Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

Ritual Time: The Struggle to Pinpoint the Temporality of Ritual Practice Using Archaeobotanical Data

  • Chapter
  • First Online:
Social Perspectives on Ancient Lives from Paleoethnobotanical Data

Abstract

Ritual practices frequently express multiple dimensions of time. Rituals themselves are temporally choreographed practices. Rituals also mark different moments or culturally important temporal events. This chapter considers the strengths and limitations to reconstructing the temporality of ritual practices using archaeobotanical data. The dataset consists of archaeobotanical remains from an Epiclassic period (ca. AD 600–900) shrine site in the northern Basin of Mexico. Using ethnographic and ethnohistoric records, I attempt to interpret the temporality of ritual practices based on an assessment of the ecological characteristics of taxa identified as well as on a consideration of symbolic characteristics of calendrical rituals. This endeavor reveals limitations to ecological and symbolic approaches to pinpoint the temporality of ritual practices as well as to the nature of ethnographic and ethnohistoric analogues. But this study is nevertheless an important exercise in understanding the qualitatively dynamic nature of time in the past.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Log in via an institution
Chapter
USD 29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD 84.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as EPUB and PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book
USD 109.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info
Hardcover Book
USD 109.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Durable hardcover edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

References

  • Andrews, J. R., & Hassig, R. (1984). Editors introduction: The historical context. In H. Ruiz de Alarcón (Ed.), Treatise on the heathen superstitions that today live among the Indians native to this New Spain, 1629 (pp. 3–36). Norman: University of Oklahoma Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Arnold, P. (1999). Eating landscape: Aztec and European occupation of Tlalocan. Niwot: University Press of Colorado.

    Google Scholar 

  • Benz, B. (1986). Taxonomy and evolution of Mexican Maize. Ph.D. Dissertation, Department of Botany, University of Wisconsin–Madison, Madison.

    Google Scholar 

  • Benz, B. (1994). Reconstructing racial phylogeny of Mexican Maize: Where do we stand. In S. Johannessen & C. A. Hastorf (Eds.), Corn and culture in the prehistoric New World (pp. 157–179). Boulder: Westview Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Bierhorst, J. (1985). Cantares Mexicanos: Songs of the Aztecs. Stanford: Stanford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Boone, E. (2007). Cycles of time and meaning in the Mexican Books of fate. Austin: University of Texas Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Broda, J. (1971). Las Fiestas Aztecas de los Dioses de la Lluvia. Española de Antropología Americana, 6, 245–327.

    Google Scholar 

  • Broda, J. (1991). Sacred landscape of Aztec calendar festivals: Myth, nature, and society. In D. Carrasco (Ed.), To change place: Aztec ceremonial landscapes (pp. 74–120). Niwot: University Press of Colorado.

    Google Scholar 

  • Carrasco Pizana, P. (1950). Los Otomíes: cultura e historia prehispánicas de los pueblos mesoamericanos de habla otomiana. Mexico City: Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México.

    Google Scholar 

  • Caso, A. (1959). Nombres Calendáricos de los Dioses. El Mexico Antiguo, 9, 77–100.

    Google Scholar 

  • Charlton, T. H. (1970). Contemporary agriculture of the valley. In W. Sanders, A. Kovar, T. H. Charlton, & R. A. Diehl (Eds.), The Teotihuacan valley project, final report, volume I: The natural environment, contemporary occupation and 16th century population of the valley (pp. 253–383, Occasional Papers in Anthropology No. 3). University Park: The Pennsylvania State University.

    Google Scholar 

  • D’Andrade, R. (1995). The development of cognitive anthropology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Diehl, R. A., & Berlo, J. C. (Eds.). (1989). Mesoamerica after the decline of Teotihuacan, A.D. 700–900. Washington, D.C.: Dumbarton Oaks.

    Google Scholar 

  • Douglas, M. (1996). Natural symbols: Explorations in cosmology. London: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Durán, F. D. (1971). Book of the gods and rites and the ancient calendar (F. Horcasitas & D. Heyden, Trans.). Norman: University of Oklahoma Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Durkheim, É. (1915). The elementary forms of religious life. New York: The Free Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Gorenflo, L. J., & Sanders, W. T. (2007). Archaeological settlement pattern data from the Cuautitlan, Temascalapa, and Teotihuacan Regions, Mexico. Occasional papers in anthropology, Number 30, Department of anthropology, The Pennsylvania State University.

    Google Scholar 

  • Harris, M. (1966). The cultural ecology of India’s sacred cattle. Current Anthropology, 7, 261–276.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Harris, M. (1979). Cultural materialism: The struggle for a science of culture. New York: Vintage Books.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hastorf, C., & Johannessen, S. (1991). Understanding changing people/plant relationships in the prehispanic Andes. In Robert W. Preucel (Ed.), Processual and postprocessual archaeologies: Multiple ways of knowing the past. Center for Archaeological Investigations, Occasional Paper 10. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hill, J. H. (1992). The flower world of the Old Uto-Aztecan. Journal of Anthropological Research, 48, 117–144.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Keber, E. Q. (1995). Codex Telleriano-Remensis: Ritual, divination, and history in a pictorial Aztec manuscript. Austin: University of Texas Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Leach, E. (1970). Claude Lévi-Strauss. New York: Viking Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • León-Portilla, M. (1992). Fifteen poets of the Aztec world. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Lévi-Strauss, C. (1975). The Raw and the Cooked: Introduction to a Science of Mythology (J. Weightman & D. Weightman, Trans.). New York: Harper Colophon Books.

    Google Scholar 

  • Lucas, G. (2005). The archaeology of Time. New York: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • McNeil, C. (2006). Maya Interactions with the natural world: Landscape transformation and ritual plant use at Copan, Honduras. Ph.D. Dissertation, Department of Anthropology, City University of New York,

    Google Scholar 

  • Minnis, P. (1981). Seeds in archaeological sites: Sources and some interpretive problems. American Antiquity, 46, 143–152.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Montúfar Lopez, A. (2006). La flora sagrada de Tenochtitlan: Propuesta para una nueva sala del Museo del Templo Mayor. In L. López Luján, D. Carrasco, & L. Cué (Eds.), Arqueología e Historia del Centro de México: Homenaje a Eduardo Matos (pp. 493–506). Moctezuma: Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia.

    Google Scholar 

  • Morehart, C., & Morell-Hart, S. (2015). Beyond the ecofact: Toward a social paleoethnobotany in Mesoamerica. Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory, 22, 483–511.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Morehart, C. T. (2010). The archaeology of farmscapes: Production, place, and the materiality of landscape at Xaltocan, Mexico. Ph.D Dissertation, Department of anthropology, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL.

    Google Scholar 

  • Morehart, C. T., Lentz, D. L., & Prufer, K. M. (2005). Wood of the Gods: The Ritual use of pine (Pinus spp.) by the ancient lowland Maya. Latin American Antiquity, 16(3), 255–274.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Morehart, C. T., Meza Peñaloza, A., Serrano Sánchez, C., McClung de Tapia, E., & Ibarra Morales, E. (2012). Human sacrifice in the Northern Basin of Mexico during the epiclassic period. Latin American Antiquity, 23(4), 426–448.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Motolinía, T. (1903). Memoriales. Madrid: Librería de Gabriel Sánchez.

    Google Scholar 

  • Parsons, J. R., Gorenflo, L. J., Parsons, M. H., & Wilson, D. J. (2008). Prehispanic settlement patterns in the Northwestern Valley of Mexico: The Zumpango Region. Ann Arbor: Museum of Anthropology, University of Michigan Memoirs.

    Google Scholar 

  • Pasztory, E. (1974). The iconography of Teotihuacan Tlaloc. Studies in precolumbian art and archaeology (No. 15). Washington, D.C.: Dumbarton Oaks.

    Google Scholar 

  • Rappaport, R. (1968). Pigs for the ancestors: Ritual in the ecology of a new Guinea people. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Rappaport, R. (1979). Ecology, meaning, and religion. Richmond, VA: North Atlantic Books.

    Google Scholar 

  • Richards, C. C., & Thomas, J. S. (1984). Ritual activity and structured deposition in later Neolithic Wessex. In R. Bradley & J. Gardener (Eds.), Neolithic studies (pp. 177–188). Oxford: British Archaeological Reports.

    Google Scholar 

  • Rival, L. (Ed.). (1998). The social life of trees: Anthropological Perspectives on tree symbolism. Oxford: Berg.

    Google Scholar 

  • Robb, J. E. (1998). The archaeology of symbols. Annual Review of Anthropology, 27, 329–346.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Roscoe, P. B. (1995). The perils of ‘positivism’ in cultural anthropology. American Anthropologist, 97, 492–504.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Ruiz de Alarcón, H. (1984). Treatise on the heathen superstitions that today live among the Indians native to this New Spain, 1629. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Sahagún, B. (1951). Florentine codex, general history of the things of New Spain: Book 2, the ceremonies. Santa Fe, NM: School of American Research.

    Google Scholar 

  • Sahagún, B. (1963). Florentine codex, general history of the things of New Spain: Book 11, earthly things. Santa Fe, NM: School of American Research.

    Google Scholar 

  • Sanders, W. T., Parsons, J. R., & Santley, R. S. (1979). Basin of Mexico: Ecological processes in the evolution of a civilization. New York: Academic Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Santamaría, M. (1912). Las Chinampas del Districto Federal. Mexico: La Secretaria de Fomento.

    Google Scholar 

  • Turner, V. (1969). The ritual process: Structure and anti-structure. New Brunswick, ME: Aldine Transaction.

    Google Scholar 

  • Vogt, E. Z. (1976). Tortillas for the Gods: A symbolic analysis of zinacanteco rituals. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Wellhausen, E. J., Roberts, L. M., & Hernandez, E. X. (1952). Races of Maize in Mexico: Their Origin, characteristics and distribution. Cambridge: Bussey Institution of Harvard University.

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Anthropology, Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ, USA

    Christopher T. Morehart

Authors
  1. Christopher T. Morehart
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Christopher T. Morehart .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. University of South Dakota, Vermillion, South Dakota, USA

    Matthew P. Sayre

  2. Dickinson College, Carlisle, Pennsylvania, USA

    Maria C. Bruno

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2017 Springer International Publishing AG

About this chapter

Cite this chapter

Morehart, C.T. (2017). Ritual Time: The Struggle to Pinpoint the Temporality of Ritual Practice Using Archaeobotanical Data. In: Sayre, M., Bruno, M. (eds) Social Perspectives on Ancient Lives from Paleoethnobotanical Data. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-52849-6_7

Download citation

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-52849-6_7

  • Published:

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-52847-2

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-52849-6

  • eBook Packages: Social SciencesSocial Sciences (R0)

Publish with us

Policies and ethics

Search

Navigation