Correcting Interpretive Miscues with the Cueva de Sangre

Summary

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

The Petexbatun Regional Cave Survey, working for three seasons from 1990 – 1993, was the largest cave project ever conducted in the Maya area. While investigating 22 caves and 11 km of passage, the survey collected a large assemblage of human skeletal material that had the potential for clarifying the nature of human remains in caves. That potential was never realized. The Cal State LA Subterranean Bioarchaeology Project has initiated a program to rectify the situation by reanalyzing and reinterpreting the Petexbatun cave assemblages. This presentation begins the process with a consideration of the Cueva de Sangre, the largest and most complex of the Dos Pilas caves. A major flaw of the previous analysis is its lumping all the caves together, negating a consideration of the varied contexts of the individual caves. For example, a considerable stretch of passage from the main entrance in the Cueva de Sangre consists of a muddy, seasonally inundated trench filled with human bone, artifacts, and ceramics. Bone in lower passages were recovered from a flowing river. No attempt was made to relate the depositional pattern to known cases in the archaeological literature with Alberto Ruz never being consulted.

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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Spatial Coverage

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 38576.0