The links between caves and the larger settlement and social landscapes in Mesoamerica have been a growing area of research in the last three decades. In this book, Shawn Gregory Morton reports on 10 caves and one structure in the Roaring Creek and Caves Branch River valleys of Belize. These sites range in date from Middle Formative through the Postclassic (ca. 600 BC–AD 1000). This work provides another theoretical and practical overview in linking ritual cave use and the settlement sites in which they existed. The strength of Morton's research is its synthesis of epigraphic, ethnohistoric, iconographic, ethnographic, and archaeological evidence for ancient Maya cave use.
The book has two parts. The first part eloquently outlines the theoretical perspectives associated with ritual, examines the “cave” concept, and discusses J. Eric S. Thompson's introduction to Henry C. Mercer's The Hill-Caves of Yucatan: A Search for Evidence of Man's Antiquity in the Caverns of Central America, outining his eight proposed cave uses by the ancient Maya. Morton details Maya cosmology and thoroughly outlines the interpretation of the CH'EEN glyph and its connection both to and within caves. He also examines the iconographic evidence for caves and cave use and overlays this with ethnohistoric data, as well as Indigenous perspectives of caves. Morton meets his goal of avoiding the “tyranny of the ethnographic record” while still critically considering these sources. His synthesis reflects the difficult, yet key, corpus of data with which archaeologists must engage when attempting to understand what a cave was, meant, did, and held for the ancient Maya.
The second part provides an overview of the numerous sites investigated by Morton and carefully details the geomorphology and archaeological investigation of each. He uses ceramic data to examine temporal patterns of cave use, argues for the existence of broad networks of exchange and consumption, and infers polity growth based on these patterns. In examining the archaeological evidence from these sites, Morton concludes that ceramic sherds were redistributed throughout the different caves. This practice, he argues, can be explained by “fragmentation theory.” In this context, caves served both as places of deposition and of acquisition for ritually charged objects. While intriguing, this argument remains tenuous because there is no evidence to support the proposal. Morton was unable to refit objects between discrete contexts and sites back together. Slater (2014) had proposed the same idea in his disseration, “Into the Heart of the Turtle: Caves, Ritual, and Power in Ancient Central Yucatan, Mexico,” and expended considerable effort in an unsuccessful attempt to find refits. Morton also hypothesizes that elite ritual specialists in central Belize may have used ritual networks that would have linked hinterland sites to the monumental core and animate world. Given the intimate links between caves and monumental architecture, kingship investiture in caves, and pilgrimage practices, this makes sense. As Morton notes, this would have served to stabilize existing and emerging social structures, strengthen community bonds, and delineate boundaries.
Morton emphasizes the necessity of “active articulation” between cave studies and the larger archaeological contexts in which they are embedded and criticizes the field for what he considers a “myopic” focus on the cave. His proposed approach to cave archaeology, however, is not new. Morton appears to ignore the fact that his own work follows the path of regional surveys that is three decades old. Additionally, the ability of cave archaeology to address larger issues has been noted as the hallmark of the field in the new millennium. Nevertheless, his ability to contextualize the cave component of the Central Belize Archaeological Survey within the surface settlement of the region is a strength. Morton demonstrates this through the examination of “hinterland” cave sites against the backdrop of the Tipan Chen Uitz settlement and the larger caves of Actun Kabul and Midnight Terror Cave (MTC). Morton rightly points out that “the study of ancient Maya cave use—in all of its complexity—is best accomplished with reference to the broader social, political, economic, and religious (etc.) milieu of the peoples under study” (p. 1).
Morton also argues for a pattern of elite interment based on human skeletal remains in “elite” caves such as Actun Kabul and MTC. This argument is problematic at best. In examples of burial in elite caves, such as Naj Tunich and Quen Santo, human skeletal remains were found in tombs (Brady and Stone, Archaeology 39:18–25). Morton never explains how or why the remains of more than a hundred individuals at MTC, not found in tombs but instead scattered and comingled across the cave floor, indicate elite burial. Interestingly, the artifact and ceramic assemblages at MTC were not, for the most part, associated with the human remains and so do not represent mortuary offerings as one would expect in Morton's model. The deposition of ritual artifacts such as ceramics for the petitioning of rain is a well-established practice in numerous Maya cave contexts and is outlined in Morton's research. The combination of these artifacts, the presence of human remains, and the deposition pattern of the remains suggests the practice of human sacrifice at MTC. It is bewildering that Morton overlooks this given his detailed overview of the practice of human sacrifice in cave spaces in Chapter 5 in addition to his application of Tiesler's approach for distinguishing mortuary from sacrificial assemblages in his consideration of skeletal remains at Actun Lubul Ha. Although it is unfortunate that Morton largely ignores the possibility of human sacrifice at Actun Kabul and MTC, he compounds the problem by arguing for an elite mortuary practice in these spaces. The proposal for elite cave mausoleums as a new mortuary form simply requires more description and justification than he provides.
In spite of some clear issues with Morton's arguments, this study provides new data and sheds light on the role of smaller caves in the settlement landscape. It adds to the growing body of cave archaeology, allowing for a regional examination of the links between these sites.
