在位于伯利兹低地的星期六溪遗址进行为期一季的考古发掘。由于河边地区是最早的玛雅人聚居地，它们往往包含很长的职业记录，因此提供了很好的场所来检查随着时间的推移方向的变化。在先前工作的基础上，卢塞罗博士在星期六溪发现了从公元前800年到公元890年的大约1700年的序列。她工作的目标是了解中央集权的政治权力是如何发展起来的，因为玛雅文化从平等主义走向分层，越来越多的个人被整合到地区单位中。目前尚不清楚统治精英是如何获得并维持权力的。考古学和人种学数据都表明，仪式和仪式活动在玛雅社会中发挥了重要作用，卢塞罗博士将重点关注这一点。仪式的作用是团结人们，使政治议程合法化，并提高赞助商的声望。根据初步数据，人们假设，涉及死亡、奉献和祖先崇拜的仪式起源于家庭层面，后来被新兴精英们挪用和改造，以服务于更广泛的综合功能。最终，她认为他们与皇室密切相关，并在社区眼中将他们与神联系在一起。玛雅考古记录中有丰富的材料，如用于仪式功能的陶瓷和其他物品的仪式藏身之处，这些物品是在各种不同的背景下发现的。在星期六溪遗址，卢塞罗博士将挖掘一系列建筑，包括孤立的建筑、一处精英大院和一座宫殿，这些建筑跨越了一系列社会地位和时间。她将确定最早的仪式遗迹是否发生在家庭协会中，后来扩展到这一直接背景之外。通过对缓存内容的分析，她还将洞察仪式是如何随着时间的推移而变化的。这项研究之所以重要，有几个原因。它将提供许多考古学家感兴趣的数据，并为整合早期大规模社会的力量提供新的线索。大约10-12名学生将参与实地研究，因此该项目也将发挥重要的教育作用。

With National Science Foundation support Dr. Lisa Lucero will conduct one season of archaeological excavation at the site of Saturday Creek, located in the Belize lowlands. Because riverine areas were the loci of earliest Mayan settlement they often contain long occupational records and thus offer excellent venues to examine directional change over time. Based on prior work, Dr. Lucero has uncovered an approximately 1,700 year sequence from ca. 800 BC to 890 AD at Saturday Creek. The goal of her work is to understand how centralized political authority developed, as Mayan culture moved from egalitarian to stratified and increasingly large numbers of individuals were integrated into regional units. It is unclear how ruling elite gained and were able to maintain power. Both archaeological and ethnographic data indicate that ritual and ceremonial activities played an important role in Mayan society and Dr. Lucero will focus on this. Ceremonies serve to unify people, can legitimize political agendas and increase the prestige of sponsors. Based on preliminary data it is hypothesized that rituals involving death, dedication and ancestor veneration originated at a family level and were later appropriated and transformed by emerging elites to serve broader integrative functions. Eventually, she believes they became closely associated with royal families and served, in community eyes, to link them with the divine. The Mayan archaeological record is rich in materials such as ritual caches of ceramics and other objects which served ceremonial functions and these have been discovered in a wide variety of contexts. At the Saturday Creek site Dr. Lucero will excavate a series of structures including solitary structures, an elite compound and a palace which span a range of social statuses and time. She will determine whether the earliest ritual remains occurred in family associations and later expanded beyond this immediate context. Through analysis of cache contents she will also gain insight into how rituals changed over time.This research is important for several reasons. It will provide data of interest to many archaeologists and shed new light on the forces which served to integrate early large scale societies. Approximately 10 -12 students will participate in the field research and thus the project will also serve an important educational function.