Stingless Beeswax in Mesoamerican Investment Casting Processes

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Adventures in Beekeeping: Recent Studies in Ecology, Archaeology, History, and Ethnography in Yucatán" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Mesoamerican metal objects have been studied in-depth in terms of alloys and production techniques, but little work has focused on the foundry materials used in the prehispanic casting process. In modern foundry practice, synthetic waxes, paraffins, or processed European honeybee wax (from the Apis genus) are commonly used as pattern materials for lost-wax (or investment) casting. In the Florentine Codex, Sahagún describes a copal-wax mixture as pattern materials of the Aztec. This paper evaluates the combination of various species of stingless beeswaxes and copal species, in terms of thermal, mechanical, and rheological properties of these blends, and their applicability in casting. Melipona beecheii is a genus known to be cultivated by the Maya, but other stingless bee genera—like Trigona and Frieseomelitta—also inhabit the Maya area. Ethnohistorical sources describe widespread meliponiculture in prehispanic Mesoamerica at Spanish contact. Meliponiculture was common in Northern Yucatán where its products, honey and beeswax, were exchanged as commodities and used to pay provincial taxes. Archaeological evidence suggests that lost-wax casting formed an important component of Postclassic period Maya metallurgical technologies at the urban centers of Mayapan and Lamanai, including metallurgical ceramics and production debris. Beeswax was a prerequisite to developing these technologies.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Adventures in Beekeeping: Recent Studies in Ecology, Archaeology, History, and Ethnography in Yucatán   •
• Society for American Archaeology 89th Annual Meeting, New Orleans, LA (2024)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 38697.0