At the Simposio last year, I ended up meeting a Guatemalan archaeologist named Raquel Macario, who saw my paper on the cave archaeology we've been doing. She expressed an interest in the field, so I grabbed Brady and introduced them. About 10 minutes later, Brady came back with Raquel and told me that she had found a new artificial cave near Q'umerkaaj (see a bit of background here).

What is so interesting about caves here and in other parts of the highlands is that they are artificial--the Maya dug caves where they didn't have them naturally and used them for ritual activity (and still use many of them today). They were first studied by Brady and Veni, but with a French project working at Q'umerkaaj and around the area, more are popping up.

So we finally got to go this weekend. Pictures will be up soon, but as a general description it's a tunnel about 40 meters long located on the other side of the site from the other three known caves and at a lower altitude. It's above a river and the entrance to the cave is topped by a large flat slab of basaltic rock which creates a chamber about 2 meters x 4 and a ceiling of about 3 meters. The tunnel is actually much narrower (only about a meter wide at the widest points) and often is impossible to stand in. Unlike the other caves at the site, this one actually opens up on the other side, although the exit was small and filled with wasps, so we didn't get to see where it ends up. Geologically, it was dug at a transition--the majority of the profile of the cave was solid rock, although the upper portion was composed of large river rocks cemented together.

The entrance to the cave had candlewax and there was more wax and pine needles scattered throughout the cave (as well as garbage and several used condoms, indicating that the cave has more than one function). One ancient artifact was uncovered--the head of a bird that probably served as an incensario handle.

While we were at Q'umerkaaj we also revisited two of the three already-registered caves (the third one is colllapsed and further down the hill), and we happened to be there while a ceremony was being undertaken in a place of difficult access in Cave 1--down a 7 meter drop-off. Apparently there are only a few people from the area who go down there, and for a small fee they can go on behalf of another family. The ritual specialist was already below and every chamber in the cave had lit candles, so while heading back Raquel (who's K'iche' herself) asked what was going on. Mirza ended up going down with me "belaying" her on a sketchy rope (or rather a collection of short segments of twine tied together), which was a combination of bravery and stupidity that I think that pretty much anyone who works in caves has to have to be successful. The passage continues with a tight crawlspace before opening up to a small room filled with candles, dead chickens, money, and the remains of some sort of predatory animal.

Raquel says that there are more artificial caves around the area, so this is the beginning of a larger project that we'll be doing sporadically on weekends. So expect periodic updates on this stuff.