ZACPETEN STRUCTURE 719: ACTIVITIES AT A CONTACT PERIODPOPOL NAHBEFORE RAPID ABANDONMENT

Abstract

This paper addresses activities carried out in a late-sixteenth or seventeenth century Maya council house (popol nah) just before its abandonment. Structure 719 at the site of Zacpeten in the central Peten lakes district is considered a noble residence remodeled into a council house with an adjacent temple. Excavations revealed quantities of de facto refuse inside the structure's two rooms and around the exterior; recent studies focused on ceramics, lithics, faunal remains, and net sinkers. The back room held abundant lithics and diverse fauna, with evidence of grinding red pigment and snapping obsidian prismatic blades into segments for fashioning arrow points. Pottery and faunal remains indicate feasting, as well as possible use of animal parts in ritual and in making ceremonial objects. The Group 719 complex served as a center of production of various goods and community ritual until its abrupt abandonment, likely in the first decade or so of the eighteenth century.

Conquest and revival at Chiantla Viejo: the transition of a highland Maya community to Spanish colonial rule

“…Instead, there was an explicit attempt to reproduce archetypes of public ritual architecture from ancestral pre-Hispanic centres such as Zaculeu at the same time that local elites were negotiating a newly adopted identity as Christian converts. In this, the Mam followed a pre-Hispanic tradition of recentring new settlements during times of great social stress, drawing on spatial arrangements of major ritual centres of the past (Pugh 2003;Milbrath & Peraza Lope 2009;Rice et al 2018). The burning, destruction and abandonment of Maya settlements during the Spanish conquest undoubtedly reflect colonial acts of destruction and domination, but the evidence from Chiantla Viejo indicates that there were also indigenous initiatives to destroy, revive and recreate landscapes and places.…”

Early Colonialism and Population Movement at the Mission San Bernabé, Guatemala

“…Spaniards established a presidio or garrison in Flores, and estancias, or ranches, across the region. Some level of in-migration is reported; for example, Kowoj and Mopan names are associated with San Bernabé and may evidence migration from contemporaneously occupied sites, such as the Kowoj center of Zacpeten or Tipu, Belize, which was home to Mopan or Ahitza Mayas (Jones 1977(Jones , 1998Rice et al 2018). The Colonial period, however, brought with it a fluctuating boundary between Spanish and British controlled areas.…”

Boundary Things in the Eastern Maya Lowlands: Negotiating Allied Relations From Terminal Classic to Postclassic Times

“…Circular architecture has been primarily identified in Terminal Classic contexts in the eastern Maya lowlands while colonnaded open halls are present in the Terminal Classic but become more common in the Postclassic (Harrison-Buck 2012; Harrison-Buck and McAnany 2013; Pugh et al 2016:12; Rice 1986, 1988). While circular architecture has been primarily interpreted as ritual in function, open colonnaded halls may have served a range of functions, which included a combination of residential, administrative, and religious purposes (Bey et al 1997; Bey and May Ciau 2014; Cheek 2003; Driver 2002; Fash et al 1992; Peraza Lopes and Masson 2014:107–110; Proskouriakoff 1962a; Pugh et al 2016; Rice et al 2018).…”