ABSTRACT
Religion was inseparable from daily life in the ancient Maya world, in part because activities like farming and building required contractual arrangements with sacred, other-than-human entities. Furthermore, ritual and politics were inseparable since most rulers could not derive authority from exclusive control of material resources. This chapter explores the ways in which domestic and community ritual practices in the northern Maya lowlands engaged political relations at a variety of scales. Caches within buildings at small- and medium-sized settlements along an 18-km-long causeway stretching from Ucí to Cansahcab illustrate that domestic ritual in rural contexts was not independent of rituals conducted by actors with much greater authority. At the same time, these domestic rituals provided the grounds upon which humble households could engage more powerful actors and contribute actively to the constitution of society.
