Victoria Newhall

Through archaeological excavation and integrated botanical and chemical analyses, this dissertation investigates how non-royal residents of the Classic-period (AD 450–850) Maya city of Palenque engaged plants to shape household identity, labor, ritual practice, and sensory experience. The study examines plants not only as sources of sustenance but as collaborators whose material and perceptual properties-taste, fragrance, smoke, texture, and color-participated in co-producing social life. Drawing on relational ontology this project approaches plants as active participants in the co-construction of urban worlds. Building on ongoing Proyecto Regional Palenque (PREP) excavations, the research analyzes macrobotanical remains, starch granules, phytoliths, and organic chemical residues from seven domestic and one non-domestic context. These multiple lines of evidence enable reconstruction of discrete practices such as grinding, boiling, roasting, nixtamalizing, burning incense, preparing beverages, and offering plant materials and situates them within household routines and episodic ritual events. Spatial, statistical, iconographic, and ethnobotanical frameworks guide interpretation of similarities and variation in plant use across structures and activity areas. By illuminating how everyday plant relations sustained social reproduction and sensorial worlds this project advances paleoethnobotany toward a relational, multispecies understanding of Classic Maya urbanism and demonstrates how non-royal households materially and cosmologically animated Palenque’s vibrant urban life.