Balché Consumption among the Ancient Maya: Bees, Honey, and Ritual Practice

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.

In this paper we discuss our recent absorbed residue study of a marble Ulúa style vase found at the Pacbitun site in Belize. In that study, we detected evidence for the consumption of the ritual drink balché dating to Terminal Classic period (800–850 CE). Consumption of balché is discussed in historic text, recognized in modern practice, and hinted at in Classic period imagery, but ours is the first study to detect it from an archaeological context. Balché is a fermented drink whose two key ingredients are honey and the bark of the balché tree. Compounds in balché bark produce a heightened sense of euphoria and emotional awareness. In modern Mayan ritual practice, balché is consumed at ritual occasions that build community solidarity and contact deities. Christina Luke has argued the imagery on Ulúa vases references creation and are often found in contexts emphasizing placemaking. The consumption of balché from them would have served to contact deities whose approval was required for rituals that ensouled buildings, remade sacred landscapes, and legitimized rulers. Our identification of balché in an Ulúa vase recovered in Belize illustrates the key role that honey and Melipona bees played in ritual practices of the ancient Maya.

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): 39048.0