Analysis and Conservation of a Wooden Figurine
Recovered from Xmuqlebal Xheton Cave in Southern Belize, C.A.

The Setting

The Maya Mountains of southern Belize constitute one of the last regions in the entire Maya area to be explored (Figure 1). The only prominent range in the lowlands, it has the highest rainfall and coolest temperatures. Largely a carbonate massif overlaying older igneous formations, the region is home to a variety of biological and mineral resources unavailable elsewhere in the lowlands. Though the interior of the mountains was largely unoccupied at the time of Spanish contact, it has been long known that the foothills were home to several important ruins, including Lubaantun, Nimli Punit, and Pusilhá (Gann 1925; Hammond 1970; Leventhal 1990; Wanyerka 1996). Nevertheless, despite the impressive history of these nearby sites and the likelihood that additional sites were located in the interior, the Maya Mountains have until recently received relatively little attention from prehistorians (Dunham and Prufer 1998; Prufer and Wanyerka 2001).

Today, the interior region is a vast uninhabited wilderness. Its extremely rugged terrain makes access difficult. As recently as the 1980’s the region was thought to have been sparsely populated and of little importance in the dynamic Classic Period growth of polities in the Maya area. Since 1992 a total of 16 previously undocumented pre-Columbian communities and over 100 cave sites have been investigated by the Maya Mountains Archaeological Project (MMAP) under the direction of Peter Dunham and the Maya Mountains Ritual Caves Project (MMRCP), directed by Keith M. Prufer.

The ruins are distributed across a wide variety of landforms and forest types, and seem to be evenly spaced to take maximum advantage of local resources. With minor variations, two generalized types of settlement patterns have been identified in the distribution of these sites: nucleated settlements located in alluvial valleys near year round streams, and ridge top settlements where architectural groups are spread across the spines of low ridges, with the site cores generally located atop the most prominent ridge.

Since 1996 attention has been focused on intensive investigations at two minor centers near the headwaters of the Monkey River in the Bladen Forest reserve. These sites, Muklebal Tzul and Ek Xux, are both literally surrounded by caves. A total of 56 caves have been investigated in the hills surrounding the settlement of these two sites (Prufer 2001). It is at a cave near the northwestern edge of the Muklebal Tzul Valley that the figurine was found.

The recovery of wooden artifacts is rare in the Maya Lowlands. However, other materials fashioned from wood have been recovered from the region. In 1995 a small wooden stool was found in a mortuary cave 25 km north of the site Pusilhá in southwestern Belize (Prufer and Dunham n.d.). The artifact dates to the Early Classic, approximately A.D. 250. It greatly resembles late Postclassic stools dredged from the Cenote of Sacrifice at Chichén Itzá (Coggins and Ladd 1992:302-303). Also in 1995 a six-foot wooden bench was found in a cave near Muklebal Tzul. While radiocarbon analysis of it is pending, associated ceramics indicate a date in the Late Classic period. Other notable organic cave finds from the region include preserved cacao beans, intact wooden torches, a bird egg, and hundreds of wood fragments, most likely the remains of incense burning. The caves of the Maya Mountains offer an unprecedented opportunity to examine the role of botanical materials in ancient Maya cave rituals.

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