Termination rituals in Mesoamerica

Violent Mesoamerican Rituals Revealed
Jennifer Viegas, Discovery News
Sept. 25, 2003

Remains of ceramics, figurines, burned objects and other seemingly
innocuous artifacts found throughout Central America have been
identified as evidence for violent destruction rituals enacted against
buildings and their inhabitants, according to a new book.
Entitled "The Archaeology of Settlement Abandonment in Middle America,"
the book describes evidence supporting fierce termination rituals
enacted by the Maya and other early Central American civilizations.
Previously, researchers believed the remains were just random debris.
"(Archaeologists) thought that lower-class squatters left garbage in
those once-magnificent (Mayan) buildings after kings and nobles left,"
said Takeshi Inomata, director of the Aguateca Archaeological Project in
the Department of Anthropology at the University of Arizona, and
co-editor of the new book. "Now new evidence suggests that many of these
deposits resulted from termination rituals as drastic outcomes of
violent conflicts."
A typical termination ritual involved the destruction and burning of
buildings. Inomata said in some cases, invaders dug holes into floors so
that walls and roofs could be pulled down into them.
"At the same time they scattered a large amount of smashed ceramic
vessels, ground stones, and stone tools, as well as a smaller amount of
jade and shell ornaments," Inomata told Discovery News. "Some scholars
suspect that the ritual involved feasting in and around the buildings.
Afterwards, they may have smashed vessels they used in feasting and
destroyed the building."
The destruction of buildings, and temples in particular, represented the
spiritual defeat of the enemy, in addition to the victory in bloody
physical battle. The Maya appear to have thought buildings and certain
objects were animated and charged with supernatural powers, which
required the releasing of their spirits before the structures were torn
down.
Termination rituals were conducted throughout Mesoamerica, Inomata said,
including at the metropolis of Teotihuacan in central Mexico, at the
ancient Mayan sites of Aguateca in Guatemala, Tikal in Belize and Yaxuna
in Mexico, as well as in the American Southwest, where Navajos would
ritually destroy and abandon houses after the death of a family member.
David Freidel, professor of anthropology at Southern Methodist
University, and one of the first archaeologists to identify evidence for
termination rituals, agrees with Inomata's findings.
Freidel said, "Ritual deposits can vary, but signature items include
grinding stones in some abundance, water jars, prismatic blade
bloodletters, fragments of chipped stone knives and projectiles and,
surprisingly, precious items like greenstone carvings of earspools, lip
plugs, often broken up."
Aside from violence against humans with the knives and bloodletters,
Freidel said at a Teotihuacan pyramid, sculptures were ritually
"wounded" by cutting. The fragments were then painted red and scattered
around the building as a warning for others not to rebuild.
Freidel said the recognition of termination ritual deposits is making
researchers much more cautious about clearing "debris" away from
archaeological sites.

Copyright © 2003 Discovery Communications Inc.






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