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Ancient Recycling: Considerations of the Wasteful, Meaningful, and Practical from the Maya Site of Ucanal, Peten, Guatemala

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Abstract

Recycling practices among ancient societies are rarely systematically explored. When such practices are considered, they are often examined in dichotomous terms as either an elite artisanal capacity for producing meaning or as part of practical logics of rationality and efficiency in confronting scarcity. The study of groundstone tool, ceramic, and architectural recycling at the Maya site of Ucanal, Peten, Guatemala, challenges this false dichotomy in highlighting the varied ways meaning and value are produced. Diachronic and contextual analyses reveal that recycling practices of quotidian materials, such as groundstone and ceramics, did not increase during periods of crisis nor were they more common among modest households as compared to higher-status households. Likewise, evidence of substantial efforts to recycle elite and monumental building materials during the Terminal Classic period (ca. 830–950/1000 CE) did not coincide with a scarcity of labor or building materials. Such findings underscore the need to consider the role of abundance as it relates to recycling, a factor that also drives much contemporary recycling.

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Notes

  1. See also http://www.atlas.d-waste.com/

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Acknowledgments

The PAU project would not be able to operate without the expertise and skill of field personnel from San José, Barrio Nuevo San José, and Pichelito II as well as students and professional archaeologists from Universidad de San Carlos de Guatemala (CUDEP and Guatemala City), Université de Montréal, San Diego Mesa College (R. Mongelleuzzo), University of West Florida (K. Miller Wolf), University of Mississippi (C. Freiwald), and University of Kentucky (Z. Hruby) with special thanks to project co-director, Jose Luis Garrido, and project lab director, Miriam Salas. Thanks are extended to the Departmento de Monumentos Prehispanicos y Coloniales from the Ministerio de Culture y Deportes in Guatemala for their support and permission to work at Ucanal. I am also grateful to three anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments on the manuscript.

Availability of Data and Material

All artifacts excavated from the site of Ucanal are under the purview of the Instituto de Anthropologia e Historía (IDAEH) as part of the Ministerio de Culture y Deportes, Guatemala. Digital data are housed in the Ancient Mesoamerican Laboratory at the Université de Montréal.

Funding

Research by the Proyecto Arquólogico Ucanal has been supported by grants from Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC/CRSH), the National Geographic Society Waitt Foundation, Fonds de Recherche du Québec—Société et Culture (FRQSC), Princeton University, and Université de Montréal.

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  1. Department of Anthropology, Université de Montréal, 3150 Jean-Brillant, Montreal, QC, H3T 1N8, Canada

    Christina T. Halperin

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Halperin, C.T. Ancient Recycling: Considerations of the Wasteful, Meaningful, and Practical from the Maya Site of Ucanal, Peten, Guatemala. J Archaeol Method Theory 28, 766–792 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10816-020-09490-7

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