Venerating Death and Fertility: Implications of Late Terminal Classic Maya Use of Monuments with Skeletal Imagery

Summary

This is an abstract from the "New Perspectives on Ritual Violence and Related Human Body Treatments in Ancient Mesoamerica" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

This paper focuses on specific attestations found on Maya monuments featuring human skeletal iconography and to the concave round depressions used in place of their skulls. Such characteristic representation on monuments is mostly limited to the Maya Puuc region of the western Yucatán Peninsula where it appears to be temporally restricted to the Late Terminal Classic period. Given the chronologically as well as geographically limited distribution of such monuments with concave depressions and skeletal imagery with seemingly no explicit antecedents in the Maya area, the question arises whether these local traditions were rooted in or otherwise influenced by non-Maya cultures of the broader Mesoamerican cultural sphere. This study examines the possible function and use of such monuments exhibiting skeletal iconography by comparing materials with similar concave depressions used as depositories for certain sacrificial offerings in the context of death and fertility symbolism related perhaps to a ritual reenactment of a Central Mexican creation myth.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 86th Annual Meeting, Online (2021)   •
• New Perspectives on Ritual Violence and Related Human Body Treatments in Ancient Mesoamerica

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 33427