Sociopolitics and community -building: The entanglement of pre -Hispanic Maya culture, objects, and place at Chau Hiix, Belize

This dissertation examines an elaborate, and intentional pre-Hispanic Maya deposit at Chau Hiix, Belize (Feature X02) and evaluates a range of possible activities responsible for the diverse concentration of materials. In doing so, I investigate the social role of material culture in Later Classic Maya society by focusing on the entanglement of culture, objects, and place referenced by this unique feature. The importance of Feature X02 lies in the information it provides about community interactions during the tumultuous Terminal Classic, and why Chau Hiix remained cohesive and viable while other lowland Maya centers experienced great change and disuse following the Later Classic period. Artifact analyses described in this project have the potential to contribute to a more sophisticated understanding of deposits usually lumped together by archaeologists as 'midden' or conversely, 'ritual/ceremonial.'.;There are several major problems addressed in the study: (1) when were objects placed and interred and by whom, (2) the origin of Feature X02, (3) the deposit's persistence, and (4) the meaning(s) associated with the deposit. Artifact analysis began with a consideration of several activities with archaeological correlates that could have produced Feature X02. The research goal was to evaluate the hypothesis that the deposit is the result of community-inclusive ritualized activity in the Terminal Classic (ca. AD 800-1100), a highly complex period in Maya history. Competing hypotheses included ritual specific to Maya termination activities; communal feasting; elite trash disposal, or non-elite trash disposal; and ceremonial or specialized trash deposition. To assess these hypotheses, I used artifact-based research involving four distinct, but interrelated analytical approaches to interpret archaeological materials: type variety; modal analysis; artifact biography (Appadurai 1986; Kopytoff 1986); and contextual analysis. Research findings suggest deposition of objects resulted from community-inclusive ritualized activity that included feasting. These data emphasize the role of Feature X02 in Terminal Classic period community-building activities at Chau Hiix, in which many participants contributed materially. The inclusive activity may have been part of reorganizational strategies at Chau Hiix during a period of shifting sociopolitics, prompting local leaders to implement highly visible, community-inclusive ritualized activity, signifying commitment to a less hierarchical social structure.