The Contacts with the Ancestors in the Maya Ontologies. Traces of an Expanded Sociability

Abstract

This article discusses the role of ancestors within the networks of Maya sociability in the past and the present. The constant presence of these characters indicates the formation of a meshwork of social relations between beings of different ontological classes at different times. I will present the formation of such meshes to answer the following question: how are these relationships formed and what type of social relationships are created? For this, I will discuss the role of ancestors within some of the Maya societies of the pre-Hispanic period, comparing them with their presence in contemporary communities, from the presentation of an ethnographic work carried out in Pomuch, Mexico. Based on the identification of similarities and changes in the presence of ancestors in these societies, I intend to reflect on the existence of an expanded sociability with the mutual interaction between human and non-human actors sharing the same entanglement of relations.