Throughout their history, Maya societies developed various ways of recording, transmitting and reinterpreting the past. Material culture, cultural landscapes and ritual practices, as well as oral tradition and other intangible expressions, have constituted different supports through which social memory was produced and preserved. Far from remaining unchanging, these records were transformed in response to the political, economic and cultural changes experienced by Maya societies over time. However, beyond these transformations, the need to construct and update collective memory remained a constant element throughout time.
Understood as a dynamic process, memory offers a particularly fruitful perspective for approaching the study of the Maya world from an interdisciplinary standpoint. The organization of space, iconography, and oral and written traditions not only constitute sources of information about the past, but also expressions of the various mechanisms through which individuals and communities constructed historical narratives, legitimized social relations, and established links between present and past. Memory also played a fundamental role in the processes of identity construction that, through different paths, made it possible to define forms of belonging, legitimation and cohesion among different social groups. In this sense, the past should not be understood as a fixed reality but as a constantly reinterpreted resource. This perspective is relevant for understanding various Maya social and cultural processes from the colonial period to the present.
From this perspective, this panel proposes a space for exchange that will bring together research devoted to the multiple forms of construction, use, transmission and reinterpretation of memory in the Maya world. Rather than being confined to a specific object of study, memory is proposed as an organizing axis capable of fostering dialogue among different disciplines, methodologies and scales of analysis. Contributions will be accepted on any period of Maya history, from the pre-Hispanic era to contemporary communities, as well as papers based on archaeological, epigraphic, historical, anthropological, linguistic, bioarchaeological, iconographic, architectural or heritage-based approaches.
