Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- Figures and Table
- Preface
- Living with the Ancestors: Kinship and Kingship in Ancient Maya Society
- Introduction to the Revised Edition
- ONE A Point of Departure
- TWO Ancestor Veneration and Lineage Organization in the Maya Region
- THREE Creating a Genealogy of Place
- FOUR Lineage as a Crucible of Inequality
- FIVE Kin Groups and Divine Kingship in Lowland Maya Society
- SIX Ancestors and Archaeology of Place
- POSTSCRIPT The Future of the Ancestors and the Clash between Science and Human Rights
- Notes
- References Cited
- Index
THREE - Creating a Genealogy of Place
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 July 2014
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- Figures and Table
- Preface
- Living with the Ancestors: Kinship and Kingship in Ancient Maya Society
- Introduction to the Revised Edition
- ONE A Point of Departure
- TWO Ancestor Veneration and Lineage Organization in the Maya Region
- THREE Creating a Genealogy of Place
- FOUR Lineage as a Crucible of Inequality
- FIVE Kin Groups and Divine Kingship in Lowland Maya Society
- SIX Ancestors and Archaeology of Place
- POSTSCRIPT The Future of the Ancestors and the Clash between Science and Human Rights
- Notes
- References Cited
- Index
Summary
Yahau ah nohol u chun u uinicil Ah Noh<Ix>-Kan-Tacay u kaba u chun u uinicil A<h> Puche. Bolonppel yoc haa u cananmaob, bolonppel uitz u cananmaob.
(Chilam Balam of Chumayel)The lord of the people of the south is the first of the men of the Noh family. Ix-Kan-Tacay is the name of thq first of the men of the Puch family. They guard nine rivers; they guard nine mountains.
(TRANSLATION BY ROYS 1967:64)ti yet … u [mah]antic kax u manab tu than lae yume hex talbal kax.
(The Titles of Ebtun)This, lord, is an inherited forest …
(TRANSLATION BY ROYS 1939:265)In a document of 1561 and another on the reverse of the same sheet … is recorded an individual title to a tract of land and its conveyance “to the principal men of the town here at Ebtun.” The vendor states that it is the “title of the forest of my ancestors.”
(ROYS 1943:37; EMPHASIS ADDED)FOREST, FIELD, ORCHARD, AND DWELLING IN THK TROPICAL LOWLANDS
Statements such as those given above suggest that the Yucatec Maya of the Colonial period perceived of their land tenure system as one in which rights were inherited through an ancestral line and boundaries of lands were carefully noted and sometimes guarded. We turn now to the realm of land, lineage, boundaries, and inheritance in order to investigate how Maya farmers configured themselves on the landscape to facilitate production. These variables are critical ones because they not only determined how production was organized, but they are also powerful determinants of archaeologically detectable settlement structure. In this chapter, ethnographic, ethnohistoric, linguistic, and archaeological data are examined in order to characterize land use in a tropical lowland setting and to examine the relationship between land tenure and residential structure.
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- Living with the AncestorsKinship and Kingship in Ancient Maya Society, pp. 64 - 110Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2014