In the 1840s, John L. Stephens traveled through northern Yucatan. While staying at the hacienda of San Francisco, he had locals dig into a square building at the ruins nearby. After six hours, a burial appeared below a flat stone. Everybody wondered whose bones these were. Stephens collected the skeletal remains and brought them back to the States where he carried them one night to the then-famous physician Samuel G. Morton. Doctor Morton had studied skulls from all over the world and deduced race and intellectual ability from cranial capacity. He looked at the bones from northern Yucatan and asserted that they were the remains of a Native American adult female who was 5'3” to 5'4” tall.
We have come a long way since then. Vera Tiesler and her colleagues reconstruct life and death at Classic period Yaxuná. They demonstrate how archaeology and physical anthropology can collaborate and detail ancient experiences. As an example, I point to their excavation of a sacred rockshelter and a unique burial in it. The corpse had been forced into a rectangular hole with flexed legs and arms crossed in front of the abdomen. The head was twisted in such a way that “after a thousand years of being in the earth, upon excavation, the face of the young man seemed to ‘look’ up to us unnaturally from beneath the left scapula” (227). Laboratory analysis revealed that the young man suffered from a disfiguring chronic disease. Set apart socially, he was selected as a sacrifice to the gods and likely killed by heart extraction. His corpse was bundled up like a deer after a hunt and buried in the rock shelter. The authors employ Maya art and hieroglyphic texts to elucidate ancient worldviews and practices. These insights allow them to discuss how the young man's disease othered him in Classic Maya society and how his mortuary treatment resonates with native cosmologies and ways of interacting with supernatural beings. Reconstructions of what happened to whom and when lead to careful explanations of why events happened.
Attention to context and culturally sensitive interpretation characterize this book and reveal the complex history of the northern Maya lowlands. Yaxuná is only a few miles south of Chichén Itzá and the latter giant still overshadows its neighbor. As transformative as the arrival of the feathered serpent was, there was a time before Kukulkán or Quetzalcoatl. Decades of excavations have revealed Yaxuná’s 3,000-year-long settlement history and make the site ideal to understand the long-term trajectory of Maya culture and society. The first part of the book discusses ancient Maya ways of living. After explaining Yaxuná’s importance, the authors address interaction and mobility across the northern Maya lowlands. They turn to the demography and lifestyles at Classic Yaxuná before discussing local diets and nutritional health, and then round out the first part with a fascinating chapter on social identities and ways in which these are physically embodied.
The second part reveals Yaxuná’s dead. Chapter 6 presents the site's burial sample and calls attention to shifting local and regional mortuary regimes. The following chapter highlights Yaxuná’s royal tombs as evidence for divine rulers in the northern lowlands. Deaths of rulers initiated complex mortuary rituals that are interpreted as an eternal performance of rulership. Chapter 8 delves into ritual killings and the caching of human bodies as culturally critical elements. The book concludes with the decline of Yaxuná, its relationship with nearby Chichén Itzá, and its Postclassic and colonial history.
This book showcases the broad arsenal of physical and chemical techniques that are now available for the analysis of skeletal remains. Rich archaeological data and the authors’ deep knowledge of ancient Maya culture enable culturally sensitive explanations. The authors not only cover the traditional areas of physical anthropology, but also delve into issues like identity and embodiment. Their investigations at Yaxuná underscore that Maya bioarchaeology has come of age.
