Experiments in ancient Maya bloodletting: quantification of surface wear on obsidian blades
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ORIGINAL PAPER
Experiments in ancient Maya bloodletting: quantification of surface wear on obsidian blades W. James Stemp & Mason D. Andruskiewicz & Matthew A. Gleason & Yusuf H. Rashid
Received: 1 September 2013 / Accepted: 18 June 2014 # Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2014
Abstract It is widely accepted that the ancient Maya practiced sacrificial bloodletting to communicate with their dead ancestors and the gods. Implements to draw blood included a variety of tools, including stone blades made of obsidian. Evidence for bloodletting is based on ethnohistoric accounts provided by the Spaniards, ethnographic observation of modern Maya rituals, iconography depicting bloodletting, hieroglyphic references, and the recovery of artifacts from ritual contexts. However, evidence for bloodletting based on the surface wear on the obsidian blades themselves is inconclusive and difficult to identify. Recent work for quantifying use-wear on stone tools using laser scanning confocal microscopy (LSCM) and scale-sensitive fractal analysis, based on relative area (RelA), has led to an experimental program to quantitatively document wear patterns on replicated obsidian tools. Three obsidian blade segments were used to cut raw beef as a proxy for bloodletting. Our results demonstrate that surface roughness on the blade segments can be documented using RelA, but discrimination of the used from the previously unused surface was only possible in one of the three cases; the original surface structure of an obsidian blade plays a role in wear formation and its subsequent documentation based on RelA.
W. J. Stemp (*) Surface Metrology and Archaeological Research Technologies Project, Department of Sociology/Anthropology, Keene State College, Keene, NH, USA e-mail: [email protected] M. D. Andruskiewicz : M. A. Gleason : Y. H. Rashid Surface Metrology Lab, Mechanical Engineering Department, Worcester Polytechnic Institute, Worcester, MA, USA
Keywords Maya . Obsidian . Bloodletting . Use-wear . Laser scanning confocal microscope . Relative area
Introduction The ancient Maya practiced ritual bloodletting to both appease and petition their gods and ancestors. One of their most important requests was for rain and good harvests, which is emphasized by the strong ideological and symbolic connection between blood and maize in their belief system (Taube 1985; Schele and Miller 1986; Schele and Freidel 1990; Freidel et al. 1993; Schele and Mathews 1998). Throughout the Maya world, as well as portions of greater Mesoamerica, most of the evidence for bloodletting is based on iconography, hieroglyphics, ethnohistoric accounts, ethnographic studies, and the recovery of artifacts from deposits identified as ritually significant (see below). Implements used to let blood consisted of sharpened bone shards or needles, stingray spines, thorny ropes, and obsidian blades (e.g., Tozzer 1941; Willey 1972; Schele and Miller 1986; Brady 1989; Schele and Freidel 1990; Chase 1991; Brady and Peterson 2008; Haines et al. 2008; Stone and Zender 2011). However, di
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