The Cave-Pyramid Complex: An Assessment of Its Impact after 25 Years

Summary

This is an abstract from the "The Subterranean in Mesoamerican Cultural Landscapes" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

In the 25 years since the publication of “Settlement Configuration and Cosmology: The Role of Caves at Dos Pilas,” a number of significant discoveries of architecture constructed in relation to caves have been made. The discovery of the man-made cave constructed beneath the Pyramid of the Plumed Serpent at Teotihuacan is perhaps the most spectacular. Resistivity data that suggest possible caves beneath the Castillo at Chichén Itzá and the Pyramid of the Moon at Teotihuacan raise the possibility that additional important structures at major sites were involved in the Cave-Pyramid Complex. Despite substantial evidential support for the complex, this paper concludes that it has not had a dramatic impact on archaeological thinking outside of the cave community and discusses the reasons for this.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• The Subterranean in Mesoamerican Cultural Landscapes   •
• Society for American Archaeology 88th Annual Meeting, Portland, OR (2023)

Keywords

Spatial Coverage

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 37053.0