Discovery in Palenque: INAH found remains that offer details of Mayan rituals

The National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH) and the Ministry of Culture announced that “hundreds of animal remains, a dozen seeds, a kilo and a half of coal, very small beads made of shells, and even fragments of a millimeter of green stone” were found, these elements were part of the deposits rituals that are found in the Palace of the Archaeological Zone of Palenque, in Chiapas.

It was detailed that hundreds of these remains have been detected and recovered thanks to “a fine sieve that combines sifting with water and flotation”. The discoveries of the deposits of houses B and E revealed “the majority exploitation of fish, one of the least studied animal groups in Mayan zooarchaeology”.

The information was released in a statement published on April 13, 2022, the document also explains that the results of this research process represent an advance in learning more about the use of animals for ritual purposes, since for a long time these characteristics went unnoticed.

On the other hand, the collaborator of the Palenque Archaeological Project of the INAH, Carlos Miguel Varela Scherrer, shared that the diagnostic elements found have been identified as “premaxillary and dental fish organisms, and that they can only be seen when the earth matrix has passed through water”.

In house B, 17 species were recognized: “58% of them correspond to fish, 19% to mollusks, 11% to decapods (crustaceans), 5% are birds, 4% reptiles and 3% mammals”. Of these, water mussel, land snail, apple snail, freshwater crab, mojarras, tenguayaca, white bass, quail, white turtle, nine-banded armadillo, domestic dog, cervid and white-tailed deer could be identified by common name.

In addition, it was detailed that in house E 70% of the animal species found are decapods, 12% fish and 10% mollusks, and “again the lowest percentages corresponded to reptiles, mammals and birds” such as pochitoque, white turtle, crocodile, quail, ocellated turkey, gopher and temazate.

For this reason, it was determined that the inhabitants of Palenque mostly exploited the “resources of nearby freshwater bodies such as plain streams, swamps, lagoons and rivers such as Arroyo Michol and Catazajá Lagoon, or the Usumacinta River, the latter in Jonuta, Tabasco.

Carlos Scherrer also said that since 2018 the Architectural Conservation of the Decorative Finishes of the Palace Project, co-directed by archaeologist Arnoldo González Cruz and restorer Haydeé Orea Magaña, has been key, since through its work it has been possible to “recover evidence of events whose characteristics lead to their identification. as in a single moment.”

The moment referred to is the holding of a banquet in the place, “after which both food and used objects were deposited in cavities that were burned and subsequently covered”.

The Institute clarifies that on some occasions these practices came to mark the beginning of architectural constructions or “important events in the religious life of this Mayan settlement of the Classic period (200-900 AD. C.)”.

Specialists say that the new clues identified in the capital that dominated northern Chiapas and southern Tabasco could help to decipher more religious and cultural aspects of the ceremonial center, since the Palace is considered the most complex and extensive building in the city, because “activities were carried out there administrative and ritual measures, with the attention of political entities in other regions”.

On the other hand, Varela Scherrer, a specialist in Mayan culture, specified that after the excavation of the ritual deposits, a procedure of “sifting with water and floating” was carried out on the banks of the Otulum stream, where two wooden supports were installed with a very narrow opening mesh, 1/8 of an inch.

Later, the doctor in Mesoamerican Studies and collaborator of the Palenque Regional Project of the Institute of Anthropological Research of the UNAM explained that in a 20-liter bucket soil was added from the excavation and then covered with water, then the contents were removed with a wooden stick.

It was thus possible to observe that coals and small bones floated, which were then emptied into a colander and examined.

Finally, Scherrer concluded: “if this methodology is applied homogeneously in the lowlands, we will be able to have comparable collections to know in depth the animal use by the ancient Mayans”.

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