Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/jasrep An ancient Maya ritual cache at Pook's Hill, Belize: Technological and functional analyses of the obsidian blades W. James Stemp a,⁎ , Geoffrey E. Braswell b , Christophe G.B. Helmke c , Jaime J. Awe d a Department of Sociology, Anthropology and Criminology, Keene State College, Keene, NH 03435-3400, USA b Department of Anthropology, University of California-San Diego, La Jolla, CA 92093-0532, USA c Institute of Cross-cultural and Regional Studies, University of Copenhagen, Karen Blixens Plads 8, DK-2300 Copenhagen S, Denmark d Department of Anthropology, Northern Arizona University, Flagstaff, AZ 86011-5200, USA ARTICLE INFO Keywords: Obsidian Blood-letting Caches Maya Pook’s Hill Use-wear analysis ABSTRACT When recovered from ritual contexts at ancient Maya sites, obsidian blades are frequently viewed as blood- letters used for auto-sacrifice. Most evidence supporting this interpretation is circumstantial and derives from iconographic and ethnohistoric sources. Such a deductive approach does not provide a means to determine whether individual blades were used to let blood. In contrast, microscopic use-wear analysis of lithic artifacts can be used to examine blades for evidence of their use, and—provided comparative experimental data are available—to determine if they were blood-letters. The technological and use-wear analyses of 48 obsidian blades recovered from a Late Classic (c. 550–650 CE) dedicatory cache at the site of Pook's Hill, Belize, serve as a test case to explore the relationship between obsidian blades and ancient Maya auto-sacrificial blood-letting. The results of the analyses indicate that some blades from the cache may have been used to let blood; however, not all obsidian blades appear to have been used in the same way. The obsidian blood-letters recovered from the cache were used in cutting, piercing, and piercing-twisting motions. Although some blades were used to let blood, the edge and surface wear on most of the used obsidian blades are consistent with other functions, including cutting meat/skin/fresh hide, cutting or sawing wood and dry hide, cutting or sawing other soft and hard materials, and scraping hard materials. Clearly, not all blades from this ritual deposit were blood-letters, which raises questions about the manner in which such a ritual deposit was formed and the nature of ritual activity associated with caching behavior at Classic period Maya sites. 1. Introduction Obsidian was an important resource for the ancient Maya in many socio-economic, political, and ideological respects. This naturally oc- curring volcanic glass was mined from the highlands of Guatemala and Central Mexico and transported over hundreds of kilometers by land and sea to its final destinations. Sourcing data indicate that the obsidian sources primarily exploited by the Maya varied in different regions and over time (e.g., Braswell, 2003; Golitko et al., 2012; Nelson, 1985; Rice, 1984). Once acquired, obsidian was chipped or ground into a variety of tools, decorative objects, and ceremonial items. In particular, prismatic blades were forced from polyhedral cores through indirect percussion or pressure (Clark, 1988) to produce very sharp implements, well suited for piercing and cutting. Obsidian blades and blade fragments have been recovered by the thousands from domestic, non-domestic, and ceremonial contexts at ancient Maya sites and were used by commoners and elites alike for subsistence, crafting, warfare, and ritual activities of many types (e.g., Aoyama, 1999, 2009, 2014; Lewenstein, 1987; Stemp, 2016a; Stemp and Awe, 2014; Stemp et al., 2013). In this paper, we focus on the procurement and ritual use of obsidian blades. Our sample of 46 blade fragments and two complete blades comes from Cache 4A-2 at Pook's Hill, Belize (Fig. 1). Results of microscopic use-wear analysis indicate that some of the blades from this cache possess use-wear traces consistent with blood-letting based on comparisons with experimental tools. Nonetheless, the majority of blades possess use-wear consistent with other domestic activities. This suggests a number of possibilities for the procurement of the blades, the activities undertaken with them, and the formation of the cache. Our results underscore that not all blades recovered from caches were necessarily used directly in ritual actions involving the formation of these types of deposits. Some blade segments may have been brought to the cache for inclusion as ritual objects from other locations where they were initially used. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jasrep.2017.07.011 Received 30 January 2017; Received in revised form 31 March 2017; Accepted 12 July 2017 ⁎ Corresponding author. E-mail addresses: jstemp@keene.edu (W.J. Stemp), gbraswel@ucsd.edu (G.E. Braswell), cgbh@hum.ku.dk (C.G.B. Helmke), Jaime.awe@nau.edu (J.J. Awe). Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports 18 (2018) 889–901 Available online 21 July 2017 2352-409X/ © 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. T