Unraveling Ancient Maya Funerary Rituals: Investigating Rare Cremation Practices at the Site of Ucanal through Bioerosion Analysis

Summary

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2025: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

The discovery of two cremation burials at the Maya site of Ucanal, Guatemala in 2019 and 2022 is significant as this practice remains extremely rare during the Classic period (250–950 CE) in the Southern Maya Lowlands. One of the burials, Burial 20-1, was unusual in that it contained four individuals, exhibiting varying degrees of thermal exposure that had been deposited among construction fill of a royal pyramid and lacked a formal tomb, raising questions about the events that took place. The other burial, Burial 21-2, was an adult individual found within a ceramic urn. Advances in techniques for analyzing bone microstructure in archaeological contexts allow us to broaden our understanding of the sequence events surrounding and after death. This study examines evidence for bioerosion on these burned human remains in order to better understand if the bodies were buried prior to cremation or if the cremation was immediate. Histological analyses will be compared to images obtained using micro-CT scanning, a non-invasive method for analyzing human remains. This comparative research advances the potential for non-destructive sampling in the future and refines our understanding of cremation funerary practices in the Maya Lowlands. ***This presentation will include images of human remains.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 90th Annual Meeting, Denver, CO (2025)   •
• SAA 2025: Individual Abstracts

Keywords

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 53644