Putting the Pieces Together: Paleogenomics and Bioarchaeology at Midnight Terror Cave

Summary

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

Since 2014, the Midnight Terror Cave (MTC) osteological assemblage has been subjected to archaeological, skeletal, isotopic, and paleogenomic analyses generating new insights regarding the use of the cave space as well as the individuals found within it. The thousands of human remains, animal bones, ceramics, and artifacts, have pushed us to consider Maya ritual and belief, in general, as well as its application within the cave itself. We have re-examined the role of women in ritual and sacrifice, age difference between sexes, and post-mortem mortuary practices. In this presentation, we synthesize the data to understand how the MTC population fits into the larger Maya landscape. Using genomic data obtained from nineteen individuals from Midnight Terror Cave, Belize and Dos Pilas, Guatemala, we examine the population genomics of the human remains recovered from both caves as well as how they fit into the large landscape. Combining the results of this decade long interdisciplinary analysis, we now have a clearer picture for how MTC was used, how people moved through the space, and the implications for the study of human sacrifice.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

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

Keywords

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 38817.0