Drawing inspiration from the theme of "Urban drama and body-politics: streets and public life," I intend to discuss the phenomenon of state-sponsored public spectacle and its impact upon the built environment at ancient urban Maya sites. I plan first to discuss an established model of Classic Maya “pilgrimage fairs” (Friedel), comparing this model to those examples of Old World public parades and festivals that we have discussed in class (Favro and Yegul). I will then apply Friedel’s model to cases of public spectacle that appear in the record at Classic period Maya sites (specifically, the sites of Tikal and Bonampak). Finally, I will evaluate elements of continuity in public spectacle within Maya communities through discussion of contact-period Spanish accounts of festival among the Yucatec Maya (Restall) and Gary Gossen’s account of Carnival practices among the modern Tzotzil Maya. The overarching theme on which I am concentrating is the idea that festival practices among the ancient Maya served to promote and enforce state ideologies, which were reflected in the construction of public, nonresidential, ceremonial space.
Preliminary bibliography:
Favro, Diane
1994 The street triumphant: the urban impact of Roman triumphal parades. In Streets: Critical Perspectives on Public Space. Zeynep Celik et al. (eds). University of California Press: Berkeley.
Freidel, David
1981 The Political Economics of Residential Dispersion Among the Lowland Maya. In Lowland Maya Settlement Patterns, edited by Wendy Ashmore, pp. 371-384. University of New Mexico Press, Albuquerque.
Gossen, Gary H.
1999 Telling Maya Tales: Tzotzil Identities in Modern Mexico. Routledge, New York, NY.
Inomata, Takeshi
2006 Politics and Theatricality in Mayan Society. In Archaeology of Performance: Theaters of Power, Community, and Politics, edited by Inomata, Takeshi and Lawrence S. Coben, pp. 187-222. Alta Mira Press, Lanham, MD.
Restall, Matthew
2000 The People of the Patios: Ethnohistorical Evidence of Yucatec Maya Royal Courts. In Royal Courts of the Ancient Maya, Volume 2: Data and Case Studies, edited by Takeshi Inomata and Stephen D. Houston. Westview Press, Boulder.
Yegul, Fikret
1994 The Street Experience of Ancient Ephesus. In Streets: Critical Perspectives on Public Space. Zeynep Celik et al. (eds). University of California Press: Berkeley.
mayaurbanism.ppt
