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Planting the Bones: Hunting Ceremonialism at Contemporary and Nineteenth-Century Shrines in the Guatemalan Highlands

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 January 2017

Linda A. Brown
Linda A. Brown*
Affiliation:
Department of Anthropology, George Washington University, Washington, DC 20052 (labrown@gwu.edu)
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Abstract

From the Classic period to the present, scholars have documented the widespread Maya belief in a supernatural guardian of the animals who must be appeased in hunting rituals. Despite this resilience, features and deposits entering the archaeological record as a result of hunting ceremonies remain largely unknown. I describe several contemporary and nineteenth-century shrines used for hunting rites in the Maya highlands of Guatemala. These sites contain a unique feature, a ritual fauna cache, which consists of animal remains secondarily deposited during hunting ceremonies. The formation of these caches is informed by two beliefs with historical time depth: (1) the belief in a guardian of animals and (2) the symbolic conflation of bone and regeneration. The unique life history of remains in hunting-related ritual fauna caches suggests a hypothesis for puzzling deposits of mammal remains recovered archaeologically in lowland Maya caves. These may have functioned in hunting rites designed to placate the animal guardian and ensure the regeneration of the species via ceremonies that incorporated the secondary discard of skeletal remains. A review of the ethnographic literature from the Lenca, Huichol, Nahua, Tlapanec, and Mixe areas reveals similar hunting rites indicating a broader Mesoamerican ritual practice.

Desde la época prehispánica hasta el presente, los estudiosos han notado la amplia creencia Maya en un guardián supernatural de los animales que debe ser apaciguado con rituales antes y después de la cacerí. Mientras que esta documentación, los tipos de rasgos o artefactos que se han encontrado en los contextos arqueológicos durante las ceremonias siguen siendo desconocidos. Describo varios santuarios del siglo diecinueve y contemporáneos que documentan la ritual cacería Maya del altiplano de Guatemala. Ellos contienen rasgos especiales, unos de escondites de fauna ritual, los cuales indican el uso en el ceremonialismo de la cacería. La formación de estos escondites es indicada por la refundición simbólica de hueso, semilla, y regeneración. Esta creencia es evidente en los textos coloniales que sugieren una historia profunda en la zona Maya. La vida historia de los huesos en escondites rituales sugiere una hipóteis por huesos de mamíferos excavados en cuevas en las tierras bajas. Es posible que estos fueron depositados en ritos de la cacería para apaciguar al guardián de los animales y promover la regeneración de las especies. La literatura etnográfica nota patrones similares de cacería que incluyen el desecho ritual, lo cual sugiere una práctica mesoamericana más amplia.

Type
Articles
Information
Latin American Antiquity , Volume 16 , Issue 2 , June 2005 , pp. 131 - 146
Copyright
Copyright © 2005 by the Society for American Archaeology.

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