DANGEROUS PLACES AND WILD SPACES:
Creating Meaning With Materials and Space at Contemporary Maya Shrines on
El Duende Mountain
By Linda Brown

EL DUENDE

• Sacred mountain the Guadtemalan highlands
• K'iche' Maya
• Outdoor shrines at summit and at rock outcrops and rock shelters
• Shrines for both positive and negative rituals

THEORETICAL APPROACH

• Ethnoarchaeology
• Practice theory - Bourdieu
• modern Maya ritual - gain an understanding of ancient Maya commoner ritual
• ritual - form of action by which people strategically distinguish certain practices

THREE KEY ACTIVITES

• Involved in the construction of social meaning
• 1. Types of materials used as offerings
• 2. Ways an offering is deposited
• 3. Choosing the location of the deposit within the site
• Through this, practicioners create the meaning and function if the rite

SACRED OBJECTS

• ceremonial artifacts have 'ritual life-histories'
• objects are assigned sacred value - singularization
• Locations/buildings can also have a life history

EL DUENDE - SACRIFICIAL OFFERINGS

• 3 types of structures for offerings
• 1. Tabal - altar
• 2. Porobal - sacrifical offering hearth
• 3. Mal entierro - evil burial

TABAL

• Candles burned - represents food or other offering for deity
• First place a ritual practicioner visits on the mountiain
• Practitioner asks deities for permission to conduct ceremony
• Practicioner will clean tabal and add new offerings of flowers/sweets
• Tabal - either natural flat feature or man-made

POROBAL

• For burning offerings -sacrificial offering hearth
• Burning essential for rites - turns offering into smoke for gods
• Rite of exchange - feed deity so they will do what you want them to
• Ceremonias blancas and ceremonias negras - different offerings associated with each
• Demarcate space for porobal with sugar, make pile of offerings, then burn it

MAL ENTIERRO - EVIL BURIAL

• Bury offerings in order to cause magical attack
• Aj'itz - witch who conducts a mal entierro
• Also used to remove attack by "throwing it back"
• Anthropomorphic figure of copal, wax, clay, cloth, or meat

EMBODIED SPACES

• Relationship between space, ritual, and the body
• Oppositional dicotomies based on orientation & balance
• Up/high - powerful & beneficial
• Down/below - dangerous & deceptive

ROCKS AND ANCESTRAL SPIRITS

• Encantos - animated spirits within rock formations
• Have a specifc orientation - faces a direction
• Orientation - determines how ritual practices and features are organized

ROCK SITES ON EL DUENDE

• Lyom - midwife - female spirit - location of offering has difference meanings
• El Dueno - owner - area for tabal rites and area for mal entierros
• Los Encantos - the enchanted ones - site for mal entierros - three areas for different rituals
• Los Huesos - the bones - tabal and hearths with lower area for mal entierros

ORIENTATION AND RITUAL MEANING

• Focal point - ancestral spirits which embody rock outcrops
• Determine which rituals are conducted where
• Tabal - closest to rock outcrop - marks focal point
• Ceremonias blancas and negras are kept separate with negras farther away
• Mal entierros - associated with the left - lower, periphery of site

RITUAL SPACE AND PRACTICIONERS

• Sites used for good and bad rites and different types of each
• Imitative magic - ceremonias blancas
• Contagious magic - mal entierro
• Combined location reflects duality of cosmology

WHAT DOES THIS MEAN FOR THE ARCHAEOLOGICAL RECORD?

• Religious sites marked by tabal shrines
• Try to interpret spatial organization of ritual space
• Mundane artifacts acquire sacred status and enter record
• Look at periphery of site to find 'dangerous' type pf ritual practices
• Analyze spatial organization of hearths and ritual offerings

QUESTIONS?

• Based on this where and how should we dig?
• Are ethnographic correlations a good way to make inferences about the past?