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Bronson Tweed Publishing
The Maya Indians of Southern Yucatan and Northern British Honduras
The Maya Indians of Southern Yucatan and Northern British Honduras
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In the following pages is a description of the mounds opened during the last few years in that part of the Maya area now constituting British Honduras, the southern part of Yucatan, and the eastern border of Guatemala. For descriptive purposes these mounds may be divided, according to their probable uses, into six main groups:
1. Sepulchral Mounds.—This group includes mounds which, originally constructed for other purposes, were afterwards used as burial sites.
2. Refuse Mounds.—This group includes kitchen middens, shell heaps, deposits of waste material remaining after the manufacture of lime, and heaps of stones gathered from the surface of the ground.
3. Foundation Mounds.—As the buildings themselves invariably stood on the summits of flat-topped mounds, such mounds, capped with the débris of the earlier structures, formed the bases of later ones.
4. Defensive Mounds.—Some of these mounds were crescent-shaped; others were in the form of a horseshoe.
5. Lookout Mounds.—These mounds extend in chains, at intervals of 6 to 12 miles, along the coast and up some of the rivers; they are lofty, steep-sided, and usually form the nuclei of groups of other mounds. As a rule they contain neither human remains nor artifacts, though in one or two of them superficial interments seem to have been made at a comparatively late date.
6. Mounds of Uncertain Use.—No trace of human interment was found in these mounds. Many of them are too small at the summit to have supported buildings, and it seems probable that they are sepulchral mounds, in which no stone, pottery, or other indestructible objects were placed with the corpse, and in which the bones have entirely disintegrated. The larger mounds of this class, many of them flat topped, are carefully constructed of blocks of limestone, marl dust, and earth, and no doubt at one time served as bases for buildings either small temples or houses—which, being built of wood, have long since vanished.
1. Sepulchral Mounds.—This group includes mounds which, originally constructed for other purposes, were afterwards used as burial sites.
2. Refuse Mounds.—This group includes kitchen middens, shell heaps, deposits of waste material remaining after the manufacture of lime, and heaps of stones gathered from the surface of the ground.
3. Foundation Mounds.—As the buildings themselves invariably stood on the summits of flat-topped mounds, such mounds, capped with the débris of the earlier structures, formed the bases of later ones.
4. Defensive Mounds.—Some of these mounds were crescent-shaped; others were in the form of a horseshoe.
5. Lookout Mounds.—These mounds extend in chains, at intervals of 6 to 12 miles, along the coast and up some of the rivers; they are lofty, steep-sided, and usually form the nuclei of groups of other mounds. As a rule they contain neither human remains nor artifacts, though in one or two of them superficial interments seem to have been made at a comparatively late date.
6. Mounds of Uncertain Use.—No trace of human interment was found in these mounds. Many of them are too small at the summit to have supported buildings, and it seems probable that they are sepulchral mounds, in which no stone, pottery, or other indestructible objects were placed with the corpse, and in which the bones have entirely disintegrated. The larger mounds of this class, many of them flat topped, are carefully constructed of blocks of limestone, marl dust, and earth, and no doubt at one time served as bases for buildings either small temples or houses—which, being built of wood, have long since vanished.
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