Posted on 06/10/2005 6:27:20 PM PDT by nickcarraway
Murder victims suggest female strength in ancient culture.
Archaeologists have entered a long-sealed crypt in Guatemala to find an ancient murder scene. The tomb, in the ancient city of Waká, contains the remains of two women, one pregnant, arranged in a ritual tableau.
Researchers say the young, wealthy women were probably slaughtered as part of a power struggle between Mayan cities. And that, they say, sheds new light on the role of women in the Mayan culture 1,600 years ago.
"This tomb tells us that women were extremely powerful," says Dorie Reents-Budet, a Maya specialist who works for the Smithsonian Institution from North Carolina. "When there were political disagreements, women were killed."
Waká, also known as El Perú, lies by the San Pedro River about 60 kilometres west of the more famous site of Tikal. Once thought to be a minor player in the Maya world, Waká has recently emerged as a key pawn in the bitter rivalry between the cities of Calakmul, to the north, and Tikal.
Women probably played an important role in those battles, says David Freidel, an archaeologist at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas, who co-directs the excavations at Waká. When one Maya group conquered another, it may not have been enough to simply invade and take over. It may also have been standard practice to slay women of the elite class.
"The usurpation of power may have required the ritual and public extinction of the immediate family line," says Freidel, who runs the Waká project with archaeologist Héctor Escobedo of the University of San Carlos in Guatemala City.
Excavations at other Maya tombs had hinted at the bloodiness of such takeovers, but the findings at Waká are some of the best documented and most detailed yet.
Death of warriors
Waká reached its height between AD 400 and 800; the newfound tomb dates to the beginning of that reign, between about AD 350 and 400. It is at least two centuries older than a queen's tomb found at Waká last year.
Graduate student Michelle Rich uncovered the tomb in late April as she excavated one of three pyramids atop Waká's highest hill. Guatemala's minister of culture announced the discovery last week.
Inside the tomb, both women had been carefully arranged. The pregnant one was laid face down with the other woman on top, face up. Both had shells and ear decorations arranged by their skulls. Stingray spines had been placed near their groins, a possible sign that they were regarded on the same level as warriors, says Freidel. Their deaths would have made a powerful political statement, he says.
The tomb also contained a handful of elaborately painted ceramic vessels. "This is the good stuff," says Reents-Budet, comparing the pots to the Mayan equivalent of delftware.
The artefacts and bones have been moved to the project's laboratory in Guatemala City, where they can be studied further.
Nick -- you are finding a lot of interesting articles! :)
Civ --
GGG PING
Ping.
archeologists get so much wrong it is hard to believe them when they start inserting PC policy.
Was this not the culture that was viewed as a bunch of peaceful astronomical calendar watchers until a wall painting depicting blood sacrifices and bloody wars?
The use of stingray spines in bloodletting ceremonies
is well documented and the blood used to write messages
to gods which were then ritually burned.
This was an obligation of the ruling class, so one could
infer that these two women were of that class.
It doesn't give any hint about their deaths though, interesting positioning of the bodies...
killeeeeees
... ah the glories of PC.
Doublespeak rides again.
Oh yeah, right. The slaughtering of women makes women powerful . . . .puleeeeese.This makes it sound like women are the most powerful sex in Islam then, too . . . .
longtermmemmory wrote:
archeologists get so much wrong it is hard to believe them when they start inserting PC policy.
Was this not the culture that was viewed as a bunch of peaceful astronomical calendar watchers until a wall painting depicting blood sacrifices and bloody wars?
--Wait until the future, millions of years from now, i wonder how PC archealogists will portray TROP(tm).
The ancient Mayans were the world's first Democrats. When things went wrong, they blamed the women.
I sat at a lunch table once listening to a radical feminist protest how oppressive the Spanish were when they invaded Mexico. When I pointed out to her that the Spanish received help from tribes who were the sacrificial victims in Aztec religious festivals where they ritually murdered thousands at a time, including roasting and eating the victims, she said that this was okay because they were of the same race and therefore not racist.
She was a political science major. What a wasted education of time and money and a mind.
Maybe the stingray spines were just some kinky fad.
Ive heard a lot worse than that from biology and chemistry professors. Guess we should diss all those majors too huh?
How the heck does to women beign DEAD contribute to an argument of their STRENGTH? I'm starting to see how people might thing Carter was a good president, apparently failing miserably on a grand enough scale means you must have been a contender.
Somehow laying dead does not conjure up powerful.
Yowwwwsa
Um, pardon my ignorance, but wouldn't their NOT being killed mean they were more powerful? It seems to me that power resides in the sacrificER, not the sacrificEE.
What the poli sci professor overlooked was that the Aztecs did not consider their victims from other tribesto be of the same "race" and were therefore guilty of racist thinking.
The women may have been of a royal class, and so, they got the best treatment. Anne Boleyn's executioner was imported from France.
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