Fire and smoke were fundamental ritual forces in Mesoamerican religious worldview. Found in varied contexts (funerary processing, animation ceremonies, and desecratory rituals), fire and smoke were applied to multiple media (human bodies, architecture, and ceramics). In the Postclassic (AD 950–1524) Maya lowlands, burning both processed honored ancestors’ remains and violated enemies’ remains. Ceramic incense burners with deity effigies were used to burn resins to communicate with supernaturals. Here we consider whether fire and smoke were applied in similar fashion to human bodies and censer effigies in the Petén lakes region of northern Guatemala during the Postclassic period. Specifically we document and compare (1) archaeological contexts in which human remains were burned (or have associations with burning), (2) archaeological contexts of ritual use of effigy censers, and (3) descriptions of ritual contexts involving the use of fire and smoke from codices and ethnohistoric and ethnographic accounts. Comparing human remains to representations of bodies suggests that both were subjected to similar ritual processes but that the former were particularly necessary under some political, and religious and calendrical circumstances.

Presented in the session "Cultural Meanings of Head Treatments in Mesoamerican and Andean Societies.” Over the past 10 years researchers in Mesoamerica have increasingly come to agree that cranial modification was a normal part of growing up in Maya society. One component of cranial modification appears to have been ritually sealing one or more of these animating essences in infants’ heads. Bodies in Mesoamerica were both permeable and partible and contained multiple animating essences associated with various aspects of personhood, animacy, and illness. Thus, one current question is identifying precisely what was being sealed in cranial modification. In this paper I review animating essences among the Maya to discuss which appear to have been the most likely candidates for sealing through cranial modification. The two most relevant essences are baah and ik’. Baah is a conflation of personhood and the head, could be interacted with by other individuals after corporeal death, and appropriated by enemies. Ik’ is breath soul and could exit the body from various orifices. Although baah is explicitly associated with the head among the Maya, here I argue that ik’ is at least as likely as baah to have been targeted for sealing through cranial modification.

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Presented in the session “Current research in Maya bioarchaeology."

Presented in the session “Bioarchaeological signatures of violence and aggression."

Presented in the Latin American Studies Speakers’ Series

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