Cave archaeology (Other Keyword)
1-15 (15 Records)
This research focuses on the faunal material from the caves and sacred deposits at Agua Lluvia and along the Dos Hombres to Gran Cacao Archaeology Project in northwestern Belize. The analysis and interpretation of faunal material in caves can be problematic for zooarchaeologists. Unlike other archaeological features, caves have the added complexity of bioturbation, irregular stratigraphy, and inconsistent preservation. Similarly, faunal remains found within caves can easily be disregarded on the...
Architecting the Underworld: What is a Southern Maya Lowland Chultun? (2017)
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...
Architectural Caves and Glyphic Stepped Platforms (2015)
Natural and man-made caves are clearly attested to in myth, iconography and the glyphic corpus as powerful features for the ancient and contemporary Maya. Caves are paramount for they function as entrances into the sacred earth, the most powerful entity of the sacred Maya universe. A third and less explicit category of these subterranean features, although extensively documented (Brady 2011; Rivera Dorado 1993; Tate 1992) in the Maya area, are architectural caves. This latter category, due to...
Caves of the Badlands: A Geospatial Analysis of Cave Archaeology at El Malpais National Monument (2017)
The El Malpais National Monument located roughly 100 miles west of Albuquerque, New Mexico, borders the southern part of the San Juan Basin and the southeastern portion of the Colorado Plateau. The extensive geologic history of volcanic activity has created a seemingly hellish volcanic field rightfully named "the badlands" by Spanish explorers. However, the region is in fact home to a rich cultural history that heavily utilizes the natural environment, including its many cave systems. The...
Contextualizing the Art: Excavations at Oxtotitlán Cave, Guerrero, Mexico (2016)
This paper presents findings from the 2014-2015 field seasons of the Urban Origins Project at Oxtotitlán cave in Guerrero, Mexico. Collaborative archaeological methods at the Quiotepec-Oxtotitlán site resulted in extensive survey, preliminary mapping, and excavations at the cave and in the surrounding area. Excavation units were placed in association with the murals, at the mouth of the rockshelter in the northern part of the cave complex, and in the botanical garden within the protected...
Exploring the Sacred Significance of Cave 2 at Chawak But'o'ob, Belize (2016)
The site of Chawak But'o'ob in the Rio Bravo Conservation and Management Area of northwestern Belize is being investigated by the Rio Bravo Archaeological Survey. The site, located just two kilometers southwest of the minor Preclassic- and Classic-period city of Dos Hombres, is unusual in that it is a modestly sized commoner residential site with a ballcourt. Very unusually, the paired ballcourt buildings are the largest at the site and perhaps along with the adjacent sweat house, are the only...
An Interpretation of the Rock Art in La Cueva de la Huachiza, Santa Clara del Cobre, Michoacán (2017)
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...
Reevaluation of Site Chronology, Subsistence, and Unifacial Lithic Technology at the Connley Caves (35LK50), Lake County, Oregon (2016)
The Connley Caves are a series of rockshelters and caves eroded into a south-facing ridge of Miocene welded tuff, rhyolite and fine-grained basalt in the Fort Rock Basin of Oregon. Initially excavated by Stephen Bedwell in 1967-68, their deeply stratified late Pleistocene-early Holocene deposits produced rich lithic and faunal assemblages potentially associated with earliest radiocarbon ages of 10,600±190 and 11,200±200. The Connley Caves data played a major role in the development of Bedwell’s...
Reverential Termination of the Sun Pyramid Cave, Teotihuacan (2016)
Reverential termination is hypothesized for the human-made cave beneath the Sun Pyramid. While the idea of a mid-third century A.D. termination is not new and is based on radiocarbon dating and construction of blockages in the rear section of the cave and use of concrete, qualifying the termination as reverential is a refinement. The most direct information comes from examination of blockage construction, which is supported by two other lines of evidence. One also lays within the cave and...
Seeking Molecular Evidence of the Ritual Function of Unslipped and Monochrome Slipped Ceramic Types at Naj Tunich, Guatemala (2016)
A large portion of the ceramic assemblage recovered from the Maya cave site of Naj Tunich, Guatemala consists of unslipped and monochrome slipped ceramic types generally considered to be “utilitarian” or “domestic” wares. This identification is based upon type-variety analysis rather than any evidence of the actual use to which they were put. That these ceramics were deposited in conjunction with domestic activities is at odds with the widely accepted interpretation that the Maya employed caves...
Small Sacred Spaces: The Results of Investigations into Subterranean Features at N950 and Grupo Agua Lluvia in northwest Belize. (2015)
This paper explores the ways in which the Maya conceptualized subterranean features as sacred landscapes within the Three Rivers Region in northwest Belize. Contemporary archaeological investigations have suggested that large cave systems served as important locations for rituals. The ubiquity of these features to the Maya indicate that these concepts of sacred space may have extended to regions, and sites without naturally forming caves. This research focuses on the utilization of small...
Some Methodological Problems with the Study of Non-Urban Caves in Northern Belize (2015)
Cave archaeology in northern Belize is poorly developed because the soft dolomitic limestone does not permit the formation of large and impressive caves. Several studies of small caves associated with public architecture have been conducted within the Rio Bravo Conservation Management Area, Orange Walk District, Belize. These studies suggest that caves played much the same role in the sacred geography that has been documented elsewhere in the Maya area. Nevertheless, there are no systematic...
Subadult Human Sacrifices in Midnight Terror Cave (2016)
Children throughout Mesoamerica were preferred sacrificial victims, especially to water deities. Because caves were associated with rain, ethnohistoric sources mention the sacrifice of children in caves. The importance of children in sacrifice was documented early on by Edward Thompson’s dredging of the Cenote of Sacrifice at Chichen Itza. More recently archaeological investigations of caves have recovered and identified the skeletal remains of children that have been interpreted as sacrificial...
Tracing Marks in the Dark: Documenting Mud Glyph Cave by Drawing on Methodology of the Past and Present (2024)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Since the rediscovery and canonization of Paleolithic and precontact cave art, researchers have grappled with different ways to document and reproduce sites containing ancient artwork. Early methods utilized hand drawing in situ and, soon after, cave art reproduction included film photography. Later, digital photography became the primary mode of capturing...
The Urban Origins Project at Quiotepec-Oxtotitlán, Guerrero (2016)
The large Early to Late Formative site of Quiotepec-Oxtotitlán, best known for Oxtotitlán Cave and its associated Middle to Late Formative polychrome murals, is the site of on-going archaeological research since 2012 by the Urban Origins Project. Our goal is twofold: to develop a richly detailed documentation of the art and its physical and chronological context at Quiotepec-Oxotitlán and to investigate the political economic underpinnings of the artistic production and possible elements of a...