Douglas Sharon, ed., Mesas & Cosmologies in Mesoamerica. San Diego Museum Papers 42, 2003.

83

Southern Mexico and Guatemala

In My Hill, In My Valley: The Importance of

Place in Ancient Maya Ritual

James E. Brady

As author of the only archaeological presenta tion in the symposium, I draw upon my

background and experience to address two is-sues. The first is the antiquity of the mesa as an in-digenous ritual stage. This is an important questionbecause these tables are so universally referredto in indigenous languages by the term mesa thatone must wonder if the word and its referentwere not borrowed at the same time by native cul-tures that had no counterpart for either. While themesa can take a variety of physical forms (see Sharonthis volume), I will restrict my analysis to twotypes commonly reported in modern ethnographyof the Maya area as possible regional variations. Ifarchaeological evidence for the presence of the mesaas a material artifact can be produced then there isa solid basis for proposing that the modern indig-enous cosmological associations were probablypresent in some form in the ancient context as well.

The first form of mesa is the low, one-pieceplatform often referred to as a banco or bench.This form appears most often in the Maya high-lands of Chiapas and Guatemala. The secondform is the simple bush table created by stickingtwo pairs of “Y” shaped stakes into the ground.A cross member is set in the notches of each pairand longer sticks are laid over the cross-members.This form appears to be common in ethnographicdescriptions from Yucatán.

The Antiquity of the Mesa

The banco as a form is quite ancient, at leastas a seat or a throne. Three individuals are shown

seated on such benches on one side of Kaminal-juyu Monument 65, dating to the Late Preclassic(Figure 1). Jonathan Kaplan (1995) has shown thatthe table-altar/throne tradition dates back to theMiddle Preclassic on the South Coast of Guate-mala and probably relates to earlier Olmec altar/thrones (Grove 1973). Unfortunately, I know ofno iconographic representations of bancos beingused as altars in rituals. Thomas Gage, however,does give a mid-17th century account of findinga banco used as a table while investigating nativerituals being carried out in a cave. He says:

At the entrance the cave was broad, and wenta little forward, but when we were in, wefound it turned on the left hand toward themountain, and not far, for within two rodswe found the idol standing upon a low stoolcovered with a linen cloth (Gage 1958:281).There is, however, solid archaeological evi-

dence for the antiquity of the use of these bancos.Parts of four Late Classic examples were recov-ered from the Cueva de “Las Banquetas” in theCentral Depression of Chiapas (RodríquezBetancourt 1987:108). Brian Hayden (1987:176)suggests that they may have functioned as ritualtables in much the same way as they do today.On the other side of the Maya area, Keith Prufer(n.d.) has found two bancos during his work withthe Maya Mountains Archaeological Project insouthern Belize in 1995. The first probably datesto the Late Classic and has very much the formof a mesa in that it is 2 m long (Figure 2). The sec-ond was found in Bats’ub/25 Flight Cave near

84 James E. Brady

Unión Camp. The four-legged rosewood bench,35 cm x 17 cm x 8 cm high, was found with anEarly Classic burial (Figure 3). The surface of thebench had traces of red pigment, which is inter-esting in that I have discovered several preparedsurfaces in caves that had red pigment sprinkledover them. A radiocarbon analysis dated thebench to A.D. 170 +/- 80, in other words, to theLate Preclassic. A special exhibit in the summerof 2002 at the Regional Anthropological MuseumPalacio Cantón in Merida displayed a banco re-

covered from the Cenote of Sacrifice at ChichénItzá by one of the projects conducted in the 1960s(Piña Chan 1970). Thus, there appears to be goodevidence that the low banco carved from a singlepiece of wood definitely has pre-Columbian rootsthat extend back into the Preclassic. Furthermore,while the ethnographic use of the banco is notedmost frequently in the Maya highlands, the ar-chaeological evidence suggests that, prior to con-tact, it was used in both the northern and south-ern lowlands as well.

The evidence for the field table type of mesais more difficult to find because all of the indi-vidual pieces tend to be small and the entirestructure would be lost as soon as the four sup-ports collapse. Nevertheless, indirect evidence ofthis type of mesa use has been recovered at NajTunich. Naj Tunich is a large cave site located insoutheastern Peten, Guatemala (Figure 4). Thecave’s entrance chamber is a huge room runningmore than 150 m east to west (Figure 5). The east-ern third of the chamber contains a natural risethat was modified though filling and leveling be-hind a series of retaining walls (Figure 6) into atwo-tiered balcony structure that rises 14 m abovethe floor of the cave. A small opening off the up-per level of the balcony gives access to the 3.5 kmof tunnel passage, most of which is over 15 m indiameter. The tunnels contain the largest corpusof hieroglyphic writing ever found in a Mayacave. I have recently proposed on a number oflines of evidence that Naj Tunich functioned as amajor regional pilgrimage center (Brady n.d.).

The balcony was the central ceremonial stageof Naj Tunich with the retaining walls probablyserving to restrict access to the upper levels toritual specialists and those of high status. Strati-

Figure 1. Individual depicted on Kaminaljuyu Monument 65seated on a banco.

Figure 2. Large banco nearly 2 m long found in a cave in theMaya Mountains of Belize (photograph courtesy of KeithPrufer).

Figure 3. A Late Preclassic wooden banco recovered fromBats’ub/25 Flight Cave (photograph courtesy of KeithPrufer).

85In My Hill, In My Valley: The Importance of Place in Ancient Maya Ritual

graphic excavations were carried out on the up-per level of the balcony. A 2 x 2 m pit was openedalong the western cave wall but the western por-tion of the pit yielded little information because

a travertine floor was encounteredless than 10 cm below the surface.The eastern half of the pit, however,contained a series of superimposeduse-floors that were marked by thinlayers of caliche. The floors werestained a dark black by charcoaland perhaps the smoke from copalincense. All of this overlay a layerof heavily compacted sterile yellowclay. The soil characteristics are im-portant because of the dramatic dif-ferences in color and compactionbetween the dark cultural levels asopposed to the yellow non-culturallevels.

In scraping across the surface ofthe yellow clay, a number of darkcircles appeared that resembledpost holes (Figure 7). These differedfrom holes that had been created bydripping water in that the naturalholes tended to be shallow andconical in shape. By contrast, thepost-holes were deeper and straight-sided. In several cases the post-holes had been plugged by a rockor mud so that when the obstruc-tion was removed, the empty shaftwas revealed. Eight of the 11 post-holes had diameters between 6 and9 cm, much too small to have beensupports for anything but small,light constructions. The largest holewas 15 cm in diameter and wasequidistant from the cave wall to asimilar sized feature (16 cm in di-ameter and 50 cm deep) just out-side of the pit. Because these twoholes were similar in size, and somuch larger than any of the otherholes, they were the only two thatcould be reasonably paired as hav-ing belonged to the same feature.These two holes were separated byabout a meter and a half and soprobably would have supported atabletop slightly over 2 m in length.

The large number of post-holes in this one re-stricted area suggests that literally hundreds, ifnot thousands, of mesas had been set up on thebalcony at Naj Tunich during the centuries of uti-

Figure 4. Map of the Maya area showing the location of caves.

Figure 5. A view of the entrance chamber at Naj Tunich; note the person standingin the middle of the floor for scale (photograph courtesy of Allan Cobb).

86 James E. Brady

lization of the site. The ceramic chronology docu-ments a utilization from the Late Preclassic to theLate Classic, between 700 and 1000 years from300 B.C. to A.D. 800. Evidence similar to that re-ported here from Naj Tunich may have beenfound at another site in Belize. MacLeod andPuleston (1978:72) state that, “In one cave en-trance, excavations this year have yielded large

numbers of post holes in otherwise sterile depos-its, suggesting the erection of temporary struc-tures perhaps akin to that of the modern Yukatekch’a chàak, a ceremony in which the rain gods areoffered maize, balche and sacrificial fowls.” Al-though they do not specifically call these mesas,it appears to be what they are referring to. Thusthe field-table form of mesa also appears to havea long pre-contact history. The utilization spansthe same period of time as the bancos found byPrufer just on the other side of the Belize - Gua-temala border from Naj Tunich. This indicatesthat both forms of mesas were in regular use inthe southern Maya lowlands.

Once it is established that the mesa was a com-ponent of pre-Columbian Maya ritual parapher-nalia, it is possible to identify other forms. Stonealtars are the features that appear to be the mostobviously related. While altars are frequently re-ported in caves, the form is extremely variable.At Naj Tunich, an altar in Operation VII is sim-ply a pile of rough stones topped by a rock thatprojects vertically from the top at a 45° angle. Thenecks of two ceramic vessels had been placed onthe projecting stone (Brady et al. 1992:78, Stone1995:128-129). There is, however, no flat surfaceanywhere on the feature, and I am reluctant toassign the function and cosmological associationsof mesas to altars that lack a flat, rectangular sur-face. A flat, rectangular altar has been found andwill be discussed below.

In the ethnographic context, very ephemeralmesas can be defined by simply laying a blanketon the ground. Little, if any, evidence of this typeof mesa or the associated ritual would remain forthe archaeologist to find. What may have been ananalogous behavior was recovered in a muddytrough at the Cueva de Sangre at Dos Pilas. Onone occasion, a large flat rock was moved to re-veal a prepared surface beneath that had beencreated by sprinkling a red mineral pigment onthe ground. Two bone awls or weaving picks, alsocovered in red pigment, were lying on the pre-pared surface. A portion of the surface had beenpreserved when water-born silts covered the pig-ment. A second surface was discovered when thesticky clay silt adhered to an archaeologist’s bootand was pulled away from the layer of pigment.The accidental discovery of two similar featuressuggests that this very simple form of mesa mayhave been regularly utilized in the rituals at theCueva de Sangre.

Figure 6. The balcony structure at Naj Tunich showing someof the retaining walls used in construction.

Figure 7. Excavation on the upper level of the balcony at NajTunich showing the post holes from mesa construction.

87In My Hill, In My Valley: The Importance of Place in Ancient Maya Ritual

The Meaning of Mesas in Caves

Over the last several decades it has becomewell established that caves are among the mostimportant features in the sacred landscape (Brady1997, Brady and Veni 1992, Heyden 1981, Stone1995, Thompson 1975). Because caves are a focusof Maya ritual and mesas play a role in so manyceremonies, it is not surprising to find evidenceof mesas in this context. Caves, however, are aunique setting that impart a special meaning torituals and the paraphernalia used in them. Thisis particularly true of a great site like Naj Tunich.I would like to delve into the special significanceof the mesas discovered at Naj Tunich.

It is recognized that the mesa is a cosmogramthat defines the cosmic center and the four quar-ters that spread out from it. The four quarters aremarked very explicitly on the mesa by the Ch’orti’Maya who place a stone in each of the directions.The four sacred stones, ideally spherical and allthe same size, are gathered from a sacred pool(Girard 1962:23). The center is marked by a fifthstone that is slightly larger than the other four.All space, from the mesa, to the house, to the vil-lage, to the world, consists of four quarters and acenter point (Redfield and Villa Rojas 1962:114).William Hanks (1984:136) says that “There is nota single type of ceremony performed by shamansthat does not embody the directional principle.”

The center is further seen as the axis mundiwhere the earthly level is connected to a celestiallevel above and an underworld level below. Theproblem in interpretation is the tendency toequate caves with the underworld. The associa-tion of caves with the underworld received itsmost explicit elaboration in Barbara MacLeod andDennis Puleston’s (1978) Pathways into Darkness:The Search for the Road to Xibalba. Their model ofthe underworld was constructed from the PopolVuh as well as from Lacandon ethnography. In thePopol Vuh, the underworld is portrayed as a placefull of dangers and presided over by the malevo-lent underworld deities. In the absence of seriousanalysis of caves either ethnographically orarchaeologically, the attribution seemed appropri-ate and so was applied with little question for thenext 20 years.

My own reservations about the association ofcaves with the underworld were aroused by ob-servation of modern Maya cave ceremonies inwhich the attitude of the participants was very

different from what one would expect of a tripto the underworld. The ceremonies were also notdedicated to underworld deities. In modernQ’eqchi’ Maya religion, the most important indig-enous figure is the Tzuultaq’a, often referred to asthe “Earth Lord” in English (Adams and Brady1994). The name literally means “hill-valley” andhas counterparts in many Maya languages, sug-gesting that this represents a pan-Maya concept.The term tzuultaq’a also refers to a recognizedgeographical entity (the hill-valley) so that theEarth Lord is clearly a personification and deifi-cation of landscape tied to the Amerindian con-cept of a sacred, animate Earth. Within a hill-val-ley the most sacred place is the cave, often re-ferred to as a “stone house” because it is thedwelling place of the Tzuultaq’a. But the cave isnot important simply as a dwelling of the deity.Xetish, an extremely important Ixil Maya cave, lit-erally means “where once there dwelt a god”(Lincoln 1945:95-96). The cave remained impor-tant even in the absence of the deity because thepower ultimately resided in the earth and thecave was the heart of the earth.

It is also clear in ethnographies that many ofthe properties MacLeod and Puleston attributedto the underworld are associated with Earth inindigenous thought. Thus, it is the Earth Lord thatis petitioned for rain and crop fertility. Whereancestors are important, they reside within thesacred mountain, a symbol of the earth, and notof the underworld. Furthermore, I have been im-pressed with the fact that the underworld andunderworld related deities do not appear to playa significant role in day-to-day indigenous life orthinking. For the last five years, I have stressedthe role of Earth in the interpretation of Meso-american caves. In returning to the analysis of themesa, I would note that action revolves around thetop of the table, which represents the earthly plainand I would further argue that the cave also rep-resents an intense expression of this level.

As the result of a number of discoveries overthe last several years, I have come to believe thatplace was enormously important in Maya cosmol-ogy. I have also begun to suspect that many cavescarried a far more important and specific mean-ing beyond their simply being access points to thesacred earth. Let me put this in a larger theoreti-cal framework. Geographer Erich Isaac has pro-posed that, as ideal polar opposites, there are twobasic religious orientations. The first seeks the jus-

88 James E. Brady

Figure 8. A stalagmite occupies a dramatic position near thecenter of the chamber at Naj Tunich in which the mesa wasfound.

tification of human existence in the act of creationitself while the second orientation finds it in a di-vine charter or covenant. Ritual in the second casewill repeatedly reference the covenant and land-scape modifications will be minimal. In societiesthat see creation as the central justification of hu-man existence, Isaac (1962:12) says that “the at-tempt will be made to reproduce the cosmic planin the landscape with greater or lesser effect uponthe land, depending on the elaborateness of re-production attempted.” While the concept of thecovenant is not unknown in Mesoamerica, reli-gion definitely focuses on the act of creation. Theimportance of the concept of world creation hasbeen seriously under-appreciated, especially byarchaeologists. Mircea Eliade, however, points tothis as one of the fundamental concepts in reli-gion. He says:

The paramount time of origins is the time ofthe cosmogony, the instant that saw the ap-pearance of the most immediate of realities,the world. This...is the reason the cosmogonyserves as the paradigmatic model for everycreation, for every kind of doing. It is for thissame reason that cosmogonic time serves asthe model for all sacred times (Eliade1959:81).Any doubt about the orientation in ancient

Mesoamerica around the act of creation shouldbe dispelled by Angel García-Zambrano’s discus-sion of contact period rituals of foundationthroughout Mesoamerica. The rituals were per-formed at the founding of a new settlement andthey established the boundaries of that commu-nity. He notes that groups attempted to find aspot with certain types of features and that theywould often bypass ecologically superior loca-tions that lacked them. He says that:

Essentially, Mesoamerican migrants searchedfor an environment with specific characteris-tics that comprised several symbolic levels….Such a place had to recall the mythical mo-ment when the earth was created: an aquaticuniverse framed by four mountains with afifth elevation protruding in the middle ofthe water. The mountain at the core had tobe dotted with caves and springs, and some-times surrounded by smaller hills. A settinglike this duplicated, and forever wouldfreeze, the primordial scene when the watersand the sky separated and the earth sproutedupwards (García-Zambrano 1994:217-218).

As mentioned above, a number of recent dis-coveries suggest that many caves were thoughtto represent the cave of origin. Space does notpermit me to detail these here. Several locationsthat closely resemble García-Zambrano’s primor-dial landscape have been located along with theirassociated caves. I have also documented two ar-tificial caves, one in Central Mexico (Aguilar etal. n.d.) and the other in the Maya area (Brady1991) that were built as models of the seven-chambered cave of origin, the Chicomoztoc or theVucub Pec. Artificial caves are important becausetheir form is the result of decisions of their mak-ers rather than the whim of nature so that elabo-rate caves provide clues about what caves in gen-eral were supposed to mean. I now strongly sus-pect that a large class of caves was probably un-derstood to have specifically represented the caveof origin in indigenous thought. Did all caves rep-resent the Chicomoztoc or Vucub Pec? At this point,I don’t think so! In that case, which ones did?

David Stuart’s (Vogt and Stuart n.d.) recentdecipherment of the glyph for ch’en or cave has

89In My Hill, In My Valley: The Importance of Place in Ancient Maya Ritual

provided new insights into the importance ofthese features in ancient inscriptions. Simon Mar-tin (2001:178) has suggested that, while meaningcave, many times the glyph may actually be re-ferring to a community. If so, ch’en may functionlike the nahuatl word for community, altépetl,which literally means “water-filled mountain”(Broda 1996:460). Thus across Mesoamerica,people appear to have been inseparably identi-fied with either the sacred cave or the sacredmountain. I suspect that all of the major caves,the caves that were the focus of group or com-munity identity, were thought to be the cave oforigin of that group of people. Given the impor-tance that Isaac and Eliade assign to the act of cre-ation, this has tremendous implications for ourunderstanding the role of caves in defining place.The place of creation is the living justification ofhuman existence and defines the center of the cos-mos because the great acts of creation always oc-cur at the center. Many of the great caves such asNaj Tunich carry the imagery of the center a stepfurther by containing huge ribbed stalagmitic col-umns (Figure 8). These formations have been iden-tified by native informants as ceiba trees, the treeof life that stands at the center and holds up thesky (MacLeod and Puleston 1978:74). This fits theimago mundi: the place of creation at the heart ofthe earth where the huge stone trunk of the ceibareaches from floor to ceiling and perhaps beyond.

The notion of centrality was reinforced at NajTunich by virtue of its being a pil-grimage center (Brady n.d.). AsTurner and Turner (1978: 22-23)note, for the pilgrim in his home-town, the distant pilgrimage centeris seen as being located in the cha-otic wilderness. Once the trip com-mences, however, the perspectivechanges to a trek through the wil-derness to reach the sacred center.As the destination draws near, thepilgrim enters a circuit of second-ary sites that builds the drama andanticipation of encountering thatwhich epitomizes the sacred.

Returning to Maya ritual, themesa situates or centers space andre-establishes the cosmic order bydefining the four directions. As theplace of creation, caves are insepa-rably linked to the concept of the

cosmic center. Mesas erected within such caveswould set up their cosmogram as a microcosm ofthis larger directional symbol, concentrating andaccentuating it. The entire cosmos would be seento emanate from these structures.

This feeling is particularly exemplified by anintact table altar that was discovered in 1989 atthe end of the new branch of Naj Tunich. To reachthe altar, the pilgrimage must first gain admit-tance to the balcony. As noted earlier, the balconywas created through the construction of a seriesof retaining walls, which are thought to have re-stricted access to the area beyond. The tunnel sys-tem can only be entered through a small open-ing on the upper level of the balcony. The fact thataccess to the tunnel system was tightly restrictedis clearly reflected in the drastic drop in artifactdensity in the tunnels. From the entrance to thetunnel system, the pilgrim would have had topenetrate over a mile into the earth and wouldhave negotiated a technical climb and a danger-ous drop to reach the final chamber. The tripwould have been a pilgrimage within a pilgrim-age. The pilgrim then entered a circular chamberby crawling through a low opening. A dramaticstalagmite is found near the center of this cham-ber and a rectangular, flat-topped stone mesa wasbuilt against a tongue of protruding bedrock (Fig-ure 9). Within the altar on the center-line was alarge piece of speleothem with the cortex re-moved to reveal its crystalline structure (Brady

Figure 9. This unusual rectangular mesa was found in the most inaccessible partof Naj Tunich, several kilometers from the entrance (photograph courtesy ofGeorge Veni).

90 James E. Brady

and Prufer 1999). Given its location in the deep-est, most inaccessible part of Naj Tunich, I believethat this altar represented the most powerful spotin the entire cave. The cosmological model laidout by the mesa would have taken on special sig-nificance being located at the heart of this ex-tremely sacred site. I have wondered if this cham-ber was considered within the region to be thevery place of creation.

Conclusions

I have attempted to show that archaeologicallypreserved examples of mesas can be dated to atleast the Late Preclassic with a wider range dat-ing to the Classic Period. Despite its Spanishname, the mesa clearly appears to be part of anindigenous religious tradition. The small body ofarchaeological evidence that does exist also sug-gests there were regional patterns of mesa forms.Pre-Hispanic bancos, associated today with theMaya highlands, have been recovered in both thesouthern and northern lowlands as well as thehighlands. Evidence has also been producedshowing that both the bush table and the bancowere in use in a small area of the Maya Moun-tains at the same time. A flat-topped, rectangu-lar stone mesa has been reported from Naj Tunichand evidence from Dos Pilas suggests that mesasmay have been laid out by sprinkling red min-eral pigment on bare earth.

While ethnography has documented the useof mesas in the context of folk religion, the ar-chaeological evidence from Naj Tunich suggeststhat at least the stone mesa was used by the eliteas well. The context and associated artifacts of oneof the bancos recovered by Keith Prufer (n.d.) sug-gests that it was used by a shaman. Thus, mesasappear to have been used at all social levels. Thisis hardly surprising because the mesa embodiesthe most basic cosmological principals. This al-lowed mesas to be employed by all classes evenas the form, function, and message of the ritualsconducted on them differed.

Finally, I have suggested that place was ex-tremely important in Mesoamerican cosmology.Caves were important sacred places because theywere the dwelling place of the deities and epito-mized the heart of the earth. I have suggested thatthe great caves, the caves that were the focus ofcommunity and group identity, may have beenthought to have been connected to the fundamen-

tally important acts of world and human creation.Caves, therefore, would have represented the cos-mic center and the place of power. The mesa car-ried the same message of centrality. Used withina cave, the mesa would have been seen as enhanc-ing by further concentrating, intensifying, andfocusing the power inherent in place.

James E. BradyDepartment of AnthropologyCalifornia State University, Los AngelesLos Angeles, CA 90032(323) 343-2440jbrady@calstatela.edu

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