Past identities, present legitimation: The reuse of a Late Preclassic residential group at the Maya site of San Bartolo, Guatemala

The ruins of ancient Maya settlements are dramatic and dominant features of the Mesoamerican landscape today, and abandoned architecture and monuments were also significant features of the Maya landscape in the ancient past. How did the Late Classic Maya interact with remnants of architecture and monuments built during the Late Preclassic period? What effects did ruins of the past have on later settlement activity?;The ancient Maya site of San Bartolo, located in the Department of the Petén, Guatemala, was occupied during the Preclassic period between 500 B.C. and A.D. 200 before it was abandoned. The site was reoccupied in the Late Classic period around A.D. 600, and these later settlers reused various abandoned structures. My dissertation focuses on identifying and investigating the nature of structure reuse through archaeological investigations in a residential group. My research has revealed the close relationship between political and social conditions and material remains.;The reuse of structures may reflect much more than the pilfering of stone material for later constructions. This dissertation tests the hypothesis that through the medium of architecture and artifacts, the past may have been manipulated to express the needs and values of these later peoples to create a sense of individual or community identity, perhaps during unstable political conditions. This dissertation also draws upon wider debates about the nature and role of memory in past societies and relationships between death, memory, and material culture.