Ceremony and Ritual: Preclassic Maya Round Structures from the Medicinal Trail Community

Summary

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

Excavations at the Medicinal Trail Community, an Ancient Maya farming village in northwestern Belize, have revealed two Late Preclassic round structures. One structure is from Group A and has a diameter of 3 m, it is located below the surface in the center of a formal residential group. The other is over 20 m in diameter and located below the surface in the center of Group M, a formal ceremonial center. In each example, the burial of the structures is associated with elaborate termination rituals including the placement of cache offerings. Structure A-Sub-1 was buried in the Late Preclassic and the space was reorganized from ceremonial to residential, while Structure M-Sub-2 appears to have been buried in the Late to Terminal Classic. Generally considered to be a rare architectural form in the region, these open platforms are believed to be used in ceremonial performances and may be ancestral shrines. Data from the round structures at the Medicinal Trail Community support this interpretation. This poster will describe each of the round structures and will compare them to others in the Maya area.

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): 53891