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Preclassic Maya architectural ritual at Cuello, Belize

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2015

Norman Hammond ,
Jeremy Bauer  and
Sophie Hay
Norman Hammond
Affiliation:
Cuello Project, Department of Archaeology, Boston University, 675 Commonwealth Avenue, Boston MA 02215, USA
Jeremy Bauer
Affiliation:
Cuello Project, Department of Archaeology, Boston University, 675 Commonwealth Avenue, Boston MA 02215, USA
Sophie Hay
Affiliation:
Cuello Project, Department of Archaeology, Boston University, 675 Commonwealth Avenue, Boston MA 02215, USA
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Extract

The Preclassic community of Cuello, the earliest village site hitherto excavated in the Maya Lowlands, centred on Platform 34, a flat-topped eminence where investigations between 1975 and 1993 documented occupation from at least 1200 BC to c. AD 400 (Hammond 1991; Hammond et al. 1995). Between 1000 and 400 BC the locus was occupied by a courtyard which with successive rebuildings became both larger and more formally organized, domestic activities shifting to the margins and ritual, including ancestor veneration, becoming more important (Hammond & Gerhardt 1990). Around 400 BC the final Middle Preclassic structures on the north, west and south sides of the court were ceremoniously demolished, their faqades hacked off and their superstructures burned. The entire courtyard was filled with rubble prior to the construction of the broad, open Platform 34, which itself underwent successive enlargements over the ensuing seven centuries.

Type
News and notes
Information
Antiquity , Volume 74 , Issue 284 , June 2000 , pp. 265 - 266
Copyright
Copyright © Antiquity Publications Ltd. 2000

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References

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