Ontologies, Ecologies, and Inequalities: Human-Environment Relationships at the Ancient Maya City of Aventura, Belize

Grauer, Kacey Chandler

doi:https://doi.org/10.21985/n2-dq1h-a855

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Ontologies, Ecologies, and Inequalities: Human-Environment Relationships at the Ancient Maya City of Aventura, Belize

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This dissertation is about the environment, inequality, and ways of being in the world. Water is necessary for biophysical existence, but also holds symbolic and ideological power. In ancient Maya ontologies, water was a powerful social force in the landscape, necessary for both bodily functions and cosmological connections. In some Classic Period (250-900 CE) city-centers governed by divine rulership, hierarchical control of water during episodes of drought led commoners to “vote with their feet” and abandon these cities. While many larger cities in the Maya area were undergoing vast sociopolitical reorganization and large-scale depopulation towards the end of the Classic Period, the medium-sized city of Aventura was thriving. In contrast to the hierarchical control of water seen at these other cities, I demonstrate that despite socioeconomic inequality, commoners and elites alike had access to the equally important metaphysical and biophysical aspects of water at their respective households. Through survey, excavation, and phytolith analysis, I demonstrate that relational ontologies of landscape contributed to heterarchical political ecology where access to water cut across hierarchical lines of inequality. Commoner and elite households had (meta)physical access to water, even at the height of drought, when the substance would have been at its most scarce. I argue that open access to two different yet vital aspects of water contributed to Aventura’s longevity in the midst of drought. The ultimate goal of this dissertation is to move towards an archaeology of environmental justice, where studies of the past necessarily implicate the present and future.

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