Considerations of Depositional Context for the Commingled, Fragmentary Skeletal Assemblage from the Cave Environment at Cueva de Sangre, Guatemala

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Multidisciplinary Approaches to the Subterranean" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Commingled, fragmentary assemblages of skeletal remains present many complications for analysis; however, there is still much information to be gleaned from the study of them. An example of this is the skeletal assemblage from Cueva de Sangre in Guatemala, an extensive, 3.5km long cave system; its use has been ceramically dated from the Late Preclassic to the Terminal Classic (400 BC - 800 AD). An important aspect to analyze in these situations is the factors that may have contributed to the placement of the skeletal elements because this can help to separate intentional cultural practices from other agents such as taphonomic processes. Deciphering if bones may have been moved as part of a cultural ritual, disturbed, or by taphonomic agents, can have great implications for how we interpret mortuary practices in archaeological contexts, especially since the resulting placement can be multifactorial. The goal of the present study is to evaluate the context of the skeletal assemblage from the cave environment at Cueva de Sangre in terms of deposition within each chamber, including a discussion of the limitations of depositional terminology originally designed for describing burial environments when being applied to surface scattered remains and non-burial assemblages in a subterranean context.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Multidisciplinary Approaches to the Subterranean   •
• Society for American Archaeology 89th Annual Meeting, New Orleans, LA (2024)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 40212.0