Abstract

VAZQUEZ LOPEZ, Verónica Amellali et al. Maya Ritual Practices during the Preclassic Period in the Grazia Complex at Yaxnohcah, Campeche. Estud. cult. maya [online]. 2022, vol.60, pp.57-95.  Epub Nov 14, 2022. ISSN 0185-2574.  https://doi.org/10.19130/iifl.ecm.60.23x00s702.

During the Middle (1000-400 BC) and Late (400 BC-AD 200) Preclassic periods, Yaxnohcah was an extensive settlement containing more than 15 civic-ceremonial complexes spread over 40 km2. Our research focuses on one of the principal peri-urban nodes known as the Grazia Complex, which consists of a monumental platform featuring a triadic group, a ballcourt, and other minor structures. Excavations revealed several construction phases, as well as the remains of repetitive ritual activities. A hearth associated with an altar and a cache deposit with a triadic layout was uncovered on the platform in front of the triadic group. This deposit and its location represent one of the earliest and clearest examples of the conceptual equivalence of household hearths and three stone places in the Maya lowlands. It provides explicit evidence for the replication of household ritual associated with cooking hearths to the public ritual analog, feeding the gods, a religious ideology intimately related to the emergence of kings.

Below the Late Preclassic triadic hearth, we identified an earlier altar, and below that, a much earlier Middle Preclassic hearth that probably preceded construction of the triadic group. These ritual contexts evidence the antiquity of community ritual practices at Grazia that involve repetitive ritual burning associated with placemaking activities. Here, we focus on ritual practices as vehicles to construct social relations within the local community, and their implications for the urban landscape at Yaxnohcah.

Keywords : Yaxnohcah; Preclassic Maya archaeology; ritual practices; Grazia Complex; urban landscape; LiDAR.

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