Vessels and Bones: Ritual Offerings from the Grupo Kuche Palace Throne Room

Summary

This is an abstract from the "The Bolonchen Regional Archaeological Project: 25 Years of Research in the Puuc" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

During the PARB project’s 2023 excavations of the Terminal Classic (AD 800–1000) Grupo Kuche palace throne room (N1050E0815) at Kiuic, we unearthed two major and distinct ritual offerings. The first was thought to be a lip-to-lip cache located on the northwest corner near the top of the structure beneath a collapsed audience chamber. It was later revealed to be a secondary burial containing several more intricate vessels, including those with incision work, cloisonné decoration with maya blue pigment, and a carved fine-orange piece from the Gulf Coast. The second was a series of dedicatory vessels and artifacts found in excavations below the plaza floor directly in front of the structure’s eastern staircase. Here, we identified at least 12 but upward of 20 vessels given the amount and variance of vessel fragments recovered. The associated artifacts were numerous pieces of shell, obsidian, chert, speleothem, carbon, quartz, and organic materials, including worked shell earrings, chert and obsidian tools, and residual food stuff. In this paper, we discuss the reasons, meanings, and importance of such ritualized behavior in better understanding the inner workings of both the throne room and palace at Kiuic. *This paper and presentation will contain images of human remains.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 89th Annual Meeting, New Orleans, LA (2024)   •
• The Bolonchen Regional Archaeological Project: 25 Years of Research in the Puuc

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 38374.0