Mortuary Evidence for Maya Political Resistance and Religious Syncretism in Colonial Belize

Abstract

This chapter presents the osteobiography of a young man who lived in what is now Belize during the time of Spanish colonial occupation, ca. A.D. 1520 to 1660). Along with another man, he was buried in the ruins of a Mayan palace that had been abandoned for four centuries. The burials combine Christian and Mayan traditions and tell part of the story of indigenous political resistance on the colonial frontier