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Teaching Anthropology: SACC Notes VoL 9, No. 1 Fall 2002 Page 27Defining the Descendant Com munity in aNon-W estern Context: The M aya ofHighland Guatemala

Greg BorgstedeUniversity of Pennsylvania

c Archaeologists are increasingly aware that they must include the"commu nity" in their projects.Within the evolving context of the

role, interaction and participation ofdescendant communities in archaeo-logical practice is the growing aware-ness among archaeo logists, both foreignand indigenous, that the "com munity"must be included in the archaeologicalproject. This awaren ess has its deriva-tion from a number of different sourc es,primary among them the "social cri-tique" developed as one strain of post-processual archaeology in the la te1980s. This critique manifested itselfin different forms, one result being theincreasing focus on archaeological rel-evance and impact outside the acad emicarenaan issue that archaeologists con -stantly add ressed in pra ctice but rarelydiscussed in academic fora. Ultimatelythis critique has heightened academicperceptions of the role, impact, and us esof archaeology outside strictly aca-demic concerns, particularly within thecommunities in which archaeology ispracticed.

This paper focuses on one type ofcommunity in which archaeology ispracticed: the descendant community.How do we define a descendant com-munity and when and how do we workin or with that com mu nity? An swe ringthis question is not a simple task. Wemust develop a definition that balancesthe perspectives of a number of differ-ent groups, including archaeology, cul-tural anthropology, modern politicalscience and the internal definitions ofthe group itself, which are not oftenconsensual. I believ e that definitionsare largely dependen t upon soc ial c on-text. Defining the comm unity for high-land Guatemala is a different task thandoing the same for the American S outh-we st or Aboriginal Australia. I do not

adopt an extreme relativist position,however. There are com mon threadsand we can de velop a theoretical b asisfor a cross-cultural ap proach to the ar-chaeology of descendant comm unities.This paper is a brief attempt to addressboth these issues: defining a descendantcomm unity for a particular contex t andsuggesting threads applicable to thewider context of descendant communi-ties.

In this paper, I address the specificcontext of archaeology among the M ayaof Highland Guatemala. This contextcannot necessarily be extended to theMaya area as a whole or toMesoam erica. How ever, this contextcontains the most diverse cultural re-gion in the Maya area, a rich archaeo-logical record, and the highest popu la-tion density of livin g May a, making theregion an important arena for under-standing the interaction between ar-chaeology and descendant communi-ties.

Highland Gu atemala has historicallyrepresented a unique anthropologicalsetting, with the ongoing conjunctivestudy of the highland Maya in culturalanthropological , archaeological , l in-guistic, biological and ethnohistoricalterms. The l iving May a them selveswere traditionally excluded from theacademic arena, a situation mirroringbroader social patterns of Maya exclu -sion from political and economic are-nas as we ll. They were view ed largelyas objects of study for anthropologistswith varying topical interests. W hilethis situation has drastically changed inrecent years, the history of academicanthropological research plays a keyrole in defining the descendant Mayacommunity.

Understanding arc haeology's role inthe anthropological study of highlandGuatem ala is complicated. Wh ile anintellectual history of this endeavor isyet to be written, a few points are sa-lient here. Cultural anthropology hasalways been, and continues to be, thefirst priority of anthropology withinhighland Guatemala. Archaeology isoften carried out in conjunction with,or as a sub-component of, cultural an-thropological study. Archaeology hasbeen less important in and of itself thanthe more general "history" to which itcontributes and which can be collectedby other means, such as ethnohistoryor oral history. On the one hand, thishas produced excellent "conjunctive"studiesfour-field anthropology notprivileging a single field. On the otherhand, it has produced a relatively lim-ited archaeological data set and inter-pretat ions based in archaeolog ica ltheory. The result is that many under-standings of highland Maya "history"used outside the academic arena relyupon the more ample literature for thelowland Maya, co-opting the "scien-tific" prestige that goes with that dataset.

In this context, cultural anthropolo-gists have consistently addressed defin-ing the M aya comm unity, situating theirperspectives within different theoreti-cal paradigms and research interests.While historically divorced from thisdebate, it bec om es increasingly impor-tant to archaeologists as they struggleto understand the relationship betweenthe l iving Maya and archaeologicalpractice. Archaeology has largely cometo depend on cultural anthropology toprovide a definition of commu nity thatcan be applied in this context. But notjust cultural anthropologists have pro-vided d efinitions; the Guatemalan state,Maya public intellectuals and othershave also provided them. Remainingwithin the discipl ine, archaeologistshave tended to rely upon cultural an-thropolog ica l def ini t ions , many ofwhich overlap with non-academic ones.

Cultural anthropological understand-ings of Maya community in highlandGuatemala can be roughly grouped intothree categories, following an histori-cal trajectory o f research and mirroring

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Page 28 Teaching Anthropology: SACC Notes VoL 9, No. 1 Fall 2002larger shifts in the social sciences andcontemporary political condition s. Thethree categories of descendant commu-nities include: the closed corporatecommu nity, ethnic commu nity, and thePan-Maya move ment. I wil l brieflydefine each and then discuss the im pactusing this conception of com mun ity hason archaeological practice in highlandGuatemala.

At issue is whether or not themunicipio the basic politicaldivision within Guatemalaalso reflects a basic sociocul-

tural division in past andpresent Maya society.

The first of these, the closed corpo-rate community, reflects the most en-during tradition in cultural anthropo-logical studies of the highland Maya.It is a form of social and cultural orga-nization defined as consisting of an en-dogamous social group, occupying adelimited territory, with differentiatedcultural norms, and usually w ith its ownlanguage. Deriving out of work in the1930s (Tax 1937) and 1950s (Wolf1957), it reflects a general theoreticalposition of the timethe presupposi-tion that a cultural group is definableon its own terms and can be isolatedfrom other cultural and social groups.The closed corporate community is of-ten correlated with the municipio, thebasic political organ izational unit of theGuatemalan State, creating a situationwhere basic cultural units also are ba-sic political units. Allie d w ith this defi-nition was the understanding that thehistories of municipios could be isolatedand investigated independe ntly. Cul-tural anthropologists work ed w ithin thisdefinition for 30 year s; resulting in eth-nographies of various municipios ofGuatemala as socio-cultural units. Ul-timately, the municip io rem ains the ba-sic political division within G uatemala.At issue is whether or not it also reflectsa basic sociocultural division in past andpresent Maya society.

Beginning in the 1960s and gainingmomentum in the 1970s, cultural an-thro po l o g i s t s beg a n to s t re s s the

interactionist nature of culture in gen-eral theoretical term s, which resulted ina redefining of the community in high-land Guatemala (e .g . Barth 1969) .Rather than relying on the mu nicipio asthe ba sic culture-bearing unit, larger andmore inter-related units were identified.The closed corporate community wasstill seen as fundamental in highlandMaya society, but larger communitiessuch as the ethnic group were recog-nized. Th e ethnic group, often basedlargely on common language wi th"loose" cultural affinities, was studiedin terms of its boundaries and relationsw i th o ther s i m i l a r g ro ups ( e . g .Casaverde 1976). Unfortunately, mod-ern anthropological studies of ethnicityrelying on a constructivist model of in-teraction have been discarded by ar-chaeologists as too difficult or impos-sible to ascertain in the archaeologicalrecord. Primordialist or essen tialistmodels of ethnicity are more easilyd i s cern a b l e i n the a rcha eo l o g i ca lrecord, but reflect the historical ten-denc y to desc ribe culture areas as inde-pend ent and defined ba sed on traits. Inmodern Guatemala, however, essential-ist views of Maya ethnicity predomi-nate outside the academic arena andpolitical reform is often framed in theseterms (Warren 1998; but see Fischer1999).

Most recently, the definition of theMaya community has expanded to in-clude all the Maya of highland Guate-mala , o f ten termed the Pan-MayaMov emen t. This community has i tsroots in the growing political power ofthe Maya and the development of aMaya edu cated elite, termed Maya pub-lic intellectuals by Kay Warren (1996).Maya public intellectuals utilize culturalheritage in its broadest sense to rein-force pol i t ical and economic rightswithin the political arena. Wh ile de-tractors suggest that the Pan-Mayamo vem ent is largely a constructed com-munity in the present, its proponentsinsist upon the essential cultural con-nection of all of the highland Maya andtheir ties to the historical and archaeo-logical past. The Pan-Maya movementcan be understood in the Andersoniansense of an imagined community, withparticular reliance on the printed me-

dia to introduce and reinforce culturalties. The Pan-Maya movement placesparticular value upon archaeologicalinterpretations where they reinforce theprimacy and Classic Period ascendancyof Maya culture within the bounds ofthe Guatemalan state.

More than merely tlwho ownsthe remains," the broader

question is "to whom do theinterpretations apply?"

Important implications arise fromthese varying definitions of the Mayacommu nity. Even as new understand-ings of community arose with shifts inanthropological theory, older defini-tions were not abandoned. Rather, theyprovided a nested set of possibilities,varying in scale as well as in content:from the smallest and most isolatedthe closed corporate commun ity, to thelarger and less wel l def inedtheethnicity, to the largest and mos t politi-cally potentthe Pan-Maya commu-nity. Arch aeologists must reconcile re-search projects with these varying defi-nitions of com munity, realizing that allthree are potentially active (and reac-tive) in archaeological practice. Manyquestions arise from the complex defi-nition of Maya community: To whichof these communities is the archaeo-logical project most responsible? Whohas decision-making power concerningarchaeological resources? How, orshould, archaeologists control the dis-semination of archaeological interpre-tations among the different communi-ties?

One of the most important aspects ofthe relationship between the archaeo-logical project and descendant commu -nities is the role of archaeological in-terpretations in the developm ent of cul-tural identity. This beco me s particu-larly salient whe n the descendant com -munity is not well defined, or over-de-fined, as in the highland Maya case. Atissue is more than merely "who ownsthe rem ains," but the broader questionof "to wh om do the interpretations ap-ply." Interestingly, little research hasbeen done in highland Guatemala todefine the commun ity from an archaeo-

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Teaching Anthropology: SACC Notes VoL 9, No. 1 Fall 2002 Page 29logical perspective. Studies have in-stead adopted a definition of commu-nity as a point of departure and analyze dits presence or absence in the archaeo-l o g i c a l r e c o r d " u p s t r e a m i n g " i nethnohistorical terms.

Archaeological resources and inter-pretations, however, help shap e culturalidentity among the Maya com mu nities.Most clearly seen in the Pan-Mayamovement, public intellectuals utilizearchaeological interpretations to rein-force the historical continuity of theMaya community as a who le. Theirinvolvement with archaeology and itspractice, however, usually ends there;it is seen as a tool for furthering thelarger political goals of the m ovem ent.There has been no call, for exa m ple, forregional archaeological studies of thesmaller Maya communities, of whichvery few have been conducted . This isa reflection of the problem o f definingthe Maya community. Region al stud-ies fall outside the purview of the Pan-Ma ya movem ent's interest in coordinat-ing national Maya interests, while theclosed corporate comm unities and eth-nic groups lack either the pol i t icalpower or the interest to make the sug-gestion.

A s the study of cultural identity m ov esfrom a predominately cultural anthro-pological topic to an archaeological o neas well, archaeology will provide in-creasingly important interpretations tothe descendant communities in whichthey practice. Within highland Guate-mala this means incorporating archaeo-logical interpretations into the multiplede f i n i t i o ns o f co m m u ni ty . W hi l eethnohistorians and archa eologists ha veattempted to trace the comm unity intothe past, their efforts have focused pri-marily on the closed corporate com mu -nity (e.g. Hill 1984). Broader associa-tions, ethnicity or a Pan-Maya identity,have not been examined in archaeologi-cal terms, a situation which makes ar-cha eology appear irrelevant to both cul-tural anthropologists and Maya publicintellectuals utilizing newer understand-ings of the Maya community. Need edare focused studies addressing culturalidentity, ethnicity and community froman archaeological persp ective.

An important realization of the "cri-

sis in archaeology" in the 1980s withreference to descendant communitieswas that archaeology had impact be-yond the acad emic arena, whether or notexplicitly addressed by archaeologists.This realization raised the question ofthe social context of archaeology ingeneral and, more specifically, the re-sponsibility archaeologists had for theirinterpretations. W hile this issue is farfrom reso lved, many archaeolog i s tsagree, particularly those w orking withindescendan t comm unities, that we are at

Many archaeologists agree thatwe are at least partially respon-sible for the implications of our

interpretations.

least partially responsible for the imp li-cations o f our interpretations, esp eciallysince those interpretations affect thepolitical, economic, and social realities.For highland Guatemala, the problembecomes especially acute since the de-scendant community is not wel l de-fined. To wh om are we respon sible?Within the American Southwest, forexamp le, a "covenantal archaeology" ispra c t i ca l (P o w e l l e t a l . 1 9 9 3 ;Zimmerman 1997); a strong and closerelationship can be developed betweenthe practitioners of archa eology and themost-affected consumers of archaeo-logical knowledge.

A covenantal archaeology is less prac-tical in highland Guatemala, however,where the community is dispersed anddifficult to define. Instead, a system of"nested responsibilities" probably re-flects, or should r eflect, the tenor of ar-chaeological practice. Since archaeolo-gists act within different spheresper-missions from both the national andmunicipal governments, for examplerespo nsibilities shift in different sph eresas well; different communities requiredifferent actions. At the mu nicipiolevel, for example, of primary impor-tance is community involvement in ar-chae ological p ractice, as well as the dis-semination of post-project interpreta-tions. At the ethnic leve l , what areneed ed are regional investigations o f thehistorical reality of these groups. At thePan-Maya level, of primary importanceis the developm ent of a dialogue or pub-

lic sphere specifically targeting the in-corporation of archaeological interpre-tation into definitions of Maya cultureand community as a whole.

Understanding the nested responsi-bilities of archaeological practice in acomplex s i tuation such as highlandGu atemala w ill also incorporate a num-ber of aspects found vital in redefiningthe relationship in the United States.Shifting to a focus on education will beparticularly important. As a result ofthe 1996 Peace Accord s, the educationguidelines for Guatemala are being re-written. One aspect of the revision isthe incorporation of regional culturalknow ledge in the education curriculum,suggesting the increasing importance ofregional archaeological studies and theirdissemination to the comm unities, pri-marily at the ethnic level. Research andeducation must develop an involvedrelationship.

A final issue is the shifting of thepower base of studies of the history ofdescendant comm unities. While thishas traditionally been the territory ofacademic, western foreigners, it is be-com ing increasingly clear that the Mayathemselves , directed from the Pan-M aya leve l but with increasing demandfrom the other levels as well, desire in-creased control over activities of alltypes w ithin their comm unities, includ-ing archaeology. The response of aca-demic archaeology to this demand willgo a long way to determining the fu-ture of the relationship between the vari-ous descendant Maya communities andthe practice of archaeology.ReferencesBarth, F.

1969 Introduction. In EthnicGroups and Boundaries, edited byF. Barth, pp. 9-37. Boston , Littleand Brown.

Casaverde, J.1976 Jacaltec Social and PoliticalStructure. Rochester, NY, Univer-sity of Rochester.

Fischer, E. F.1999 Cultural logic and Mayaidentity: rethinking constructivismand essentialism. Current Anthro-pology 40(4):473-500 .

continued on page 38

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Page 38 Teaching Anthropology: S ACC Notes VoL 9, N o. 1 Fall 2002tors)1997 Native Americans and Archae-ologists: Stepping Stones to CommonGround. Alta Mira Press , WalnutCreek, CA.

BorgStede Continued from page 29Hill, R. M.

1984 Chinamit and Mo lab: LatePostclassic highland Mayaprecursors of closed corporatecommunity. Estudios de CulturaMaya 15:301-327.

Powell, S., C. E. Garza, and A.Hendricks1993 Ethics and owne rship of thepast.the rebuna] and repatriationcontroversy. ArchaeologicalMethod and Theory 5:1-42.

Tax. S.1937 The mu nicipios of themidwestern highlands of Guate-mala. American Anthropologist39:423-444 .

Warren, K.1998 Indigenous Movem ents an dTheir Critics: Pan-Maya Activismin Guatemala.. Princeton, NJ,Princeton University Press.Warren, K. B.1996 Reading history as resis-tance: Maya public intellectuals inGuatemala. In Maya CulturalActivism in Guatemala, edited byE. F. Fischer and R. M. Brown, pp.89-106. Austin, TX, University ofTexas Press.

Wolf, E.1957 Closed corporatecommun ites in Mesoam erica andCentral Java. SouthwesternJournal of Anthropology 13:1-18.

Zimmerm an, L. J.1997 Remythologizing therelationship between Indians andarchaeologists. In Native Ameri-cans and Archaeologists: SteppingStones to Common Ground, editedby N. Swidler, K. Dongoske, R.Anyon, and A. Downer, pp. 44-56.Walnut Creek, CA , Altamira Press.

Wolfe'continued from page 33lenges of traditional polygyny in today'sMissionary-infested New Guinea High-lands, while hevs doing everything hecan to keep his Southern Californiaho me an d hearth intact. I'm forever fly -ing the coop in search of more amazingpictures and better data, wh ile he 's pre-paring food and buying special treatsfor all the people and pets that he lo ves.Wh ile I stay in touch with some of my"exes" and generate love and intensitywith the new men I meet, the wom en inhis l i fe are much more demanding.They need money, practical assistanceand a steep serving of the nurturingemotion-thick stew he's so adept atcooking up.

When I first told Don I no longerwanted to be his lover, it felt like an at-tention-seeking angry proclamation thatI would n't actually keep to. Then, muchto my amazement, I found value in mynewfoun d status as the emotionally un-fettered public wife. Finally, I releasedall of the jealousy I had towards An-gela; she wa s no longer my competitor.We n ow inhabited completely separatearenas. I faced that mu ch of what hadtroubled me over the last five years hadbeen that sh ed attempted to occupy mydomain, causing me to fear displace-ment. No w that our domains were com-pletely separate, I recovered my esteemand my security. I stopped scru tinizingthe nature of Don's connection withAn gela; it held no further interest to me.I remained Don s life partner in the ar-eas of keeping a home, parenting (hisdaughter and our two cats and twodogs), and business (producing v ideos,photography and books).

With my emotional, sexual and spiri-tual arenas wide open, I quickly builtconne ctions with other men. And forthe first time in my nine years of rela-tionship with Don, he actually foundone of them to be acceptable! He, Ja-son, lives in a distant town and whenhe visits, Don would graciously stay atAn gela's hom e to give us privacy. Andunlike the single men I'd attempted toconvert to polyamory, Jason very muchlives a polyamorou s life. He lives withhis wife and teenage sons while main-taining a passionate con nection w ith his

lover and colleague Rachel. Wh ile itseemed that his plate was more thanbrimming, somehow our connectiontook hold. Together we taught eachother about unfettered lov e a lov e thatcould be kindled in spite of all of thereal-life baggage busy mid-life profes-sionals carry. Asid e from the fact thatmarriage and owning a home togetherwere not in our mutual futures, w e couldlove and engage each other from thecore. There were no limits to our fan-tasies or the real-life ways we'd man-age to actualize them .

Sometimes we 'd madly exchange fivee-ma ils in a day trying to plan b usines sand professional projects or sort out atheory one of us had conjured up abouthow love, life and relationships work.He d traveled and lived in as many od dand remote places as I had and had com-plete empathy for my exp eriencer-modeof figuring out human behavior. W hileI'd never given much credence to soulmates, in Jason, I sensed I'd gottenclose. I could tell him m ore of my truththan I'd told just about any one e lse andhe'd make me feel very heard. It wasas if we'd grown up in the same cul-tural stew and serendipitously landed onthe exact same lily pad.

No w most Americans w ould be prettyunimpressed at the thought of lovingsomeon e they cou ld never marry whilstliving w ith someon e wh o no longer cap-tivated their erotic and emotional soul.The m ore I thought about this, the moreI faced that this is exactly how humanshave lived for most of civilized time.One's home base was not one's lovebase; there were public marriages forreputation and procreation, and thenthere were love and roma nce. In OldEurope there were the stately Lords andthen the love-struck Troubadours. InModern Europe there are proper publicmarriages and then the slightly morehidden mistresses. In Latin Americathere is the Casa Grande and the CasaChica. How fascinating that in mysearch for "new" paradigms beyondModern Western Society's embrace ofmonogamy, I landed in one of the old-est paradigms known to humans!

Would living a day-to-day life withDon, spinning lost in paradise fantasieswith Jason, and being open to the many