Where Water Becomes Stone: A review and methodological considerations of speleothem sourcing via trace elements

Summary

This is an abstract from the "The Subterranean in MesoAmerican Sacred Landscapes: A Multidisciplinary Assessment" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Speleothems are secondary calcium carbonate formations that form within a cave as rainwater drips through the ceiling. Speleothems have been recovered from various surface and subsurface archaeological contexts. The simple, but important, fact that speleothems are cave formations provides a unique way to investigate how ancient Maya peoples engaged with subterranean spaces: doorways to the underworld realm of ancestors and deities and sources of water necessary for agricultural fertility. Indeed, scholars can determine the original cave from which a speleothem was obtained and thereby investigate broader questions of inter- and intra- site social interactions. Put differently, what relationships, such as pilgrimage, desecration, and trade, characterized the interactions that resulted in the movement of speleothems?

This paper reviews the literature pertaining to ancient speleothem movement as well as relevant studies by early speleothem sourcing projects and paleoclimatic research to propose a replicable approach to sourcing speleothems. It first outlines the importance of speleothems to Maya peoples and highlights evidence for speleothem manipulation. Second, it introduces speleogenesis, how speleothems form, and the processes that control the inclusion of source able elements. Third, it analyzes past speleothem sourcing studies and builds on their methods to provide recommendations for provenance analysis.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 90th Annual Meeting, Denver, CO (2025)   •
• The Subterranean in MesoAmerican Sacred Landscapes: A Multidisciplinary Assessment

Keywords

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 50115