Ancientg Maya Stone Tools and Ritual Use of Deep Valley Rockshelter, Belize

Abstract

This paper discusses the technological and microscopic use-wear analyses of the chert debitage excavated from Deep Valley Rockshelter. This rockshelter, located in the Caves Branch River Valley of central Belize, was primarily used by the ancient Maya from the Late Preclassic to Terminal Classic periods and may demonstrate a pattern of rockshelter usage by the Classic period Maya. To test whether such a pattern exists, lithic data from Caves Branch Rockshelter and other rockshelters in Belize, specifically those in the Sibun Valley and the Ek Xux Valley, are compared. Interpretations are complicated, however, by the severe mixing of deposits, which makes segregating the lithic artifacts into different reduction or use events nearly impossible. Moreover, this mixing severely hampers reconstructions of diachronic change in stone-tool use in the rockshelter. While acknowledging these limitations, our analysis suggests that the lithics in the rockshelter are primarily the result of reduction and use-related activities that originally occurred at other nearby surface sites rather than in the rockshelter itself. Consequently, the chipped-stone artifacts recovered from this rockshelter most likely result from secondary deposition of debitage for ritual purposes and represent accumulation over many years. We suspect this type of secondary deposition of debitage was also occurring at other rockshelters in Belize, based on comparisons to the chipped stone assemblages from these locations. We cannot discount the possibility that some stone tool production and use may have originally occurred in Deep Valley Rockshelter, but support for this is minimal.

Lithics in the Maya Region: Exploring Gendered Trends in Research in the Last Decade

“…Recent technological studies of items from ritual contexts (Stemp and Awe 2014; Stemp, Peuramaki-Brown, and Awe 2018; Stemp et al 2015Stemp et al , 2017 suggest that they were quotidian tools deposited in ritual settings. Given the use of debitage in caches and burials, classifying lithics as "ritual" versus "quotidian" requires further consideration.…”

“…Most functional analyses in the Maya region are use-wear studies conducted by just a few analysts (Aoyama 2017a;Aoyama, Inomata, Triadan, et al 2017;Aoyama et al 2018;Stemp 2016aStemp , 2016bStemp, Peuramaki-Brown, and Awe 2018;). These discussions emphasize ritual activities like bloodletting (Stemp 2016a;Stemp, Peuramaki-Brown, and Awe 2018;Stemp et al 2013Stemp et al , 2015Stemp et al , 2017) and quotidian activities (Aoyama et al 2018;Stemp 2016b;Stemp, Stoll, et al 2018;Stemp et al 2010), such as food processing (McKillop and Aoyama 2018) and crafting (Sharpe and Aoyama 2022). Use-wear analysis is time consuming, and the dearth of such analysis in the Maya region can probably be explained by these time constraints.…”