Abstract
Burial practices can provide insight into the complex and multilayered identities of both individuals and communities. We explore one aspect of identity—an individual’s origin—and the way that it was expressed in funerary treatment at Xunantunich in the Belize Valley. Strontium, carbon, and oxygen isotope values in the tooth enamel of 19 individuals show that some individuals with nonlocal origins were buried in the same households, or even the same graves, as locally born individuals. In contrast, most individuals with Central Peten-like isotope values were placed in atypical burial positions and graves, including termination ritual contexts. We discuss the relationship between their origins and burial treatment in relation to major political changes that were occurring during Late and Terminal Classic periods in the Maya lowlands, and show that origin also was important in burial treatment in contemporaneous cultures elsewhere in the Americas.
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Acknowledgements
We would like to thank our collaborators on the XAP, TDP, and XPE Projects, and emphasize the ongoing collaboration with T. Douglas Price and James Burton at the University of Wisconsin-Madison Laboratory for Archaeological Chemistry (LARCH), Paul Fullagar at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and David Dettman at the University of Arizona. David Meiggs and Meaghan Peuramaki Brown helped obtain the Naranjo strontium isotope value. We also thank Carolyn Audet, Jennifer Braswell, and Brad Adams for excellent report and dissertation data that contributed to this discussion, and Gabriel Wrobel and Bill Duncan for comments and suggestions on ideas and comments on the earlier version of this chapter.
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Freiwald, C., Yaeger, J., Awe, J., Piehl, J. (2014). Isotopic Insights into Mortuary Treatment and Origin at Xunantunich, Belize. In: Wrobel, G. (eds) The Bioarchaeology of Space and Place. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4939-0479-2_5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4939-0479-2_5
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