Middle Preclassic Marine Shell Production and Ritual Deposition at the Sites of Blackman Eddy and Las Ruinas de Arenal, Belize

Summary

This is an abstract from the "An Exchange of Ideas: Recent Research on Maya Commodities" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Marine shell was a highly valued long-distance trade material for the ancient Maya beginning as early as the Middle Preclassic. Symbolically, marine shell represented the watery underworld and was often used in ritual offerings that reference cosmological ordering of the world. Evidence for Middle Preclassic marine shell bead production, predominately using Strombus, has been identified at several sites in the Belize River valley including Pacbitun, Blackman Eddy, and Cahal Pech. Ritual deposition of marine shell has also been widely documented in the Middle Preclassic in a variety of offerings in both public and private spaces. In this paper we compare Middle Preclassic marine shell production and use at the sites of Blackman Eddy and Las Ruinas de Arenal in order to better understand patterns of purposeful symbolic deposition. At Blackman Eddy, marine shell production debitage was used in ritual deposits, while at Las Ruinas de Arenal, marine shell beads were preferred for ritual offerings. We suggest that economic factors may have contributed to these differences but that the underlying symbolism and cosmological references to the underworld were consistent at both sites.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• An Exchange of Ideas: Recent Research on Maya Commodities   •
• Society for American Archaeology 88th Annual Meeting, Portland, OR (2023)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 36282.0