Maya mortuary landscapes, Central Belize

Abstract

The Central Belize Archaeological Survey (CBAS) was initiated in 2005 as a sub-project of the Belize Valley Archaeological Reconnaissance project (BVAR; directed by Jaime Awe) to investigate the prehistoric Maya cemetery site of Caves Branch Rockshelter. Subsequently, we began to survey other nearby cave and rockshelter sites (Hardy 2009) and to excavate the monumental civic-ceremonial centre of Deep Valley (Jordan 2008). CBAS became an independent project in 2009, with an increasing focus on sites in the neighbouring Roaring Creek Valley (Figure 1). This slight geographic shift was in part intended to expand bioarchaeological investigations to include dark zone cave contexts identified during the late 1990s by BVAR's Western Belize Regional Cave Project. In the area around these caves, we identified two large, previously unreported civic-ceremonial centres and a network of raised roads (sacbeob) connecting them and other sites. Our survey and excavations at Tipan Chen Uitz (Figure 2) have yielded evidence that it was a regional capital with ties to powerful foreign polities, as attested by the discovery of multiple carved stone monuments (Figure 3; see Andres et al. 2014; Helmke & Andres 2015; Andres et al. in press in Antiquity). We have also continued our investigations of mortuary rockshelters, including Sapodilla Rockshelter in the Caves Branch Valley.

Osteophageous insect damage on human bone from Je'reftheel, a Maya mortuary cave site in west‐central Belize

“…None of these individuals were completely articulated, though all scattered elements appear to originate from complete bodies. Thus, it seems likely that isolated bones were not redeposited in these features after initial deposition elsewhere, as has been documented in similar assemblages at other nearby cave and rockshelter sites (Wrobel, Michael, et al, ; Wrobel, Morton, Michael, Biggs, & Andres, ; Wrobel, Shelton, Morton, Lynch, & Andres, ; Wrobel, Tyler, & Hardy, , 2013). This is particularly apparent in Chamber 3, which holds the larger and better preserved of the two deposits (Feature 5) comprising nine complete individuals, rather than an assortment of random bones taken from another context (Figure ).…”