| Abstract: |
Lévi-Strausss minimal discussion of the physical house concerned how, as a central symbol of unity, it was conceived and created as a miniature image of the universe. The representation of the house as a microcosm has been well documented for many societies, including the Maya peoples of Mesoamerica, and is related to overlapping notions of the house and the body, a means by which people and houses are co-identified. Susan Gillespie draws on ethnographic and archaeological data encompassing over two millennia of Maya occupation to look beyond the mere form of the Maya house as microcosm and examine the active agency of the social house members who used their dwellings and analogous constructions to orient themselves and the spirits with whom they interacted within a specific locus in space. These spirits include the ancestral dead, who are ritually contacted at domestic altars that are miniature houses at the same time that they are made to resemble beds, resting places associated with immobility, permanence, and potency. Archaeological evidence demonstrates the longevity of this practice, which once involved burying the dead under altars or beds within the house compound and constructing miniature houses as containers for certain spirits that were part of the intangible estate of noble houses. In enclosing and thus unifying diverse elements, the house is a means of creating place and sociocosmic order within the landscape. Building such order into existence requires specific ritual actions to produce and activate all these material houses, actions undertaken by those who thereby define themselves as a group with a common stake in the house.
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