Maya Pilgrimage, Migration, and Community Connectivity at Ritual Landscapes at Mensabak, Chiapas, Mexico

Abstract

Anthropologists have demonstrated that having information about new settlements is crucial for drawing migrants. Pilgrimage to ritual landscapes and their shrines allows people, including Maya societies, to explore places where they can settle. They then establish or augment settlements around the landscape shrines, which explains the locations and growth of some centers. Migrants continue to make pilgrimages to shrines, such as sacred mountains, near their receiving settlements to enhance community cohesion through ritual contact with spiritual forces. In this article, I show that pilgrimage is an important element in the establishment of select migrant settlements and their community identity. I focus on Maya and Mesoamerican cultures, particularly at Mensabak in Chiapas, Mexico, and on supporting archaeological, historical, and ethnographic information. I conclude that Maya perceptions of movement, connectivity, and transformation in their world are linked to pilgrimage, migration, and community formation. Importantly, pilgrimage provides a religious variable, in addition to better-known economic, political, or demographic factors, to consider in migration.

Well‐being in the context of Indigenous heritage management: A Hach Winik perspective from Metzabok, Chiapas, Mexico

“…Visitors can hire a guide in town to row them across Lake Metzabok while learning about different aspects of Hach Winik history and culture and the rainforest. Tzibana has also been a focus of MAP because it is a site with Preclassic (1000 monumental architecture that contains evidence of Late Postclassic/Early Colonial (1200-1600 CE) settlement reoccupation (Palka & Balderas, 2023). The people who reoccupied Tzibana's Preclassic monumental core also built fortifications between buildings to barricade walkways and protect their homes.…”

A Small Rural Travel Stopover at the Late Postclassic Maya Site of Mensabak, Chiapas, Mexico: Overland Trade, Cross-Cultural Interaction and Social Cohesion in the Countryside

“…Mensabak (also Mensäbäk) is a small cluster of archaeological sites at a small lake located in the Sierras of Chiapas, about 250 km to the south of the lowland coastal Maya and Aztec trade enclaves and port towns of Potonchan and Xicalango (Xicalanco) on the Gulf Coast of Tabasco (Berdan et al 2003; Chapman 1957; see Figure 1). The sites and shrines at Mensabak were discovered during the author's collaborative rural archaeological surveys with local Lacandon Maya from Puerto Bello Mensabak (Palka 2014; Palka et al 2020). We research an area far from regional Maya centres and ports, which have drawn more archaeological attention due to the presence of Maya elite material culture like palaces and hieroglyphic monuments.…”