Assemblage Theory and Maya Ontologies

As advanced by philosophers Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, assemblage theory posits that the world is constantly in a state of becoming and that, through their interactions, diverse entities—including but not limited to people, animals, objects, and weather events—constitute a larger whole (DeLanda Reference DeLanda2016:12, 20–30; Jervis Reference Jervis2019:37). As Arthur Joyce and Roberto Rosado-Ramirez (Reference Joyce and Rosado-Ramirez2025) explain in the introduction to this special section, this perspective encourages scholars to “understand phenomena . . . as assemblages, which involve flows of matter, energy, and meaning that are temporarily drawn together.” Assemblages are made of distinct entities that are drawn together or territorialized and, at times, separated or deterritorialized (DeLanda Reference DeLanda2016:22; Jervis Reference Jervis2019:36–42). Over time, assemblages experience phase changes—specific points where change is intensified, altering an assemblage’s character into something new (DeLanda Reference DeLanda2016:19; Jervis Reference Jervis2019:41). Assemblage theory thus emphasizes “dynamic processes, rather than stable essences” (Joyce and Rosado-Ramirez Reference Joyce and Rosado-Ramirez2025) and encourages scholars to focus on the capacity of ruins to affect people.

Assemblage theory, with its emphasis on fluidity, the capacities of other-than-human entities, and the rejection of Western dualisms, has several implications for archaeological interpretation. For example, it challenges the common tendency to relegate archaeological sites to the past and fetishize them as solely places of awe and reverence (e.g., Jervis Reference Jervis2019:105–106; Olivier Reference Olivier2004:212). As James Scorer (Reference Scorer2017:143) lamented in a critique of conventional archaeological photography, “The ancient ruin continues to be photographed as an aura-laded, ethereal site of decay that is lost in time.” Archaeological sites may be better understood as active and dynamic confluences of distinct entities over time.

In addition, assemblage theory encourages the incorporation of Indigenous ontologies with an “ontological openness” that considers how other-than-human-beings matter in more than representational ways (Jervis Reference Jervis2019:25–30). As Joyce and Rosado-Ramirez (Reference Joyce and Rosado-Ramirez2025) note, both assemblage theory and Indigenous ontologies “approach existence as relational, nonbinary, and non-essentializing.” Assemblage theory provides the schematic to map connections and emerging relationships between entities (Jervis Reference Jervis2019:148), whereas Indigenous ontologies provide the meaning through which those changing relationships are understood. To create nuanced interpretations of the past and present, archaeologists must understand the ontological frameworks held by the non-Western communities with and for whom we work.

Given the diversity of Maya peoples, scholars generally refer not to a single Maya ontology but to Maya ontologies (Astor-Aguilera Reference Astor-Aguilera, Astor-Aguilera and Harvey2018). Despite their differences, these ontologies share a core set of understandings of the world, including the fundamental importance of animacy, relationality, and reciprocity (e.g., Astor-Aguilera Reference Astor-Aguilera2011; Redfield and Villa Rojas Reference Redfield and Rojas1964; Vogt Reference Vogt1969). Maya peoples generally understood, and still understand, the world to be animated by various beings. The complex relationships between humans and other-than-human beings are structured by rules of reciprocity. The Popol Vuh, an ethnohistoric text written by the K’iche’ Maya of Guatemala, for instance, states that humans must act as “sustainers” (q’o’l in K’iche’ Mayan; Christenson Reference Christenson, Moyes, Christenson and Sachse2021:21–22) who provide for deities in exchange for maintenance of the world. Reciprocity can thus be understood as the foundation for building ties between beings.

Adopting insights from the material turn, this article maintains that Maya ruins are usefully understood as dynamic interactions between human and other-than-human entities. Building on insights from Indigenous Maya ontologies—particularly notions of animism and reciprocity—this article moves away from Western, Romantic understandings of Maya ruins as lifeless and argues instead that Maya roads are better understood as kuxansumob (Freidel et al. Reference Freidel, Schele and Parker1993:99; Miller Reference Miller and Hammond1972; Ringle Reference Ringle, David and Rosemary1999:200).

Maya Sak-beob and Kuxansumob

Sak-be, or sak-beob in the plural, is Yucatec Mayan for white (sak) road (be). These wide, elevated causeways are made of large stone retaining walls filled with smaller stones, sediment, and broken ceramics and capped with powdered white limestone known as sascab (Flores Colin Reference Colin and Alberto2019:95–98; Shaw Reference Shaw2001:261). Maya peoples built these raised causeways throughout the prehispanic period, beginning as early as 800/600 BC–AD 300, and they continuously used them or, in some instances, modified them for other purposes into the colonial era (e.g., Flores Colin Reference Colin and Alberto2019:84–85; Mathews Reference Mathews2001:6–7). Archaeological evidence suggests that ancient sak-beob were labor intensive projects likely organized by elites to exert authority and increase social cohesion (Shaw Reference Shaw2008:99). Ethnographic evidence suggests that early twentieth-century elite families organized a communal labor system to build and maintain roads in the peninsula (Redfield and Villa Rojas Reference Redfield and Rojas1964:78–81). That this system was compulsory and “an essential condition of citizenship” (Redfield and Villa Rojas Reference Redfield and Rojas1964:79) suggests a deep connection between building roads and building communities. Indeed, ancient communities may have understood the labor necessary for monumental constructions as an offering that sustained reciprocal relationships with other-than-human entities (Hutson and Welch Reference Hutson and Welch2021:311–312; Ringle Reference Ringle, David and Rosemary1999).

Sak-beob are variable. Some connect individual buildings (Shaw Reference Shaw2001:262, Reference Shaw2008:130), others different parts of the same city (Chase and Chase Reference Chase and Chase2001:276; Cobos and Winemiller Reference Cobos and Winemiller2001:289; Folan et al. Reference Folan, Hernandez, Kintz, Fletcher, Heredia, Hau and Canche2009), and still others entirely different cities (e.g., Loya González and Stanton Reference Loya González and Stanton2013:21). Some scholars suggest that sak-beob primarily served more mundane purposes, including facilitating the movement of people, trade goods, and messages (Flores Colin Reference Colin and Alberto2019:129–136; Shaw Reference Shaw, Alcock, Bodel and Talbert2012). Others argue that sak-beob primarily served as highly visible platforms that elevated elites during ceremonies and facilitated pilgrimages (Flores Colin Reference Colin and Alberto2019:136–145; Hutson and Welch Reference Hutson and Welch2021:315–17; Ringle Reference Ringle, David and Rosemary1999; Shaw Reference Shaw, Alcock, Bodel and Talbert2012:140–141).

For Maya peoples, roads were not only physical conduits but also animate mediums to other realms and temporalities. Maya peoples knew and know the world to consist of three interconnected areas: the underworld, the earthly or human realm, and the celestial realm (Freidel et al. Reference Freidel, Schele and Parker1993:53–55). Ancient Maya iconography and architecture depict humans and other-than-human entities traversing this tripartite universe in several ways, including via causeways (e.g. Folan et al. Reference Folan, Bolles and Ek2016; Miller Reference Miller and Hammond1972; Stanton et al. Reference Stanton, Taube, Coltman and Camacho2023:9–13). In addition to connecting different realms of the universe, Maya roads also bridge the past, present, and future.

Keller (Reference Keller2006:4) analyzed prehispanic to contemporary Mayan uses of the word “road,” be in Mayan, and found it is frequently associated with the passage of time. Yucatec Mayan speakers, for example, often ask “Bix a beel?” (How is your road?) to ask how one’s life is going.

Flores Colin’s (Reference Colin and Alberto2019:77–79) study of prehispanic to contemporary uses of the word “road” further identifies its meaning as both a means of transportation and a metaphor associated with journeying. Such metaphors include the Classic period term och bih, “entering the road,” to describe death (Freidel et al. Reference Freidel, Schele and Parker1993:76–78). For many Maya communities, all entities have chulel, a soul or life force, circulating within them (Stuart Reference Stuart1996:164; Vogt Reference Vogt1969:369–70). Ringle (Reference Ringle, David and Rosemary1999:200) proposed that ancient Maya peoples understood ritual processions across sak-beob as a metaphor for the flow of chulel throughout the body’s circulatory system: processions animated sak-beob with chulel, thereby integrating the site into a living, cohesive whole (Ringle Reference Ringle, David and Rosemary1999:202–206).

Beyond these metaphors, Maya peoples also conceptualized roads as kuxansumob, living (kuxan) cords (s/zum) of blood (Freidel et al. Reference Freidel, Schele and Parker1993:99; Miller Reference Miller and Hammond1972; Ringle Reference Ringle, David and Rosemary1999:200–201, 207– 208). Such a conceptualization is consistent with extensive research suggesting that ancient Maya peoples understood various aspects of the built environment, including temples and houses, as animate entities with chulel (e.g., Stuart Reference Stuart and Houston1998:393–396; Taube Reference Taube and Houston1998:428). Scholars have identified kuxansumob depictions on stelae (Guernsey Kappelman Reference Guernsey Kappelman and Stone2002:68, 75), pottery (Freidel et al. Reference Freidel, Schele and Parker1993:99; Steiger Reference Steiger2010:55), murals (Miller Reference Miller and Hammond1972, Reference Miller1982:95), and in the Paris Codex (Love Reference Love1994:83–84; Miller Reference Miller1982:93; see Figure 1). Nevertheless, contemporary understandings of kuxansumob are based primarily on postconquest oral histories from the northern Yucatán Peninsula.

Figure 1.

Paris Codex, pp. 21–22. Note the kuxansum (twisted blood cord) connecting individuals across the realms of the universe. Courtesy of the Bibliothèque Nationale de France. (Color online).

In the twentieth century, Alfred Tozzer (Reference Tozzer1907:153–154) recorded an unnamed Maya interviewee near Valladolid describing how before the modern era, in the First Creation of the world associated with pre-Sunrise beings, there “was a road suspended in the sky, stretching from Tulum and Cobá to Chichen Itza and Uxmal. This pathway was called kuxansum or sak-be (white road). It was in the nature of a large rope (sum) supposed to be living (kusan) and in the middle flowed blood. It was by this rope that the food was sent to the ancient rulers who lived in the structures now in ruins.”

Oral histories also record that kuxansumob connected historic communities in the contemporary era, including Mérida and Cozumel, and Cobá, Zac Ii (Valladolid), and Ho (Mérida; Figure 2; see Bolles and Folan Reference Bolles and Folan2001:300–301), as well as other connections (Folan et al. Reference Folan, Hernandez, Kintz, Fletcher, Heredia, Hau and Canche2009:61).

Figure 2.

Map of the northern Yucatán Peninsula showing all sites mentioned in the text (map by Nicholas A. Puente).

In other interviews, Jacinto May Hau of Cobá explained how such kuxansumob, which facilitated connection across space, time, and realms of the universe, were powerful enough to warrant attacks by Mexican forces (Bolles and Folan Reference Bolles and Folan2001:300–301), and Alonzo, a Maya resident of Maní, described another unsuccessful attempt to dismantle connections between Maní and Mérida (Folan et al. Reference Folan, Bolles and Ek2016:311). He explained how a living rope of blood connecting these communities was cut in half, but by placing the rope in boxes within a well under Maní, the community remained connected to Mérida via an underground road that enabled the continued transport of food (Folan et al. Reference Folan, Bolles and Ek2016:311–312). In this instance, cutting a kuxansum transformed but did not sever relationships between communities.

The parallels between kuxansumob and umbilical cords are notable and are reinforced by ethnographic studies of Maya midwifery. In some cases, when a boy’s umbilicus is cut, an ear of maize is passed through the smoke from the cauterized cord, and the kernels are planted in the family milpa, which feeds the boy until he is old enough to work the milpa himself (Thompson Reference Thompson and Eric1970:283–284). Although this account speaks to gendered notions of labor, it also clarifies how, even after being cut, the umbilicus—much like the kuxansum connecting Maní and Mérida—remains an important point of connection and sustenance (Knowlton and Dzidz Yam Reference Knowlton and Yam2019:731–733).

Building on the work of Ringle (Reference Ringle, David and Rosemary1999) and other scholars (Bolles and Folan Reference Bolles and Folan2001; Dunning and Kowalski Reference Dunning and Kowalski1994; Folan et al. Reference Folan, Bolles and Ek2016; Miller Reference Miller and Hammond1972; Stanton Reference Stanton2000; Tozzer Reference Tozzer1907), this article maintains that the sak-be at Punta Laguna is a kuxansum: an animate entity that, even when seemingly broken, connects and sustains relationships. In doing so, the article highlights how ruined roads are usefully conceptualized as potent and dynamic assemblages, despite their decay and seeming lifelessness.

Punta Laguna

Punta Laguna lies in the northeastern interior of the Yucatán peninsula of Mexico, approximately 20 km northeast of Cobá (Figure 2). In the contemporary village live approximately 150 residents who manage a cooperative ecotourism venture (see Kurnick Reference Kurnick2019). The archaeological site of Punta Laguna covers approximately 200 ha of land immediately surrounding a three-basin lagoon. It includes a cenote with an ancient mortuary deposit of at least 120 individuals (Rojas Sandoval Reference Rojas Sandoval2011); a series of caves; two small, uncarved stelae; and more than 200 mounds including both residences and civic-ceremonial structures (Figure 3; Kurnick and Rogoff Reference Kurnick and Rogoff2020). A type-variety analysis of all excavated ceramics suggests that Maya peoples occupied Punta Laguna continuously or recurringly from 600/300 BC through AD 1500/1550 (Kurnick et al. Reference Kurnick, Rogoff and Aragón2024).

Figure 3.

The archaeological site of Punta Laguna. See Figure 4 for an enlarged view of the area within the box.

Among other architectural features, Punta Laguna includes an intrasite sak-be named Habanero. Located southeast of the lagoon within the site’s civic ceremonial center, Habanero is oriented 21° east of north and measures approximately 72 m long by 10 m wide, with a height ranging between 30 and 50 cm (Figures 4–6). Its southern terminus lies at the base of Jalapeño, an approximately 1.5 m tall structure with a staircase on its northeast side. Despite its likely initial civic-ceremonial use, Jalapeño has evidence of domestic use during the Seco phase (AD 1100/1200–1500/1550), including utilitarian ceramics and artifacts suggestive of fishing net manufacture (for the establishment and description of these ceramic phases, see Robles Castellanos Reference Castellanos and Fernando1990).

Figure 4.

Enlarged view of the southeast portion of the archaeological site of Punta Laguna, showing the location of the sak-bev (map by David Rogoff).

Figure 5.

Photograph of the Punta Laguna sak-be, looking south along the west wall (photo courtesy of the Punta Laguana Archaeology Project). (Color online).

Figure 6.

Plan sketch of the Punta Laguna sak-be (drawing by David Rogoff).

Figure 7.

Profile sketch of excavations near the northern terminus of the Punta Laguna sak-be (drawing by David Rogoff).

The northern terminus of the sak-be is less clear. After approximately 72 m, the density of stones decreases, and Habanero loses its form. Notably, it does so near a structure denominated Fresa. A stone-lined cyst, oriented east–west and constructed of large, roughly cut limestone blocks, suggests that Fresa—like other similar structures in the interior of the Yucatán peninsula (Barrera Rubio et al. Reference Rubio, Alfredo and May2015; Medina et al. Reference Medina, del Socorro, José Gómez Cobá, Raúl Díaz Pantoja and Travis2009)—was a residence during the Añejo (100 BC/AD 100–300/350), Blanco (AD 300/350–550/600), Palmas (AD 550/600–700/730), and Oro (AD 700/730–1100/1200) phases. During the Seco phase, however, Maya peoples heavily modified this structure, likely emptying the cyst—artifacts within it included neither human remains nor funerary items but only fragments of Seco-phase ceramics—and adding nonresidential architectural features, including a miniature masonry shrine.

Archaeologists working in the Maya area have demonstrated that excavations directly adjacent to sak-beob often reveal little to no cultural material (Mathews Reference Mathews2001:15–18; Shaw Reference Shaw2008:38). Consequently, and with the permission of Mexico’s National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH), members of the Punta Laguana Archaeology Project (PLAP) conducted limited excavations in the fill of Habanero, near both the northern and southern terminus (Figures 6–8). Near the northern terminus, project members recovered ceramics dating to the Añejo, Blanco, and Oro phases. Near the southern terminus, where bedrock was closer to the surface, project members recovered similar ceramics, as well as sherds from the Seco phase, including in construction fill. These data suggest that, during the Seco phase, Maya peoples extended the sak-be farther south, carried out maintenance work there, or altered the southern terminus when modifying Jalapeño. Project members did not recover any nonceramic artifacts in the excavation units on Habanero.

Figure 8.

Profile sketches of excavations near the southern terminus of the Punta Laguna sak-be (drawing by David Rogoff).

The Punta Laguna Sak-Be Assemblage as a Kuxansum

Those adopting a Western, Romantic understanding of Maya ruins might view Habanero as a now defunct vestige of stones, sediment, and ceramics that humans created to connect two areas of Punta Laguna, perhaps to facilitate movement or to elevate the elite. How then can insights from Maya archaeology, the material turn, and ruination studies, particularly the Maya concept of kuxansum, offer a more nuanced understanding of this feature? To address this question, this article considers how Habanero interacted with human, material, climatic, and other actors at three phase changes: in the Palmas and Oro phases, in the Seco phase, and over the last six decades.