Recent Radiocarbon Dates from the Shaft and Cave under the Osario at Chichén Itzá: Rethinking the High Priest's Grave

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Studies in Mesoamerican Subterranean Archaeology" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

In the archaeological literature, the Osario at Chichén Itzá has been defined by the 998 A.D. long-count date inscribed on a pillar at the top of the pyramid. Although the pillar could have been added long after the construction of the pyramid, the complex is, nevertheless, consistently treated as a late construction. From the outset, this has been problematic. J.C. Harrington, who mapped the Osario, the shaft, and the cave in the 1920s, discovered the soffit of a vault behind the stones of the shaft suggesting that a vaulted structure stood on the stone platform at the base of the shaft before the pyramid was built. An investigation of the Osario by the Gran Acuífero Maya project collected charcoal from the shaft and the cave. Radiocarbon dating establishes that the earlier structure was terminated and the Osario pyramid was constructed in the early eighth century A.D. Thus, the Osario predates the Castillo.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Studies in Mesoamerican Subterranean Archaeology   •
• Society for American Archaeology 84th Annual Meeting, Albuquerque, NM (2019)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 25417