Juvenile Death and Ancestor Veneration: Comparing Child Burials of the Preclassic Maya at K’axob and Cuello, Belize

Summary

Recently, children have been a growing focus of mortuary analysis as archaeologists have been interested in how past societies responded to childhood mortality. This study is a comparative analysis of two Preclassic Maya sites, K’axob and Cuello, and the child burials, 25 and 19 burials respectively. The age ranges of the individuals are infant, child, and adolescent. Placement of the burial, burial offerings, type of grave, and other variables are analyzed to determine how children were incorporated into ancestor veneration and a part of ensouling the house among the Early Maya, perhaps as a precursor to the practice in Classic Maya mortuary ritual. The study contrasts patterns between children inside domiciles and children buried with an adult versus children buried outside residences and not with adults. It is hypothesized that children buried with adults and inside domiciles provide evidence that children were part of ancestor veneration during the Preclassic.

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This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 80th Annual Meeting, San Francisco, CA (2015)

Keywords

Spatial Coverage