Understanding the Ritual of Peri-abandonment Deposit Behavior Evidenced by Late Classic Maya Figurines at the Site of Baking Pot, Cayo District, Belize

Summary

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

The Belize Valley Archaeological Reconnaissance Project is an archaeological field school operating in the Cayo District of Western Belize and has excavated at multiple sites in Belize annually since 1988. In the past five years, the project has focused on excavation of peri-abandonment deposits, or deposits of artifacts built up during and after the abandonment of city centers during the Late Classic period of Maya history (approximately 750 – 900 AD). This poster will present data on two specific artifact types, ceramic figurines and musical instruments, that were recovered from peri-abandonment deposits at the site of Baking Pot, Cayo District, Belize. In looking at these figurines and instruments, this poster will first detail the iconography of the Baking Pot collection, which includes 234 items. Next, a brief discussion of the composition of the collection will be outlined, showing categorical differentiation of the items into groups of figurines versus instruments, hand-made versus mold-made items, and anthropomorphic, zoomorphic, and unknown representations (with unknown representations being undiagnostic fragments of these items). Finally, the poster will discuss hypotheses of ritual behavior, and conclude why these items were included in these specific peri-abandonment deposits made by the Maya of Baking Pot during the Late Classic.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 84th Annual Meeting, Albuquerque, NM (2019)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 25366