Into the Darkness: Analyzing the Midnight Terror Cave Artifact Assemblage and its Spatial Implications

Summary

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

From 2008-2010, California State University, Los Angeles, working under the Western Belize Regional Cave Project directed by Jaime Awe, investigated Midnight Terror Cave (MTC) in the Cayo District of Belize. At present, MTC is best known for its large human osteological assemblage of over 10,000 bones, which is well documented in the bioarchaeological literature. Less well-known is that the survey also recovered a large number of artifacts that have received scant attention. This presentation analyzes the MTC collection within the larger context of our knowledge of Maya cave artifact assemblages to highlight its unique characteristics. Additionally, this research analyzes the spatial distribution of collection within the cave to draw conclusions about the use of artifacts and the function of space within caves.

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

Spatial Coverage

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 39046.0