Traditional studies of public architecture in Mesoamerica view it as a passive reflection of social complexity and ideology, an ''inert container'' for social action. In this study, I attempt to move beyond this static perspective by exploring the construction, dedication, and use of ballcourts as ''lived space'' in which social values and practices inhabit and activate geographical space. The dedication of ballcourts through the interment of foundation caches and burials transformed these structures into sacred and social places, defining them as suitable stages for ritual action. With archaeological data from recent excavations in west-central Honduras and elsewhere in Mesoamerica, I examine the use of ballcourts through a functional analysis of excavated materials. Evidence from these excavations and from ethnohistoric and ethnographic accounts suggests that interfactional ballgame rituals involved the competitive sponsorship of ballgames and feasts, providing strategic settings for the negotiation of power relations. These rituals centered on the redistribution of food and wealth and the symbolic renewal of agricultural fertility. I argue that the ballcourt, as a place with powerful supernatural associations, served as a stage for rituals in which political conflict was mapped onto and resolved through cosmological drama.
