James E Brady
Dados Biográficos
| ID | 106006 |
|---|---|
| NOME | James E Brady |
| PRENOMES | James E |
| SOBRENOME | Brady |
| ASSINATURA | BRADY J E |
| AFILIAÇÕES | California State University Los Angeles |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-5223-6694 |
| VERIFICADO | Sim |
| TOTAL DE OBRAS | 33 |
| TOTAL DE CITAÇÕES | 250 |
| TOTAL COMO AUTOR | 32 |
| TOTAL COMO EDITOR | 1 |
| PRIMEIRO ANO DE PUBLICAÇÃO | 1983 |
| ANO MAIS RECENTE DE PUBLICAÇÃO | 2026 |
| ÍNDICE H | 9 |
Otopathological indicators in Classic Period Maya
OBJECTIVE: This study evaluates osseous changes suggestive of ear inflammation in three individuals from a Classic Period (250-900 CE) Maya skeletal assemblage. MATERIALS: Isolated left temporal bones from two adults and one juvenile from the Cueva de Sangre, Dos Pilas, Guatemala were examined. METHODS: The temporal bones were inspected macroscopically, microscopically, and radiographically. RESULTS: Each individual presented with pathological bo…
The “Copulating Couple” at Naj Tunich
The discovery of a large corpus of Maya inscriptions and paintings in the cave of Naj Tunich in 1980 attracted the attention of scholars because of an explicitly drawn image of a naked couple locked in an embrace. The initial analysis identified it as part of a well-known scene portraying an old male deity with a young female goddess. With the passage of time, it has become increasingly popular to interpret the drawing as depicting a homoerotic r…
Shifting Perspectives on Human Sacrifice at Midnight Terror Cave, Belize
A calvarial osteolytic lesion of probable vascular origin in a Maya juvenile from the Classic Period ( 250−900 CE)
OBJECTIVE: This case study evaluates a focal osteolytic lesion in the right sulcus sinus transversi of an isolated os occipitale. MATERIALS: The os occipitale is from a juvenile from the Cueva de Sangre at the Classic Period (250-900 CE) site of Dos Pilas, Guatemala METHODS: The lesion was examined macroscopically, microscopically, and radiographically. RESULTS: The oval lesion has a well-circumscribed margin, endocranial origin, and involves cor…
Cenote Xbis
This article reports on a sacbe discovered by the Gran Aquífero Maya in the cave/cenote of Xbis, Hoctún, Yucatán, Mexico. The sacbe is the first reported example of a ritual roadway constructed in a Maya cave. The current study details how the construction incorporated elements of the natural cavescape to create Xbis as a significant sacred landmark. The sacbe led to a large pool of water and was constructed into the pool, allowing passage to a l…
Fresh Observations on Ancient Maya Ceramic/Textile Composites
In 1993, the Petexbatun Regional Cave Survey discovered a previously unknown composite material in the Cueva de los Quetzales, Petén, Guatemala. The composite material, consisting of layers of cotton fabric impregnated with ceramic slipping material, was analyzed by the Smithsonian Institution’s Conservation Analytical Laboratory (now the Smithsonian Center for Materials Research and Education [SCMRE]). Recently, a micro-CT scan of one of the she…
Blue fibers found in dental calculus from Maya sacrificial victims
Surveyed in 2008–2010, the Midnight Terror Cave contains the comingled remains of at least 118 Maya sacrificial victims from the Classic Period (250 CE–925 CE). In order to determine what the victims were consuming, microscopic analysis was carried out on dental calculus. Given the minimal calculus present, calculus from three teeth from one area of the cave (operation V) and three teeth from another area (operation VIII) was each combined to cre…
Stone Houses and Earth Lords
This heavily illustrated compilation of current scholarship on cave archaeology in the Maya lowlands is the first dedicated to the subject and yields key insights into Maya ritual and cosmology. An important publication that fills a crucial niche in Maya scholarship and addresses issues important to archaeology, cave studies, religion, anthropology, global archaeology, and more
An investigation of ancient Maya intentional dental modification practices at Midnight Terror Cave using anthroposcopic and paleogenomic methods
Implications of age and sex determinations of ancient Maya sacrificial victims at Midnight Terror Cave
The prurient element in the popular notion of the ancient Maya sacrifice of "beautiful virgins" during the first half of the 20th century appears to have made researchers wary of studying women in human sacrifice. Interest in human sacrifice arose in the 1990s along with the formulation of the warfare hypothesis for the collapse of Maya civilization so that models of human sacrifice often assumed that victims were largely male war captives. The p…
Finding Drama in Bones
Journal of Anthropology and Archaeology is a peer-reviewed international journal, which publishes original papers promoting theoretical, methodological and empirical developments in the discipline of socio-cultural anthropology
Evidence of Bat Sacrifice in Ancient Maya Cave Ritual
Excavations conducted in Naj Tunich, Petén, Guatemala encountered a number of slabs of speleothem curtains that were used as altars. Two of these contained bat skeletons suggesting that bats had been sacrificed as part of ceremonies carried out in the cave. A review of the archaeological literature documents that remains of bats has been reported in burials, caches, and constructions. Naj Tunich, however, is the first instance of sacrifice occurr…
Paleodemographics of Child Sacrifice at Midnight Terror Cave
Investigations of Midnight Terror Cave, Belize between 2008-2010 recovered a human osteological assemblage of over 10,000 bones, the largest reported for a cave in the southern Maya lowlands. Analysis indicates that approximately a quarter of the bones belong to subadults, which make up 43% of the minimum number of individuals (MNI). Determination of age at death produced a mortality curve that differs significantly from a normal curve with the n…
Maya Cultural Landscapes and the Subterranean
The function of chultuns, man-made subterranean chambers, in the southern Maya lowlands has been debated for over a century, with food storage being the most widely accepted proposal. Experimental archaeology shows, however, that none of the major Maya subsistence crops can be stored in chultuns because of their high humidity. Maya archaeology is currently at an impasse, espousing a storage function that is refuted by the data. Cave archaeology, …
Bats and theCamazotz
At the end of the nineteenth century, Eduard Seler identified the bats depicted on a ceramic vessel excavated by Erwin Dieseldorff at the site of Chama, Guatemala, as the camazotz, or death bat, from the K'iche' Maya myth, the Popol Vuh. The attribution was never critically reviewed. Nevertheless, it became so deeply entrenched that virtually every image of a Maya bat is identified as a camazotz. We have located no ancient depictions of the Hero …
Small Caves and Sacred Geography
Contemporary research on prehispanic Maya landscapes has focused on caves as core features of the cultural geography. Investigations within a number of large caves have suggested that they served as the loci for important rituals, legitimized inhabitants' claims to their territory, and helped establish the authority of a site's ruling elite. The ubiquity and centrality of caves in the Maya worldview raises questions about what happened in regions…
The Couple in the Cave
This article analyzes the iconography on a ceramic vessel collected from the site of Los Naranjos, Honduras, over 70 years ago by Danish archaeologist Jens Yde. The relatively more naturalistic representation of the scene on the vessel allows us to interpret the motifs called “dancing figures” as relating to a well-documented corpus of Mesoamerican origin mythology. We then turn our attention to the site of Los Naranjos and document the fact that…
A Reappraisal of Ancient Maya Cave Mining
Throughout the world caves are often important sacred landmarks whose dark zones tend to be restricted spaces reserved for religious rituals. The function and meaning of activities conducted within these spaces are categorically different than physically similar activities conducted at the surface. Archaeology has been slow to integrate this fact into the analysis of cave features. Recently discovered evidence of extractive activities within Maya…
Mass Spectrometric Radiocarbon Dates from Three Rock Paintings of Known Age
Radiocarbon age determinations are presented on three hieroglyphic texts from Naj Tunich cave in Guatemala containing Maya calendar dates. The ages obtained are on average 110-140 years older than the calendar dates. Several possible reasons are discussed for this discrepancy: one that is applicable to all radiocarbon dates on charcoal, one that applies to rock paintings, and one that is specific for the tropics. Possible problems with the ages a…
Electrical resistivity mapping of landscape modifications at the Talgua site, Olancho, Honduras
Geophysical reconnaissance in 1995 provided information useful in developing a successful strategy for the 1996 field season in resistivity mapping of subsurface cultural features at Talgua Village, an archaeological site in eastern Honduras. Ground truth excavations confirmed that high-resistivity anomalies detected by modified dipole–dipole apparent resistivity pseudosections correlate with a layer of small cobbles imported to fill low spots of…
Caves and Crystalmancy
Modified and unmodified fragments of rock crystal have been recovered from a number of caves in the southern Maya Lowlands, suggesting that these stones were used in ancient ritual. A review of the archaeological literature suggests that crystal appears with some regularity, and ethnohistorical sources suggest that crystal was considered to be a precious stone. Ethnographic literature reports the utilization of crystals to be restricted to ritual…
Application of seismic surface waves at a pre‐Columbian settlement in Honduras
A technique to locate culturally significant features by means of mechanical stiffness contrasts using seismic surface waves was applied at a Pre-Columbian settlement along the Talgua River near the town of Catacamas, Department of Olancho, Honduras, Central America. This technique was adapted from geotechnical engineering, where it is used to establish layering of soil and rock. With this surface-based, non-intrusive technique, a stress pulse is…
Application of seismic surface waves at a pre-Columbian settlement in Honduras
A technique to locate culturally significant features by means of mechanical stiffness contrasts using seismic surface waves was applied at a Pre-Columbian settlement along the Talgua River near the town of Catacamas, Department of Olancho, Honduras, Central America. This technique was adapted from geotechnical engineering, where it is used to establish layering of soil and rock. With this surface-based, non-intrusive technique, a stress pulse is…
The Lowland Maya “Protoclassic
The term “Protoclassic,” employed regularly but inexplicitly in the literature of lowland Maya archaeology, has become increasingly nebulous and ambiguous in both meaning and usage. This paper reviews the history and use of the term and presents a formal redefinition of the Protoclassic as a ceramic stage based explicitly and exclusively on ceramic criteria. Some suggestions regarding future use of the term also are offered. The paper further add…
Multiethnicity or Multiple Enigma
During the summer of 1995, an intensive archaeological survey of the Río Talgua drainage in eastern Honduras was conducted after the discovery of the Talgua Cave in the Department of Olancho. One important goal of this survey was the identification of the indigenous population responsible for depositing the ninth-centuryb.c.human burials found upstream in Talgua Cave. In addition to this survey, four other caves were found and/or explored during …
Settlement Configuration and Cosmology The Role of Caves at Dos Pilas
Cross-culturally, settlement location is celebrated in group mythology, raising the possibility that cosmological factors may play a role in the selection of site location. Using ethnographic sources, a model of modern Maya sacred geography is constructed that indicates that caves played an important role in settlement selection and layout. This model was tested for prehistoric settlement patterns at Dos Pilas. A thoroughgoing pattern of locating…
Stone Houses and Earth Lords
This heavily illustrated compilation of current scholarship on cave archaeology in the Maya lowlands is the first dedicated to the subject and yields key insights into Maya ritual and cosmology. An important publication that fills a crucial niche in Maya scholarship and addresses issues important to archaeology, cave studies, religion, anthropology, global archaeology, and more
The Lowland Maya “Protoclassic
The term “Protoclassic,” employed regularly but inexplicitly in the literature of lowland Maya archaeology, has become increasingly nebulous and ambiguous in both meaning and usage. This paper reviews the history and use of the term and presents a formal redefinition of the Protoclassic as a ceramic stage based explicitly and exclusively on ceramic criteria. Some suggestions regarding future use of the term also are offered. The paper further add…
Caves and Crystalmancy
Modified and unmodified fragments of rock crystal have been recovered from a number of caves in the southern Maya Lowlands, suggesting that these stones were used in ancient ritual. A review of the archaeological literature suggests that crystal appears with some regularity, and ethnohistorical sources suggest that crystal was considered to be a precious stone. Ethnographic literature reports the utilization of crystals to be restricted to ritual…
A Re-Evaluation of the Isotopic and Archaeological Reconstructions of Diet in the Tehuacan Valley
Carbon and nitrogen isotope ratios in collagen from bones of individuals who lived in the Tehuacan Valley during the period 8000-1000 years B.P. have been interpreted as indicating earlier use of maize and more utilization of legumes as food sources than is suggested by the occurrence of the remains of these plants in the coprolites and debris excavated along with the bones. Reassessment of the assumptions made in interpreting the bone collagen i…
Man‐made and pseudo‐karst caves
Recent investigations at a number of sites in the highlands of Guatemala have uncovered the existence of man‐made, man‐modified, and pseudo‐karst caves. The caves were excavated from volcanic or volcanically derived Tertiary and Quaternary age rocks, with construction methods varying according to rock hardness, and the pre‐existence of pseudo‐karst caves and springs. Some of these caves are of considerable length and are associated with site cent…
Glimpses of the Dark Side of the Petexbatun Project
The Petexbatun Regional Cave Survey (PRCS) is the first large cave study to be undertaken as part of a major archaeological expedition. The survey's primary objective was assessing the extent to which surface architecture at Dos Pilas was configured by features in the sacred landscape. All three of the major architectural complexes at the site had a direct relation to caves, and a number of important secondary buildings and even residential units…
A Reassessment of the Chronology and Function of Gordon's Cave #3, Copan, Honduras
Recent excavations in the first chamber of Gordon's Cave #3 encountered a use floor with a substantial quantity of sherds and artifacts. Middle Preclassic, Gordon subphase sherds were recovered, but overall the ceramics suggest that Preclassic use of the cave was minor with the most intensive use occurring during the Classic period. The artifact assemblage provides a fuller picture of cave rituals which appear to be similar in many respects to th…
Mass Spectrometric Radiocarbon Dates from Three Rock Paintings of Known Age
Radiocarbon age determinations are presented on three hieroglyphic texts from Naj Tunich cave in Guatemala containing Maya calendar dates. The ages obtained are on average 110-140 years older than the calendar dates. Several possible reasons are discussed for this discrepancy: one that is applicable to all radiocarbon dates on charcoal, one that applies to rock paintings, and one that is specific for the tropics. Possible problems with the ages a…
Arson, Urban Economy, and Organized Crime
The deadly crime of arson is spreading at an alarming rate in the United States, leaving whole city neighborhoods devastated in its wake. Traditional methods of dealing with the problem are based on a view of arsonists as pyromaniacs or vandals. This paper shows a clear link between the policies of banks and insurance companies, on the one hand, and the arson-for-profit schemes of organized crime, professional arsonists, shady landlords, and corr…
The Couple in the Cave
This article analyzes the iconography on a ceramic vessel collected from the site of Los Naranjos, Honduras, over 70 years ago by Danish archaeologist Jens Yde. The relatively more naturalistic representation of the scene on the vessel allows us to interpret the motifs called “dancing figures” as relating to a well-documented corpus of Mesoamerican origin mythology. We then turn our attention to the site of Los Naranjos and document the fact that…
A Reappraisal of Ancient Maya Cave Mining
Throughout the world caves are often important sacred landmarks whose dark zones tend to be restricted spaces reserved for religious rituals. The function and meaning of activities conducted within these spaces are categorically different than physically similar activities conducted at the surface. Archaeology has been slow to integrate this fact into the analysis of cave features. Recently discovered evidence of extractive activities within Maya…
An investigation of ancient Maya intentional dental modification practices at Midnight Terror Cave using anthroposcopic and paleogenomic methods
Small Caves and Sacred Geography
Contemporary research on prehispanic Maya landscapes has focused on caves as core features of the cultural geography. Investigations within a number of large caves have suggested that they served as the loci for important rituals, legitimized inhabitants' claims to their territory, and helped establish the authority of a site's ruling elite. The ubiquity and centrality of caves in the Maya worldview raises questions about what happened in regions…
Bats and theCamazotz
At the end of the nineteenth century, Eduard Seler identified the bats depicted on a ceramic vessel excavated by Erwin Dieseldorff at the site of Chama, Guatemala, as the camazotz, or death bat, from the K'iche' Maya myth, the Popol Vuh. The attribution was never critically reviewed. Nevertheless, it became so deeply entrenched that virtually every image of a Maya bat is identified as a camazotz. We have located no ancient depictions of the Hero …
Blue fibers found in dental calculus from Maya sacrificial victims
Surveyed in 2008–2010, the Midnight Terror Cave contains the comingled remains of at least 118 Maya sacrificial victims from the Classic Period (250 CE–925 CE). In order to determine what the victims were consuming, microscopic analysis was carried out on dental calculus. Given the minimal calculus present, calculus from three teeth from one area of the cave (operation V) and three teeth from another area (operation VIII) was each combined to cre…
Implications of age and sex determinations of ancient Maya sacrificial victims at Midnight Terror Cave
The prurient element in the popular notion of the ancient Maya sacrifice of "beautiful virgins" during the first half of the 20th century appears to have made researchers wary of studying women in human sacrifice. Interest in human sacrifice arose in the 1990s along with the formulation of the warfare hypothesis for the collapse of Maya civilization so that models of human sacrifice often assumed that victims were largely male war captives. The p…
Multiethnicity or Multiple Enigma
During the summer of 1995, an intensive archaeological survey of the Río Talgua drainage in eastern Honduras was conducted after the discovery of the Talgua Cave in the Department of Olancho. One important goal of this survey was the identification of the indigenous population responsible for depositing the ninth-centuryb.c.human burials found upstream in Talgua Cave. In addition to this survey, four other caves were found and/or explored during …
Arson, Urban Economy, and Organized Crime
The deadly crime of arson is spreading at an alarming rate in the United States, leaving whole city neighborhoods devastated in its wake. Traditional methods of dealing with the problem are based on a view of arsonists as pyromaniacs or vandals. This paper shows a clear link between the policies of banks and insurance companies, on the one hand, and the arson-for-profit schemes of organized crime, professional arsonists, shady landlords, and corr…
A Re-Evaluation of the Isotopic and Archaeological Reconstructions of Diet in the Tehuacan Valley
Carbon and nitrogen isotope ratios in collagen from bones of individuals who lived in the Tehuacan Valley during the period 8000-1000 years B.P. have been interpreted as indicating earlier use of maize and more utilization of legumes as food sources than is suggested by the occurrence of the remains of these plants in the coprolites and debris excavated along with the bones. Reassessment of the assumptions made in interpreting the bone collagen i…
Man‐made and pseudo‐karst caves
Recent investigations at a number of sites in the highlands of Guatemala have uncovered the existence of man‐made, man‐modified, and pseudo‐karst caves. The caves were excavated from volcanic or volcanically derived Tertiary and Quaternary age rocks, with construction methods varying according to rock hardness, and the pre‐existence of pseudo‐karst caves and springs. Some of these caves are of considerable length and are associated with site cent…
A Reassessment of the Chronology and Function of Gordon's Cave #3, Copan, Honduras
Recent excavations in the first chamber of Gordon's Cave #3 encountered a use floor with a substantial quantity of sherds and artifacts. Middle Preclassic, Gordon subphase sherds were recovered, but overall the ceramics suggest that Preclassic use of the cave was minor with the most intensive use occurring during the Classic period. The artifact assemblage provides a fuller picture of cave rituals which appear to be similar in many respects to th…
Speleothem breakage, movement, removal, and caching
Recent investigations have documented extensive human breakage, movement, resetting, removal, and caching of speleothems which reflects an unreported aspect of ancient Maya cave utilization. The movement, resetting, and caching of speleothems make it clear that much of the breakage was purposeful. Speleothems appear in excavation contexts at surface sites, and the Petexbatun Regional Archaeological Project demonstrates that reported examples repr…
Into the netherworld of island Earth
The reexamination of a lava tube that had been modified for defensive/refuge purposes in Hawai′i's early historic period offers insights linking such sites to Polynesian cosmology, settlement patterns, and status use. Details of site modifications provide methodological clues for advanced interpretation and analysis. © 1997 John Wiley & Sons, Inc
Glimpses of the Dark Side of the Petexbatun Project
The Petexbatun Regional Cave Survey (PRCS) is the first large cave study to be undertaken as part of a major archaeological expedition. The survey's primary objective was assessing the extent to which surface architecture at Dos Pilas was configured by features in the sacred landscape. All three of the major architectural complexes at the site had a direct relation to caves, and a number of important secondary buildings and even residential units…
Settlement Configuration and Cosmology The Role of Caves at Dos Pilas
Cross-culturally, settlement location is celebrated in group mythology, raising the possibility that cosmological factors may play a role in the selection of site location. Using ethnographic sources, a model of modern Maya sacred geography is constructed that indicates that caves played an important role in settlement selection and layout. This model was tested for prehistoric settlement patterns at Dos Pilas. A thoroughgoing pattern of locating…
Application of seismic surface waves at a pre‐Columbian settlement in Honduras
A technique to locate culturally significant features by means of mechanical stiffness contrasts using seismic surface waves was applied at a Pre-Columbian settlement along the Talgua River near the town of Catacamas, Department of Olancho, Honduras, Central America. This technique was adapted from geotechnical engineering, where it is used to establish layering of soil and rock. With this surface-based, non-intrusive technique, a stress pulse is…
Application of seismic surface waves at a pre-Columbian settlement in Honduras
A technique to locate culturally significant features by means of mechanical stiffness contrasts using seismic surface waves was applied at a Pre-Columbian settlement along the Talgua River near the town of Catacamas, Department of Olancho, Honduras, Central America. This technique was adapted from geotechnical engineering, where it is used to establish layering of soil and rock. With this surface-based, non-intrusive technique, a stress pulse is…
The Lowland Maya “Protoclassic
The term “Protoclassic,” employed regularly but inexplicitly in the literature of lowland Maya archaeology, has become increasingly nebulous and ambiguous in both meaning and usage. This paper reviews the history and use of the term and presents a formal redefinition of the Protoclassic as a ceramic stage based explicitly and exclusively on ceramic criteria. Some suggestions regarding future use of the term also are offered. The paper further add…
Multiethnicity or Multiple Enigma
During the summer of 1995, an intensive archaeological survey of the Río Talgua drainage in eastern Honduras was conducted after the discovery of the Talgua Cave in the Department of Olancho. One important goal of this survey was the identification of the indigenous population responsible for depositing the ninth-centuryb.c.human burials found upstream in Talgua Cave. In addition to this survey, four other caves were found and/or explored during …
Electrical resistivity mapping of landscape modifications at the Talgua site, Olancho, Honduras
Geophysical reconnaissance in 1995 provided information useful in developing a successful strategy for the 1996 field season in resistivity mapping of subsurface cultural features at Talgua Village, an archaeological site in eastern Honduras. Ground truth excavations confirmed that high-resistivity anomalies detected by modified dipole–dipole apparent resistivity pseudosections correlate with a layer of small cobbles imported to fill low spots of…
Caves and Crystalmancy
Modified and unmodified fragments of rock crystal have been recovered from a number of caves in the southern Maya Lowlands, suggesting that these stones were used in ancient ritual. A review of the archaeological literature suggests that crystal appears with some regularity, and ethnohistorical sources suggest that crystal was considered to be a precious stone. Ethnographic literature reports the utilization of crystals to be restricted to ritual…
Mass Spectrometric Radiocarbon Dates from Three Rock Paintings of Known Age
Radiocarbon age determinations are presented on three hieroglyphic texts from Naj Tunich cave in Guatemala containing Maya calendar dates. The ages obtained are on average 110-140 years older than the calendar dates. Several possible reasons are discussed for this discrepancy: one that is applicable to all radiocarbon dates on charcoal, one that applies to rock paintings, and one that is specific for the tropics. Possible problems with the ages a…
The Couple in the Cave
This article analyzes the iconography on a ceramic vessel collected from the site of Los Naranjos, Honduras, over 70 years ago by Danish archaeologist Jens Yde. The relatively more naturalistic representation of the scene on the vessel allows us to interpret the motifs called “dancing figures” as relating to a well-documented corpus of Mesoamerican origin mythology. We then turn our attention to the site of Los Naranjos and document the fact that…
A Reappraisal of Ancient Maya Cave Mining
Throughout the world caves are often important sacred landmarks whose dark zones tend to be restricted spaces reserved for religious rituals. The function and meaning of activities conducted within these spaces are categorically different than physically similar activities conducted at the surface. Archaeology has been slow to integrate this fact into the analysis of cave features. Recently discovered evidence of extractive activities within Maya…
Small Caves and Sacred Geography
Contemporary research on prehispanic Maya landscapes has focused on caves as core features of the cultural geography. Investigations within a number of large caves have suggested that they served as the loci for important rituals, legitimized inhabitants' claims to their territory, and helped establish the authority of a site's ruling elite. The ubiquity and centrality of caves in the Maya worldview raises questions about what happened in regions…
Bats and theCamazotz
At the end of the nineteenth century, Eduard Seler identified the bats depicted on a ceramic vessel excavated by Erwin Dieseldorff at the site of Chama, Guatemala, as the camazotz, or death bat, from the K'iche' Maya myth, the Popol Vuh. The attribution was never critically reviewed. Nevertheless, it became so deeply entrenched that virtually every image of a Maya bat is identified as a camazotz. We have located no ancient depictions of the Hero …
Paleodemographics of Child Sacrifice at Midnight Terror Cave
Investigations of Midnight Terror Cave, Belize between 2008-2010 recovered a human osteological assemblage of over 10,000 bones, the largest reported for a cave in the southern Maya lowlands. Analysis indicates that approximately a quarter of the bones belong to subadults, which make up 43% of the minimum number of individuals (MNI). Determination of age at death produced a mortality curve that differs significantly from a normal curve with the n…
Maya Cultural Landscapes and the Subterranean
The function of chultuns, man-made subterranean chambers, in the southern Maya lowlands has been debated for over a century, with food storage being the most widely accepted proposal. Experimental archaeology shows, however, that none of the major Maya subsistence crops can be stored in chultuns because of their high humidity. Maya archaeology is currently at an impasse, espousing a storage function that is refuted by the data. Cave archaeology, …
Finding Drama in Bones
Journal of Anthropology and Archaeology is a peer-reviewed international journal, which publishes original papers promoting theoretical, methodological and empirical developments in the discipline of socio-cultural anthropology
Evidence of Bat Sacrifice in Ancient Maya Cave Ritual
Excavations conducted in Naj Tunich, Petén, Guatemala encountered a number of slabs of speleothem curtains that were used as altars. Two of these contained bat skeletons suggesting that bats had been sacrificed as part of ceremonies carried out in the cave. A review of the archaeological literature documents that remains of bats has been reported in burials, caches, and constructions. Naj Tunich, however, is the first instance of sacrifice occurr…
An investigation of ancient Maya intentional dental modification practices at Midnight Terror Cave using anthroposcopic and paleogenomic methods
Implications of age and sex determinations of ancient Maya sacrificial victims at Midnight Terror Cave
The prurient element in the popular notion of the ancient Maya sacrifice of "beautiful virgins" during the first half of the 20th century appears to have made researchers wary of studying women in human sacrifice. Interest in human sacrifice arose in the 1990s along with the formulation of the warfare hypothesis for the collapse of Maya civilization so that models of human sacrifice often assumed that victims were largely male war captives. The p…
Archaeology (28 obras) · Cave (22 obras) · Geography (22 obras) · Archaeology and ancient environmental studies (21 obras) · Maya (18 obras) · History (14 obras) · Latin American history and culture (12 obras) · Art (10 obras) · Geology (9 obras) · History (8 obras)