A Preclassic Maya sweatbath at Cuello, Belize. (News & Notes).

A Preclassic Maya sweatbath at Cuello, Belize. (News & Notes). The sweatbath, temescalli, literally `steam house', to theAztecs, and pib na -- `cooking-pit house' -- to the prehispanicMaya, was a noted feature of the ceremonial and social life ofprehispanic and colonial Mesoamerica, with a cosmologically liminal liminal/lim��i��nal/ (lim��i-n'l) barely perceptible; pertaining to a threshold. lim��i��naladj.Relating to a threshold.liminalbarely perceptible; pertaining to a threshold. location between the surface world of the living and the underworld ofthe ancestors and gods. It functioned situationally as a place ofrecreation or purification, used by both sexes -- usually separately --for bodily cleansing both practical and ritual, the latter includingpost-partum bathing for women and solidarity rites before communalaction for men. The sweating could be dry, as in the Roman laconicum, orenhanced by splashing water on hot stones, as in the Finnish sauna. Most historically and ethnographically observed sweatbaths arequite small, holding at most half-a-dozen people, and have severaldefining architectural features. These include a sweating room with alow, narrow doorway to keep the heat in, and a separate firebox, linkedby a channel along which hot air can flow and hot embers or stones beraked. The Codex codexManuscript book, especially of Scripture, early literature, or ancient mythological or historical annals. The earliest type of manuscript in the form of a modern book (i.e. Magliabechiano illustrates an Aztec temescalli with abottle-shaped firebox being fed through an exterior aperture, arectangular sweatroom with a water symbol visible through the lowdoorway, and a bundle of fuel lying outside (FIGURE 1). [FIGURE 1 OMITTED] In the Maya Area, Late Classic period (AD 600-900) masonrysweatbaths are known from major sites including Tikal, Piedras Negrasand Chichen Itza. Most are small, rectangular in plan, and with thefirebox contained as a separate construction within the walls; the royalsweatbaths of Piedras Negras, best-known from Proskouriakoff's(1946: plate 7) reconstruction, were housed within a larger buildingwhich may have acted as a changing room. Stephen Houston (1996) hasshown that the Cross Group temples at Palenque are `symbolicsweatbaths' of similar form, but lacking the firebox and floorchannel. A more demotic demotic:see hieroglyphic. sweatbath, built of wood and clay, was preserved byvolcanic ash at Joya de Ceren in El Salvador (Sheets 1992: 97-102), theinternal firebox being covered by a dome. The tiny BS-27 structure undera rock shelter at Piedras Negras (Webster 2001) simply had the fire inone corner, a feature shared with the earliest example hithertoreported, of c. 500-400 BC at Dzibilchaltun in northern Yucatan (Andrews& Andrews 1980:31 & figures 14-17). We report here a substantially older Preclassic sweatbath of morecomplex plan, discovered in March 2000 on the east side of a courtyardat Cuello, which appears to be the earliest construction on that spot;stratigraphy stratigraphy,branch of geology specifically concerned with the arrangement of layered rocks (see stratification). Stratigraphy is based on the law of superposition, which states that in a normal sequence of rock layers the youngest is on top and the oldest on the and associated pottery indicate a date of c. 900 BC. East is the prime direction in Maya cosmology: important structuresincluding ancestor shrines and funerary fu��ner��ar��y?adj.Of or suitable for a funeral or burial.[Latin fner temples often occupy the eastsides of plazas. At Cuello, the successive Structures 342,338,339 and334 were superimposed, the last of these (Hammond et al. 2000) being asubstantial rectilinear rec��ti��lin��e��ar?adj.Moving in, consisting of, bounded by, or characterized by a straight line or lines: following a rectilinear path; rectilinear patterns in wallpaper. platform overlying overlyingsuffocation of piglets by the sow. The piglets may be weak from illness or malnutrition, the sow may be clumsy or ill, the pen may be inadequate in size or poorly designed so that piglets cannot escape. two subcircular precursors,all oriented to about azimuth azimuth(ăz`əməth), in astronomy, one coordinate in the altazimuth coordinate system. It is the angular distance of a body measured westward along the celestial horizon from the observer's south point. 255 [degrees]. Structure 342 also wassubcircular, 2.5 m across but with an apsidal extension to thenortheast, 1.3 by 0.9 m; its front and putative entry from the courtyardlie beyond the 2000 limit of excavation (FIGURE 2). [FIGURE 2 OMITTED] The curving rubble walls, with plaster facings turning out to forman external surround and an interior floor, were interrupted by aparallel-sided channel just under 1 m wide, cut down through the oldland surface to bedrock and dry-walled with small limestone slabs. Thechannel ended in the northeast extension, where it was cut deeper intobedrock; the rock walls were heavily burned. Postholes flanking thebedrock pit suggest that it was roofed; the thinness of the rubble wallsof the steam chamber indicate that a wood-framed plastered roof there isalso likely. All of these features -- the subcircular plan, floor channel to anexterior firebox, and signs of heavy and repeated burning -- areconsonant with Cuello Structure 342 being a sweathouse sweat��house?n.Any of various permanent or portable structures typically heated by fire or by pouring water over hot stones and used by certain Native American peoples to induce sweating, as for medicinal, spiritual, or social purposes. (FIGURE 3). Theinternal area is similar to those of the Dzibilchaltun and Cerensweatbaths; Ceren, slightly larger, included the interior firebox. Aroof less than 2 m above floor level seems likely for all threeexamples. The masonry-walled and vaulted elite sweatbaths at ChichenItza and Piedras Negras were, at c. 5x3 m, substantially larger, but themasonry-walled sweatbath at Tikal was only c. 2 m square and the BS-27example at Piedras Negras was a mere 1 * 9x1 * 4 m. [FIGURE 3 OMITTED] Sweatbath design clearly evolved over the centuries: Cuello at c.900 BC has an exterior firebox with a channel funnelling heat into thesteam chamber; at Dzibilchaltun in 500 BC, the firebox was broughtinside, and it remained there at Ceren a millennium later, but with adomed cover to avoid direct heat. The Piedras Negras royal sweatbaths ofthe 8th century AD also had the firebox as a small separate interiorchamber, set against the back wall, and Chichen Itza a century laterretained this plan. The Cuello design persisted in the highlands ofMesoamerica into Aztec and colonial times, and although its antiquitythere is unknown, it may perhaps have originated there early in thePreclassic period. Acknowledgements. Investigations at Cuello were funded by theNational Geographic Society, and by Raymond and Beverly Sackler and ananonymous donor through Boston University. FIGURE 3 is by MichaelRothman. References ANDREWS, E.W., IV & E.W. ANDREWS V. 1980. Excavations atDzibilchaltun, Yucatan, Mexico. New Orleans (LA): Middle AmericanResearch Institute, Tulane University. Publication 48 . HAMMOND, N., S. HAY & J.R. BAUER. 2000. Preclassic Mayaarchitectural ritual at Cuello, Belize, Antiquity 74: 265-6. HOUSTON, S.D. 1996. Symbolic sweatbaths of the Maya: architecturalmeaning in the Cross Group at Palenque, Mexico, Latin American Antiquity7: 132-51. PROSKOURIAKOFF, T. 1946. An album of Maya architecture. Washington(DC): Carnegie Institution. Publication 558. SHEETS, P.D. 1992. The Ceren site: A prehistoric village buried byvolcanic ash in Central America. Fort Worth (TX): Harcourt BraceJovanovich. WEBSTER, D. 2001. A rural sweat bath from Piedras Negras. Paperpresented at the Society for American Archaeology The Society for American Archaeology (SAA) is the largest organization of professional archaeologists of the Americas in the world. The Society was founded in 1934 and today has over 7000 members. Annual Meeting, NewOrleans. Norman Hammond & Jeremy R. Bauer, Hammond, Department ofArchaeology, Boston University, 675 Commonwealth Avenue, Boston Commonwealth Avenue (often spoken of as Comm Ave by locals, the latter word pronounced in the same manner as "have") is a major street in the cities of Boston and Newton, Massachusetts. MA02215-1406, USA. ndch@bu.edu Jeremy R. Bauer, Department of Anthropology, Vanderbilt University,Nashville TN 37235, USA.