Social Identities in the Classic Maya Northern Lowlands

Traci Ardren begins her book by recalling the words of a previous esteemed professor who suggested that students of ancient cultures see either the differences between their cultures and those of others or see their similarities. While she does not explicitly state where she stands on the matter, it is clear throughout the interweavings of the book that she stands with the latter group. This book explores social identities in ancient Maya society with vivid archaeological case examples of Classic and Postclassic peoples from northern Yucatan. The understandings of these identities are peppered with personal anecdotes, are considered in relation to the experiences, writings, and art work of Yucatecan Maya peoples today, and are firmly grounded in contemporary social theories, such as ideas on social memory, gender, and social imaginaries. These connections enliven the book, making it a pleasure to read. At the same time, the book features a career’s worth of archaeological data obtained since the author’s dissertation work at the site of Yaxuna and throughout subsequent research directing projects at Chunchucmil and Xuenkal.Tying the book together is what Ardren refers to as a relationality approach to ancient social identities. Such an approach considers social identities as negotiated and constructed through practices whereby individual actions are undertaken in relation to the expectations of peer groups, to society at large, and to the social imaginaries. The notion of childhood, for example, is a relational category in so far as the social experience of being a child is formed through the interactions of children and adults, kids and their parents, as well as infants and otherworldly places and beings. As Ardren asserts, childhood informs adulthood, itself a social category so axiomatic that it goes unrecognized. Postclassic Maya identities were, in turn, informed by the memory and materialities of their Classic period ancestors, just the same way in which contemporary Maya ethnic identities selectively draw from the archaeological record to reproduce their own sense of Maya-ness. In addition to the relational engagements between people, and between the past and present, Ardren considers the relationality of people and things, a perspective recently popular among archaeologists who consider alternative ontologies and the agency of objects.One of the great strengths of the book is the way Ardren brings the invisible into the fore. For example, Ardren considers the people who worked specific occupations, such as the workers who traveled back and forth from Chunchucmil on a seasonal basis to work in the salt flats to the west of the site. These workers are barely visible archaeologically since salt dissolves quickly and their exchange is without material imprint. Nonetheless, Ardren underscores how the shared experiences of salt workers would have helped forge not only occupational identities but also understandings of self in relation to a world beyond the city. Children, who continue to remain a rare focus of analysis in archaeological research, appear in this book as active members in Classic Maya society, making their own private spaces for themselves, playing with particular objects, and serving as a focus of commemoration after death through burial. Even after death, children reinforce obligations and rights of kin collectivities. Lastly, Ardren’s consideration of the making of Maya masculinities is a welcome addition to the sparse literature on the subject. Thus, rich in archaeological data and written in an easy prose, Social Identities in the Classic Maya Northern Lowlands broadens our appreciation for archaeology in the Northern Lowlands outside of the great centers of Chichen Itza and Mayapan and broadly speaks to the making of ancient identities in the Maya area and beyond

Archaeology · Ethnology · Geography · Maya · Social memory · Sociology · Anthropology · History · Indigenous Cultures and History · Psychology

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