Lost Rites of the Ancient Maya: Esoteric Rituals in Caves

Summary

This is an abstract from the "The Subterranean in Mesoamerican Indigenous Culture and Beyond" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Over the past 30 years archaeologists have made large strides in understanding the function and meaning of ancient Maya ritual caves sites. Ethnographic analyses have made major contributions to interpretive efforts and advanced the field in innumerable ways. Throughout Mesoamerica, there have been many long-term sustained projects, both regional and site specific, that have investigated literally hundreds of caves. This has facilitated comparative approaches between Mesoamerican cave sites, enabling researchers to establish similarities in how caves were used as well as to address regional differences. Patterning in ritual assemblages is often noted, but what goes relatively unnoticed or underrepresented in published works are isolated instances of cave use that I refer to as “lost rites.” These rites are suggested by features and artifact assemblages that are not tied to established patterns and have no obvious analogs in the ethnographic literature, rendering them very difficult to interpret. The Las Cuevas Archaeological Reconnaissance in the Chiquibul Forest Reserve in western Belize documented a number of these esoteric rites. In this paper, I will report on one of the oddest cave deposits encountered by the project—the mysterious molded deposits in Eduardo Quiroz cave.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 86th Annual Meeting, Online (2021)   •
• The Subterranean in Mesoamerican Indigenous Culture and Beyond

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 33341