With support from the National Science Foundation, Dr. Lisa J. Lucero will bring together a multidisciplinary team that include archaeologists, underwater archaeologists, exploration divers, an ethnobotanist, a tropical tree specialist, and a paleontologist from the U.S., Mexico, and Belize to examine how ancient Maya settlement articulates with sacred landscape features in addition to examining rainfall patterns and landscape transformation.
Openings in the earth, such as caves and pools, were sacred to the Maya as portals to the underworld or Xibalba. The Maya left countless offerings in these portals to petition gods and ancestors to bring forth rain and bountiful crops. At Cara Blanca in central Belize, there are 25 openings in the earth in the form of pools (Pools 1-25). Its distance from centers and relatively sparse but unique settlement (e.g., water temple and sweatbaths) suggest it may have served as a pilgrimage center. Growing evidence in the form of a Terminal Classic (c. 800-900 C.E.) water temple at Pool 1 with a copious amount of water jars indicates that the Maya increased their visits to Cara Blanca at the end of the Late Classic, perhaps in response to a series of multiyear droughts that struck the Maya area between c. 800 and 900 C.E. Further, previous dives at Pool 1 have yielded megafauna fossils, submerged trees and freshwater shells that can be used to assess ancient climate and landscape change through oxygen isotope analysis, radiocarbon dating, and species identification.
The major goals in 2014 (April 30-June 30) are to conduct underwater excavations at two pools, continue excavating the water temple at Pool 1, collect submerged fossils, fossil matrix (gastropods, wood, soil) and tree limbs, map and explore a total of five unexplored pools, and collect botanical specimens near pools to compare with submerged trees.
The intellectual merit of this project will be to collect information about cultural landscapes, ceremonial life on the surface and in the water, and ritual intensification. This project is unique in both its multidisciplinary approach and focus on both the cultural and material aspects of climate change and how the Maya responded to it. This project also will address a topic that has been missing in southern lowland Maya studies - the focus on water bodies as portals.
The broader impacts of the study is that results will be relevant today since the challenges the Maya faced between 800 and 900 C.E. are similar to the ones at present with accelerating global climate change. The international and multidisciplinary team will include graduate students from the University of Illinois. The investigations at Cara Blanca also set the stage for future fieldwork, including additional diving expeditions to explore more of the 25 pools, continuing to survey the transect along the pools, and excavating the sweatbaths, water shrines, and other interesting settlement configurations. Results will be disseminated through major peer review outlets (e.g., Latin American Antiquity, Ancient Mesoamerica, Antiquity) and in Belize at the annual Belize Archaeology Symposium.
