Maya Royal Tomb Found Beneath El Diablo Pyramid

            On my google hunt I found an interesting article about the discovery of a royal tomb underneath El Diablo pyramid in the Guatemalan forest in July 2010. The well preserved tomb containts carvings, ceramics, textiles, and the bones of six children, which are interpreted as possibly the remains of a human sacrifice.  The archaeologists who discovered the tomb stated that “When we sunk a pit into the small chamber of the temple, we hit almost immediately a series of ‘caches’ - blood-red bowls containing human fingers and teeth, all wrapped in some kind of organic substance that left an impression in the plaster. We then dug through layer after layer of flat stones, alternating with mud, which probably is what kept the tomb so intact and airtight.”. I think that the discovery of this tomb was so interesting to archeologists and the public because of the well preserved nature of the artefacts as well as the bizarre nature of the severed fingers and teeth. Finds like this are interesting to the public because we so rarely hear about cultures anymore that have found new evidence of human sacrifice, and also because most people don't know a lot about human sacrifice and we are usually curious about seemingly 'strange' things we have no knowledge about. Finds like this where people discover secret tombs beneath existing structures are also very indiana jones esque, which I believe piques peoples curiousity because of circumstances of falling through a floor into a passage, a fantasy in many people's minds because it seems like it could happen to anyone.
        What I found interesting about this article is that it was the discovery of the tomb through probing for cavities and the surpise upon finding the red bowls filled with fingers, as well as the well preserved nature of the artefacts because they had been sealed off from air and water for over 1600 years. The strange thing about this extrordinary find is that until I completed this search I had no idea this discovery even occurred. I believe that this was because I could only find two or three different articles about the discovery, and the majority of the sites that I found with information for the find were just exerpts or links to the original few articles. In the article they make reference to royal tombs such as this one taking years to study because of their history laden nature, which I believe has something to do with only a small amount of articles published. Because they posted the intitial discovery only a couple weeks into the excavation I believe that they are waiting to post a follow up article so archaeologists can do more digging and researching to find concrete explanations and then they will present their more complete findings, which at the time of the discovery they would not be able to speculate what anything meant. I do believe though that once proper analysis of artefacts and historical research is done, a much more comprehensive article about the find will be posted, and more people will know, and be interested about it once some more definitive findings are released.
Pictures:



Both pictures came from this source:

http://heritage-key.com/blogs/ann/maya-royal-tomb-found-beneath-el-diablo-pyramid

Links to the articles:

http://heritage-key.com/blogs/ann/maya-royal-tomb-found-beneath-el-diablo-pyramid
http://news.discovery.com/archaeology/mayan-kings-tomb-found-in-guatemala.html

Monument Analysis Revisited: Kinship?

           In our dataset for the monument analysis at Ross Bay Cemetery kinship was actually one of the more obvious concepts that I was able to identify throughout examination. For graves (#1,2,5,6 & 7) in our dataset, all of them showed the presence of multiple names on the same stone. While in my monument analysis I mostly described the appearance of multiple names as a result of impoverished conditions, I think that those conditions would have resulted in the creating of family monuments or tombstones in order to save money as well as having some type of a family legacy with all their names included. For example, one of the stones has the names Anastasia Downes and Hannah Downes, which is a strong, if not definite indicator that those two names are linked by kinship in one way or another. Another monument with multiple names also has "in loving memory of Kate wife of Richard Wolfenden died July 28 1878 age 39, Georgie Kate daughter of the above died September 10 1867 aged 7 months. Anna Gertrude died June 7 1870 aged year 1." inscribed on it, which blatantly states kinship relations by identifying the relationship between the names on the stone.

        Based on the evidence from simply looking at the monuments I believe that archaeologists of the future would probably deduce the same thing that I was able to, that the appearance of multiple names on one grave had to be a result of some type of family or kinship link. Because none of the monuments had monuments with the same last name, or common family name in the vicinity (other than the on that same monument), there is no evidence in our dataset of family cemeteries or groups of family buried in the same region. Since 4 of the monuments from graves  (#1,2,5,6 & 7) had multiple names that specifically stated relations or had identical last names, I believe that archeologists of the future would come to the same conclusion I did, that inclusion of multiple names on one monument stone signifies a tie or reference to kinship.