The Implements of the Blade House: The Function and Symbolic Significance of Laurel-leaf Bifaces from Caves in Central Belize

References

• Adams, R. E. W. (1963). A polychrome vessel from Altar de Sacrificios. Archaeology, 16, 90–92.
   Web of Science ®Google Scholar
• Agurcia Fasquelle, R., Sheets, P., & Taube, K. A. (2016). Protecting sacred space: Rosalila’s eccentric chert cache at Copan and eccentrics among the Classic Maya. Precolumbian Mesoweb Press.
   Google Scholar
• Andrieu, C. (2013). Late Classic Maya lithic production and exchange at Rio Bec and Calakmul, Mexico. Journal of Field Archaeology, 38(1), 21–37. https://doi.org/10.1179/0093469012Z.00000000034
   Web of Science ®Google Scholar
• Andrieu, C. (2014). Maya lithic production. In H. Selin (Ed.), Encyclopaedia of the history of science, technology, and medicine in non-western cultures (pp. 1–13). Springer.
   Google Scholar
• Aoyama, K. (2005). Classic Maya warfare and weapons: Spear, dart, and arrow points of Aguateca and Copan. Ancient Mesoamerica, 16(2), 291–304. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0956536105050248
   Google Scholar
• Aoyama, K. (2009). Elite craft producers, artists, and warriors at Aguateca: Lithic analysis. Monographs of the Aguateca Archaeological Project First Phase, Volume 2, University of Utah Press.
   Google Scholar
• Ardren, T. (2011). Empowered children in Classic Maya sacrificial rites. Childhood in the Past, 4(1), 133–145. https://doi.org/10.1179/cip.2011.4.1.133
   Google Scholar
• Austin, R. J. (2015). The ritual uses of lithic raw materials during the Woodland period, Fort Center, southern Florida. Journal of Field Archaeology, 40(4), 413–427. https://doi.org/10.1179/2042458214Y.0000000005
   Web of Science ®Google Scholar
• Awe, J. J. (2019). Children for Chaahk: archaeological, iconographic, and ethnohistoric evidence for ancient Maya child sacrifice. Paper presented at the 10th Maya@Playa Conference, Palm Coast, Florida.
   Google Scholar
• Awe, J. J., Griffith, C., & Gibbs, S. A. (2005). Cave stelae and megalithic monuments in western Belize. In J. Brady & K. Prufer (Eds.), In the maw of the earth monster: Mesoamerican ritual cave use (pp. 223–249). University of Texas Press.
   Google Scholar
• Bassie, K. (2002). Mesoweb – Maya creator gods. Retrieved August 28, 2019, from www.mesoweb.com/features/bassie/CreatorGods/CreatorGods.pdf (28 August 2019)
   Google Scholar
• Bassie-Sweet, K. (1991). From the mouth of the dark cave: Commemorative sculpture of the Late Classic Maya. University of Oklahoma Press.
   Google Scholar
• Bassie-Sweet, K. (2021). Maya gods of war. University Press of Colorado.
   Google Scholar
• Brady, J. E. (1989). Investigation of Maya ritual cave use with special reference to Naj Tunich, Peten, Guatemala [Ph.D. dissertation]. Department of Anthropology, University of California.
   Google Scholar
• Brady, J. E. (2005). The impact of ritual on ancient Maya economy. In K. M. Prufer & J. E. Brady (Eds.), Stone houses and earth lords: Maya religion in the cave context (pp. 115–134). University of Colorado Press.
   Google Scholar
• Brady, J. E., Scott, A., Neff, H., & Glascock, M. D. (1997). Speleothem breakage, movement, removal, and caching: An aspect of ancient Maya cave modification. Geoarchaeology, 12(6), 725–750. https://doi.org/10.1002/(SICI)1520-6548(199709)12:6<725::AID-GEA10>3.0.CO;2-D
   Google Scholar
• Brown, L. A. (2015). When pre-sunrise beings inhabit a post-sunrise world: Time, animate objects and contemporary Tz’utujil Maya ritual practitioners. In A. Aveni (Ed.), The measure and meaning of time in Mesoamerica and the Andes (pp. 53–77). Dumbarton Oaks.
   Google Scholar
• Chase, P. G. (1991). Symbols and Paleolithic artifacts: Style, standardization, and the imposition of arbitrary form. Journal of Anthropological Archaeology, 10(3), 193–214. https://doi.org/10.1016/0278-4165(91)90013-N
   Web of Science ®Google Scholar
• Christenson, A. J. (2007). Mesoweb – Popol Vuh: Sacred book of the Quiché Maya people. Retrieved February 17, 2019, from http://www.mesoweb.com/publications/Christenson/PopolVuh.pdf
   Google Scholar
• Clark, J. F., Nelson, F. W., & Titmus, G. L. (2012). Eccentric flint. In J. Pillsbury, M. Doutriaux, R. Ishihara-Brito, & A. Tokovinine (Eds.), Ancient Maya art at Dumbarton Oaks (pp. 282–287). Dumbarton Oaks.
   Google Scholar
• Coe, M. D. (1978). The lords of the Underworld. Princeton University Press.
   Google Scholar
• Coe, W. R. (1959). Piedras Negras archaeology: Artifacts, caches, and burials. Museum Monographs, No. 4. University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology. University of Pennsylvania Press.
   Google Scholar
• Coggins, C. C., & Shane, O. C. III (1984). Cenote of sacrifice: Maya treasures from the sacred well at Chichén Itzá. University of Texas Press.
   Google Scholar
• Coppe, J., & Rots, V. (2017). Focus on the target. The importance of a transparent fracture terminology for understanding projectile points and projecting modes. Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports, 12, 109–123. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jasrep.2017.01.010
   Google Scholar
• Cucina, A., Tiesler, V., & Palka, J. (2015). The identity and worship of human remains in rock-shelter shrines among the northern Lacandons of Mensabäk. Estudios de Cultura Maya, 45, 141–169. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0185-2574(15)30005-8
   Google Scholar
• De Anda Alanis, G. (2007). Sacrifice and ritual body mutilation in Postclassical Maya society: Taphonomy of the human remains from Chichen Itza’s Cenote Sagrado. In V. Tiesler & A. Cucina (Eds.), New perspectives on human sacrifice and ritual body treatments in ancient Maya society (pp. 190–208). Springer.
   Google Scholar
• Doyle, J. A. (2022). Rain, lightning. In O. Chinchilla Mazariegos, J. A. Doyle, & J. Pillsbury (Eds.), Lives of the gods: Divinity in Maya art (pp. 109–135). The Metropolitan Museum of Art.
   Google Scholar
• Gann, T. W. F. (1917). The Chachac, or rain ceremony, as practiced by the Maya of southern Yucatan and northern British Honduras. In F. W. Hodge (Ed.), Proceedings of the nineteenth international congress of Americanists (pp. 409–419). Smithsonian Institution Bureau of American Ethnology.
   Google Scholar
• Goring-Morris, N., & Belfer-Cohen, A. (2001). The symbolic realms of utilitarian material culture: The role of lithics. In I. Caneva (Ed.), Beyond tools. Redefining PPN lithic assemblages of the Levant: Proceedings of the third workshop on PPN chipped lithic industries, Department of Classical and Near Eastern Studies Ca'Foscari University of Venice, 1st - 4th November, 1998 (pp. 257–271). Ex oriente.
   Google Scholar
• Graham, I. (1997). Discovery of a Maya ritual cave in Peten, Guatemala. Symbols, (Spring), 28–31.
   Google Scholar
• Grube, N. (2000). Monumentos esculpidos e inscripciones jeroglíficas en el triángulo Yaxhá-Nakum-Naranjo. In W. W. Wurster (Ed.), El sitio Maya de Topoxté: Investigaciones en una isla del lago Yaxhá, Peten Guatemala (pp. 249–268). Materialen zur Allgemeinen und Vergleichenden Archäologie, 5. Verlag Philipp von Zabern.
   Google Scholar
• Grube, N. (2004). Akan – the god of drinking, disease and death. In D. Graña Behrens, N. Grube, C. M. Prager, F. Sachse, S. Teufel, & E. Wagner (Eds.), Continuity and change: Maya religious practices in temporal perspective (pp. 59–76). Acta Mesoamericana, Vol. 14. Verlag Anton Saurwein.
   Google Scholar
• Grube, N., & Schele, L. (1994). Tikal altar 5. Texas Notes on Precolumbian Art, Writing, and Culture, 66, 1–6.
   Google Scholar
• Harrison, P. (1999). The lords of Tikal: Rulers of an ancient Maya city. Thames & Hudson.
   Google Scholar
• Helmke, C. (Ed.). (2019). The realm below: Speleo-archaeological investigations in the Macal River Valley, Belize. Precolumbian Mesoweb Press.
   Google Scholar
• Helmke, C. (Ed.) (2019). The realm below: Speleo-archaeological investigations in the Macal River Valley, Belize. Precolumbian Mesoweb Press.
   Google Scholar
• Helmke, C., & Nielsen, J. (2009). Hidden identity and power in ancient Mesoamerica: Supernatural alter egos as curses and diseases. Acta Americana, 17(2), 49–98.
   Google Scholar
• Helmke, C., & Wrobel, G. D. (2012). Je’reftheel, Roaring Creek Works, Belize. In J. E. Brady (Ed.), Heart of earth: Studies in Maya ritual cave use (pp. 69–81). Bulletin No. 23, Association for Mexican Cave Studies.
   Google Scholar
• Helmke, C. G. B. (2009). Ancient Maya cave usage as attested in the glyphic corpus of the Maya lowlands and the caves of the Roaring Creek Valley, Belize [Ph.D. thesis]. Institute of Archaeology, University College–London.
   Google Scholar
• Helmke, C. G. B. (2017). A carved speleothem monument at Yaxchilan, Mexico. The PARI Journal, 17(4), 16–43.
   Google Scholar
• Holland, W. R., & Weitlaner, R. J. (1960). Modern Cuicatec use of prehistoric sacrificial knives. American Antiquity, 25(3), 392–396. https://doi.org/10.2307/277522
   Web of Science ®Google Scholar
• Houston, S. (2014). The life within: Classic Maya and the matter of permanence. Yale University Press.
   Google Scholar
• Hruby, Z. X. (2007). Ritualized chipped-stone production at Piedras Negras, Guatemala. In Z. X. Hruby & R. K. Flad (Eds.), Rethinking craft specialization in complex societies: Archaeological analyses of the social meaning of production (pp. 68–87). Archaeological Papers of the American Anthropological Association, No. 17. American Anthropological Association. https://doi.org/10.1525/ap3a.2007.17.1.68
   Google Scholar
• Iannone, G. (1992). Ancient Maya eccentric lithics: A contextual analysis [M.A. thesis]. Department of Anthropology, Trent University.
   Google Scholar
• Keeley, L. H. (1980). Experimental determination of stone tool uses: A microwear analysis. University of Chicago Press.
   Google Scholar
• Kidder, A. V. (1947). The artifacts of Uaxactun, Guatemala. Publication 576. Carnegie Institution of Washington.
   Google Scholar
• Kwoka, J. J., Hanratty, H. C., & Guderjan, T. H. (2019). From crafting to caching: Technological and iconographic analyses of Blue Creek Cache 37. Journal of Field Archaeology, 44(6), 352–366. https://doi.org/10.1080/00934690.2019.1625248
   Web of Science ®Google Scholar
• Lacadena, A., & Wichmann, S. (n.d.). Harmony rules and the suffix domain: A study of Maya scribal conventions. Unpublished manuscript in possession of the authors.
   Google Scholar
• MacLeod, B., & Puleston, D. E. (1978). Pathways into darkness: The search for the road to Xibalba. In M. G. Robertson & D. C. Jeffers (Eds.), Tercera mesa redonda de Palenque (Vol. 4, pp. 71–77). Herald Peters.
   Google Scholar
• McAnany, P. A. (2010). Ancestral Maya economies in archaeological perspective. Cambridge University Press.
   Google Scholar
• Meadows, R. K. (2001). Crafting K’awil: A comparative analysis of Maya symbolic flaked stone assemblages from three sites in northern Belize [Ph.D. dissertation]. University of Texas.
   Google Scholar
• Moholy-Nagy, H. (1991). The flaked chert industry of Tikal, Guatemala. In T. R. Hester & H. J. Shafer (Eds.), Maya stone tools: Selected papers from the second Maya lithic conference (pp. 189–202). Monographs in World Archaeology No.1, Prehistory Press.
   Google Scholar
• Moholy-Nagy, H. (2008). The artifacts of Tikal: Ornamental and ceremonial artifacts and unworked material. Tikal report no. 27, part A. University Museum Monograph 127. University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology.
   Google Scholar
• Moyes, H., Awe, J. J., Brook, G. A., & Webster, J. W. (2009). The ancient Maya drought cult: Late Classic cave use in Belize. Latin American Antiquity, 20(1), 175–206. https://doi.org/10.1017/S1045663500002571
   Web of Science ®Google Scholar
• Palka, J. W. (2014). Maya pilgrimage to ritual landscapes: Insights from archaeology, history, and ethnography. University of New Mexico Press.
   Google Scholar
• Prout, M., & Brady, J. (2018). Paleodemographics of child sacrifice at Midnight Terror Cave: Reformulating the emphasis of Maya sacrificial practices. Archaeological Discovery, 06(1), 1–20. https://doi.org/10.4236/ad.2018.61001
   Google Scholar
• Redfield, R. (1941). The folk culture of Yucatan. University of Chicago Press.
   Google Scholar
• Reents-Budet, D., & MacLeod, B. (1997). The archaeology of petroglyph cave, cayo district, Belize. Unpublished Report. Royal Ontario Museum.
   Google Scholar
• Rots, V. (2016). Projectiles and hafting technology. In R. Iovita & K. Sano (Eds.), Multidisciplinary approaches to the study of stone age weaponry (pp. 167–185). Springer.
   Google Scholar
• Rovner, I., & Lewenstein, S. M. (1997). Maya stone tools of Dzibilchaltún, Yucatán, Becán and Chicanná, Campeche. Middle American Research Institute Bulletin 65, Tulane University.
   Google Scholar
• Sano, K., & Oba, M. (2015). Backed point experiments for identifying mechanically-delivered armatures. Journal of Archaeological Science, 63, 13–23. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jas.2015.08.005
   Web of Science ®Google Scholar
• Sheets, P. D. (1991). Flaked lithics from the Cenote of Sacrifice, Chichen Itza, Yucatan. In T. R. Hester & H. J. Shafer (Eds.), Maya stone tools: Selected papers from the second Maya lithic conference (pp. 163–188). Monographs in World Archaeology No.1. Prehistory Press.
   Google Scholar
• Sievert, A. K. (1992). Maya ceremonial specialization: Lithic tools from the Sacred Cenote at Chichen Itza, Yucatan. Monographs in World Archaeology, No. 12. Prehistory Press.
   Google Scholar
• Stemp, W. J. (2001). Chipped stone tool use in the Maya coastal economies of Marco Gonzalez and San Pedro, Ambergris Caye, Belize. BAR International Series (Vol. 935). John and Erica Hedges Ltd.
   Google Scholar
• Stemp, W. J., & Awe, J. J. (2014). Ritual use of obsidian from Maya caves in Belize: A functional and symbolic analysis. In M. N. Levine & D. M. Carballo (Eds.), Obsidian reflections: Symbolic dimensions of obsidian in Mesoamerica (pp. 223–254). University Press of Colorado.
   Google Scholar
• Stemp, W. J., Awe, J. J., Helmke, C., & Lee, J. A. (in press). The ideology and symbolism of ancient Maya chipped chert and obsidian eccentrics from Xunantunich and caves in central Belize: Materials, contexts, chronology, and meaning. Journal of Lithic Studies.
   Google Scholar
• Stemp, W. J., Helmke, C. G. B., & Awe, J. J. (2010). Evidence for Maya household subsistence and domestic activities: Use-wear analysis of the chipped chert assemblage from Pook’s Hill, Belize. Journal of Field Archaeology, 35(2), 217–234. https://doi.org/10.1179/009346910X12707321520558
   Web of Science ®Google Scholar
• Stemp, W. J., Wrobel, G. D., Awe, J. J., & Payeur, K. (2013). Stir it up, little darlin’: The chipped stone assemblage from mixed deposits from Caves Branch Rockshelter, Belize. Canadian Journal of Archaeology, 37(1), 123–167.
   Google Scholar
• Stemp, W. J., Wrobel, G. D., Haley, J., & Awe, J. J. (2015). Ancient Maya stone tools and ritual use of Deep Valley Rockshelter, Belize. Journal of Cave and Karst Studies, 77(1), 1–11. https://doi.org/10.4311/2012AN0271
   Web of Science ®Google Scholar
• Stone, A J, & Zender, M. (2011). Reading Maya art: A hieroglyphic guide to ancient Maya painting and sculpture. Thames and Hudson.
   Google Scholar
• Stuart, D. (1988). Blood symbolism in Maya iconography. In E. Benson & G. Griffin (Eds.), Maya iconography (pp. 173–221). Princeton University Press.
   Google Scholar
• Stuart, D. (2003). Mesoweb – On the paired variants of TZ’AK. Retrieved February 18, 2019, from www.mesoweb.com/stuart/notes/tzak.pdf.
   Google Scholar
• Sullivan, K. J. (2017). Caching it in: Local patterns in ancient Maya ritual caches of eccentric lithics within the Belize Valley [M.A. thesis]. Department of Anthropology, Northern Arizona University, Flagstaff.
   Google Scholar
• Taçon, P. S. (1991). The power of stone: Symbolic aspects of stone use and tool development in western Arnhem Land, Australia. Antiquity, 65(247), 192–207. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0003598X00079655
   Web of Science ®Google Scholar
• Tiesler, V., & Cucina, A. (2006). Procedures in human heart extraction and ritual meaning: A taphonomic assessment of anthropogenic marks in Classic Maya skeletons. Latin American Antiquity, 17(4), 493–510. https://doi.org/10.2307/25063069
   Web of Science ®Google Scholar
• Tozzer, A. M. (1941). Landa’s relación de las cosas de Yucatán. Papers of the Peabody Museum of American Archaeology and Ethnology, Vol. 18, Harvard University.
   Google Scholar
• Vogt, E. Z., & Stuart, D. (2005). Some notes on ritual caves among the ancient and modern Maya. In J. E. Brady & K. M. Prufer (Eds.), In the maw of the earth monster: Mesoamerican ritual cave use (pp. 155–185). University of Texas Press.
   Google Scholar
• Weiss-Krejci, E. (2006). The Maya corpse. Body processing from Preclassic to Postclassic times in the Maya hand lowlands. In P. Colas, G. LeFort & B. Liljefors (Eds.), Jaws of the Underworld. Life, death, and rebirth among the ancient Maya (pp. 71–86). Anton Saurwein.
   Google Scholar
• Willey, G. R. (1972). The artifacts of Altar de Sacrificios. Papers of the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology 64, Harvard University.
   Google Scholar
• Wrobel, G. D., Helmke, C., & Freiwald, C. (2014). A case study of funerary cave use from Je’reftheel, Central Belize. In G. D. Wrobel (Ed.), The bioarchaeology of space and place: Ideology, power and meaning in Maya mortuary contexts (pp. 77–106). Springer.
   Google Scholar