Material   Culture

    Religion:  It is universal to all mankind, an inevitable in the uncertainty of life.  At no matter what point in time, man has carried many various religious beliefs.  Despite the universality of this concept, archaeologists have a difficult time dealing with the religion of past cultures, as many of their belief systems do not appear in material culture.  Even when material culture does give evidence for patterned actions in response to religious belief, it is often hard to tell the difference between these religious actions and those of everyday life.
    The Maya were an ancient Mesoamerican tribe that left behind great amounts of material culture supporting religion.  Such religiously themed material includes architecture, literature, art, and hieroglyphic writing.  Although there are still plenty of aspects of ancient Maya religion shrouded in mystery, archaeologists have been able to uncover an incredible amount of information, enabling us to have a fairly clear idea of what it meant to be a Maya in ancient Mesoamerica.

 
 
                            Architecture      Burials
                                        Art            Literature
                               Hieroglyphics
                                                           Bibliography