Emerging from the Place of Darkness: Subterranean Archaeology in Mesoamerica

DOCUMENT Citation Only Humberto Nation. Leah Minc. Holley Moyes. James Brady.

The occurrence of "foreign" ceramic materials as well as the breakage and transport of speleothems during ancient Maya cave visitations have become an increasingly well-documented phenomenon (Brady et al. 1997). This phenomenon has raised several questions such as the spatial and temporal extent of these interactions, practices, meaning and specifically what does all this tell us about the relationship between Maya polities and proximal or distant caves. Geochemical analysis of geological...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Toni Gonzalez. Samantha Lorenz.

Chultunes, man-made subterranean chambers excavated into limestone bedrock, are ubiquitous features encountered throughout the Maya cultural region. Although studies in the Northern Lowlands have demonstrated that chultunes in that locale functioned as water cisterns, the ascription of them as purely utilitarian within the Southern Lowlands is under much debate. One issue that hinders dialogue is lack of a commonly accepted understanding of what constitutes a chultun. The first aim of this paper...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Cristina Verdugo. Kimberly Zhu. Lars Fehren-Schmitz.

The prurient element in the popular notion of the Maya sacrifice of "beautiful virgins" during the first half of the twentieth century (Frost and Arnold 1909; Willard 1926) appears to have made researchers wary of the topic of gender in study of human sacrifice. The interest in human sacrifice arose in the 1990s at the same time as the formulation of the warfare hypothesis for the collapse of Maya civilization (Demerast 1990) so that models of human sacrifice tended to assume that victims were...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Cameron Griffith. Adam Spring. Brent Woodfill.

Over a period of just a few short years there have been dramatic advancements in digital imaging and scanning technologies. Increasingly, cave archaeologists around the world are utilizing many of these new platforms and techniques to document subterranean artwork. This paper outlines two different approaches to digital imaging of ancient Maya cave art. In Guatemala, a Z+F IMAGER 5010C 3D Laser scanner, mounted on a tripod, was employed in Cueva San Juan and Hun Nal Ye to document both...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Paulo Medina.

This investigation’s working hypothesis is that chultunes, manmade subterranean features, served as ritual spaces in the southern Maya lowlands. The hypothesis is an outgrowth of my grounding in cave archaeology. Ethnographically, even subterranean features used for utilitarian activities, such as mining, come to have sacred meaning and this phenomenon can be documented in ethnohistoric sources. However, my hypothesis has not been tested. Dennis Puleston argued for a utilitarian function of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jon Spenard. Michael Mirro. Jennifer Weber. Terry Powis.

Ritual karstscape archaeological research at the pre-Hispanic Maya site of Pacbitun, Belize, by the Pacbitun Regional Archaeological Project (PRAP) has included experimentation with a range of digital recording technologies. The overall goal of these experiments has been to better document ritual landmarks and the archaeological materials within them than has been possible with traditional recordation methods such as hand-drawn maps, photographs, and written descriptions. Our efforts have...

DOCUMENT Citation Only James Brady.

A good deal of academic attention has been focused on the iconographic analysis of Maya painted ceramics, principally from the Late Classic Period and to a lesser extent from the Early Classic. The tradition, however, begins in the first century A.D. during the protoclassic ceramic stage. Virtually no analysis has been undertaken on these earliest Maya artistic expressions probably because the motifs are largely geometric and figural representations are rare. I compiled a motif inventory from...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Cinthia M. Campos. José Luis Punzo-Diaz.

The Cueva de la Huachizca is a tectonic cave formed within a basaltic flow in the municipio of Salvador Escalante just south of Lake Patzcuaro, Michoacán. The cave was initially recorded in 2014 by Dr. Jose Luis Punzo-Diaz as part of Proyecto Arqueología y Paisaje del Area Centro Sur de Michoacán (PAPACSM). An investigation of the cave conducted this summer recorded pecked petroglyphs of a man facing an eagle, above a spiral motif. These motifs resemble those from contact period Codice de...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Allan Cobb. Linda Palit.

Handprints and stencils are ubiquitous elements in rock art throughout the world. Numerous well preserved examples have been noted in Maya caves. These elements provide a clue as to the sex of the person whose hand is recorded on the cave wall. Recent studies have shown that sex may be estimated with a high degree of accuracy using anthropometric hand measurements. Sex is estimated by applying a variety of mathematical models based on sexual dimorphism in hand dimensions to direct measurement...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Rebecca Sload.

The predominant view is that the paucity of material remains from the cave under the Sun Pyramid is attributable to looting, often described as exhaustive. This paper disputes that speculation, based on lack of evidence and, more convincingly, on a paucity of material remains from contexts that could not possibly have been looted any time after Teotihuacanos applied concrete to the cave in the mid-third century CE. I present evidence for timing, termination ritual, sealing of termination...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Dominique Rissolo. Michael R. Hess. Jose Huchim Herrera. Fabio Esteban Amador.

Satunsat, or the Labyrinth, at Oxkintok is one of the most unique structures in the Maya lowlands. Inside this otherwise unremarkable terraced building platform are interconnected vaulted passageways that span three levels. In addition to functioning as an observatory, Satunsat has also been interpreted as a symbolic cave, and was in fact referred to as a cave by the residents of Maxcanu during the 19th century. The phenomenon of architectural caves is well documented and lies along the...