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PARTING (WITH) THE DEAD: BODY PARTIBILITY AS EVIDENCE OF

COMMONER ANCESTOR VENERATION

Pamela L. Geller

Ancient Mesoamerica / Volume 23 / Issue 01 / March 2012, pp 115 - 130

DOI: 10.1017/S0956536112000089, Published online: 13 June 2012

Link to this article: http://journals.cambridge.org/abstract_S0956536112000089

How to cite this article:

Pamela L. Geller (2012). PARTING (WITH) THE DEAD: BODY PARTIBILITY AS EVIDENCE OF COMMONER ANCESTOR
VENERATION. Ancient Mesoamerica, 23, pp 115-130 doi:10.1017/S0956536112000089

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Ancient Mesoamerica, 23 (2012), 115–130
Copyright © Cambridge University Press, 2012
doi:10.1017/S0956536112000089

PARTING (WITH) THE DEAD: BODY PARTIBILITY

AS EVIDENCE OF COMMONER ANCESTOR
VENERATION

Pamela L. Geller
Department of Anthropology, University of Miami, P.O. Box 248106, Coral Gables, FL 33124

Abstract
As a complement to life histories authored by many researchers of Maya bones, this study narrates death histories. The latter entails
detection of perimortem and postmortem changes to decedents’ bodies, followed by translation of these changes’ encoded meanings.
Biographical analysis of body parts and the buildings in which they are situated facilitates such an endeavor. Past investigations of
partibility have focused on protracted processing of noble and royal bodies as a means to reconstitute decedents’ identities. Commoners’
burials, however, have received far less attention. Consequently, it is difficult to determine if partible practices differ according to or
transcend social class. To address this lacuna, a multiscalar frame is applied to a burial sample comprised of decedents from varied
social settings in the Three Rivers region, northwestern Belize. Identification of widely shared practices related to the becoming and
venerating of ancestors offers a springboard for examining particulars within patterns. Scaling down, commoner burials unearthed at the
minor center RB-11 are summarized and special attention is paid to the death history of Individual 71. This decedent’s intentionally
fragmented body reflects general thinking about ancestors as partible and dividual persons. Yet, certain attributes of Individual 71’s
burial are unique to the sample as a whole, which demonstrates how social class, circumstance, and individual life history are also
instrumental in the reformation of ancestorhood.

Bodily transformations—whether the result of intentional and artifi-
cial modification, habitual activity, or developmental change—are
often linked to the formation of identity in ritual and mundane set-
tings. Skeletal analysis of these markers yields considerable infor-
mation about the life histories of those long deceased. Here,
however, I document practices that alter bodies after the cessation
of life. Narrating individuals’ death histories contributes to an
expanding body of archaeological and bioarchaeological literature
that addresses the symbolic significance and social viability of the
biologically dead (Chapman 2000; Fowler 2002, 2004; Robb
2002; Tiesler 2004; Tiesler and Cucina 2007). To narrate death his-
tories effectively, a biographical approach—a study of bodies and
the buildings in which they were situated—proves useful.
Processing dead bodies, as Maya scholars have discovered,
entailed myriad practices (Becker 1992, 1993; Ciudad Ruíz et al.
2003; Cobos 2004; Ruz Lhuillier 1965, 1968; Webster 1997;
Weiss-Krejci 2006; Welsh 1988). Notable exceptions notwithstand-
ing (Becker 1992, 1993; McAnany 1995, 1998; Robin 1989; Robin
and Hammond 1991; Storey 2004), researchers’ discussions about
the complicated nature of funerary rituals and extended curation
of dead bodies have concentrated on material and/or epigraphic evi-
dence from royal contexts (Bell 2002; Chase and Chase 1996, 1998;
Fitzsimmons 1998, 2006; Sharer et al. 1999; Tiesler 2004, 2007;
Weiss-Krejci 2003, 2004). Certainly, much can be learned from
commoners’ humble burials in spite of poor skeletal preservation,
a dearth of material wealth, and the absence of epigraphic data.
E-mail correspondence to: pgeller@mail.as.miami.edu
The burial sample discussed here includes every ‘body’ from
renowned ruler to humble farmer, yielding a more holistic represen-
tation of ancient Maya society. In northwestern Belize’s section of
the Three Rivers region (Adams 1995) excavators recovered 132
individuals from rural house ruins, minor centers, and major
centers1 (Figure 1). House ruins, while variable in plan, were typi-
cally between one and five buildings placed atop rectangular plat-
forms. They simultaneously served as residential and ritual
spaces. Building on Bullard’s (1960:360) definition, minor
centers “may consist of only one large building, but ordinarily
they include one or more pyramids, which are assumed to have
been small temples, arranged in company with lower buildings
around” one to five adjacent plazas. In contrast, major centers
were larger and had more elaborate architecture. Structures may
have had vaulted roofs and multiple rooms, or were associated
with features like stelae, altars, ballcourts, and sacbes connecting
adjacent plazas. Major centers served as “nuclei” for Districts,
which were functionally, if not geographically, central (Bullard
1960:368). As Ashmore (1981:55) has noted, both minor and
major centers did not just serve a ceremonial function, but were
1
From 1992 to 2002, excavators recovered 132 individuals under the
aegis of three different projects—La Milpa Archaeological Project
(LaMAP) co-directed by Norman Hammond and Gair Tourtellot,
Programme for Belize Archaeological Project (PfBAP) directed by Fred
Valdez, and Chan Chich Archaeological Project (CCAP) directed by Brett
Houk. Collectively, the area covered by these three projects is included in
the larger Three Rivers region. Frank Saul and Julie Mather Saul, under
whose guidance I conducted doctoral research (Geller 2004), directed skel-
etal analyses for all three projects.

115
116
Figure 1. Map showing the boundaries of the Three Rivers region (adapted
from Houk 1996).
also arenas for commercial, residential, political, ritual, and intellec-
tual activities. Given sites’ varied locations, sizes, and layouts in the
Three Rivers region, it follows that decedents’ social backgrounds
are similarly diverse. What do burials relate about widely shared
socio-religious practices, communities’ creative responses, and/or
decedents’ specific circumstances?
To this end, I utilize a multiscalar framework—one that extends
from region to community to individual—to consider the becoming
and venerating of ancestors. Similar to findings at other Maya sites
(Gillespie 2001, 2002; McAnany 1995; Storey 2004; Webster
1997), noble and commoner communities in the Three Rivers
region interred their dead beneath and within the structures they
continued to utilize. Such physical contextualization then engen-
dered transformation of liminal corpses to valued ancestors.
Comparisons between the noble minority and social majority,
however, underscore that the concept ‘ancestor’ is a complex one
that should not be homogenized. The Maya conceived of varied
types of ancestors, which may have been contoured by social
class, circumstance, and/or individual life history.
To illustrate this point, burials from the minor center RB-112 are
discussed with special attention paid to the death history of
2
Thomas Guderjan first encountered RB-11 during exploratory survey
work in 1990. Brandon Lewis and Hugh Robichaux christened the site El
Intruso in 1992 while conducting preliminary investigations. In 1994,
Rene Muñoz (1997) conducted excavations at the site as part of his
master’s thesis. He labeled the site Gateway, given its proximity just
300 m south of the Río Bravo Conservation and Management Area’s north-
ern entry gate. He is the excavator that uncovered Individual 71. Currently,
Geller
Individual 71. I single out this individual’s burial given its idiosyn-
cratic attributes that do not easily accord with populational patterns
in the broader sample. A microscale analysis reveals that the com-
moner community had a protracted engagement with this decedent.
One particularly intriguing characteristic of this burial was
Individual 71’s intentionally fragmented body parts. To understand
the significance of and processes involved in such fragmentation, I
compare Individual 71’s burial to instances of body partibility from
other Maya sites. Contingent on the decedent, body partibility
served to memorialize, desecrate, revere, or forget. That is, partibil-
ity engenders reformation of personhood. For ancestors, whose
veneration by the living community reconfirms generational
relations, postmortem partibility is connected to dividual person-
hood. The concept is a highly abstract one, and its relevance to
this pre-Columbian Maya case study will be explored. Individual
71 serves as an especially striking example of how a commoner
community used partible practices to make a dividual person.
BIOGRAPHIES OF BONES AND BUILDINGS: A
MULTISCALAR APPROACH
Interactions between living and dead members of Maya society were
pervasive and complex, shaped by religious tenets, cosmological
beliefs, and social norms, as well as mourners’ personal memories
and decedents’ life histories. Brought to light by population-based
questions, Maya burial samples contain identifiable patterns that
indicate shared cultural practices and beliefs. But, they also
contain important and at times subtle information for which macro-
scale analyses of observable patterns cannot account. Much appears
peculiar or particular when regarded in light of the patterned. As
Rosemary Joyce (2001) has pointed out in her study of Formative
burials from Tlatilco, Mexico, examination of particularities in
addition to regularities signals mourners’ creative responses to indi-
viduals’ deaths and humanizes the decedents we study.
To flesh out these dialectics—between macro- and micro-scales,
structure and agency, society and individual, patterned and particu-
lars—an osteobiographic approach is a useful starting point. Frank
Saul’s (1972) formulation of osteobiographic analysis set an impor-
tant precedent, which he and wife Julie Saul have continued to apply
in their studies (see Saul et al. 2005; Saul and Saul 1989). As Jane
Buikstra and Rachel Scott (2009:36) have recently remarked, Saul
and Saul’s understanding of osteobiography primarily stresses
methodology. Specifically, it is a forensic methodology, which
involves collection of data about demography or functional adap-
tations (i.e., age, sex, pathology) from individual skeletons (see
also Buikstra 2006:350). Accordingly, reconstruction of individ-
uals’ life histories could, in Saul and Saul’s (1989:300) words, be
used “to make projections unto the life history of the population.”
Conceptually speaking, however, exactly how one gets from Point
A (the individual) to Point B (the larger society), is developed mini-
mally in Saul and Saul’s understanding of osteobiography. That this
approach stresses life history also leaves unexamined decedents’
corporeal alterations and social vitality in communities who
Morgan Davis is examining the site as part of her ongoing doctoral research,
which involved additional mapping and excavations. She also refers to the
site as Gateway. To avoid confusion, I simply use the original PfB site
number RB-11. Saul and Saul excavated the majority of burials at RB-11,
including Individual 71.
Body Partibility as Evidence of Commoner Ancestor Veneration 117

engaged ancestors on a daily basis. There is no accounting for death BURIALS IN NORTHWESTERN BELIZE: PATTERNS AND
histories with this approach. PARTICULARS
When revisiting osteobiography more recently, Robb (2002)
The sample from the Three Rivers region is comprised of 132 indi-
offers worthwhile conceptual expansion by exploring the body’s
viduals, the majority (n = 88) of whom lived (and died) during the
connection to time. Time, as he describes, extends from the
Late and Terminal Classic periods (a.d. 650–900). Such a small
experiential to the social to the cosmological. Experiential time is
number certainly does not represent the region’s total population,
subjectively embodied and pertains to human activities, routine or
a phenomenon that scholars working elsewhere in the Maya
remarkable ones, at various junctures throughout an individual’s life-
world have also noted (Becker 1993:62; Chase 1997).
history. Mediating between the scale of the individual and the
Nonetheless, a population approach does allow us to identify
cosmos, social time marks age-related shifts in statuses. These sta-
broader patterns within northwestern Belize, which I have discussed
tuses, which are often associated with discernible bodily changes,
in detail elsewhere (Geller 2004, 2006a, 2006b, 2011a). While
are shared by cohorts and dictate interactions between generations.
excavators encountered burials beneath main plazas and entombed
To narrate a biography then captures the trajectory and experience of
within monumental ceremonial buildings, they recovered the
statuses throughout the course of individuals’ lives. Osteobiography,
majority of decedents, or 87.1% of the total sample (n = 115),
as expanded by Robb, illumines cultural ideals reproduced by a
from residential buildings. Interment of decedents in association
larger community, as well as deviations from the norm that may
with domestic structures is especially evocative of the intimate
be contingent on the decedent’s life history, group strategizing, or
and ongoing relationship between mourners and their deceased kin.
broader sociopolitical circumstances. Cosmological time extends
More than half of the sample’s decedents (n = 76 or 57.6% of
beyond human lifetimes. It is eternal, according to Robb, and indif-
the total sample) were primary interments, or fully articulated.
ferent to mortal meddling.
Table 1 contains information about these primary interments’
An individual’s death provides the convergence of all three tem-
body positions, as well as body conditions3 for the larger sample.
poralities. Robb (2002:159) writes “…one important function of
In 85.5% of cases (n = 65), mourners had positioned these
funerary ritual is as a bridge between kinds of time, merging the
primary decedents in several variations on the fetal position, one
recently deceased, finishing a story at biographical time, into the
that is highly suggestive of bundling (Reese-Taylor et al. 2006).
immanent order of things existing at cosmological time.” Hence,
The bodies of 29 individuals (or 22% of the total sample) may be
examining “the history of human remains after death” (Robb 2002:
characterized as “secondary.” Burials qualified as secondary if
160)—death histories—helps us to understand how a culture links
bodies had been accidentally disturbed during ancient construction
the experiential to the social to the cosmological. Communities con-
activities, or if the living intentionally disarticulated bodies. The
tinue to engage with bodies well after an individual’s death in a
latter occurred when graves were reentered and decedents
manner that is materially discernible, symbolically meaningful, and
removed or additional individuals interred. Partibility, a subset of
culturally nuanced.
this type of secondary burial, refers to the intentional selection
Without information about physical context, however, it is chal-
and interment of body parts in the absence of a whole body, such
lenging to effectively undertake an osteobiographic approach. That
as a lone finger, scattered teeth, a decapitated skull, or long-bones
is, we must also have information about the architectural spaces in
crossed over each other. In the case of the Three Rivers region
which dead bodies are interred. Such is especially true for Maya
sample, partibility applies to the burials of only four decedents.
studies where tropical environs make for poor preservation of
With regard to the graves in which bodies were interred, Table 2
human remains. Physical contextualization augments data sets
summarizes information according to time period. From the Late
when information about skeletal materials is otherwise deficient,
Preclassic period onward, “simple graves” predominated, compris-
and it helps researchers make inferences about mourning kin
ing 46.2% of the entire sample. This grave type entailed minimal
members’ mortuary practices and beliefs. To do so, one must
effort and informal design. Decedents’ remains, whether articulated
collect the following data: information about grave location and
or disarticulated, intermingled with the surrounding building’s con-
type; associated architecture; grave goods; presence of additional
struction fill. Pits, cists, and tombs, on the other hand, involved
decedents; and, if present, the spatial relationship between multiple
exponentially increasing amounts of planning and labor.4 Aside
decedents (or their parts). These burial attributes also aid researchers
from chultuns, caches were the least likely to serve as a decedent’s
in reconstructing a building’s life history, and thus extend my use of
grave type. The sample only contains five caches, or 3.8% of the
the term biographical.
A life history approach to architecture is one that several archae-
ologists have found productive for elucidating and sequencing the
ritual and mundane activities associated with complex stratigraphic 3
For 27 individuals (or 20.4% of the total sample), it was not possible to
relationships (Bailey 1990; Gosden and Marshall 1999; LaMotta determine body condition.
and Schiffer 1999; Nanoglou 2008; Tringham 1991, 1994; 4
A pit grave is an observable burial space that is not formally demar-
Walker and Lucero 2000). In Maya studies, a biography of buildings cated by construction materials such as cut limestone blocks. Construction
is particularly pertinent since decedents were generally interred fill associated directly with human remains is distinct from fill outside of
beneath structures in which the living continued to reside and reno- the grave space. There are two types of cist graves—capped and informal
cists. The capped cist type is constructed of vertically upright stones,
vate (Storey 2004). Such spatial arrangements highlight the sus- which are placed in an ovoid, spherical, or box-like arrangement, and
tained social potency of the biologically dead (Geller 2006b; capped with one or more stones. Cist stones are generally regular in shape
Gillespie 2001, 2002; McAnany 1995; Webster 1997). A conjunc- and size. Informal cists do not require as great care and effort in their con-
tive consideration of bodies and the places in which they rested then struction. Decedents within informal cists are surrounded completely by irre-
gularly shaped stones sans a capstone, or one or more stones may be placed
is best served by describing construction biographies in addition to haphazardly atop or around the body or head. Tombs are architecturally
osteobiographical ones. With this multiscalar model in hand, I now complex spaces that are either stone-lined or rock cut. They are often—
turn to burials from the Three Rivers region, northwestern Belize. though not always—found in association with monumental buildings.
118 Geller

Table 1. Body conditions and positions

Body Body Loosely Tightly Legs Bent % of Total

Condition Position Extended Flexed Flexed Kneeling Backwards Unknown Total # Sample

Primary 5 45 19 1 1 5 76 57.6
Secondary n/a n/a n/a n/a n/a n/a 29 21.9
Unknown n/a n/a n/a n/a n/a n/a 27 20.4

total burial sample. Human remains cached within ceramic vessels
characterize this grave-type. All caches in the Three Rivers region
sample are secondary interments.
In general, the majority of the sample’s Classic period decedents
were found with few if any grave goods. Caches and tombs provided
exceptions, as grave goods were always unearthed in association
with these types of interments. Grave goods in the latter were
better preserved, plentiful, and diverse with respect to types and
materials, however. In the case of 46 individuals, no grave goods
were recovered (34.8% of the total sample), and it was not possible
to determine whether goods had been interred in 24 decedents’
graves (18.2% of the total sample). The graves of 47 individuals con-
tained between one and four different types of objects (35.6% of the
total sample); each ceramic vessel was distinguished but groups of
objects, like the 19 pieces of mica found in one grave, were
counted as one object. For the most part, graves contained ceramic
fragments, whole vessels, shell, and obsidian. Found less frequently
were granite and chert tools, animal bones, and jade or greenstone.
Singular instances of mica, hematite, coral, copal, a stingray spine,
and turtle carapace also occurred. If anything, however, individuals’
grave goods defied patterns. That is, assemblages appeared specific
to each burial and may offer evidence for the more personal aspects
of decedents’ lives or mourners’ remembrances.
Based on patterns in the sample, I believe that certain aspects of
burials—grave’s location and type, interred body’s condition and
position, associated architectural features—materialize eschatologi-
cal beliefs about the afterlife, souls, and sacred aspects of the
cosmos, as well as ritual practices involving the becoming and
venerating of ancestors (Geller 2004, 2006b). Generally, primary
interments whose bodies had been intentionally flexed and situated
in association with domestic architecture signaled individuals’
ancestral rebirth and invited ongoing dialogue between decedents
and their living kin (Geller 2004; Reese-Taylor et al. 2006).
Additionally, as Gillespie (2000) has argued was the case in other
parts of the Maya world, peoples living in the Three Rivers region
appear to have utilized benches as repositories for their decedents’
bodies, which subsequently functioned as household altars (Geller
2006b). Nineteen individuals (14.4% of total sample) were associ-
ated with benches at various sites throughout the region and thus
qualify as ancestors.
Ancestors and Social Variance
It would appear that occupants of the Three Rivers region elected
few individuals for ritualized posthumous processing that conferred
ancestral identity. Not everyone got to be an ancestor, and just who
did remains a query that deserves deeper deliberation. In their analy-
sis of Piedras Negras burials, Houston and colleagues (2003) have
argued that the dead fall into different categories—the poor,
“special dead,” and “ancestors”—evidenced by the location of,
labor expend on, and quantity of goods within a decedent’s grave.
They reserve the term “ancestor” for a select group of nobles and
royals buried within tombs. According to the authors, these dece-
dents’ prestige and power extended generations beyond their
mortal existences. Yet, burials from commoner and noble settings
throughout the Three Rivers region suggest that processing and

Table 2. Grave-types in the burial sample by time periods. *Two Simple graves could not be assigned to a more specific Classic period context and are not
included in the table though the total number of Simple graves is 61. For a full description of grave-types see Geller (2004)

Early Late Late/Terminal Terminal

Grave-types Preclassicclassic Classic Classic Classic Classic Unknown Total (n) % of total sample

Cache 1 1 1 1 0 1 5 3.8
Simple 11 5 23 13 4 3 59* 46.2
Pit 1 2 11 9 3 0 26 19.7
Chultun 0 0 1 0 0 0 1 .8
Cist:
Informal Cist 0 0 8 1 0 0 9 6.8
Capped Cist 0 3 5 4 0 1 13 12.1
Tomb:
Rock-cut Tomb 1 2 0 0 0 0 3 2.3
Stone-lined Tomb 0 2 1 0 0 0 3 2.3
Unspecified 0 0 0 0 0 6 6 4.5
Tomb
Unknown 0 0 2 0 0 3 5 3.7
Body Partibility as Evidence of Commoner Ancestor Veneration
venerating the dead as ancestors may not have been restricted to
certain classes within Maya society.
Cross-culturally, the category of “ancestor” need not be an undif-
ferentiated one, nor should it be restricted to a certain social stratum
(Pelras 2002; Sellato 2002). For instance, revisiting Hertz’s Borneo
case-study a century later, Sellato (2002) identified various emic
categories reserved for the dead. Ancestors are either exclusive or
inclusive. The former are important to the larger society, and their
public renown during life endures after death. Inclusive ancestors
include the genealogical forebearers of a kin group. Their selection
occurs in two ways. While alive, prominent figures may slate them-
selves for ancestorhood or, contingent upon an individual’s deeds, a
kin group can impart an inclusive ancestor identity after death. In a
similar vein, Pelras (2002) describes the Indonesian phenomenon of
ancestor gradation for the Bugis of South Sulawesi. Nobles and
commoners conceive of and interact with their ancestors in different
ways. Amongst the nobility, generational links are made between
descendants and their ancestors through the sharing of personal
names. The latter’s origin point is characterized as temporally
distant, divine, and mythical. Such links serve to justify nobles’
status and right to rule. Pelras (2002:127–128) further distinguishes
between noble ancestors as original or ordinary. Original ancestors,
like exclusive ones, represent noble progenitors who are widely
celebrated, while ordinary ancestors are but a link in the resultant
genealogical chain. Each type has distinct material and spatial attri-
butes, a point that should not be lost on archaeologists. In contrast to
the nobility, Bugis commoners venerate ancestors as an indivisible
group. The temporality, materiality, and spatiality of their commem-
oration are on a much simpler scale. Genealogical memory is abbre-
viated, while food offerings, grave visitations, and silent prayers are
decidedly more modest.
While contemporary Indonesian communities are culturally and
temporally distant from the pre-Columbian Maya, material remains
from varied social settings indicate that the latter also recognized
different types of ancestors. In the Three Rivers region, decedents
were interred in association with monumental architecture at
major centers, elite and centrally located residences at major
centers, residences from minor centers, and humble house ruins.
For instance, beneath the floor of La Milpa’s main plaza was the
laborious and opulent tomb of Individual 111, a possible male
who died between 35 and 50 years of age.5 The monumental
eastern Structure 1 served as a dramatic backdrop for this Early
Classic period interment. Amongst numerous items, the tomb con-
tained a jade pendant in the shape of a vulture head, one of many
ways in which ahau, or lord, can be written (Schele and Miller
1986:325–326). Taken together, this evidence speaks to this dece-
dent’s identity as a royal and renowned ancestor linked to mythical
or supernatural figures. As such, Individual 111 would qualify as an
original (or exclusive) ancestor.
Closer consideration of noble burials, however, also reveals
differences between original and ordinary ancestors. Individual
65 from the major center Dos Hombres provides a contrast to dece-
dents interred within or beneath monumental temples. This dece-
dent, a possible male 25–34 years old, was situated beneath the
eastern Structure B-16 of a noble family’s residence.6 The
5
This burial is discussed in much greater detail by Geller (2004) and
Mongelluzo (1997).
6
More specifically, this burial was found beneath Structure B-16 at
Group B’s Courtyard B-4. I have discussed it in greater detail elsewhere
(Geller 2004, 2008).
119
residence, which was located in Group B’s Courtyard B-4, is
about 80 m south of the center’s primary Group A. While this
tomb was also richly arrayed and Early Classic in date, its location
is more suggestive of an ordinary ancestor whose significance reso-
nated on a regional level.
The reduced architectural scale and nominal quantity of interred
goods for commoners’ graves, while functionally equivalent to
those of the nobility (McAnany 1995), suggest that their ancestors’
lineage connections were not publicly powerful. The burials at
RB-11, in particular Individual 71, illustrate the necessity of a
scaled down biographical approach. As we will see, consideration
of this decedent’s burial relates information about wider social prac-
tices and beliefs, as well as the specificities of a commoner commu-
nity’s protracted engagement with the individual in question.
Osteological data are admittedly meager, but such is often the
case for commoner burials from the Maya lowlands. A contextua-
lized, biographical approach communicates much about practices
and beliefs, and works to remedy many years of investigative
sidestepping.
RB-11: A Commoner Community
RB-11 is comprised of six distinct architectural groups (Groups
A–D, F, and G), and agricultural features surrounded the site to
the northeast and the northwest (Morgan Davis, personal communi-
cation 2003) (Figure 2). Based on its size, physical configuration,
and architectural features, I have characterized RB-11 as a minor
center (Geller 2004:96). The majority of RB-11’s burials, 15 of
16, were found in association with Group A’s buildings
(Figure 3). Excavators recovered Individual 71 in association with
Structure 1, a domestic building located on the eastern side of
Group A. Several Maya scholars have contended that eastern struc-
tures containing funerary interments served as a community’s
ancestral shrine (Becker 1971, 1999; Chase and Chase 1994;
Welsh 1988). Given Structure 1’s location and the presence of
Individual 71, we might surmise a similar function. Hence,
Individual 71’s burial within a residential structure fits with
broader social patterns evident in the Three Rivers region and
throughout the Maya world. Yet, a scaled-down perspective
reveals that Individual 71’s burial diverged from patterns at the
regional and community levels.
With respect to the burial’s physical context, Structure 1’s con-
struction history is rather complex. According to its excavator, Rene
Muñoz (1997:38), occupants remodeled the building at least four
times beginning in the Early Classic and ending in the Late
Classic period. One building episode involved the primary inter-
ment of Individual 72 within a Late Classic period (a.d.
600–700) capped cist cut through the room’s plaster floor. The
grave cut was then resurfaced and a bench was built stratigraphically
above though just to the south of the cist. As aforementioned, such
burial attributes signal the decedent’s identity as an ancestor. The
only other burial unearthed in Structure 1 was Individual 71.
Similar to Individual 72, this decedent’s burial was also associated
with a major architectural renovation. Sometime in the Late Classic
period, Structure 1’s occupants erected a rear (east) wall, which
penetrated into an Early Classic floor. This wall contained a niche
or “constructed hollow,” as defined by Muñoz (1997:93).
Excavators found no sign that a plaster seal had covered the
niche’s opening, but post-abandonment, natural and cultural tapho-
nomic processes made it difficult to make a definitive determination
(Rene Muñoz, personal communication 2009). Cached within this
120
Figure 2. Plan map of RB-11; Groups F and G, which are located to the north of Group D, do not appear on this map (drawn by Morgan
Davis).
wall niche, about 1 m above the Late Classic floor, were the remains
of Individual 71.7
Based on the presence and proximity of a ceramic plate,
Individual 71’s grave type would at first glance appear to be a
cache—one of the five aforementioned caches recovered by inves-
tigators working in the Three Rivers region. But, upon greater
reflection, Individual 71’s designation as such is not without short-
comings. Indeed, the cache grave type is one that has been the
subject of much debate and scrutiny. Welsh (1988:169–170), for
instance, has linked caches containing human remains to sacrifice.
Conversely, Becker (1992:186; see also Kunen et al. 2002; Mock
1998) has argued that caches were earth offerings, which “had
similar cognitive meaning for the Maya, perhaps relating to the
death-planting-rebirth cycle.” Caches, however, could include
varied skeletal elements, representing individuals of all ages.
Elsewhere in the Three Rivers region, for instance, cache vessels
have contained the remains of sacrificed infants, as well as
bowls with the remains of adults’ fingers (Geller 2011b).
Similar to these other caches, the context and contents of
Individual 71’s interment substantiates Becker’s notions about
regeneration.
7 distal fragment of left femur, fragment of femoral head from
In the years since Individual 71’s excavation, Muñoz has unfortunately
misplaced plan maps, photographs, and drawings that show the burial’s
architectural context. The primary sources of information about this dece-
dent’s burial have been Muñoz’s master’s thesis (1997) and personal com-
munications, as well as osteological reports authored by Julie and Frank
Saul who analyzed RB-11’s skeletal remains. The Sauls have fairly strict
and clear methodological standards for how human remains should be
recorded and packaged, which all excavators working with PfBAP,
LaMAP, and CCAP follow.
Geller
Yet, there are attributes of Individual 71’s burial that also dis-
tinguish it from the region’s caches. Caches unearthed elsewhere
in the Three Rivers region appear to have been interments that
went undisturbed after their initial burial. Individual 71’s associ-
ation with an Early Classic plate in a Late Classic architectural
feature, however, reflects dynamism—materially, functionally, and
symbolically speaking—as well as the community’s sustained inter-
action with the long dead. An ongoing dialogue between living kin
and their ancestor is also suggested by the niched cache’s visually
prominent location. As such, this architectural feature may have
been functionally analogous to a bench. Yet, unlike cache burials
sealed within benches, Structure 1’s occupants would have been
able to easily access the niche’s contents.
Scaling down, we also see that Individual 71’s burial offers a
pointed contrast to other interments at RB-11. For the most part,
the minor center’s decedents were primary interments, which mour-
ners had loosely flexed, oriented north/south, and placed on their
left sides (Table 3). Individual 71, however, was incomplete and dis-
articulated. A inventory of all skeletal elements included: fragments
of the frontal bone including its posterior third; most of the right par-
ietal and a smaller fragment of the left parietal with coronal and
sagittal sutures; femoral parts (shafts of right and left femora,
unknown side); and the shaft of a right fibula (Saul and Saul
1997a). Saul and Saul’s skeletal analysis yielded minimal infor-
mation about Individual 71’s life history (see Appendix in Muñoz
1997:124–134). Open coronal and sagittal sutures suggested that
the individual had been 20–34 years of age at the time of death.
Long bone metrics and overall robusticity of the remains suggested
that Individual 71 was possibly male (M?). No pathology or cut
Body Partibility as Evidence of Commoner Ancestor Veneration
Figure 3. Group A at RB-11 with the location of the 14 burials that were documented in detail, as well as notable associated architectural
features (adapted from Muñoz 1997:36).
marks (i.e., evidence of mutilation) were visible on the bones recov-
ered, which may be a consequence of poor preservation. A post-
coronal depression and parietal bossing hinted at possible cranial
shaping resultant from habitual activities like tumpline usage.
Such meager data would likely discourage investigators from narrat-
ing a life history or answering population-based research queries.
Yet, from certain characteristics of the interment we might make
inferences about the dynamic activities associated with this individ-
ual’s death history.
Poor preservation might account for the absence of cancellous
bones, but, then, how do we explain the presence of a femoral
head? This cancellous skeletal fragment supports the notion that
Individual 71’s interment was secondary rather than a consequence
of taphonomic changes acting on a primary interment. Seeing that
the shafts of upper limbs are absent, there is additional support
for intentional selection of specific skeletal elements from the
lower limbs. And interestingly, femoral and fibular shafts display
postmortem rodent gnawing, perhaps due to the more accessible
nature of the cache and open niche. Indeed, Individual 71 is the
only decedent at RB-11 to display such taphonomic marks.
As far as arrangement of skeletal elements, femora appear to
have been intentionally crossed over cranial fragments (Muñoz
1997:94). Structure 1’s ancient occupants then inverted several
large fragments of an Early Classic plate over these skeletal
121
remains. Additional items placed within the niche included an
unslipped jar, a toad effigy vessel, turtle carapace, and fragments
of faunal remains. The toad effigy vessel and turtle carapace are
noteworthy, given their singularity within the larger sample from
the Three Rivers region. Only one other individual at RB-11,
Individual 72, had as many and varied grave goods as Individual
71. Although, the latter’s objects, which included drilled marine
shell, a shell disk, animal teeth, a bone awl, and an obsidian blade-
let, were quite distinctive from those found with the former.
Conjunctively, information about grave type, body condition,
body position, grave goods, and taphonomic changes highlights
Individual 71’s distinctiveness among RB-11’s other interments—
indeed, in comparison to any other burial in the Three Rivers
region. Body partibility, in particular, is worth reflecting upon as
it offers insights about the identity this individual acquired after
death.
BODY PARTIBILITY
Sociologists and sociocultural anthropologists have extensively
investigated the dynamic activities that immediately follow an indi-
vidual’s death and continue well after initial interment (Bloch 1971;
Bloch and Parry 1982; Hertz 1960; Metcalf and Huntington 1991;
Turner 1967; van Gennep 1960. Above all, they have identified
122 Geller

Table 3. Burials at RB-11

Ind. # Grave Type Body Condition Body Orientation Body Position Body Side Grave Goods

71 Niched Cache Secondary ? Disarticulated ? Present

72 Capped Cist Primary N/S Flexed Right Present
73 Simple Primary N/S. Flexed Left Absent
74 Simple Primary N/S Flexed Left Absent
75 Simple Primary N/S Flexed Left Absent
76 Simple Primary N/S Flexed Left Absent
77 Simple Primary N/S Flexed Left Absent
78 Pit Primary N/S Flexed Left Absent
79 Informal Cist Primary N/S Flexed Left Absent
80 Informal Cist Primary N/S Flexed Left Absent
81 Informal Cist Secondary ? Disarticulated ? Absent
82 Simple Primary N/S Flexed ? ?
83 Pit Primary E/W Flexed Right Absent
84 Capped Cist ? ? ? ? ?
85 Capped Cist ? ? ? ? Present
86 Pit Primary N/S. Flexed Left Present

the links between death, ritual practices, bodily transformation, and
identity formation. Specifically, corporeal changes set in motion
ritual acts that serve to reconstitute decedents’ identities. While
there are certain guidelines that direct these rituals, the particulars
of a decedent’s individuality may also contour the living’s response.
In his eloquent and self-reflective discussion of emotional forces
following from a loved one’s death, Renato Rosaldo (1984) dis-
tinguishes between routinized, scripted responses to expected
deaths and spontaneous, subjective reactions to the unexpected
and often untimely losses of lives. The importance of his analysis
is the recognition that contingent upon the individual involved
and the manner of death, associated rituals are the intersection of
social processes, historical circumstances, and living community
members’ personal experiences with the decedent. Accordingly,
individuals’ biographies may be abridged, embellished, censored,
or revised after their deaths. Nevertheless, there is an assumption
that an account resembles—though may not directly reflect—the
life it purports to narrate (at least in the eyes of its narrator).
Ascription of identities then act to memorialize, obscure, disparage,
or venerate a decedent. To realize these varied ends, body partibility
was one of several ritual practices that the Maya utilized to transform
individuals’ social identities. But, before we can think about the
meanings conveyed by partible bodies, like that of Individual 71,
we must first isolate the often subtle material markers of such
practices.
Desecration
As several scholars have remarked (see contributions in Tiesler and
Cucina 2007), the fragmented and fragile nature of Maya skeletal
material make it difficult to disentangle taphonomic processes that
naturally modify human remains from intentional practices per-
formed by past peoples. Perhaps, confusion also stems from cate-
gorizing disarticulated decedents as “secondary” burials. Voicing
his dissatisfaction, Becker (1993:51) has stated that the “term
appears inappropriate to the specific archaeological situation in
the Maya area.” Indeed, such categorization neither captures the
variability of partible practices that the Maya performed, nor does
it invite consideration of the multiple stages and often extended dur-
ation of these practices.8 Analysis of Maya mortuary and skeletal
remains then necessitate a conceptual move beyond thinking
about burials in terms of either/or; a dichotomous frame obscures
the diversity and complexity that characterized Maya peoples’
practices.
Yet, Becker’s (1993) suggestion that “two-stage burial” would
be a more apt descriptor also seems inadequate given archaeological
research that documents the repeated re-entry and reuse of grave
spaces (Chase and Chase 1996, 1998; Fitzsimmons 1998, 2006).
For this reason, a biographical approach to bodies and built
spaces is essential for distinguishing the marks of antemortem,9
perimortem, and postmortem partibility. These different changes
conveyed discrete messages about the living’s regard for (de)parted
persons. For example, Maya scholars have argued that perimortem
practices performed during violent ritual events, like decapitation
and flaying, acted to desecrate personhood (Duncan 2005; Mock
1998).
There is ample evidence that decapitation was common in
certain contexts (Houston et al. 2006:70–72; Miller and Martin
2004:195). Severed heads representing victims of warfare were pro-
minently depicted in Bonampak’s infamous battle scene. Numerous
8
In their reassessment of Monte Alban’s Tomb 7, Middleton and col-
leagues (1998:298) echo a similar sentiment, suggesting that this issue of
variability beyond dichotomy, as indicated by the repeated reuse of tombs,
is relevant throughout Mesoamerica.
9
Though an expanded discussion would be somewhat tangential, ante-
mortem partibility deserves brief expansion. For instance, Andrews
(1959:100) has noted that modern Yucatec Maya mothers remove portions
of their finger after the death of a child. Perhaps such an extreme action trans-
lated emotional turmoil into physical pain. In doing so, it would have pro-
vided a constant reminder of mourners’ loss. Archaeological evidence
hints at the antiquity of this practice. Excavators of Classic burials have
encountered isolated finger bones singly cached and interred with infants
(Chase and Chase 1998; Gann cited in Ruz Lhuillier 1965:448; Ricketson
and Ricketson 1937:140–144). It is arguable that these fragmented fingers
were symbolically laden elements. That is, they materialized mourners’ per-
sonal sacrifices, and their deposition in other decedents’ (primary) burials
represented a type of gifting that bound the living to the dead in a perduring
social relationship (Geller 2011b).
Body Partibility as Evidence of Commoner Ancestor Veneration
(though sadly unprovenienced) polychrome vessels portray upside
down trophy heads affixed to weapons, fashioned into masks,
situated in headdresses or other garments, and held as if in offer-
ing.10 Landa’s sixteenth-century chronicling recounted how war-
riors would ornament themselves with the detached and defleshed
jaws of their defeated enemies (Tozzer 1941:123). And other
researchers have identified the interment of skulls as dedicatory
sacrifices, most notably at Seibal (Smith 1982:60, 62) and Colha
(Barrett and Scherer 2005; Massey and Steele 1997; Mock 1998).
Seeing that Individual 71’s remains included cranial fragments, it
is worth reflecting on the markers of decapitation and the spaces
in which isolated skulls were disposed. A biographical consider-
ation of the mass grave from Miramar, Chiapas is illustrative.
At Miramar, excavators unearthed a Late Classic period mass
grave located in the main plaza. The grave’s date, ca. a.d. 565,
coincided with the abandonment of Mirador to the north and
Miramar’s subsequent population increase (Agrinier 1978). The
partial and complete bodies of 24 individuals were recovered in
association with a large ceramic olla and several smaller vessels.
No one individual appeared central in the grave, and there was no
evidence of bundling. For the most part, decedents’ bodies were
articulated, if not arrayed awkwardly. Their haphazard arrangements
indicated to excavators that during a single event bodies had been
stacked atop one another, leaving the limbs of corpses unnaturally
akimbo. Evidence that the grave’s occupants had been violated is
further supported by the presence of three skulls sans bodies.
Such body partibility is highly evocative of decapitation. At
Miramar, however, skeletal analysis was minimal by the excavator’s
own admission (Agrinier 1978:15). Markers of perimortem mutila-
tion or trauma (i.e., cutting or fractures from blunt force) are not
mentioned as evidential support for execution. Nonetheless, the
location, condition, and arrangement of bodies indicate that
desecration and perhaps the production of non-persons was the
intent.
In contrast, the context and careful arrangement of Individual
71’s remains show postmortem partibility motivated by quite differ-
ent ends. The absence of cut marks may also offer support that
Individual 71’s demise was not engendered by violent sacrifice,
though we of course consider that poor preservation of the
remains may have obscured evidence of violence. Hence, we
should not be so quick to conclude that interments comprised of iso-
lated crania or the remains of disarticulated decedents categorically
signal desecration of personhood (Berryman 2007; McAnany 1995:
63; Weiss-Krejci 2003). The veneration of and ongoing engagement
with ancestors, as we will see, also involved body partibility.
Ancestors as Partible Persons
As many scholars have pointed out in cross-cultural considerations
of body partibility, corporeal wholeness need not be a precondition
for ancestors’ potency. Within seminal anthropological literature,
Frazer (1922:36) described “contagious magic” as the sustained
association of an individual with his or her body parts (i.e., hair,
nails, teeth) long after the latter’s detachment. More recently,
Strathern’s Melanesian case study (1988, 1992, 2005) has offered
10
In the Maya Vase Data base, there are several examples of decapitated
heads depicted on unprovenienced polychrome vessels (e.g., K680, K0182,
K1229, K2342, K5390, K6316, and K764). The data base, an archive of
rollout photographs created by Justin Kerr, can be found at http://www.
famsi.org/research/kerr/index.html.
123
an evolving consideration of the connection between partibility
and personhood. Identities assigned to partible bodies, according
to Strathern (1988:13), can be understood in terms of the ‘individ-
ual’ and the ‘dividual.’ Dividual captures a type of personhood
that is divisible, shared, plural, and composite, following Marriott
(1976). The notion of the dividual person recognizes that a larger
community engenders the single individual and that individuals
within the community are intimately imbricated with one another.
As she later clarifies, at issue is not individualism but relationism
(Strathern 2005:121). In the wake of an individual’s death, a
family claims bones to create continuity between generations
(Strathern 2005:123–124). The selected decedents are defined by
their relationship to the living community (i.e., along lines of
descent). The detachability and transference of body parts—“bone
and flesh or blood and semen”—underscore how “a person’s sub-
stance may be thought of as body that is part of other bodies”
(Strathern 2005:126; see also Busby’s [1997] discussion of per-
meability). An individual’s body parts can retain personhood, i.e.,
a person is partible and such personhood is dividual, or defined
by one’s dynamic relationship to the group.
Strathern’s ideas have a utility beyond her Melanesian case
study, specifically with regard to the fragmentation of whole
bodies. That decedents can be in/dividual persons applies to
(de)parted saints during the Middle Ages. Regarded as both
object of worship and active subject, relics were sanctified and
adored by peoples throughout Europe (Geary 1986). The fact that
body parts may not have come from those saints to whom they
were ascribed represented a minor detail for the believers who inter-
acted with them (Verdery 1999:28).
Archaeologists studying the European Neolithic period have also
offered instances of (de)parted bodies’ active social lives (Chapman
2000; Chapman and Gaydarska 2007; Thomas 2002). Especially
insightful is Chapman’s (2000) discussion of objects’ and
persons’ fragmentation. The latter involved “deliberate deposition
of partial skeletons, formed after defleshing, presumably by excar-
nation” (Chapman 2000:6). This active breaking down of bodies
into component parts had a twofold consequence. First, the living
members of a group could more easily transport ancestors’ fragmen-
ted body parts. As such, communities used these mobile parts to
redefine a bounded or built space, and concomitantly create a
sense of place or identity. Second, selection of specific body parts
for curation and circulation highlighted the social viability of the
biologically dead as they continued to interact with the living. It
is the gifting or exchanging of these fragments that enchained
people, whether biologically alive or dead, in social relations.
Fowler’s (2004) consideration of Late Mesolithic period
Scandinavia further expands on bodily fragmentation. He regards
partibility as akin to Chapman’s description of fragmentation inas-
much as a person’s body can be broken down into component parts
and subsequently gifted or exchanged. Bones represented one type
of substance—others included garments, exuvia, genetic materials,
spiritual beings, and varied animal, plant, or object with which
humans come into direct or metaphoric contact—that flowed
between people and guided their relationships (Fowler 2004:
102–118). He thus sees the concept of dividuality as pertinent in
his examination of Mesolithic burials. Scandinavian decedents
were buried in cemeteries, cremated, exhumed and disarticulated,
interred singly, multiply interred, arrayed with a variety of
animals, idiosyncratically decorated, or painted with ochre. These
myriad types of corporeal treatments resulted from the complex
intertwining of an individual’s personal biography, relations with
124
members of the living community, time of and events surrounding
death, and links to the landscape.
The Maya and Dividual Personhood
While I recognize that these examples are culturally and temporally
distant from the Maya, ethnographic discussions about soul
conceptions suggests that notions about dividual personhood and
partibility are quite salient. Mam-speakers from Santiago
Chimaltenango (Guatemala), for instance, define naab’l as the
social soul or a community’s particular and proper “way of being”
(Watanabee 1989:269). Calvin (1997:869) elaborates,
Because each specific Maya community possesses a unique
naab’l, its members can recognize each other and distinguish
strangers. The concept of naab’l is grounded in the continuities
of local ancestry, received tradition, and the features of the
environment that are the loci of ritual. Naab’l survives the
death of the individual and remains as part of the communal
collectivity.
Such a description calls to mind the notion of dividual personhood.
Yet, contemporary Maya peoples also believe that individuals
possess inner personal souls (Fischer and Hendrickson 2003;
Vogt 1990; Watanabee 1989). For example, Mam-speakers refer
to such souls as aanma (Watanabee 1989:269), and Tzotzil speakers
in Zinacantan use ch’ulel (Vogt 1990:24). While there is a dimen-
sion of individuality associated with the inner personal soul, such
souls are inherited. Watanabe (1989:263) explains that in planting
these souls soon after an individual’s conception, ancestral deities
“pass down the patriline, drawn from a ‘pool’ of souls previously
held by members of the same descent group.” Each new individual
is paired with a deceased relative, and a continual recycling of the
inner personal soul occurs.11 Pertinent to a discussion of (de)parted
persons, an inner personal soul resides in specific body parts—an
individual’s flowing blood, beating heart, detached hair and nail
clippings (Guiteras-Holmes 1961:140–141). Removal and/or trans-
ference of these substances (i.e., persons as partible) link individuals
of the present generation to past ones (i.e., persons as dividual).
Archaeological evidence suggests that the pre-Columbian Maya
regarded skeletonized body parts as another substance that flowed
between the living and their dead kin. Evidence from Cuello,
Belize, may offer an early instance of such corporeal treatment. In
particular, we may reflect on a Late Preclassic mass grave, Mass
Burial 1, encountered beneath the site’s main plaza (Robin 1989;
Robin and Hammond 1991; Saul and Saul 1991, 1997b). This
example is particularly salient as we can compare it to the mass
grave at Miramar. According to excavators, the secondary remains
of 30 disarticulated individuals accompanied two primary, articu-
lated decedents. The former, which may have been bundled orig-
inally, had been placed at the latter’s feet and atop their laps.
Excavators characterized their findings as sacrificial. More specifi-
cally, the mass grave was described as a “holocaust” and several of
the disarticulated were deemed “severely mutilated” (Robin and
Hammond 1991:211). Such body partibility would then have
echoed the violation and desecration of person apparent at Miramar.
Yet, a biographical approach spotlights features of this mass
grave that call its designation as desecratory into question.
11
Soul recycling might explain why it was feasible for children and
young adults, like Individual 71 who was 20–34 years old, to be venerated
as ancestors.
Geller
McAnany (1995:63) observes, “The multiple ‘collar’ linings
around the top of the pit indicate that it was opened and resealed
several times.” Reentering Cuello’s mass grave would have pro-
vided the living with an opportunity to purposely rearrange or unin-
tentionally disturb the remains of decedents already contained
within. Or, Mass Burial 1’s reentry may have resulted from the dis-
interment of decedents from other locales and their subsequent rein-
terment in this more central location. Indeed, the excavators have
even noted that remains were arranged in a “non-random way”
(Robin and Hammond 1991:211), a pointed contrast to the hapha-
zard assemblage of articulated bodies at Miramar. And skeletal ana-
lysts have found no evidence for dismemberment (Saul and Saul
1991), though the absence of cut marks may again be a consequence
of poor preservation. That the mass grave’s disarticulated decedents
represented venerated ancestors is also supported by their bundled
states. Throughout the Maya world, and Mesoamerica more
broadly, the practice of bundling bodies connoted sacredness, con-
ferral of ancestor status, and deification, and there is evidence of
such bundling at sites in the Three Rivers region (Geller 2004;
Reese-Taylor et al. 2006). Finally, we may note the historic
period for Mass Burial 1. Like its associated monumental architec-
ture, this mass grave was created around 400 b.c., a time when sig-
nificant sociopolitical changes were afoot (Robin and Hammond
1991:224). Accordingly, it is possible that community rulers
required the physical presence of original ancestors to legitimate
their positions of power. In this regard, we may conceptualize
these decedents as dividual persons.
INDIVIDUAL 71: PRACTICE MAKES PERSON
Cuello’s mass grave, which offers convincing evidence for partibil-
ity connected to re-entry and reverence, provides a springboard for
thinking about the death history of RB-11’s Individual 71. While
the scale is reduced, biographical information suggests that treat-
ment of Individual 71’s body parts materialized relations between
and maintained continuity from generation to generation.
As aforementioned, it appears that Late Classic renovations to
Structure 1 provided access to the Early Classic remains of
Individual:71. Hence, the decedent’s original grave space was
later re-entered after initial interment. Following the completion
of construction activities, Structure 1’s occupants appear to have
then placed Individual 71 into a wall niche (Muñoz 1997:95).
Fragments of an Early Classic plate offer additional support for dis-
turbance and re-interment. Skeletal and material remains were not
hastily reburied in construction fill, an act suggestive of forgetting,
and one which does characterize the secondary remains of six partial
individuals in the Three Rivers region sample. Rather, the commu-
nity fashioned a niche in Structure 1’s rear wall into which they
placed parts of Individual 71. Epigraphy, ethnohistory, and icono-
graphy suggest that inclusion of specific grave goods and selection
of cranial and femoral fragments was an intentional and creative
response to the disinterment of a person long dead but believed to
be a revered kin member.
For instance, the Classic period Maya believed certain body
parts, most notably the head, retained aspects of an individual’s
identity. Houston and colleagues (2006:60) have argued that the
Maya regarded the head, or baah, as “the locus of identity…[that]
establishes individual recognition and serves logically as the recipi-
ent of reflexive action.” Here we are reminded of contemporary
Maya conceptions of the inner personal soul. As a historical
Body Partibility as Evidence of Commoner Ancestor Veneration
bridge, sixteenth-century ethnohistoric writings reiterate these ideas
about decedents’ in/dividuality and partibility.
They used to cut off the heads of the old lords of Cocom, when
they died, and after cooking them they cleaned off the flesh, and
then sawed off half the crown of the back, leaving the front part
with the jaws and teeth. Then they replaced the flesh which was
gone from these half-skulls by a kind of bitumen, and gave them
a perfect appearance characteristic of those whose skull they
were. They kept these together with the statues with the ashes,
all of which they kept in the oratories of their houses with their
idols, holding them in great reverence and respect. And on all
the days of their festivals and rejoicings, they made offerings
of food to them, so that food should not fail them in the other
life, where they thought that their souls reposed. (Landa, cited
in Tozzer [1941:131])
From this passage, we see that processing the head involved several,
complicated stages—defleshing, fragmentation, and reconstitution.
The decedent’s individuality was maintained inasmuch as the exter-
nal visage was replicated. As a consequence, the skull seemed to
represent or memorialize the individual in life. But, the above
passage also indicates that these (de)parted ancestors were dividual
persons. Processing also reconstituted decedents’ identity from bio-
logically alive group member to liminal corpse to biologically dead
but socially viable ancestor. Interactions between the living and
dead occurred during the course of daily, mundane activities, as
well as in the more formal context of special ritual occasions.
Consequently, a kin group could actively maintain a dialogue
with the dead and use body parts (i.e., heads) to reaffirm social
cohesion amongst the living. Such seems to be the case for
Individual 71.
Additionally, the placement of Individual 71’s femora—care-
fully crossed over cranial fragments—offers support for the connec-
tion between partibility and dividual personhood. Such an
arrangement is reminiscent of skull-and-crossbones motifs, which
are ubiquitous throughout the Maya world.12 Iconographic depic-
tions appear on buildings at Tikal and Uxmal, for example
(Houston 1998:520, Note 2). As to the motif’s meaning,
McAnany (1995:46–47) contends that skull-and-crossbones are
“potent images symbolic of social order and orderly successions,
be they transmissions of royal power or of the fields and orchards
of wealthy commoners.”
The niching of these remains may also be a symbolic variation
on the theme of generational continuity. The sixteenth-century
Popol Vuh tells us that just after impregnating Blood Moon with
the Hero Twins, the skull of One Hunahpu—while “niched”
within a tree—states, “A father’s face will survive in his son, even
after his own face has rotted away and left nothing but bone”
(Tedlock 1996:37). Hence, successive generations are linked
through the separation and transference of substances like bones.
That Individual 71’s remains were similarly niched might indicate
the perdurance of Maya religious beliefs about body parts’ social
vitality and power from the Classic period into the colonial era.
In addition to Individual 71’s body condition, position, and
location, the decedent’s assortment of grave goods may reiterate
12
In fact, the skull-and-cross bone motif appears throughout ancient
Mesoamerica. Klein (2000) documents the Aztec’s use of this image in
association with the tzitzimime, supernatural figures that possessed the
power to heal and harm. Moreover, at numerous Aztec sites, small stone plat-
forms contain panels with skull-and-cross bone symbolism, and Klein has
argued that these features were the backdrop for ritual blood offerings.
125
notions about this individual and dividual personhood. Rather
than assume that the objects directly reflect aspects of Individual
71’s social persona in life, focusing on a death history facilitates
thinking about the meanings and identity attributed to this decedent
by subsequent generations. Certainly, the community’s allusion to
fauna—in the form of animal bone fragments, a turtle carapace, a
toad effigy vessel—was intentional and symbolically charged.
Turtles and toads are similar symbolic constructs linked to the
Maize Lord. On numerous pottery vessels, for instance, the turtle
carapace is depicted as the place from which the Maize Lord is
reborn, breaking free from his “grim dry-season prison” (Zender
2006:9–10; see also Taube 1988). Likewise, the toad is depicted
as the place of rebirth in the Ek Balam façade and on Stela X
from Izapa. Perhaps the toad’s biological abilities served as a refer-
ence point. These amphibians have dry and leathery skin that facili-
tates water retention in times of scarcity and is shed anywhere from
once a week to six times a year (Kennedy 1982:281). Additionally,
many toads in the family Bufonidae have glands behind their ears
that excrete toxins with psychotropic effects. Shamans may have
consumed these secretions to induce hallucinogenic trances that
engendered communication with the supernatural (Dobkin de Rios
1974; Kennedy 1982:289). The inclusion of these animals’ physical
and stylized remains in Individual 71’s burial perhaps points to this
person’s role in a community dependent on agricultural production.
It is possible that such was the case while Individual 71 lived. Yet,
the (re)interment of grave goods may also reveal how subsequent
generations regarded their ancestor, and thus narrated this dece-
dent’s death history to meet their own ends. Long after Individual
71’s death, the community—very much aware of the inconsistent
and often extreme wet-dry cycles of the ecological setting—may
have re-envisioned this ancestor as a mediator between natural
and supernatural spheres.
CONCLUSION
Though unassuming and humble in comparison to the more grand-
iose burial of noble persons, Individual 71 is significant for several
reasons. This decedent’s careful interment, subsequent curation of
body parts, and prolonged veneration by multiple generations at
RB-11 demonstrate that interactions between commoner commu-
nities and their dead kin could be temporally deep. Such practices,
as I have suggested, may have been designed to produce dividual
persons. Yet, particular attributes of this burial have much to tell
us about a death history shaped by social class and personal relation-
ships, as well as different types of ancestors within ancient Maya
society. Were we to close our ears—treat such variability within
communities and throughout regions like so much noise—we
would be missing key and intriguing aspects of individuals’ lives
and deaths. Thus, a multiscalar approach to the Three Rivers
region’s sample has circumvented a top-down perspective, which
often glosses over the nuances of mortuary rituals and ancestor
veneration in commoner communities. The fragmentation of
bodies, however, did not always sustain generational continuity.
Some individuals were venerated, while others may have been victi-
mized, vilified, or simply buried. To distinguish between techniques
and meanings, biographical consideration of body partibility—
contextualization of bodies and their associated materials within
physical space, cultural setting, and historic period—is necessary.
Such an approach wedded with a multiscalar frame ultimately facili-
tates peopling ancient Maya society in a much more vibrant and
complex way.
126
RESUMEN
Al estudiar las alteraciones de los cuerpos, pongo en práctica un análisis
biográfico de los restos humanos encontrados. En general, la mayoría de
las investigaciones sobre los mayas relatan historias sobre sus vidas, pero
también es importante narrar las historias de sus muertes—las prácticas
que transforman a los esqueletos después de la muerte. Esta estudio se
centra en la costumbre de partición corporal entre los mayas, es decir, la
partición del cuerpo para conmemorar, olvidar, deshonrar o venerar al indi-
viduo. El tipo de partición corporal proporciona información importante
sobre la identidad del individuo. Para entender mejor la evidencia material
y el significado simbólico de la costumbre de partición corporal utilizamos
teorías relacionadas a la tema de la categoría de persona, especialmente las
ideas sobre la persona como ‘dividual.’
Muchos estudios han examinado los cuerpos de la nobleza y su trata-
miento prolongado. El énfasis en entierros de los mayas plebeyos comple-
menta los numerosos estudios de la élite y de sus tumbas; de este modo, se
aprecia mejor la complejidad de la sociedad maya antigua. Una muestra de
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
A much-abbreviated version of this paper was originally presented at a 2004
AAA symposium in Atlanta, and I would like to thank Ken Nystrom for his
organizing and coping skills in light of the tribulations from that particular
annual meeting. Comments from the original discussants, Lynne Goldstein
and Jane Buikstra, offered encouragement and constructive criticism. For
the opportunity to participate in the PfBAP and permission to draw on its
data, I thank Project Director Fred Valdez and skeletal analysts Julie and
Frank Saul. I am also grateful to RB-11’s excavators Rene Muñoz and
Morgan Davis for their careful attention to detail and generosity with data.
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