Cancuén Regional Archaeological Project: Highland-Lowland Influence and Exchange along a Geographical Boundary

Preliminary Interpretation: Sacred Geography and Settlement Patterns in the Upper Pasión Region

The Upper Pasión region is unusual for its lack of large temples at even the largest sites, such as Cancuén and Raxruja Viejo. Evon Vogt (1964) proposed that temple pyramids were constructed versions of the sacred environment with the pyramids serving as mountains and the temples atop them as caves. David Stuart (cited in Schele and Freidel 1990) subsequently recognized that the word for such temple pyramids and mountains was the same, witz. In the earliest stages of the Vanderbilt Cancuén project it was hypothesized that the lack of temples at that site, despite one of the largest palaces in the Maya world, may be due to the presence of nearby cave-riddled karst towers, including the massive Candelaria cave system (Barrientos, et al. 2000). These natural features precluded the need to construct artificial representations. Preliminary exploration of some of these caves (Woodfill 2002) and discussions with local informants indicates that virtually all known caves in the region contain ancient Maya artifacts, suggesting that these locations were loci for rituals.

The above hypothesis is most strongly supported at the site of Raxruja Viejo. As noted above, structures on the east and west sides of the central plaza are built into karst towers. One large cave entrance has been noted in the eastern tower and the current landowner reports many others are located higher up the face of the hill. It is likely that for elaborate rituals at the site the local populace would gather in the plaza, facing the nearly two-dozen monuments to the east while awaiting the k’ul ahau’s emergence from a cave mouth dozens of meters above the plaza floor. For other sites in the region, processions may have been led from site centers to other caves for similar performances.

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