[...]... that there are widespread similarities crossing ethnic, temporal, and linguistic boundaries For example, central to many conceptions of illness and death among the modern and historic Maya is the idea of “soul-loss,” a concept observed among the Lacandon, the Zinacantecos, and a number of highland Maya groups Death is the result of “fright” from the gods, the death of an animal spirit-companion, or the. .. would give them pain and where they would have an abundance of foods and drinks of great sweetness, and a tree which they call there yaxche, very cool and giving great shade, which is the ceiba, under the branches and the shadow of which they would rest and forever cease labor The penalties of a bad life, which they said that the bad would suffer, were to go to a place lower than the other, which they called... during the “intermediary period,” the soul was homeless and an object of dread, unable to enter the afterlife The feast, he observed, marked the end of this period and the celebration of the soul’s arrival into the land of the dead, indicated by the now-dry bones and the reestablishment of more “friendly” social relations with the deceased. Stressing the interrelationship of corpse, soul, and mourners,... from one of the largest and best-known cities of tropical lowland Mesoamerica t h e cl a ssic m aya c a se Flourishing within the lush jungle of the southern Yucatán Peninsula (Figure 1), the great Maya cities of the Classic Period rose and fell in a period roughly bounded between AD 250 and AD 909. Among the palace complexes, administrative buildings, and temples at the heart of these centers, Maya. .. death as represented by the ideas of van Gennep, Hertz, and their successors and the archaeological anthropology of the Maya are two halves of a greater conceptual whole m e t hod ol o gic a l c once r ns The royal focus of the Classic Maya inscriptions presents limitations for this study of ancient rites of death and burial Written by and for a ruling minority, the texts were a form of communication shared... between the preliminal, liminal, and postliminal rituals; each involves a symbolic death of the old status and the construction of a new one. With respect to death rituals, the liminal phase has been a topic of much elaboration For example, in exploring the concept of “liminality” in the death rites of the Ndembu of southern Africa, Victor Turner developed the view that liminality was a “state of transition”... society in space and time Nevertheless, burials from all segments and geographic areas of the Classic Maya world are available for study and comparison, and where applicable, I use their data for analogy to the royal situation There is clear evidence that many sites shared common beliefs about the afterlife and the process of death These commonalities are most observable in the phrasing of death (e.g.,... throughout the Classic Maya landscape Given that this study is a comparison of what can be gleaned from the archaeological, epigraphic, and iconographic records of kings in combination, I focus out of necessity on the royal sector of Classic Maya society, as defined by the burials of rulers or their immediate families That royal sector in turn is limited to those sites— largely confined to the southern lowlands—that... titudes associated with the physical body in order to understand changes to the social one. Therefore, the purpose of this book is not to force the models of van Gennep, Hertz, Turner, or others onto the Classic Maya example, but to examine their more general tenets within the context of Maya archaeology, epigraphy, and iconography Karl Taube was the first to apply the idea of liminality to Mesoamerican... way. For the Classic Maya (AD 250–900), the works of Alberto Ruz Lhuillier and W Bruce M Welsh remain the foremost analyses of burial practice The former’s focus on grave goods, orientation, and patterns in mortuary practice was adopted in subsequent studies of the Maya area and at Teotihuacan. Documenting the widespread presence of specific grave goods and burial patterns for the Classic Maya, Ruz .  Table . Death and Burial Dates of Classic Maya Rulers  Table . “Founders” of the Classic Maya Lowlands  Table . Reentered Royal Tombs of the Classic Maya Lowlands  Table . Death and Accession. through the generosity of William C. Nowlin, Jr., and Bettye H. Nowlin, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and various individual donors. Copyright ©  by the University of Texas Press All. person- ally and professionally over the course of my time at Harvard University and in my postgraduate career. With me they have endured the frenetic life of an aca- demic in the fi nal stages of turning