Investigating Ancient Beverages from Cerro Maya, Belize through Chemical Residue Analysis.

Summary

Ceremonial vessels used by the ancient Maya are common archaeological findings, and are thought to have contained beverages made from cacao, maize and other plants of ritual and economic importance. Increasingly, methods of chemical analysis able to detect trace levels of organic compounds are being applied to the investigation of these artifacts. Two whole pottery vessels from the site of Cerro Maya, Belize were selected from the collection at the Florida Museum of Natural History at the University of Florida to undergo mass spectrometry. Goals of this testing were to determine if any chemical traces were recoverable and identifiable that would help reveal what ingredients may have been included. Both vessels were from well protected burial contexts and were in good preservational condition. One had undergone field washing and curation, while the other was unwashed. Both vessels underwent ultra-high performance liquid chromatography-high resolution mass spectrometry at the University of Florida. Results from both items were positive for multiple chemical biomarkers associated with cacao and other ingredients. Among the implications of these results are that washed pottery artifacts in museum collections may be a valuable source of such information.

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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