Partible, permeable, and relational bodies in a Maya Mass grave

Abstract

Over the past 30 years, research in the anthropology of the body has documented the fact that many cultures do not view bodies as inherently individual, like in Western societies. Rather, bodies in many cultures have permeable boundaries, are internally partible with regard to the location of specific souls (animating essences) or other aspects of personhood, and are defined in terms of their relationships to objects and other people's bodies. Bioarchaeologists have become increasingly aware of the need to engage such non-individualized perspectives of bodies over the past 15 years and considering fragmented bodies is one way to do so. Commingled, secondary contexts are particularly fertile ground for considering aspects of partibility, permeability, and relationally defined bodies. One challenge for considering embodiment in such contexts is identifying when fragmentation was intentional and thus reflects an attempt to manipulate bodies on the basis of partibility or permeability. Here, we use a spatial analysis, Ripley's K function, to argue that bodies in a Maya mass grave were fragmented and manipulated by virtue of their partible, permeable, and relational nature. The case study highlights the fact that many elusive aspects of embodiment may be engaged in the material record in an empirically rigorous fashion through spatial analysis coupled with contextual data.