Ancient Maya Pyramid Found To Contain Charred Royal Human Remains That Were Burnt as Part of 'Act of Desecration'

Excavations of an ancient Maya pyramid have yielded royal human remains that were apparently burnt as part of a ritual or act of desecration. This could have served as a mark of a new political regime.

Burning Ritual

The research team discovered the remains as they were investigating the archaeological site in Ucana, Guatemala. This area used to be the capital of the Maya kingdom known as K'anwitznal.

Findings were documented in the "A pivot point in Maya history: fire-burning event at K'anwitznal (Ucanal) and the making of a new era of political rule" study. The study suggests that the burning ritual, which happened during the 9th century, served as the mark of a new political regime's takeover and was a public power display. The authors note that this serves as an extremely rare example of a change in political regime that appears in the archaeological record.

The authors write that history's key tipping points can rarely be directly found within the archaeological record. The study documents a ritual fire-burning event that took place in the early 9th-century at the Ucanal Maya site and argues that it served as a mark of an old regime's public dismantling.

Charred Royal Human Remains, Burnt Ornaments

During the temple-pyramid excavations, the researchers discovered a deposit that held burnt remains of humans as well as ornaments. The human remains' analysis shows that they cover at least four individuals. All of them were adults who were aged 21 to 60 years old. There were at least two individuals who exhibited evidence of burns.

The found ornaments include nearly 1,500 fragments of greenstone plaques, beads, mosaics, and pendants. It also includes dozens of obsidian objects and over 10,000 marine shell beads that were both fragmented and completed. Other artifacts, such as mammal tooth pendants, were also included. Among the findings, the most notable one was a greenstone funerary mask.

Similar to the bones of the two individuals, the majority of ornaments also exhibit evidence of high-temperature burning. The broken and burnt ornaments' quality and quantity show that the burial was that of a Maya royalty.

With ceramic dating techniques and radiocarbon analysis, the researchers were able to determine that the burning event may have taken place between 773 A.D. to 881 A.D. This places the ritual at the start of Mesoamerican history's Terminal Classic period.

However, the burial's royals apparently died before this ritual took place. Based on radiocarbon analysis on one of the individuals, they died several decades before the fire-burning rite was held. This suggests the reentry of the royal tombs to specifically burn the remains.

The researchers think that this burning event served as part of a political act that marked the literal and symbolic destruction of the K'anwitznal dynasty and eventually ushering a new political regime. The event chronologically overlapped with a new leader's, Papmalil, emergence. This leader ruled from 814 A.D. to 859 A.D. and he could have been the political transition's key figure.

Tomb reentry and burning of royal human remains has been previously known based on hieroglyphic texts of Maya culture. The fire-entering events could potentially be an act of veneration and an act of destruction. This largely depends on the context.

Christina Halperin, the excavation leader from the University of Montreal's Department of Anthropology, says that they think that the burnt deposit within the K-2 temple-pyramid could have been an act of desecration. This is due to how the remains were haphazardly deposited with minimal care and no efforts for protection. There was construction fill thrown over it, making the ornaments and bones scatter during its burial process.

While fire-burning rites that involve royal tomb reentry are known, it is rare to discover archaeological proof of these rites. This is especially so for findings that corresponds to a major mark of social and political change.

Halperin explains that when the fire-burning event happened, the polities of the Maya had crises, as there were royal dynasties collapsing and some settlements abandoned partially. However, not all of their polities saw the same fate, as there were some kingdoms that reinvented themselves and had more prolific trade networks, among other efforts.

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