Ritual Sacrifice in Mayan Cenotes?

The Mayans relied on an underground network of sinkholes and underground caves for their water, living in a riverless landscape. These entrances to Xibalba, cenotes, are formed by rainwater eating away at limestone bedrock. There is evidence, however, that these cenotes were used for more than just water sources. Archaeologists diving under the surface and exploring the caverns have discovered a number of remains associated with activity—and perhaps more importantly, human remains. Mounds of debris are located on the floors of these caverns, containing chunks of pottery, carved building blocks, and further exploration shows the skull of at least one adult human and child. The sacred Cenote at Chichen Itza contained a minimum of 120 individuals, making the possibility of ritual or execution much more likely than accident.

Work is still being done on the skeletons found at Chichen Itza, and not all of the cenotes have been explored by divers.

Source: Romey, K.M. 2011. Diving the Maya Underworld. Archaeology Magazine: Maya Edition.

The New York African Burial Ground - Quality of Life in Archaeology

In 1991, the United States General Services Administration began to excavate a portion of property that contained New York’s African Burial Ground—ignoring or failing to comply with regulations that required public comment and influence in how the site was to be preserved. By the time the Mayor of New York, the first African American to hold that position, and the community managed to shut the project down, 412 skeletons had already been removed. Permission was eventually granted for the remains to be studied prior to reburial, and Howard University, the most prestigious black university, was chosen to complete the study.

One of the objects of the study was to determine where these people came from prior to being slaves in New York. The study determined that at least one third of slaves buried in the African burial ground came directly from the African continent, the remainder enslaved in the Caribbean for a time prior to coming to New York. Work done to determine where in Africa these individuals came from was partially based on analysis of ten different styles of dental modification found within the burial ground, which largely still needs to be compared with ethnographic examples. At the time of publishing (1998), it was believed that the styles were similar to Ashanti and central African skulls. One woman in particular was buried with a string of 111 glass beads and cowrie shells, suggesting that she belonged to an Akan-speaking society that typically buries beads like these with their owner. One heart-shaped symbol in particular is telling because it is believed to be the Sankofa, a symbol that is specifically Akan. The symbol was made by pounding shiny tacs into the coffin’s surface. The links to Akan-speaking peoples match up with historical documents kept by the English, which list these people among those who were brought to New York as slaves.

The study also sought to learn about the physical quality of life that these people had under slavery, and the results are grim. Nearly one half of the population represented in the burial ground died in childhood, 40% of which were infants, nearly twice the rate of the Colonial English infant mortality rate (that ratio is still the same today). Half of those children showed evidence of metabolic disease, most commonly anemia. Children 2-12 years of age had bone growth that lagged two years behind their ages associated with dental development, and 60% of the children had developmental defects in their dental enamel, evidence of malnutrition and disease.

Comparative studies of numbers of adults who showed dental markers of malnutrition showed that New York’s adult slaves were generally better off than other slave populations, more specifically from South Carolina, Virginia, Maryland and Philadelphia plantations, possibly because a large percentage of the eighteenth century population spent their childhood in African societies—evidence of a higher quality of life in Africa than as slaves. Adult bones showed evidence of heavy muscle strain, most likely through heavy lifting and carrying on the head.

Evidence of resistance is harder to come by than evidence of a rough life, but there is one 22-year old woman who was found with a musket ball in her ribs, and comparisons showed that she was shot in the back. She had multiple fractures on her lower face, evidence of blunt force, and her arm appears to have been broken due to being twisted. None of these breaks show evidence of healing. 

The African Burial ground and its modern story is a grim reminder that there is history underneath us—often brutal and violent, in places we least expect. And the callous treatment by the government of a site with human burials shows us that legislation put in place to protect sites and involve descendant communities in issues of preservation and the question of whether to excavate at all are often ignored and easily sidestepped.

Source: Blakey, M.L. 1998. The New York African Burial Ground Project: An Examination of Enslaved Lives, a Construction of Ancestral Ties. Transforming Anthropology 7:1, pp. 53-58.

Mass Grave Found by Construction Workers in Russia

One skull from the site, with a bullet wound [Source]

Crews working on a road outside the Far Eastern Russian town of Vladivostok in the fall of 2009 were forced to halt construction when they discovered a mass grave in the path of the proposed road, totalling 495 skeletons (3.5 tons of bones). Most of the skulls have gunshot wounds, and bits of clothing and coins found in the grave have led volunteer archaeologists to believe that this is the result of Stalinist purges.

The site itself is no stranger to Stalin’s paranoia and executions due to largely false charges. There used to be a barracks for political prisoners several kilometres from the site, and a short distance away a memorial to Stalin’s victims already stands.

The company immediately halted construction on discovering the grave, a sort of find which has become less frequent since a surge of finds like these after the fall of the Soviet Union. A spokesperson said they would leave investigation of the site to the experts [source], and the battle to excavate and study the remains has been a long one, having to wait for the ground to thaw properly before a large number of the skeletons could be excavated.

Finds like this often serve as reminders of the near past, and bring the techniques archaeologists use into more recent memory—not to mention reminding us that there are likely still more of these mass burials out there, and that perhaps it is our duty as archaeologists to locate these graves, maybe finding out who these people were and reburying them elsewhere.

Read More:

http://en.rian.ru/russia/20100412/158537934.html

http://www.allvoices.com/contributed-news/6034777-mass-grave-found-in-vladivostock-russia

Mayan Figurines Uncovered in King's Tomb

King and Queen figurines [Source]

In “Representing the Maize King,” published in Archaeology Magazine’s September/October 2010 issue, the discovery of an unnamed seventh century A.D. kind and the unearthing of 23 ceramic figurines depicting the costumes of Maya royalty are described with a sort of reverence. The find of these figurines is said to be particularly spectacular due to the fact that most of the examples archaeologists have of these figurines were looted, and we’ve lost the original context in which they were found. This is the first opportunity archaeologists have really had to understand the context in which these figurines were originally deposited, and postulate as to their original function. Due to their association with the dead king and his tomb, David Freidel, Michelle Rich and F. Kent Reilly III believe that this scene depicts the king’s funeral, and a deer shaman presides over the King, who is posed as a penitent person or a shaman’s patient in Modern Maya cultures. There are two royal figures presiding over the ceremony, a king and a queen, who archaeologists believe to be the successors to the dead king’s throne.

Finding artefacts like this in relation to burials is fortunate, and maybe the assumption that they depict a ceremony related to death is a bit of a stretch. Perhaps they had multiple purposes, and their final resting place was with the king in his death. It’s hard to say for sure, but their association with a lavish burial chamber certainly influences the interpretation of these figurines.

Modern Monuments - The World Trade Center

Talking about monuments that people have hated has made me think of what happened with one monument of the World Trade Center attacks, originally a sculpture called “Tumbling Woman” by artist Eric Fischl. It was accompanied by a plaque with a poem by Fischl:

[source]

We watched, 

disbelieving and helpless, 

on that savage day.

People we love

began falling,

helpless and in disbelief. 

[source]

The sculpture is of a naked woman tumbling, presumably through the air, a depiction of those who chose to jump rather than wait for the World Trade Center to collapse around them on September 11^th 2001. After about a week of being on display in the Rockefeller Center, it was suddenly covered with cloth and a curtain wall was erected around it due to a wave of complaints about the content of the statue.

“I don’t think it dignifies their deaths,” said Paul Labb… “It’s not art. … It is very disturbing when you see it.” [source]

Fischl issued a public apology soon after the statue was covered and eventually removed, saying that the sculpture was a depiction of deep sympathy for the “vulnerability of the human condition” [source].

Tumbling Woman might not have been at Ground Zero, but its effects on the state of memorials that would later be presented there are keenly felt. The first large-scale monument to be erected on the site was one to the firefighters—and it has all the hallmarks of a classical Roman relief, openly deriving its inspiration from Trajan’s Column. Assistant Chief Harold Meyers provides a description of the bronze relief on an interactive New York Times feature:

“The… relief is appropriate in the tactics used… It’s the way people are being presented. It does not show specific people. I think that it was an opportunity to as thoroughly as possible present fairly what took place, and I would say as such that it was not meant to be an artistic presentation, by that I mean an abstraction, it was meant to be modelled beautifully, but truthfully.” [source, transcription mine]

I would suggest taking a listen to that sound clip, because to fully understand the quote you need to hear the way he says abstraction, the absent way he says artistic presentation. This is not supposed to be a work of art, it is strictly speaking a memorial. Meyers not only shies away from the concept of art as a representative force, and in part in drawing such specific information from Trajan’s Column, a monument of victory, not of something as tragic and emotional as 9/11.

Trajan's Column [Source]

Firefighter's Memorial [Source]

“It was decided after the first sketches were presented that it was the appropriate thing to do to show the buildings at the point of impact and not collapse. Speaking to many of the people, it was not the impact that in fact brings back the greatest emotion, it was the collapse and what that collapse then brought about. They felt that the building should still be strong and present, identifiable but not at a point of failure or weakness.” [emphasis mine]

The whole message of the Firefighter’s Memorial is not emotional—the faces of the firefighters are passive, just like their counterparts in Roman sculpture. The moment of the second impact was deliberately chosen over the image of the collapsed towers, which is specifically cited as an image of failure or weakness. The inscription reads, “Dedicated to those who fell and those who carry on. May we never forget.” Yet there is no depiction of falling anywhere in the image. Firefighters are depicted doing their work, strong backed figures who show no hesitation. The monument avoids altogether the event that killed these people who are being represented, the towers collapsing, and this is evidently the way that the people of New York choose to remember this day—not the moment of collapse, but the point when the firefighters and police gathered to save as many people as they could. There is none of the confusion of the day present—everyone in the sculpture is directed, knows what they are doing. I don’t think this monument would be covered by a cloth and whisked away—but neither is it really doing service to the memories of those whose names are listed directly below.

Not at all related to the dead...

... But it has a Skeleton in it, and I really like showing it off.



Please ignore how that skeleton lacks any semblance of anatomical correctness. I really couldn't be bothered to draw a detailed pelvis.

Coral Reef Burials

I was watching Disney’s Planet Earth, specifically the episode regarding the ocean and coral reefs, and at one point we see a few ships sunk that form the base for a new reef in that area of the ocean. There’s something almost poetic, the waste of war turned into something beautiful. Whether that’s too fluffy is up to you to decide, but I like the idea of our waste turned into something useful for something else—even if that something else isn’t human.

There was a mention in class of Green burials—which I’d never heard of before—and the one that specifically caught my attention was the idea of having a person’s ashes form the base for a coral reef. Off the coast of Miami, Florida there’s a 16-acre system of coral reef called the Neptune Memorial Reef, promoted by the Green Burial Council.

Source: Neptune Memorial Reef.

While the people at Neptune Memorial Reef don’t do the cremating themselves, they take the cremated remains of a person and form them into a mould and affix them inside the previously built structure. They place a bronze plaque at the site, and eventually little polyps take hold and a reef is formed.

Source: Neptune Memorial Reef.

The whole set-up looks a lot like what people expect Atlantis to—kind of space-age, all creepy and completely devoid of human life. It’s a veritable underwater empire, complete with roads, columns and a welcome feature, not to mention lion features like in old archaeological sites. It’s not quite the teeming mass of life that some reefs are just yet, but there are reports that biodiversity has increased 60% in the area since the installation. I’m just waiting for when it decides to look a little more inviting before I make a decision on it.

Source: Neptune Memorial Reef.

The thought of someone finding it later and possibly mistaking it for Atlantis—it would be an interesting archaeological find. All these plaques, which might not even be visible or still intact after decades of unchecked coral growth, with essentially nothing but names and dates, unlike a modern graveyard which might at least include a relationship with the family. And if this is mistaken for the remains of a lost civilization, if the coral even maintains the shape built into the ocean for it, where would the people have lived? This might be the oceanic equivalent of Stonehenge, as far as future archaeologists might be concerned. I just hope the good people at Neptune Memorial Reef thought to align it to the setting position of the sun at the summer solstice.