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239 During the 1953 field season a program of intensive excavation was begun in selected ceremonial structures in the Main Group at Mayapán. This area clearly had been the ritual heart of the city, and it was considered that careful digging in certain types of structures, followed by analysis of the results and comparison with other types, might throw light not only on the function of the structures but also on the activities carried on in the ceremonial center and perhaps on the stages of growth of the center. This plan was continued in the 1954 field season . Among the structures chosen for attention were three within a stone’s throw of the Castillo, the largest structure in Mayapán (Jones 1952, map, Square Q).All three have small single-room buildings. Two of them are designated, whether correctly or not, as “shrines.” The term “temple” seems to be more appropriate for the largest, Str. Q-153. Since the three structures are close to each other, it was felt that in addition to increasing our knowledge of the building types they might give some idea of the degree of diversity which might be permitted in so crowded an area. Str. Q-153 and adjacent conStructionS (247 S, 258 W) The first to be investigated was Str. Q-153, sometimes referred to as the Cenote Temple, which is situated on the edge of the ceremonial center’s principal cenote (Fig. 21.2a). This sink, Chen Mul (“well-mound”), is jug-shaped under the surface and has a jaggedly circular mouth about 10 m in diameter; its proximity to the Castillo and the large round temple, Str. Q-152, indicates its significant ritual position and emphasizes the importance of excavations in any structure connected with it. A low platform on the east side of the cenote and connected with the temple was also included in the investigation. The main question raised by Str. Q-153 was whether or not there had been a cenote cult in C u r r e n t R e p o r t s Carnegie Institution of Washington Department of Archaeology No. 21 January 1955 Excavations in Three Ceremonial Structures at Ma yapán PhiliP E. Smith PhiliP E. Smith 240 Mayapán as at Chichén Itzá. There is some documentary evidence in favor of the existence of such a cult. The Spanish missionary Fray Alonso Ponce, who visited Mayapán in 1588, less than 50 years after the final conquest of Yucatán and about a century and a half after the traditional date of the city’s abandonment, reported that, “Near the foot of this same mound [the Castillo] there is a very deep zonote with a very smooth stone on the edge of its mouth, from which (it is said) they used to throw those whom they sacrificed to their gods” (Noyes 1932: 355). The reliability of this report is open to question. The context does not indicate if the missionary himself inspected the cenote. Also, one wonders whether the account of the sacrificial rite was delivered to him by the natives of the district or if he attributed it to this cenote because of knowledge of a similar practice formerly popular at Chichén Itzá. As Bishop Landa’s writings show, the clergy at this time were well aware of this traditional mode of sacrifice and of its continuation even after the conquest (Tozzer 1941). Nor does the missionary say whether the victims were cast into the cenote living or dead; at Chichén Itzá, the victims were thrown alive into a water-filled cenote, but the absence of water in Chen Mul, except for small hidden pools, might suggest that only corpses were thrown in and that the more sanguinary part of the rite took place in or near the adjoining temple. In the 1953 season some trenching inside the cenote (R. E. Smith 1953) disclosed water holes some distance from the mouth; the pottery showed that these holes had been used in the Classic as well as in the later Mayapán period. Animal and human bones, including carved and ornamental ones, were recovered at that time but nothing indicated that corpses had been systematically disposed of here. There remains of course the possibility that any bodies thrown in were later brought out for disposal elsewhere. There is no “very smooth stone” to be seen near the mouth of the cenote at the present time, nor was anything...

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