CLASSIC-PERIOD RITUAL CERAMICS FROM THE COAST OF CHIAPAS, MEXICO

Abstract

AbstractIn 1947 Philip Drucker excavated an unusually dense concentration of artifacts from the plaza of a small Late Classic site on the inner coastal plain of Chiapas, Mexico that he proposed was a possible end-of-cycle ceremonial dump. Although the deposit contained both utilitarian and ritual items, only some of the latter have survived for present day investigation. Here we describe Drucker's excavations and the surviving ritual items, neither of which had ever been published in detail. We also examine archaeological expectations for end-of-cycle dumps based upon ethnohistoric descriptions of this Mesoamerican ritual practice and we explore the iconography of effigy censers, which constitute an important set of the items that Drucker collected. We conclude that this singular deposit most likely represents the material remains an end-of-cycle ritual as Drucker had originally proposed.