Abstract
This collaboration originates from our mutual participation in an invited session “The Role of Sustenance in the Feasts, Festivals, Rituals and Every Day Life of Mesoamerica” organized by Karen Bassie at the 40th Annual Chacmool Conference. Eat, Drink, and Be Merry: The Archaeology of Foodways. Hosted by the Chacmool Archaeological Association and the University of Calgary, Department of Archaeology, November 10–12, 2007 Calgary, Alberta. We are sincerely grateful to Karen Bassie for her encouragement in stimulating this collaboration and her support of this project.
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Notes
- 1.
This date is based on the Thompson correlation of 584,285 days. For a full discussion of the issues surrounding the correlation of Maya and Western calendars see Sharer (1994:755–762).
- 2.
It is commonly believed that the use of the Long Count ceased with the abandonment of lowland Classic Maya cities; however, the presence of k’atun and bak’tun signs in the Dresden codex suggest that the Long Count was probably still in use or understood until the Conquest.
- 3.
Jaguar, Bahlam, is particularly a common name among the Maya, but is also the given name of Lord 8 Deer (8 Deer is his name based on his birthday in the Tonalpohualli).
- 4.
Among the most important of these documents are the Codex Mendoza (1541), Codex Badiano de la Cruz 1552 (De la Cruz 1552 [1991]), and Florentine Codex (1590).
- 5.
The literate population of sixteenth century Europe was incredibly small, consisting primarily of clerics and members of the aristocracy and all were literate in Latin. The ways of life of most of the population continued to follow patterns typical of the Medieval world until the industrialization and the formation of the modern European nation states. However, most of the missionaries and a number of the conquistadors were from educated classes and therefore saw the world through a literary knowledge of biblical and the classical literature.
- 6.
Houston et al (2006:Chap. 3) have examined ingestion as a concept in ancient Maya culture; however, there is little additional literature dedicated to the examination of concepts surrounding agriculture, animal husbandry, hunting, cooking, and eating. By contrast, the scholarship on the symbolism of maize (see Staller et al. 2006; 2009) and chocolate (see McNeil 2006) as well as their use in both ancient and modern ritual is vast (e.g., Coe and Coe 1996).
- 7.
While it is true that Claude Lévi-Strauss (1971) focused on food in his Mythologiques nevertheless he looks more to food in mythology as opposed to the symbolic implications of food in the ebb and flow of daily life. Lévi-Strauss (1978) also considered the role of food and feasting to status and hierarchy and has emphasized importance of foods to memory and to particular festivals in the annual cycle.
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Acknowledgments
We wish to express our sincere appreciation to Brian Stross (University of Texas-Austin) and David A. Freidel (Washington University in St. Louis) for their insightful comments on this chapter. We also thank Karen Bassie (University of Calgary) for inspiring this volume through our mutual participation at a session of on Mesoamerican foodways in Alberta, Canada
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Staller, J.E., Carrasco, M.D. (2010). Pre-Columbian Foodways in Mesoamerica. In: Staller, J., Carrasco, M. (eds) Pre-Columbian Foodways. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4419-0471-3_1
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