Fragmentary Ceramic Assemblages as a Record of Ritual Practice at Las Cuevas, Belize

Summary

The most common artifacts found in Maya caves are unslipped and monochrome slipped ceramic sherds. The smashing of ceramic vessels as an element of ritual practice is recorded ethnographically among some twentieth-century Maya groups. Other Maya groups have been documented collecting sherds from domestic middens and depositing them at sacred sites. If caves were venues for the former type of behavior in antiquity, one would expect to find a high percentage of refitting sherds in their assemblages. A lack of consensus exists among scholars as to the prevalence of refitting sherds because these data are rarely provided in reports. The lack of refitting is most acute with unslipped ceramics because, while analysts might spend considerable time attempting to reconstruct a polychrome vessel, few would spend time working with unslipped material. This study seeks new pathways to the decipherment of the cultural processes which led to the formation of ceramic assemblages in Maya caves and is based upon the results of both quantitative and spatial analyses of recently collected data from the Las Cuevas region.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 83rd Annual Meeting, Washington, DC (2018)

Keywords

Spatial Coverage

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 20071