university of texas press in the maw of the earth monster studies of mesoamerican ritual cave use feb 2005

[...]... where the oldest of the deities, the god of fire, Xiuhtecuhtli, resided, in the middle of blue water, in the navel of the earth (Sahagún 1969b:19, 41, 88– 89) As has been mentioned, the navel, or center, of the earth is the equivalent of a cave, the womb Maize, the basic cereal of Mesoamerica, one of whose names is Cinteotl, Divine Corn, was born when the deities went into a cave where the god Piltzintecuhtli... as the owners of the mountains, game, or lightning and as the givers of maize All of these activities and figures tend to be associated with the earth in indigenous thought rather than with the Underworld In the final theoretical article to appear before the beginning of a formal cave archaeology, Mary Pohl and John Pohl (1983) propose that rituals resembling the cuch ceremony (involving the sacrifice of. .. and invigorates these beliefs Nahua cave- focused activities and beliefs are but one manifestation of these complex relationships Sandstrom’s data point repeatedly to the role of ritual specialists in mediating human needs with earth deities in the cave context, a theme revisited in most of these chapters Heyden’s chapter (Chapter 2) is a synthetic review of literature regarding the use of caves in the. .. In the Maw of the Earth Monster Brady, James E 1989 An Investigation of Maya Ritual Cave Use with Special Reference to Naj Tunich, Peten, Guatemala PhD dissertation, University of California, Los Angeles 1996 Sources for the Study of Mesoamerican Ritual Cave Use Studies in Mesoamerican Cave Use, Publication 1 George Washington University, Washington, DC 1997 Settlement Configuration and Cosmology: The. .. significant in developing a model of the meaning of caves that can be used to explore why they were being used in a particular man- Introduction 5 ner The articles on the cave beneath the Pyramid of the Sun are particularly noteworthy because they ascribe an importance to caves that is of an entirely different order from anything suggested in the literature at that time she was writing On the negative side, the. .. and the offerings to this deity Their data are important, since they detail not only specific types of offerings made during pilgrimages, but also the ritual importance of the objects offered They also demonstrate that while rituals performed in caves are solely the domain of men, women are a critical element in the acquisition of ritual paraphernalia and offerings made outside of the cave Participation of. .. development of interpretive models of cave use contrasts sharply with the history of field investigation that has been sketched above The first major synthetic statement does not appear until 1959, with the publication of J Eric Thompson’s ‘ The Role of Caves in Maya Culture.’’ Thompson begins the article by noting that ‘ the considerable body of information’’ on cave use had never been brought together Combining... referring to the creation of the Fifth Sun in Teotihuacan, ‘‘after [Nanahuatzin] threw himself into the fire and was transformed into the sun, another [divine personage] went into a cave and came out as the moon’’ (Herrera 1945:87) Even the sky was created in the interior of the earth, which can be interpreted as a gigantic womb, a cave The ‘‘Histoyre du Mechique’’ describes the journey made by the gods... center of the earth before moving up into the sky Caves are important in Chamula cosmovision; the earth is laced with caves that eventually reach its edges, and the earth lords live in mountain caves, where they control ‘‘all forms of precipitation, including accompanying clouds, lightning and thunder’’ (Gossen 1972:136–137) Many gods, too, were created in caves The Florentine Codex refers to the place... area in the 1980s, 4 In the Maw of the Earth Monster it coalesced around these syntheses, and they formed the foundation on which the field has been built At the same time that Thompson’s revised synthesis appeared, Doris Heyden took a very different approach in a series of articles interpreting the cave beneath the Pyramid of the Sun at Teotihuacan (Heyden 1973, 1975, 1981) Because she was attempting . finally emerged in the Maya area in the 1980s, 4 In the Maw of the Earth Monster it coalesced around these syntheses, and they formed the foundation on which the field has been built. At the same time. addresses the question of the importance of caves in Mesoamerica. The prevalence of -oztoc, Nahuatl for ‘ cave, ’’ in the site names of Central Mexico and the presence of the cave motif in site. Cataloging -in- Publication Data In the maw of the earth monster : Mesoamerican ritual cave use / edited by James E. Brady and Keith M. Prufer. — 1st ed. p. cm. — (The Linda Schele series in Maya