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The Classic Maya used dedication rituals to sanctify their living spaces and family members by associating their physical world with supernatural concepts through religious practice. The existence of such rituals is inferred from the frequent occurrence of so-called 'dedication' or 'votive' cache deposits in an archaeological context.
Caches can be found in the Maya common places and public buildings, which contained objects made or found by commoners. [1] More specifically, these caches were usually found in fields or family altars, and contained less valuable materials such as ceramic vessels, copal, food, and drink. [1] These dedication cache materials relate more closely to household tasks, such as preparing food or working a field. The content and placement of these caches suggests a request for aid in acquiring daily necessities, such as food, as they dedicated their work places and homes to deities in exchange for a better harvest or other living needs. These contents also relate closely to the common mesoamerican idea that the people have an obligation to nourish the life-providing Earth as it does them.
A hoard or "wealth deposit" is an archaeological term for a collection of valuable objects or artifacts, sometimes purposely buried in the ground, in which case it is sometimes also known as a cache. This would usually be with the intention of later recovery by the hoarder; hoarders sometimes died or were unable to return for other reasons before retrieving the hoard, and these surviving hoards might then be uncovered much later by metal detector hobbyists, members of the public, and archaeologists.
The location of a cache in relation to others can also play a significant role in dedication rituals. At the Classic Maya site in Tonina, three caches covered by a circular stone mark the north, south, and center of a ballcourt alley. [2] The north and south caches contained eight obsidian blades, likely used in bloodletting, whereas the center cache contained nine. [2] The number nine represents death and the underworld, dedicating the ballcourt to those concepts and deity, as well as emphasizing the directions of the Earth. Including this example, caches mark the center of nine ballcourts across Belize, Chiapas, and Central Mexico. [2] Ballcourts were commissioned by the elite, and hosted ritual activities for the elite and commoners, associating them with power and wealth. These caches then dedicated the ballcourts, including their power and rituals, to Classic Maya deities.
A Mesoamerican ballcourt is a large masonry structure of a type used in Mesoamerica for over 2,700 years to play the Mesoamerican ballgame, particularly the hip-ball version of the ballgame. More than 1,300 ballcourts have been identified, 60% in the last 20 years alone. Although there is a tremendous variation in size, in general all ballcourts are the same shape: a long narrow alley flanked by two walls with horizontal, vertical, and sloping faces. Although the alleys in early ballcourts were open-ended, later ballcourts had enclosed end-zones, giving the structure an
Obsidian is a naturally occurring volcanic glass formed as an extrusive igneous rock.
Bloodletting was the ritualized self-cutting or piercing of an individual's body that served a number of ideological and cultural functions within ancient Mesoamerican societies, in particular the Maya. When performed by ruling elites, the act of bloodletting was crucial to the maintenance of sociocultural and political structure. Bound within the Mesoamerican belief systems, bloodletting was used as a tool to legitimize the ruling lineage's socio-political position and, when enacted, was important to the perceived well-being of a given society or settlement.
Dedication rituals through burial were most common in the Maya highlands, in which they were used to commemorate dead ancestors, make an offering to their deities, and give life or nourishment to the community or structure the ritual serves. [2]
Sacrifice is the offering of food, objects or the lives of animals or humans to a higher purpose, in particular divine beings, as an act of propitiation or worship. While sacrifice often implies the ritual killing of an animal, the term offering can be used for bloodless sacrifices of food or artifacts. For offerings of liquids (beverages) by pouring, the term libation is used.
In Maya cultures, elites were buried as cremations in urns. [1] Dedicated to their power, large ritual structures such as temples were built above these burials. [1] The Maya Tikal Triple Ballcourt held two young female burials placed facing each other inside benches located under a central structure. [2] Dedicatory burials are unique in that they utilize ancestors to worship ancestors, as well as provide an offering that had also once provided offerings to their deities, signifying both power and life-giving.
Tikal is the ruin of an ancient city, which was likely to have been called Yax Mutal, found in a rainforest in Guatemala. It is one of the largest archaeological sites and urban centers of the pre-Columbian Maya civilization. It is located in the archaeological region of the Petén Basin in what is now northern Guatemala. Situated in the department of El Petén, the site is part of Guatemala's Tikal National Park and in 1979 it was declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
Bodily sacrifice was commonplace in dedication rituals, whether in bloodletting or sacrificing a war victim, one of the many sacrificial rituals employed in Mesoamerica and perhaps during war the chief's daughter just for good luck . Sacrifice specifically represents a returning of life to the Earth and deities, who were seen as life-providers for the Mesoamerican people. The importance of sacrifice in Classic Maya culture can be seen in Structure O-13 at Piedras Negras where vessels of obsidian blades, stingray spines, and other bloodletting utensils lined the pathway along the structure. [3] These materials increased in count along the pathway, leading to a main room in which sacrifice rituals took place. [3] These materials and their context clearly dedicate Structure O-13 to deity worship through sacrificial offerings.
Sacrifice was a religious activity in Maya culture, involving either the killing of animals or the bloodletting by members of the community, in rituals superintended by priests. Sacrifice has been a feature of almost all pre-modern societies at some stage of their development and for broadly the same reason: to propitiate or fulfill a perceived obligation towards the gods.
Piedras Negras is the modern name for a ruined city of the pre-Columbian Maya civilization located on the north bank of the Usumacinta River in the Petén department of northeastern Guatemala. Piedras Negras is one of the most powerful of the Usumacinta ancient Maya urban centers. Occupation at Piedras Negras is known from the Late Preclassic period onward, based on dates retrieved from epigraphic information found on multiple stelae and altars at the site. Piedras Negras is an archaeological site known for its large sculptural output when compared to other ancient Maya sites. The wealth of sculpture, in conjunction with the precise chronological information associated with the lives of elites of Piedras Negras, has allowed archaeologists to reconstruct the political history of the Piedras Negras polity and its geopolitical footprint.
Sacred writings were also used as dedicatory devices in ritual structures. The art of writing was controlled by the elite in Mesoamerica, and the skill passed down linearly. An example of this can be seen in Classic Maya Chichen Itza, in which elite women created architectural texts dedicating structures to their female ancestors and patron deities. [4] These gender-specific deities were given significant attention through the dedication of structures in their possession. Structure 23 in Yaxchilan embodies this concept with sacred writings, often including an initial glyph, verb, noun, prepositional phrase, and most importantly, the name of a possessor of the structure. [4] This is so significant in dedication ritual because writing the name of a possessor to which the structure is dedicated gives permanence to that ownership. The quality of permanence held in writing dedication rituals gives power and importance to the relationship it creates.
Maya script, also known as Maya glyphs, was the writing system of the Maya civilization of Mesoamerica and is the only Mesoamerican writing system that has been substantially deciphered. The earliest inscriptions found which are identifiably Maya date to the 3rd century BCE in San Bartolo, Guatemala. Maya writing was in continuous use throughout Mesoamerica until the Spanish conquest of the Maya in the 16th and 17th centuries.
Chichen Itza was a large pre-Columbian city built by the Maya people of the Terminal Classic period. The archaeological site is located in Tinúm Municipality, Yucatán State, Mexico.
El Caracol, the Observatory, is a unique structure at pre-Columbian Maya civilization site of Chichen Itza. El Caracol, which means 'snail' in Spanish, is so named due to the spiral staircase inside the tower.
As the complement and counterpart of dedication ritual, termination ritual serves to destroy the link between a structure and the deity to which it was dedicated. In Temple XIV of Cerros, Belize, jade artifacts were found scattered and smashed on the floor of the temple, which had presumably once served in dedication caches for the same temple. [3] Destroying these creations ceases their representation of the cosmos and religious ideas and ends the relationship between those ideas and the structure.
Copán is an archaeological site of the Maya civilization in the Copán Department of western Honduras, not far from the border with Guatemala. It was the capital city of a major Classic period kingdom from the 5th to 9th centuries AD. The city was in the extreme southeast of the Mesoamerican cultural region, on the frontier with the Isthmo-Colombian cultural region, and was almost surrounded by non-Maya peoples.
Altun Ha is the name given to the ruins of an ancient Mayan city in Belize, located in the Belize District about 50 kilometres (31 mi) north of Belize City and about 10 kilometres (6.2 mi) west of the shore of the Caribbean Sea. The site covers an area of about 8 square kilometres (3.1 sq mi).
The Mesoamerican ballgame was a sport with ritual associations played since 1400 B.C. by the pre-Columbian people of Ancient Mesoamerica. The sport had different versions in different places during the millennia, and a newer more modern version of the game, ulama, is still played in a few places by the indigenous population.
Quiriguá is an ancient Maya archaeological site in the department of Izabal in south-eastern Guatemala. It is a medium-sized site covering approximately 3 square kilometres (1.2 sq mi) along the lower Motagua River, with the ceremonial center about 1 km (0.6 mi) from the north bank. During the Maya Classic Period (AD 200–900), Quiriguá was situated at the juncture of several important trade routes. The site was occupied by 200, construction on the acropolis had begun by about 550, and an explosion of grander construction started in the 8th century. All construction had halted by about 850, except for a brief period of reoccupation in the Early Postclassic. Quiriguá shares its architectural and sculptural styles with the nearby Classic Period city of Copán, with whose history it is closely entwined.
El Perú, is a pre-Columbian Maya archeological site occupied during the Preclassic and Classic cultural chronology periods. The site was the capital of a Maya city-state and is located near the banks of the San Pedro River in the Department of Petén of northern Guatemala. El Perú is 60 km (37 mi) west of Tikal.
Cerros is an Eastern Lowland Maya archaeological site in northern Belize that functioned from the Late Preclassic to the Postclassic period. The site reached its apogee during the Mesoamerican Late Preclassic and at its peak, it held a population of approximately 1,089 people. The site is strategically located on a peninsula at the mouth of the New River where it empties into Chetumal Bay on the Caribbean coast. As such, the site had access to and served as an intermediary link between the coastal trade route that circumnavigated the Yucatán Peninsula and inland communities. The inhabitants of Cerros constructed an extensive canal system and utilized raised-field agriculture.
The traditional Maya religion of Guatemala, Belize, western Honduras, and the Tabasco, Chiapas, and Yucatán regions of Mexico is a southeastern variant of Mesoamerican religion. As is the case with many other contemporary Mesoamerican religions, it results from centuries of symbiosis with Roman Catholicism. When its pre-Spanish antecedents are taken into account, however, traditional Maya religion already exists for more than two millennia as a recognizably distinct phenomenon. Before the advent of Christianity, it was spread over many indigenous kingdoms, with all their own local traditions. Today, it coexists and interacts with pan-Mayan syncretism, the 're-invention of tradition' by the Pan-Maya movement, and Christianity in its various denominations.
The Zapotec civilization was an indigenous pre-Columbian civilization that flourished in the Valley of Oaxaca in Mesoamerica. Archaeological evidence shows that their culture goes back at least 2,500 years. The Zapotec left archaeological evidence at the ancient city of Monte Albán in the form of buildings, ball courts, magnificent tombs and grave goods including finely worked gold jewelry. Monte Albán was one of the first major cities in Mesoamerica and the center of a Zapotec state that dominated much of the territory that today belongs to the Mexican state of Oaxaca.
Death rituals were an important part of Maya religion. The Maya greatly respected death; they were taught to fear it and grieved deeply for the dead. They also believed that certain deaths were more noble than others.
Classic Veracruz culture refers to a cultural area in the north and central areas of the present-day Mexican state of Veracruz, a culture that existed from roughly 100 to 1000 CE, or during the Classic era.
The Maya civilization was a Mesoamerican civilization developed by the Maya peoples, and noted for its logosyllabic script—the most sophisticated and highly developed writing system in pre-Columbian Americas—as well as for its art, architecture, mathematics, calendar, and astronomical system. The Maya civilization developed in an area that encompasses southeastern Mexico, all of Guatemala and Belize, and the western portions of Honduras and El Salvador. This region consists of the northern lowlands encompassing the Yucatán Peninsula, and the highlands of the Sierra Madre, running from the Mexican state of Chiapas, across southern Guatemala and onwards into El Salvador, and the southern lowlands of the Pacific littoral plain.
Various sorts of dogs are known to have existed in prehispanic Mesoamerica, as shown by archaeological and iconographical sources, and the testimonies of the 16th-century Spaniards. In the Central Mexican area, there were three races: the medium-sized furred dog (itzcuintli), the medium-sized hairless dog (xoloitzcuintli), and the short-legged, (tlalchichi) based in Colima and now extinct. Apart from other, more obvious functions, dogs were also used for food and ritual sacrifice.
Most of the ancient civilizations of Mesoamerica such as the Olmec, Maya, Mixtec, Zapotec and Aztec cultures practiced some kind of taking of human trophies during warfare. Captives taken during war would often be taken to their captors' city-states where they would be ritually tortured and sacrificed. These practices are documented by a rich material of iconographic and archaeological evidence from across Mesoamerica.
Cuello is a Maya archaeological site in northern Belize. The site is that of a farming village with a long occupational history. It was originally dated to 2000 BC, but these dates have now been corrected and updated to around 1200 BC. Its inhabitants lived in pole-and-thatch houses that were built on top of low plaster-coated platforms. The site contains residential groups clustered around central patios. It also features the remains of a steam bath dating to approximately 900 BC, making it the oldest steam bath found to date in the Maya lowlands. Human burials have been associated with the residential structures; the oldest have no surviving burial relics, but from 900 BC onwards, they were accompanied by offerings of ceramic vessels.
The Maya Research Program is a US-based non-profit organization (501C3) that sponsors archaeological and ethnographic research in Middle America. Each summer since 1992, they have sponsored archaeological fieldwork at the ancient Maya site of Blue Creek in northwestern Belize.
During the pre-Columbian era, human sacrifice in Maya culture was the ritual offering of nourishment to the gods. Blood was viewed as a potent source of nourishment for the Maya deities, and the sacrifice of a living creature was a powerful blood offering. By extension, the sacrifice of a human life was the ultimate offering of blood to the gods, and the most important Maya rituals culminated in human sacrifice. Generally only high status prisoners of war were sacrificed, with lower status captives being used for labour.
Caracol is the name given to a large ancient Maya archaeological site, located in what is now the Cayo District of Belize. It is situated approximately 40 kilometres south of Xunantunich and the town of San Ignacio Cayo, and 15 kilometers away from the Macal River. It rests on the Vaca Plateau at an elevation of 500 meters above sea-level, in the foothills of the Maya Mountains. Long thought to be a tertiary center, it is now known that the site was one of the most important regional political centers of the Maya Lowlands during the Classic Period. Caracol covered approximately 200 square kilometers, covering an area much larger than present-day Belize City and supported more than twice the modern city's population.
