Bighorn Sheep Bone Caches in the Lava Tube Caves of El Malpais National Monument, New Mexico

Summary

This is an abstract from the "The Subterranean in Mesoamerican Indigenous Culture and Beyond" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

The rugged volcanic landscapes of El Malpais National Monument contain over 400 lava tube caves, some of which harbor the most southerly perennial ice in North America. Many of the caves also house the material record of precontact human use in the form of internal architecture, ceramic, and other artifacts. Caches of bighorn sheep (*Ovis canadensis) bones, a species now extirpated from the area, are a reoccurring feature. Some of the caches are deposited in the deepest and most inaccessible chambers of the caves. Early twentieth-century ethnographies note a Puebloan prohibition against damaging the bones of game animals during butchery and cooking as these were designated to be placed on a special shrine. Among the Zuni, this shrine was reportedly located within a cave. The El Malpais bone caches may represent evidence of this ritual practice in antiquity. This would link the remains with a wider ceremonial pattern documented throughout Mesoamerica and still performed today as far south as the Guatemalan highlands. Alternatively, recent Park Service consultation with neighboring Pueblos suggests that ice caves formerly had a pragmatic function: the cold storage of meat. Radiometric and zooarchaeological analyses elucidate the circumstances of deposition of these suggestive faunal caches.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 86th Annual Meeting, Online (2021)   •
• The Subterranean in Mesoamerican Indigenous Culture and Beyond

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 32629