The Hills are Filled with Water; the Caves Breathe Rain: An Ideational Landscape Approach to Settlement Distribution at Classic Period Pacbitun, Belize.

Summary

On an isolated, steep-sided hill in the otherwise undifferentiated foothills of the northern Maya Mountains is the site of Sak Pol Pak, a secondary center of the pre-Hispanic (900 BC – AD 900/1000) Maya site, Pacbitun. Sak Pol Pak is a small site encompassing the entire hilltop, with no room for agriculture and is difficult to access, yet it contains the largest pyramid-temple outside of Pacbitun’s epicenter. At the foot of the hill is the deepest, and most complex cave system in the Pacbitun area—a primary landscape drain for the region—as well as several other unrelated karst landmarks. In this paper, we analyze Sak Pol Pak from a Mesoamerican ideational landscape perspective, specifically that mountains, caves, and water were inextricably linked in thought, to propose the site was a significant ceremonial pilgrimage shrine for Pacbitun. Drawing on ethnographic, ethnohistoric and iconographic sources demonstrating mountains were believed to be living guardians of the wildland, and filled with water, while caves were mouths, exhaling aromatic, smoke-like breath, filling the skies with rain clouds, we conclude two of the primary uses of this hilltop shrine were rain and agricultural rituals.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

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

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 20033