Ceremonial Fauna from the Holmul Region

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Recent Investigations in Maya Archaeology, Epigraphy, Bioarchaeology, and Zooarchaeology by the Holmul Archaeological Project in Northeastern Peten, Guatemala" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

The large site of Holmul and its neighboring centers lay at the heart of the lowland Maya region, and were together involved in related ceremonial activities throughout the Preclassic and Classic periods. This paper reviews 24 years of excavated fauna from the Holmul region, with a focus on animals found associated with ceremonial contexts. The faunal record from this region includes bones, shells, and coral, all of which hint at performances that involved animals in one form or another, alive or dead. Animals were not only sacrificial offerings, but also provided materials for clothing, tools, and ceremonial equipment such as musical instruments, decorative fans, and paint pots. The Holmul fauna shares strong temporal continuity with trends that came and went throughout parts of the broader Maya region, such as the caching of Spondylus oysters with cinnabar and the use of tessellated shells to form intricate mosaics on costumes. However, it also contains a few unique specimens, such as a bezoar offering from a deer’s stomach and a mantle of drilled terrestrial snails in a human burial. The plethora of animals from the Holmul region provide windows into the complexity of Maya ceremonial displays over time.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Recent Investigations in Maya Archaeology, Epigraphy, Bioarchaeology, and Zooarchaeology by the Holmul Archaeological Project in Northeastern Peten, Guatemala   •
• Society for American Archaeology 90th Annual Meeting, Denver, CO (2025)

Keywords

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 50180