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Thursday, September 24, 1987AThe Battaliori/Page 7
Is .-'e
svinlhonl
Dan Bat
Sleepyheads
Danielle Sampey, left, and her sister Dawn put their heads together
for a nap between classes Wednesday morning. The sisters live to-
I gether and were up most of the night looking for their lost dog. They
Photo by Robert W. Rizzo
eventually found the dog, but lost a lot of sleep in the process. Dan
ielle is 21 years old and a biomedical science major while Dawn, 19 is
studying elementary education. The women are from Bellville.
uman skulls discovered in pit
,ffer look at Meso-Amerleans
&M researcher says bones may explain sacrifice rituals
By Anne Neidinger
Reporter
hirty human skulls discovered in
| a pii at a Mayan Indian site by Texas
j Ilfc' A&M anthropologists in 1980 show
Hns of decapitation and skinning,
/JpT/V l|§ich suggests religious sacrifice or
fy\\ llwl political conflict within the Mayan
[society, says Virginia Massey, an
H|cM doctoral candidate in anthro-
ATLL (AP) - pology.
iping cranes, tlK^^The small, shallow pit at the site of
jf the birds on' : |06lha in Belize, which is in Central
• the annual 2.5 , America, contained skulls of 20
rom north cento t adult males and females and 10 chil-
nter nesting gn- dren, Massey says.
isas National 'I^Massey, whose master’s thesis was
•ildlife officials^ about the Colha skulls, conducted
• 109 birds that" the skull research in collaboration
last year, plus< [with Dr. D. Gentry Steele, an A&M
3 or 24 whoop® anthropology professor.
year, aren’t exp^wThe Maya project at Colha was
ter nesting ^sponsored by A&M, the Center for
ze near Aust»d|Archaeological Research at the Uni-
jp j versity of Texas in San Antonio and
4 1 the the Centro Studi e Ricerche Ligabue
j cr anes in ^ in Venice, Italy.
'to 16 birds. HDr. Harry Shafer, an A&M an-
of the largecn» e thropology professor, was co-direc-
eft the Wood* tor of project.
Park in the ‘ ; Massey says the skulls, which are
dated A.D. 850, were found sur
rounded by pieces of ceramics in a
pit next to a monument-like struc
ture.
sOther skeleton remains were not
found, Massey says.
^Anthropologists believe the skulls
are Meso-American, probably
Mayan, since some of them have the
cranial deformations and filed teeth
characteristic of ancient Meso-
Americans, Massey says.
J«A detailed historic account of the
$ {Mayans was compiled by Bishop
Landa, who wrote extensively about
them during his travels through the
Yucatan Peninsula in the 16th cen
tury, Massey says.
The Mayans, according to Landa’s
writings, often changed the shape of
their babies’ skulls by putting boards
on the front and back of the infants’
heads and binding them tightly until
the desired shape was formed.
This practice is evident in the
skulls from Colha, Massey says.
Two other known Meso-Ameri
can skull pits were discovered at the
Cerro de las Mesas camp in southern
Veracruz, Mexico and at Rio Hondo,
the same time,” Massey says. “This is
no secondary burial.”
If the people at Colha were in
volved in a secondary burial, she
said, lower jaws and some neck ver
tebrae would not have been found
with the skulls.
This is because the soft tissue sur
rounding them would have decom
posed during the time of primary
burial and fallen away, she says.
“That’s not what we have here,”
Massey says.
The bodies must have been deca
pitated at or shortly after the time of
death, she says, because the soft tis-
“It’s always interesting to find out how other people
lived. And one thing that’s different from one culture
to the other is how they bury the dead. ”
— Virginia Massey, A&M graduate student
es, wildlifeoffi®-]
Jobman, a
th the U.S.Fis 1
nancement Ut|
sle, Neb., ^{j
; sighting’ ° tllP |
ooping cran« I
a early Sept' J ;i
,ake National |
i North Dakota'
Mexico. The 52 skulls at the Vera
cruz site were each found in a pot
tery vessel.
“Both of these pits could be ‘sec
ondary burials,’ ” Massey says.
Many cultures practiced second
ary burials by burying the entire
body, and exhuming it later, she
says.
Individuals in these two skull pits
could have died naturally, been bur
ied, and later disinterred. Their
heads might have been saved, possi
bly as a way of honoring the dead,
she says.
Many generations might have
been exhumed at one time and rebu
ried at a special ceremony, she says.
“That’s what makes the skull pit at
Colha so unique, because we know
these individuals were all killed at
sue surrounding the vertebrae and
jaw did not decompose before
burial.
“There are several things that in
dicate the incident may have had
some ritual significance, but there
are equally important things that in
dicate it may have been political,”
Massey says.
The pit does not look like a delib
erate burial site, which might be evi
dence of political conflict, Massey
says. It seems that the monument
next to the pit fell onto the grave.
Massey says archaeologists discov
ered that after the time the building
fell, the Colha population decreased
sharply and the production of arti
facts and monumental structures
ceased.
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If the people in the pit were rul
ers, she says, that would indicate a
possible coup by the Colha or an
other group.
Religious interpretations of the
burial stem from Landa’s report of
human sacrifices that took place at
the top stairs of temples, Massey
says.
Landa wrote that the sacrifices’
hearts wefe ripped out and their
bodies tossed to the base of the
temple, where they were skinned.
Priests would wear the skins and
perform a dance. Landa wrote that
this ceremony was a time of high sol
emnity.
He also told of instances of deca
pitation in Mayan culture. If the
monumental structure had been a
religious temple, the burial could
have been sacrificial, Massey says.
The skulls are important because
a cross section of the Colha popula
tion can be studied at a specific point
in time, Massey says.
Some individuals had modified
craniums of different styles or filed
teeth and some did not, which im
plies that the culture either tolerated
or demanded diversity, she says.
The most important discovery
about the skulls was the presence .of
patterned cut marks all over the
head, indicating that the people
were skinned, Massey says.
The cut marks are physical evi
dence of Landa’s reports of Mayan
skinnings, she says.
“It’s always interesting to find out
how other people lived,” Massey
says.
“And one thing that’s different
from one culture to the other is how
they bury the dead,” she says.
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