Decoding the Archaeological Significance of Problematic Deposits in the Maya Lowlands

Abstract

The term “problematical deposits” was coined decades ago at Tikal to refer to special deposits that were neither burials nor caches. Since that time, the term has been expanded to refer to a range of deposits that have puzzled archaeologists. In this paper we review the various interpretations that have been offered for these deposits including de facto refuse, squatter deposits, and the remains of dedication or termination ritual, feasting, or pilgrimage. We argue that the superficial similarity of these deposits can make it difficult to identify the range of activities that they represent and that detailed contextual analysis is required to distinguish them. We offer some of the archaeological correlates that have been associated with different types of problematic deposits.

Applying Regional, Contextual, Ethnohistoric, and Ethnographic Approaches for Understanding the Significance of Peri-Abandonment Deposits in Western Belize

“…The same can be said for the contexts and contents of peri-abandonment deposits at sites in Peten, Guatemala, and in the Yucatan, Mexico. When examined against the archaeological correlates for warfare and pilgrimage events discussed by Aimers et al (2020a), we also find that both the context and contents of the deposits at Caracol are more in line with those associated with ritual events at sacred landscapes. As we also note below, if all these deposits were associated with rapid abandonment due to invasion or military activity, we would have to assume that marauding armies attacked sites of all sizes in Western Belize, and then took the time to destroy similar sets of objects in similar contexts.…”

The Long Goodbye: Problematic Pottery and Pilgrimage at Cahal Pech, Belize

“…Another problem with the feasting hypothesis is that we would have to assume that almost all feasts in the Maya world ended with the destruction of the utensils used in the feasts (see Shott [2018] for commmets on archaeological versus systemic inventories) and that the remains of the broken utensils were consistently placed on the flanks of stairways and corners of buildings. In summary, while it does seem possible that the Plaza A deposit represents ritual activity, we do not believe that these deposits support the feasting hypothesis (see Aimers et al [2020] for more comments on feasting).…”

“…As in many parts of the Maya world, most Belize Valley site cores were abandoned at the end of the Classic period, although occupation continued into the Postclassic period on the peripheries of some sites (Aimers 2004). Cahal Pech is one such site (Figure 1; Aimers et al 2020). Investigations have recovered new data from the site core for a range of Terminal Classic “peri-abandonment” activities from a tomb, a burial, and two problematic deposits in epicentral Plazas A and G (Figure 1; see Aimers et al [2020] for a review of problematic deposits).…”

Contextual and Compositional Comparisons of Abandonment-Related, on-Floor Deposits at Chan Chich, Belize

“…Various researchers have developed typologies with material correlates in attempts to classify on-floor deposits into types (Aimers et al 2020:Table 1; Lamoureux-St-Hilaire and Snetsinger 2020) and particularly to identify those created by termination rituals (Pagliaro et al 2003:79–80; Stanton et al 2008). The analytical challenge of these features is that they may “represent a wide array of behaviors and attendant meanings,” as Navarro-Farr (2009:67–68) observed in her analysis of an extremely large and complicated peri-abandonment deposit at Waka’, and deposits from multiple, diverse events may blanket the same structure (Navarro-Farr 2016) or be found near one another at the same site (Houk 2016).…”

“…More recent excavations have uncovered another on-floor deposit—another example of piled artifacts—in the Norman's Temple courtyard (Booher 2016). As Aimers and colleagues (2020) discuss in the introduction to this special section, archaeologists have applied a wide range of interpretative labels to similar deposits in the Maya lowlands. Harrison-Buck (2012:103, 115) has referred to deposits “of smashed and scattered objects in the context of defaced elite residential architecture” as “termination deposits,” while other scholars have described deposits similar to those under consideration here as “desecratory termination rituals” (Stanton et al 2008).…”