Multidisciplinary Approaches to the Subterranean

DOCUMENT Citation Only Roxanne Mayoral. Teegan Boyd. Michele Bleuze. James Brady.

This is an abstract from the "Multidisciplinary Approaches to the Subterranean" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Cueva de Sangre is a 3.5-kilometer cave that is a highly complex, multi-cave system, in Dos Pilas, Petén, Guatemala, that includes riverine environments, seasonally inundated passages as well as dry areas. Use of the cave has been dated ceramically from the Late Preclassic to the Terminal Classic (400 BC – AD 800). This study examines the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Teegan Boyd. Roxanne Mayoral. James Brady. Michele Bleuze.

This is an abstract from the "Multidisciplinary Approaches to the Subterranean" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Commingled, fragmentary assemblages of skeletal remains present many complications for analysis; however, there is still much information to be gleaned from the study of them. An example of this is the skeletal assemblage from Cueva de Sangre in Guatemala, an extensive, 3.5km long cave system; its use has been ceramically dated from the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only James Brady. Ann Scott.

This is an abstract from the "Multidisciplinary Approaches to the Subterranean" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Petexbatun Regional Cave Survey, working for three seasons from 1990 – 1993, was the largest cave project ever conducted in the Maya area. While investigating 22 caves and 11 km of passage, the survey collected a large assemblage of human skeletal material that had the potential for clarifying the nature of human remains in caves....

DOCUMENT Citation Only Carlos Rincon Mautner.

This is an abstract from the "Multidisciplinary Approaches to the Subterranean" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Rectilinear planes cut into one of the gypsum outcrops near the base of the north face of Cerro Mequitongo, the hillock that rises above the south end of the massive Purrón Dam, created a subterranean space. The labor invested in excavating this man-made cave (Tc-511), its walls plastered with a thin veneer of stucco and decorated with...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Nicholas Puente. Sarah Kurnick. Ethan Abbe.

This is an abstract from the "Multidisciplinary Approaches to the Subterranean" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. As rainwater seeps into caves over millions of years, it creates calcium carbonate formations known as speleothems. Ancient Maya peoples associated speleothems with the Earth Monster’s fangs, the Serpent Deity, and caves from which Chahk, the rain god, brings rain. As such, speleothems are animate embodiments of fertility and ritually...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Guillermo De Anda.

This is an abstract from the "Multidisciplinary Approaches to the Subterranean" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. During the Terminal Classic and Postclassic periods, Chichen Itza became an important pilgrimage center. People from all over Mesoamerica came to the Maya Lowlands to make special offerings to Chichen Itza's sacred well. Paleoclimate studies indicate that a severe drought occurred during that period of time. This may have lasted a decade...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Michele Bleuze. James Brady.

This is an abstract from the "Multidisciplinary Approaches to the Subterranean" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Petexbatun Regional Cave Survey, operating as a subproject of the Petexbatun Regional Archaeological Project from 1990 – 1993, was the largest Maya cave project ever conducted. Centered at the important site of Dos Pilas in the Department of Petén, Guatemala, the cave survey recovered a large and important human skeletal assemblage...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Ernesto Morales.

This is an abstract from the "Multidisciplinary Approaches to the Subterranean" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. As early as 1910, Manuel Gamio called attention to what he termed cavernas in the Chalchihuites area of Zacatecas. Later, in the 1960s, Charles Kelly and Philip Weigand labelled these features mines and proposed that they supplied Teotihuacan with turquoise. It has since been shown that the area is not a turquoise producing area....

DOCUMENT Citation Only Scott Nicolay.

This is an abstract from the "Multidisciplinary Approaches to the Subterranean" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Over two dozen cave shrines are known from the Mimbres Mogollon region, more than have been reported from any other cultural region in the United States Southwest and Northwest Mexico (SW/NW). Despite some variation, the archaeological record of these sites is remarkably consistent and readily allows for their identification as shrines...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jeffrey Rosa Figueroa.

This is an abstract from the "Multidisciplinary Approaches to the Subterranean" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. From 2008-2010, California State University, Los Angeles, working under the Western Belize Regional Cave Project directed by Jaime Awe, investigated Midnight Terror Cave (MTC) in the Cayo District of Belize. At present, MTC is best known for its large human osteological assemblage of over 10,000 bones, which is well documented in the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Michael Prout.

This is an abstract from the "Multidisciplinary Approaches to the Subterranean" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Cueva de los Quetzales was initially reported in 1991 by the Petexbatun Regional Cave Survey and more intensively investigated in 1993 in conjunction with the Altas Arquqológico de Guatemala’s excavation of the surface site of Las Pacayas. The site is located 12 km south of Dos Pilas and 7.5 km east of Aguateca. The cave is noteworthy...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Cristina Verdugo. James Brady. Lars Fehren-Schmitz.

This is an abstract from the "Multidisciplinary Approaches to the Subterranean" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Since 2014, the Midnight Terror Cave (MTC) osteological assemblage has been subjected to archaeological, skeletal, isotopic, and paleogenomic analyses generating new insights regarding the use of the cave space as well as the individuals found within it. The thousands of human remains, animal bones, ceramics, and artifacts, have pushed us...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Nicholas Poister. Steve Baumann. Richard Greene.

This is an abstract from the "Multidisciplinary Approaches to the Subterranean" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. After more than a century of sustained looting, the lava tube caves of El Malpais have lost volumes from what was once an unparalleled record of cave use by Ancestral Pueblo people. Occasionally, artifacts stolen from the caves appear on public auction blocks, offering a brief glimpse of what used to be. In general, archaeologists seeking...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Erin Sears.

This is an abstract from the "Multidisciplinary Approaches to the Subterranean" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. An accidental discovery by bulldozer of an ancient Maya ceramic workshop has created a post-civil war chapter of exploration in central Alta Verapaz. The site of Aragón lies at the base of a mountain, near the headwaters of what becomes the Usumacinta drainage. Its Late Classic-Terminal figural contents represent a range of ritual and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Christina Iglesias. Ann Scott.

This is an abstract from the "Multidisciplinary Approaches to the Subterranean" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Twenty years ago, Ann Scott presented "The Historical Context of the Founding of Maya Cave Archaeology" at the SAA meetings in Montreal documenting the history of Maya cave archaeology from the 1970s to its emergence as a self-conscious field in 1997. It is fitting, therefore, that this presentation considers the expansion the field has...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Neil E. Kohanski.

This is an abstract from the "Multidisciplinary Approaches to the Subterranean" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This paper seeks to explore the pivotal role of ethnographic analogy in archaeological research, with a focus on the Maya ritual within subterranean spaces. While ethnographic analogy remains indispensable to the archaeological enterprise, it has faced significant resistance within the archaeological community. This presentation aims to...