This collection of eight essays (including the introduction by the two editors) is the first of a planned two-volume series dealing with mortuary rituals in Mesoamerica and in the Andes. Though primarily written by and intended for archaeologists, much in the book may be recommend to folklorists. The contributing authors take a longue durée approach to their study of Lowland Maya, Zapotec, Miixtec, Teotihuacano, and Aztec cultures, linking them with contemporary expressions in Oaxacan and Nahua societies (e.g., Day of the Dead celebrations).
As James Fitzsimmons and Izumi Shimada point out in their introduction, “This book documents the various manners in which the dead and the living interact in prehistoric and historic Mesoamerica” (1). Rituals and practices concerned with the dead are seen as continuing to have an effect on the living, either their descendants or later peoples occupying sites where they lived. This may involve reopening their tombs, rearranging and decorating their bones, and using them in new architectural contexts. Viewing funerary rites as a liminal state in which the deceased is between social roles, neither fully alive nor dead, the authors draw on the research of scholars such as Robert Hertz in Indonesia. As the editors point out, “The ritual process included secondary burials as well as feasting, with the intent being to change the status of the deceased from a defunct person into an ancestor” (9).
The individual essays include Estella Weiss-Krejci’s “The Role of Dead Bodies in late Classic Maya Politics: Cross-Cultural Reflections on the Meaning of Tikal Altar 5,” which suggests that during the troubled seventh and eighth centuries CE, bodes of the former elite were exhumed, manipulated, and redeposited to legitimize the new regime’s right to rule and to prevent dynastic crises. James Fizsimmons’ essay, “Perspectives on Death and Transformation in Ancient Maya Society: Human Remains as a Means to an End,” supports this argument, indicating that there is a growing body of evidence to suggest that Classic Maya lords “curated ancestral or sacrificial remains as sacred objects,” in effect tied to the belief that “human remains were ritually efficacious, able to assist in the dedication of monuments as well as ancestral or divine communication” (53). Diane Z. Chase and Arlen F. Chase analyze the relationship between the living and the dead in “Ghosts Amid the Ruins,” based on their excavations of the Caracol, Belize, site.
Jeffrey Blomster, in “Bodies, Bones and Burials,” thoroughly examines this relationship in Oaxaca, Mexico, from the earliest villages that developed by 1500 BCE, through the Late Formative and Classical cultures (500 BCE-CE 600), and up to the present. As he states, citing Monaghan and Norget, “Brightly colored and glowing skulls, made of sugar, flash through the nights during the Day of the Dead throughout Oaxaca state, a powerful visual reminder of the ongoing social relationships that continue between the living and the dead....It is a time when all members of a household – living and dead – are together....People from all walks of life in Oaxaca today plan parties and feasts to celebrate the return of the spirits of their loved ones, recognizing the importance of death in their everyday lives and the performative ways in which it is experienced” (102).
Saburo Sugiyama’s “Interactions between the Living and the Dead at Major Monuments in Teotihuacan” explores the range of burials – both human and animal – associated with the various Teotihuacan pyramids. He finds distinct differences between the mass burials of sacrificial victims in the Feathered Serpent Pyramid and those of high-status individuals buried in a late phase of the Moon Pyramid, all of whom display special ornaments associated with Classic Maya societies. This suggests to him that they were either emissaries or Maya elite brought to Teotihuacan to be buried “willingly or not” (173). Elizabeth Baquedano’s “Concepts of Death and the Afterlife in Central Mexico” provides a contextual reading of the belief system operating in pre-conquest Mexico, including the various Otherworlds (Mictlan, Tlalocan, and the House of the Sun), who was destined for each one, and the fate which would await them. Finally, Patricia A. McAnany’s “Toward a Hermeneutics of Death” is a commentary on the previous seven essays and lends a philosophical framework to ameliorate understanding of the Mesoamerican deathways provided in this collection. She concludes quite rightly: “As the hermeneutics of death mature within Mesoamerican archaeology, it will, hopefully, include expanded discussion of topics introduced in the pages of this book and exhibit a general trend towards a fuller meaning of the theological with the material” (239).
WORKS CITED
Hertz, Robert. 1960. “A Contribution to the Study of the Collective Representation of Death.” In Death and the Right Hand, edited by Rodney Needham and Claudia Needham. New York: Free Press.
Monaghan, John. 1996. “The Mesoamerican Community as a ‘Great House,’” Ethnology 35: 181-94.
Norget, Kristin. 2006. Days of Death, Days of Life: Ritual in the Popular Culture of Oaxaca. New York: Columbia University Press.
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[Review length: 824 words • Review posted on December 7, 2011]