Architecture as Animate Landscape: Circular Shrines in the Ancient Maya Lowlands

Abstract

In this study, I develop a theory of landscape archaeology that incorporates the concept of “animism” as a cognitive approach. Current trends in anthropology are placing greater emphasis on indigenous perspectives, and in recent decades animism has seen a resurgence in anthropological theory. As a means of relating in (not to) one's world, animism is a mode of thought that has direct bearing on landscape archaeology. Yet, Americanist archaeologists have been slow to incorporate this concept as a component of landscape theory. I consider animism and Nurit Bird‐David's (1999) theory of “relatedness” and how such perspectives might be expressed archaeologically in Mesoamerica. I examine the distribution of marine shells and cave formations that appear incorporated as architectural elements on ancient Maya circular shrine architecture. More than just “symbols” of sacred geography, I suggest these materials represent living entities that animate shrines through their ongoing relationships with human and other‐than‐human agents in the world. [Maya architecture, animism, relational ontology, landscape archaeology, agency]

Pilgrimage to the Edge of the Watery Underworld: an Ancient Maya Water Temple at Cara Blanca, Belize

“…In precipitating around things, the visible and on-going creation of tufa itself further demonstrates the pools' animate qualities. Harrison-Buck (2012) illustrates a similar case in the Sibun area to the east at a Terminal Classic circular shrine devoted to the wind god, Ehecatl Quetzalcoatl, where the Maya incorporated speleothems and marine shell in the architecture to animate it. Tufa, as 'artifacts as places' (Bradley 2000, 85), is similar to cached speleothems in public architecture (e.g.…”

Anthropological Archaeology in 2012: Mobility, Economy, and Transformation

“…In investigating the complexity of hunter–gatherer social behavior and land‐use strategies, Smith and McNees argue that predicable resources in a patchy environment would have motivated hunter–gatherers to more intensively use the best patches, thus leading to persistent landscape use such as that found during the two thousand years of cyclical reuse of sites in the Wyoming and Big Horn basins. Eleanor Harrison‐Buck () applies animism theory and a relational ontology perspective to understand aspects of sacred geographies and the built environment in the Sibun Valley in the Maya lowlands. In discussing circular shrines with high densities of shell and speleothems, the author makes a compelling argument for how animate landscapes are created at the local level and are imbued with aspects of the living cosmos.…”

The Emperor's New Body: Personhood, Ontology and the Inka Sovereign

“…It has been my overarching aim here to draw direct links across the growing efforts to think through difference in terms of 'ontology' within archaeo logy (e.g. Alberti et al 2011;Alberti & Marshall 2009;Fowles 2013;Haber 2009;Harrison-Buck 2012), and the longer-running interest in models of ancient personhood that grew out of Strathern's and others' challenges to Cartesian dualisms. Grappling with the underlying great divides of modernity seems a clear interest in both these theoretical literatures, and so it seems to me that the 'ontological turn' might benefit from addressing these existing debates with fresh perspectives rather than seeking to carve out entirely new theoretical problems for itself.…”