Ritual Fires and Ancient Maya Termination Deposits at Naachtun (Guatemala): An Archaeobotanical Perspective

Summary

Termination rituals have been a well-documented practice among ancient Maya societies. Generally including the spread of broken artifacts on floors, the manipulation of ancestor bones, and the intentional destruction of architectural structures, termination deposits are believed to have served to symbolically "kill" a building at the time of its abandonment. Regardless of the nature or function of these different deposits, their frequent association with ashes, charcoal and burn marks clearly attests that fire was a central element in the ritual practices they originate from. Fire must have been necessary to burn incense, as it is the case in modern societies. But the complexity and the variability observed in the composition termination deposits encourage to consider that fires associated with them were also intentionally composed, implying a more complex relation to the vegetal world as materialized by wood and plants. This paper presents an archaeobotanical study of termination deposits dated from the Terminal Classic period (AD 830-1000) at Naachtun (Northern Petén, Guatemala), which aimed to better characterize their formation process and socio-cultural significance.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• The Use of Plants in Ancient Rituals: New Perspectives from Paleoethnobotany   •
• Society for American Archaeology 82nd Annual Meeting, Vancouver, BC (2017)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 15108