All the World’s a Stage
All the World’s a Stage
The Late Classic Built Environment of Chan Chich, Belize
Approaching monumentality and politics at an epicentral-scale, Houk and Ashley Booher use a site-planning approach in chapter 8 to argue that the Late Classic rulers of Chan Chich, Belize designed major architectural components of the site to function as the theater for public spectacles and processions. The authors are able to demonstrate evidence for rituals’ having taken place along the two causeways and at their termini structures, as well as an apparent functional relationship between one causeway and an associated courtyard. Ritual, in this case, was actually the means to a political end. As Houk and Booher show, converting the monumental landscape of Chan Chich into a vast stage for public spectacle and ritual processions required considerable planning, labor, and resources. The Late Classic rulers at Chan Chich and other sites spent vast resources on the architecture of political theater as an exercise in community building and regional competition for labor, loyalty, and prestige.
Keywords: Site-planning, Chan Chich, Late Classic, Public spectacle, Ritual rocessions, Political theater
Florida Scholarship Online requires a subscription or purchase to access the full text of books within the service. Public users can however freely search the site and view the abstracts and keywords for each book and chapter.
Please, subscribe or login to access full text content.
If you think you should have access to this title, please contact your librarian.
To troubleshoot, please check our FAQs , and if you can't find the answer there, please contact us .
