Cache withdrawal at classic Maya site.

Cache Withdrawal at Classic Maya Site

Twelve centuries ago, when the Mayaking known as Smoke-Shell buried a ceremonial offering in the ancient Honduran city of Copan, he left a time capsule for anthropologists. On March 5, a scientific team uncovered Smoke-Shell's cache of jade and flint artifacts, which supports hieroglyphic evidence for the stability of the family dynasty at Copan for much of the Classic period (A.D. 250 to A.D. 900).

"This is the finest ceremonial offeringthat's yet been discovered in the ruins of Copan,' says William L. Fash of Northern Illinois University in DeKalb, leader of the group. The cache was found beneath an altar at the foot of Copan's temple-pyramid 26 by Princeton University sophomore David Stuart, who is already considered an authority on Maya hieroglyphics. The two researchers say the offering was probably made at the dedication of the temple-pyramid in A.D. 756.

A ceremonial pot beneath the altarcontained two jade pieces. One portrays a squat male figure wearing a loincloth and headband. The other represents a Maya god associated with symbols of the sun and the jaguar, and was carved in the form of a plaque worn across the chest. Artistic styles of both pieces date to between A.D. 250 and 600, says Fash. This suggests that they were heirlooms passed by Copan kings from generation to generation over at least two centuries. Jade heirlooms have been found at a few other Maya sites, but most are from the Olmec civilization that preceded the Maya.

The ceremonial pot also held a flintlance head, several stingray spines and a spiny oyster shell with a reddish-brown substance coating its interior. Fash and Stuart suspect the substance is dried blood, but a laboratory analysis has not yet been conducted. It is likely, they say, that Smoke-Shell used the stingray spines to draw his own blood for inclusion with the offering.

Another possibility, says Fash, is thatSmoke-Shell used one of three elaborate flint lance heads found next to the ceremonial pot, each with carved Maya faces branching out from the body of the lance, to rip out the still-beating heart of a captive, which was then placed in the shell.

In any case, says anthropologistGeorge Stuart (David Stuart's father) of the National Geographic Society in Washington, D.C., which announced the discovery, "this find appears to confirm that the [Classic-period] Maya engaged in elaborate bloodletting ceremonies [SN: 6/7/86, p.360].'

Photo: Dark substance inside shell, above, may beblood from a Maya ritual ceremony. Stingray spines lie in front of the shell. Jade figure, left, was an heirloom of kings.