The Sword and the Olive Jar: Material Evidence of Seventeenth-Century Maya – Spanish Interaction in Central Belize Abstract. This paper describes the recent discovery of a Spanish sword and olive jar in two separate cave sites in the Roaring Creek Valley in central Belize. Analysis of the sword and olive jar places their date of manufacture between the late sixteenth and the mid-seventeenth century. The socio-political environment that prevailed along the seventeenth-century colonial frontier in Belize suggests that the sword may have been forcibly acquired by the Maya, whereas the archaeological contexts in which the European-made objects were discovered provide evidence for native ritual continuity amidst persistent proselytization efforts by the Spanish invaders.

“Much more needs to be documented and understood about the dynamics of Maya resistance” (Jones 1990: 192).

INTRODUCTION In his chapter, in the volume Vision and Revision in Maya Studies, Grant Jones (1990: 192) comments that tangible evidence for seventeenth-century Maya rebellion in the Yucatan “has been elusive because it was defined primarily in nonconfrontational terms”. Evidence for such rebellions, and for Maya – Spanish interaction in general, in the southern colonial frontier of the Yucatan peninsula is indeed still limited primarily to information drawn from Spanish records that are curated in the Archivo General de las Indias in Seville. For this and other reasons indicated below, the recent discovery of a sixteenth to seventeenth century Spanish rapier sword and an olive jar in two separate caves in central Belize represents a significant addition to the material evidence for Maya – Spanish interaction in what was apparently a very rebellious frontier area. In this paper we describe the discovery and characteristic features of the sword and olive jar, and we present information on the socio-political environment that is likely to have led to the deposition of these European-made objects in caves in the Roaring Creek Valley of central Belize. We also suggest that these discoveries provides new evidence in support of Thompson’s (1972: 13; also Scholes and Thompson 1977: 50) proposal that the seventeenth-century village of Hubelna was located on the banks of Roaring Creek, known at the time as the Yaxteel Ahau1 River. NATURE OF DISCOVERY: The Olive Jar In December of 2004, the senior author was shown, during a visit to the farm of Mr. Richard Pollack in the Roaring Creek Valley, two ceramic vessels that the farm’s owner and a workman had discovered within a small cave on the property. The cave is located on the side of a hill, approximately one kilometer southwest of Mr. Pollack’s residence (fig. 1). The entrance to the cave measures about 1.5 m wide by 0.9 m high. This low entrance opens into a small chamber measuring about 4.0 m in diameter. Mr. Pollack informed us that when they entered the chamber, they saw two jars standing next to each other in a corner of the small room. At the other side of the chamber, they noted a low passage that connected into a larger chamber, but owing to time constraints they did not investigate this

chamber. Fearing that the vessels might be plundered by looters, they decided to remove the two jars from the cave and transfer them to the Pollack residence for safekeeping. The two ceramic vessels are a small olive jar of Spanish origin and a large, wide-mouth jar of Maya manufacture. The Maya jar (fig. 2d) measures 17 cm tall, 43 cm at its widest and 32 cm at its interior orifice. It has a rounded base that curves gently upward to the shoulder, and then flares out slightly to the rim. The vessel is brownish-black, unslipped, but burnished. A small section of the rim is broken off. It is possible that this break may have been intentional, occurring during the ritual termination of the jar by the ancient Maya who deposited the vessels in the cave. Similar instances of chipped rims as a means of termination, have been documented in the ceramic assemblage of other caves in the Roaring Creek Valley (Helmke 2009). The Maya jar displays a number of similarities in form and manufacture to wide-mouth jars from the Terminal Postclassic – Early Historic period Yglesias Phase (AD 1450 to 1644) at the Belizean sites of Tipu and Lamanai (fig. 3). This is particularly true of vessels that were deposited in middens in the vicinity of the ruins of two Spanish churches at Lamanai (Graham 1987: 91-95, fig. 8p & 9i-n; Pendergast 1985: 101-102). Other similar, Yglesias-Phase jars were found by David Pendergast in various contexts at Lamanai (see Pendergast et al. 1993: 66. fig. 2g), at the contact-period Maya site of Tipu on the Macal River (Graham 1987: 91), and at Santa Rita in northern Belize where Diane Chase (1982: 541-542, fig. 4-14b & 4-50d) classified them as Santa Unslipped in the type-variety system. The olive jar (fig. 2a) is 48.0 cm tall, 31.5 cm in diameter at its shoulder, and tapers to about 12.0 cm in diameter at its rounded base. The vessel rim is 10.2 cm in diameter on the outside and 6.3 cm in diameter at its interior neck. The exterior of the vessel is plain, not glazed, and the color ranges from tan to light brown. On the lower body of the jar, there is a small “kill hole” (fig. 2b) that is most likely to have been punctured into the base when the Maya ritually terminated the vessel and deposited it in the chamber. This type of ritual termination is a Maya cultural tradition of considerable antiquity and has been particularly noted in caves in western Belize (Moyes 2006). From present evidence we know that ceramics found in the caves of the Roaring Creek were ritually terminated by a variety of means including, puncturing a kill hole in the base or the side of a vessel–or alternately punching out the base–chipping the rim, and even completely shattering a vessel (Helmke 2009: 60, 423). The Maya Yglesias jar and the Spanish olive jar thus exhibit the two most common forms of termination documented for the area, and testify to the continuity of native Maya ritual practices. Olive jars, and olive jar fragments, have been found at several contact period sites in Belize. At Lamanai, for example, excavations yielded a diverse range of portable objects of European origin. Graham (1987: 91) reports that included among the European-made artifacts are olive jar sherds, majolica ware, iron objects and glass beads, predominantly discovered in middens dating to the Terminal Postclassic-Early Historic period. Excavations by Pendergast (1985: 101-102) around the two Spanish churches at the site also yielded a considerable number of “historic period offerings”, as well as “seventeenth-century Spanish jar sherds.” Elsewhere in northern Belize, olive jar fragments have been

recovered at Santa Rita (Chase and Chase 1987: 47-72) and a complete specimen, presently exhibited in the Museum of Belize, was recently found in the New River near Orange Walk Town (fig. 2c). Most significantly, while we were conducting excavations at the archaeological site of Pook’s Hill, José Portillo, a local inhabitant of Arizona village, brought to our attention several gray-glazed olive jar sherds that he had discovered at a plazuela group along the eastern banks of the Roaring Creek Valley, just 3.9 km southwest of the Olive Jar Cave (fig. 1). Unfortunately, upon finding out that the fragments had no commercial value, Portillo discarded the sherds (José Portillo, personal communication 2000). South of Lamanai, along the Sibun River, McAnany and her colleagues (2004: 306) also discovered several olive jar fragments at the site of Cedar Bank. It is likely that the site may have been the location of a Spanish visita church constructed by a Spanish encomendero at the end of the sixteenth century (Jones 1989: 200). At the site of Tipu in central Belize, Graham et al. (1989: 1256; and 1985: 207-210) note that:

Goods of European origin, such as glass-bead necklaces and bracelets, brass needles, pins, silver earrings, and copper rings and pendants were worn by men, women and children and were buried with them. Spanish-made majolica pottery and olive jars, metal hooks, iron nails, locks and other Spanish ironwork occur in refuse deposits and building debris. The presence of these artifacts indicates that both Tipu and Lamanai were participants in exchange networks that distributed European products throughout the Yucatan peninsula.

North of Belize, a number of Spanish olive jars have been recovered in the Mexican states of Quintana Roo and Yucatan. Andrews and Andrews (1975: 72, fig. 88) recovered two intact olive jars, accompanied by two Late Postclassic censer cups, in the Group S cave at Xcaret, Quintana Roo. They note that Xcaret was abandoned ca. 1650, and that the olive jars are akin to Goggin’s (1960) Middle Style, Type A. Also in Quintana Roo, underwater exploration of a cenote on the island of Cozumel by Luis Alberto Martos López (2008: 107) recovered a variety of Spanish-made objects, including several olive jars. To the west, in the state of Yucatan, Mexican archaeologist Carmen Rojas Sandoval found several olive jars in the Cenote Canun near the sites of Acanceh and Mayapan (Anthony Andrews, personal communication 2010). In yet another Yucatecan cenote, known as Xbatun, Eunice Uc Gonzalez and Luis Daniel Domínguez found an olive jar that is particularly interesting because, like the Roaring Creek vessel, it also has a small kill hole in its side (CONACULTA 2008; Alfredo Barrera Rubio, personal communication 2010). In what remains the most comprehensive study of Spanish olive jars, John M. Goggin (1960) classifies the vessels into three major types: Early, Middle and Late forms (fig. 4). Each form is assigned a date, with Early types dating between 1500 and 1580, Middle forms between 1580 and 1800 and Late forms post-dating 1800 (Goggin 1960: 23). The dates for Middle and Late forms have subsequently been refined to ca. 1580-1780 and 1780-1850, respectively (Goggin 1960: 20-24, 1968: 101-114). Modally, the Roaring Creek olive jar is very similar to Goggin’s Middle Style Shape A. According to James (1988: 43), the earliest evidence of Shape A olive jars in the Americas dates to 1621 and

comes from the wreck of a ship identified as the San Antonio (see Petersen 1969: 182-183). The latest date is from the 1733 wreck of the Spanish vessel San José. He further notes that these types of ceramic vessels were not only used for transporting olives and oil but were also “Employed as a main type of shipping container, the jars held foodstuffs and supplies. Documents from the General Archives of the Indies at Seville list various types of beans and olives, as well as wine, olive oil, and tar” (James 1988: 43). For sites in Belize where Spanish-made objects have been discovered, Pendergast et al. (1993: 70) argue that archaeological investigations “permit fairly precise fixing of the time of use of the community within the span of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.” This is particularly “true of olive jar and majolica types, which at Lamanai and very probably also at Tipu cannot be later than the 1630s and are most likely to have reached the sites between 1544 and 1600” (Pendergast et al. 1993: 70). NATURE OF DISCOVERY: The Sword The sword was discovered in 2008 by a Belize Institute of Archaeology Park Ranger stationed at the site of Actun Tunichil Mucnal in the Roaring Creek Valley. The ranger informed us that he discovered the sword within a small niche in a rockshelter a few kilometers to the southeast of Actun Tunichil Mucnal (see fig. 1). A subsequent visit to the area by Archaeologist Rafael Guerra (2009) secured the location of the site by means of a hand-held GPS unit. Guerra also reported that the rockshelter is about 42 m long by 7.5 m high and no more than 1.5 m in depth (fig. 5). The niche where the sword was found measures 63 cm wide by 20 cm high and approximately 1.2 m deep. A brief reconnaissance of the immediate area noted nothing more than a few potsherds on the ground surface. Some 250 m east of the rockshelter, Guerra came across a stream that enters into a small cave no more than 1.85 meters high and about 6.5 m wide. The cave also has two dry entrances to the south. A quick reconnaissance of the cave indicated that that the river passage is periodically washed out by floods. This would account for the fact that no archaeological materials were present on the cave floor. Subsequent research in the files of the Institute of Archaeology suggests that this cave had been previously visited in July of 2009, by caver Bruce Minkin, which he had provisionally named Drowning G cave. The dimensions of the sword are provided in Table 1. As can be noted in figure 6, time and the elements have not been kind to the sword. The handle, which is most likely to have been of perishable material, such as wood with a wrapping of leather, is missing, leaving only the metal core preserved (fig. 6a). The hilt also appears to have suffered from the erosive power of the elements for it seems to be missing small sections of the normally complex hilts that are typical of rapier swords. The blade, like much of the rest of the sword, is extremely rusty and there appears to be minor damage on some sections of the blade (fig. 6b).

Blade length: 71.2 cm

Blade width: 1.8 cm

Blade thickness at center: 0.7 cm

Blade thickness at preserved blade tip: 0.2 cm

Hilt length: 12.4 cm

Squared hilt: 0.8 x 0.5 cm

Width of guard: 8.7 cm

Height of guard: 4.1 cm

Length from tip of blade to end of hilt: 87.8 cm

Table 1: Dimensions of Spanish rapier from Rapier Cave, Roaring Creek Valley, Belize. Note: all measurements are maxima.

Subsequently, we forwarded photos of the sword (fig. 6) to John Clements, Director of the Association for Renaissance Martial Arts (ARMA) and a leading authority on Medieval and Renaissance period weapons. Clements (personal communication 2010) responded that the sword has a common style of hilt and blade typical of rapiers dating to “the second half to last quarter of the 16th-century”. To this he added that:

It is a simple ring hilt design common among the Spanish and Italians. What’s important here is the blade geometry far more than the hilt (which was often changed out). A slender blade of that length denotes more a civilian weapon for use against unarmored opponents rather than a military one, but it would still have been effective against lightly armed opponents in the New World and could have been carried by anyone not just an officer or noble.

According to Oakeshott (1980: 137) rapiers originated in Spain in the sixteenth century, and he concurs that it was “primarily used as a thrusting weapon”. He adds that these types of swords were originally called espadas ropeas ‘swords of the robes’ by the Spanish, later designated as la rapière by the French and in turn as ‘rapier’ by the British (Oakeshott 1980: 136). They appear to have been quite popular in the late sixteenth to early seventeenth century but by 1715 rapiers had been largely replaced by smaller and lighter swords throughout most of Europe (Clements 1997; Coe 1989). Interestingly, these dates are coeval with the dates proposed by Pendergast et al. (1993: 70) for the introduction of olive jars and other European-made objects at contact-period sites in central Belize. SOCIOPOLITICAL AND CULTURAL CONTEXT The question arises of what two objects of early historic date and Spanish origin were doing in two separate caves in the Roaring Creek Valley of central Belize. To provide an

answer to this question, we must first examine the nature of sixteenth to seventeenth century Maya – Spanish relations along the southern Yucatan colonial frontier, and then review the nature of ancient Maya cave use in the Roaring Creek Valley. The best sources of information on sixteenth to seventeenth century Maya – Spanish relations in what is now Belize are reports by Spaniards Fray Andrés de Avendaño y Loyola (Means 1917), Fray Diego López de Cogolludo (1688), and Juan de Villagutierre y Soto-Mayor (1983). Additional information is provided in the Probanza of Francisco Pérez, which reports on three entradas “made in 1645-1655 to what is now west central Belize” (Scholes and Thompson 1978: 51). More recent scholarly syntheses can be found in Thompson’s (1972) The Maya of Belize: Historical Chapters since Columbus, plus various volumes and articles by Graham (2011; also Graham et al. 1985, 1989), Jones (1989, 1990, 1998), and Pendergast (1985; also Pendergast et al. 1993). To summarize these rich ethno-historic sources, we know that between 1545 and 1600 Spanish missionaries began travelling from Bacalar in Quintana Roo, Mexico to the Itza’ Maya capital of Tah Itza ~ Tayasal on Lake Peten, Guatemala (see fig. 3). Along this route, the Spanish priests stopped at several Maya communities that were situated on the banks of what are now the New and Belize Rivers—or the Dzuluinicob and Tipu, as these were respectively known in the seventeenth century. At a few of the larger Maya towns they built ramada-style visita churches, wherein they celebrated mass in their efforts to convert the Maya to Catholicism. The site of Lamanai in northern Belize, on the shores of the New River lagoon, has the remains of two such churches. Two other visita churches were located along the Belize River at the towns of Zaczus and Tipu. Work conducted by Graham (2011) and her colleagues (1985, 1989) has confirmed the location of Tipu at the present site of Negroman on the banks of the Macal branch of the Belize River. The exact location of Zaczus has not been determined archaeologically, but Thompson (1972: 13; also Scholes and Thompson 1977: 46, map 2-1) consistently argued that its location was somewhere near the mouth of the Roaring Creek, a river which was named the Yaxteel Ahau, according to Spanish sources. The Spanish also report that when Zaczus was burnt by the Maya, its cacique, a man by the name of Don Francisco Yam, moved his community about three leagues2 (roughly 9 miles or 14,5 km) up the Yaxteel Ahau River where they established a new village by the name of Hubelna (Jones 1989: 217-219). As we noted above, Thompson (1972) as well as Scholes and Thompson (1977: 46) proposed that Zaczus was located at, or near, the point of confluence of the Roaring Creek and the Belize River. If this is accurate, Hubelna must therefore have been situated up the Roaring Creek. An alternate placement for these sites, suggested by Jones (1989: 288), is that the Yaxteel Ahau “may have been Barton Creek further upstream, which would situate Zaczuz in the vicinity of the archaeological site of Baking Pot.” Archaeological research at Baking Pot, however, has provided little, if any, evidence of the presence of contact-period settlements in the area (Audet 2007; Audet and Awe 2005; Awe et al. forthcoming; Helmke and Awe 2008). In fact, even Postclassic-period (AD 1000 – 1400) remains are rare, and they date predominantly to the first half of this phase. In contrast, the discovery of the sword, wide-mouth, Yglesias phase, jar, as well as the complete olive jar and glazed jar sherds in the Roaring Creek Valley, provides more than just circumstantial evidence for contact-period activity in the valley. We therefore contend that the evidence provides very strong support

for the placement of Zaczus and Hubelna in the Roaring Creek drainage, and that the river is indeed the Yaxteel Ahau River reported by the Spanish in the seventeenth century. Interestingly, if we assume that the three leagues separating Hubelna from Zaczus were estimated in a straight line of sight, then Hubelna may have been situated just south of the site of Chaac Mool Ha (fig. 1), a minor center of the Classic period that functioned as a satellite to the major site of Tipan Chen Uitz, the largest archaeological site in the area (see Helmke 2009: 210-215; Andres et al. 2010). Conversely, if the distance takes into account the curves and bends of the river, and is measured from the confluence of the Roaring Creek and the Belize Rivers, then Hubelna would have been located on the raised alluvial embankments, just a stone’s throw away from where the glazed olive jar sherds were discovered. It is hoped that future settlement surveys in the area can assess the validity of these hypotheses. As regards seventeenth century Spanish – Maya relations on the southern Yucatan frontier, Scholes and Thompson (1977: 48) noted that “the first attempt to evangelize” the Maya of the Belize River Valley and the eastern Peten Province of Guatemala took place in 1618 when Franciscan friars Bartolomé de Fuensalida and Juan de Orbita travelled from Bacalar to Tipu and thence to Tah Itza. Fuensalida made a second trip to the region in 1619 and, finding that the Tipuans were continuing their idolatrous ways, decided to destroy their idols “in a great bonfire; more serious offenders were whipped, and others suffered lighter punishment” (Scholes and Thompson 1977: 49). Frustrated by the seeming inability of the clerics to bring the Maya of central Belize, and the Peten under their control, Spanish civil authorities in Merida, Yucatan eventually decided to attempt conquest of the Itza’ by force. Rather than follow the Belize River path, they chose a more northerly route that took them through Oxkutzcab and Sacalum (Jones 1990: 186-189). To carry out this campaign, a Spanish force, under the leadership of Franciso Mirones y Lezcano, departed Merida in 1622 (Villagutierre y Soto-Mayor 1983: 89-90). Accompanying Mirones was a Spanish priest by the name of Diego Delgado. While awaiting additional troops in Sacalum, Delgado’s relationship with Mirones soured over the latter’s treatment of the natives. As time went by, the rift between Delgado and Mirones worsened and early in 1623 Delgado decided to leave Sacalum for Tah Itza by way of Tipu (Jones 1990: 188). His goals were to convince the Itza’ ruler Kan Ek’ to subject his community to Spanish rule and to attempt further conversion of the Itza’ Maya stronghold (Jones 1989). When Mirones found out that Delgado had left for the Itza’ capital with just a few native companions, he dispatched 12 soldiers to overtake Delgado. Their instruction was to persuade him to return to Sacalum or, failing that, to accompany him to Tah Itza (Villagutierre y Soto-Mayor 1983: 91). Delgado refused to rejoin Mirones and headed to the Itza’ capital via Tipu. Delgado and his party arrived on the shores of Lake Peten on July 1623 (Jones 1989: 177). Shortly after their arrival, the Maya sent canoes to transport them to their island capital. Upon entering the town, Delgado and his party were taken captive and “the Itzas without further delay began cruelly killing them, all the Spaniards and the Indians… tearing out their hearts and offering them to their idols. They cut off all their heads and set them on poles on a little hill near the city and in sight of all the people” (Villagutierre y Soto-Mayor 1983: 92).

The following year (1624), on the Catholic feast of the Purification, sometime around the 29th of January (Jones 1990: 188), or 2nd of February (Thompson 1972: 12), while Mirones and the other Spaniards were sitting weaponless attending mass in Sacalum, a group of Maya under the leadership of a priest named Ajk’in Pol, seized weapons from the arsenal, captured the Spaniards in the church and then massacred them in much the same way that Delgado and his team had been killed in Tah Itza. Several months later, and in retaliation for the massacre, the Spanish hunted down Ajk’in Pol and killed him (Jones 1989: 185-187). At his capture they found in his possession the “chalices and silver from the Sacalum church, as well as a silver-plated dagger and some clothing belonging to Mirones” (Jones 1990: 188). In spite of Ajk’in Pol’s capture, however, the seed of rebellion had been sown and the years between 1624 and 1695 resulted in the “expulsion of Spanish civil and ecclesiastical authorities from all Belize missions” (Graham et al. 1985: 210). The best known attempt to break this stalemate and to pacify the rebellious Tipuans, was an entrada by Father Fuensalida and three other Fransican friars who embarked for Tipu by way of Bacalar in 1641 (López de Cogolludo 1688). Quoting Cogolludo (1688: bk. 11, chap. 13, 643-644), Jones (1990: 191) reports that the padres found “towns burned and deserted” from Lamanai in the north, all the way to the Belize River to the south. Approaching the Belize River they saw “statues of men dressed like Spaniards scattered about. ...These idols guarded the way and would stop and enchant anyone who tried to pass by them” (Jones 1990: 202). When Fuensalida’s party arrived in Zaczus they found that the church had been burnt down and the bell thrown in the bushes3 (López de Cogolludo 1688: bk. 11, chap. 13, 645). They then requested passage upriver to Tipu, but were told that they were not welcomed there. After spending several days waiting and hoping that the Tipuans would change their minds, they requested passage to Hubelna, located a few leagues up the Yaxteel Ahau River (Jones 1989: 219). Hubelna was the new settlement established by the previous cacique of Zaczus after they had burnt the church in Zaczus. The following day Fuensalida and his party were taken to Hubelna. Shortly after their arrival, they were tied up and subjected to “numerous insults”. According to López de Cogolludo (1688: bk. 11, chap. 14, 648; in Jones 1990: 202), the Maya informed Fuensalida, “Let the governor come. Let the king come. Let the Spanish come. We are ready to fight them. Now go and tell them [...] Others threatened to kill him because he and Father Orbita had destroyed the Itzas’ idol Tzimin Chac and thereby killed their god”. Fortunately for Fuensalida, his life was spared and he eventually managed to make his way back to Bacalar. For the next 50 years or more, the Maya of central Belize saw little of the Spanish. But this was only the calm before the storm, for in 1695 the Spanish began their last major siege of the Itza’ capital in the Peten. Tah Itza, the last bastion of Maya independence, subsequently fell and was destroyed in 1697. Thereafter, many of the Maya were forcibly resettled in Spanish-controlled towns and haciendas in Guatemala and Mexico. Given this historical background, and the location of Hubelna in the upper Roaring Creek Valley, it is reasonably safe to assume that the sword and the olive jar described in this report are likely to have been deposited in the caves by members of the Hubelna community. Considering the relationship that existed between the Maya and the Spanish,

we believe, in addition, that there are only two possible ways that the Maya could have acquired the Spanish-made objects. In the case of the olive jar, the evidence suggests that this object may have been a gift to the Maya, or perhaps left behind at Zaczus by Spanish priests who occasionally visited this community. As Graham et al. (1989: 1258) note:

There are references to gifts given out by priests in the early years of contact to encourage natives to convert. In our area, we know that glass beads, axes, machetes, earrings, and necklaces were brought to the Peten by priests in the months before and after the Itza conquest. Similar supplies may have been brought by the ten secular priests who stayed in Tipu for several months during 1696. All but machetes have been found either at Tipu or at Lamanai. However, artifacts of both European and Maya manufacture are more numerous and more varied than the documents would lead one to expect. In addition, some excavated objects raise the possibility that the Maya were reworking European brass as they did iron and were importing native smelted copper.

In the case of the sword, it is highly unlikely that it was a gift to the natives by the Europeans, especially given the bellicose relationship that existed between Maya and Spanish along the colonial frontier, in seventeenth-century Belize. Graham et al. (1989: 1258), state emphatically that the Maya were prohibited use and access to arms, a position supported by Patch’s (1979: 145) research in the Yucatan. At the same time, Villagutierre y Soto-Mayor (1983: 101) mentions that a machete was given to a “mayor” of a Maya village to help in clearing a path through the jungle (in Ch’ol territory in Verapaz). He also implies (Villagutierre y Soto-Mayor 1983: 312) that the Maya would barter for hatchets and machetes with the Spanish. In spite of this, we contend that it is more likely that the sword came into Maya hands as a result of rebellious action against the Spanish. It does, in fact, bring to mind the capture of Ajk’in Pol following the massacre of Spaniards at Sacalum. It will be recalled that, at his capture, Ajk’in Pol had in his possession the “chalices and silver from the Sacalum church, as well as a silver-plated dagger and some clothing belonging to Mirones” (Jones 1990: 188). It is also well established that the Belize River Valley was a preferred haven for both refugees and rebellious Maya fleeing Spanish oppression and retaliation (Graham 2011, Graham et al. 1985; Jones 1989). It is therefore quite possible that the sword may have been taken from the Spanish during one of the uprisings. A further intriguing possibility is that the sword was taken from the arsenal on that fateful day in 1624 when Mirones and his troops were massacred at Sacalum. It would be even more dramatic if the sword had been forcibly seized from Fuensalida, or one of his crew, at Hubelna in 1641. In fact, this is a tempting suggestion, considering the detailed account provided by López de Cogolludo of the embroilments at Hubelna:

The one that they most mistreated and stripped bare was Lázaro [Pech], whom they knew was servant to the friars, and they took from him of a good machete4 that he had, lest in anger he should kill one of them […] While this was happening, they had already begun to load off the ornaments and the few clothes of the friars, breaking the boxes in which they were, and these were torn up with outrage in their presence. They made pieces of the images that they found, with great contempt, and that which they most felt was to see a

holy crucifix being broken, saying a thousand blasphemies whilst reducing it to pieces, which were so iniquitous that they will not be repeated. A this time, the Indian named K’uxeb […] said: Biktun, ut’aan ak’uul kech mam? ‘What is your god saying grandfather?’ And thus they were left with only the habits that they wore.5 (López de Cogolludo 1688: bk. 11, chap. 14, 647, 649; translation by the authors)

Here it is significant that Pech, who assisted the friars, was deprived of his weapon, as the possessions of the Spaniards were plundered, torn apart and the religious paraphernalia rent asunder. In the end, one is left to wonder if the “machete” taken from Pech is the sword that eventually was deposited in a cave, up in the hills behind Hubelna. ANCIENT MAYA CAVE USE IN THE ROARING CREEK VALLEY Archaeological investigations in the Roaring Creek Valley provide considerable evidence for ancient Maya cave use in this sub-region of central Belize (Andres et al. 2010; Awe et al. 1998, 2005; Awe and Helmke 2000, 2007; Brady 2010; Halperin 2005; Helmke 2009; Helmke et al. 2003, 2004; Morehart 2002; Moyes 2002; Moyes et al. 2009). These investigations, together with the objects reported in this paper, confirm that the Maya began utilizing caves in this area around the first century before the Christian era and continued to make use of them until about the end of the seventeenth century. The period of most intensive use was between AD 750 and 900, coinciding with the time of gradual decline of ancient Maya civilization (Awe and Helmke 2007; Helmke 2009; Moyes et al. 2009). As in other regions of the Maya lowlands, the caves in Roaring Creek were used primarily for ritual purposes. Our research indicates, furthermore, that cave rituals involved the deposition of various offerings within these sites, including the remains of children and adults who may have been sacrificed during ceremonies that served to petition the gods for rain and bountiful crops. Other offerings included agricultural produce, placed in ceramic vessels, musical instruments, as well as stone tools and shell beads. As we have mentioned above, many of the vessels left in caves were also ritually killed, either by the cutting of a small “kill hole” on the body of the vessel, by the breaking of a small section of the rim, knocking out the base of the pot, or completely smashing the vessel. It is also well documented that pre-Hispanic Maya cave rituals continued unabated during the early colonial period and that they continue to be celebrated today, albeit with some modifications (Adams and Brady 2005; Brady 1989; Chuchiak 2006; Graham et al. 1989; Prufer and Brady 2005; Thompson 1959; Villagutierre y Soto-Mayor 1983; Vogt 1976; Vogt and Stuart 2005). For the early colonial period, Villagutierre y Soto-Mayor (1989: 101) reports that the Maya perceived caves as some of the most sacred landscapes. He further notes that “they held their idolatries in cavernas (as they called them), in the forests, hills and caves” (Villagutierre y Soto-Mayor 1989: 316; italics added), and that Spanish priests often “admonished the Maya for hiding idols in caves” (Villagutierre y Soto-Mayor 1989: 131). Graham et al. (1989: 1257) add that the contact period Maya “were wont to place “idols” in churches, caves and the recesses of houses” and Farris (1984: 290) reports that:

The Maya ritual remained as a parallel system driven underground—often literally, into sacred caves. There in the bush, or in the houses of the principales, the idols were hidden and when possible worshiped and fed with copal incense, maize gruel, and the blood of sacrificial victims, including humans.

The existence of these clandestine ritual practices is substantiated not only by the many Spanish documents that relate the extirpation of ritual objects from caves as well as the inquest of alleged idolaters in the Yucatan (Chuchiak 2006), but even more tangibly and to the case at hand, by the discovery of a wooden deity effigy in a Belizean cave (Stuart 1999). The discovery of the Spanish sword and olive jar in caves in the Roaring Creek Valley should therefore come as no surprise, especially given the fact that the cave sites are located in close proximity to the contact-period community of Hubelna. It is equally unsurprising that the Maya would have cut the small “kill hole” into the base of the olive jar, for this was a tradition of considerable antiquity in Maya culture. At first thought, it is possible that the jar and the sword were eventually spirited underground, in order to avoid reprisals, were the Spaniards to return. Nevertheless, this seems to run counter to established Maya ritual practices, since caves were believed to be the abode of supernatural entities, including the earth lords and Chaahk, the deity of thunder and rain. Why despoil ritual sites with objects of the foreigners? On the contrary, we are left to conclude that the exoticness of the sword and olive jar may have raised the “ritual value” and hence transformed them into fitting offerings to the gods. These ritual actions may thereby constitute the initial steps towards the development of religious syncretism, that would eventually come to predominate throughout Mesoamerica (see Miller and Farris 1979; Early 2006; Pugh and Cecil 2009). CONCLUSIONS We believe that when the discovery of the Spanish sword, olive jar and glazed sherds is placed within the culture-historical context of the seventeenth-century colonial frontier in the Yucatan Peninsula, it is possible to provide a fairly accurate reconstruction of the events that led to the deposition of these objects in cave sites in the Roaring Creek Valley. In the case of the olive jar, it is likely that the Maya from Hubelna acquired it from Franciscan missionaries on one of the friars’ stops at Zaczus. The vessel may subsequently have been taken to Hubelna at some point between 1624 and 1641 following the Maya destruction of Zaczus and the relocation of the village upriver to Hubelna. We suggest 1641 as the cutoff date for this event because on his trip to the Belize valley in that year Fuensalida reported that the church at Zaczus had been burnt and that the cacique had moved his community upriver to Hubelna. Some time after this move, and owing to the exotic nature of the olive jar, the Maya decided to place the jar and other objects as offerings in the cave. When the olive jar was deposited within the cave, the Maya pierced a “kill hole” into its base to ensure that, in accordance with ritual observances, the spiritual essence of the jar would be released and the vessel would never be used again for non-ritual purposes (see Helmke 2012: 65-67).

In the case of the sword, it is quite unlikely that this object was a gift to the Maya. Owing to the bellicose Spanish – Maya relationship that persisted on the southern Yucatan colonial frontier, the Spanish refrained from giving weapons to the Maya. This virtual prohibition of weapons meant that the only way the Maya could have acquired the sword was by aggressive action. The 1624 massacre of Francisco Mirones and his Spanish soldiers at Sacalum would have provided just such an opportunity. Recall, for example, the fact that when Ajk’in Pol, the leader of that Maya rebellion, was captured, he still had in his possession the personal dagger of Mirones. It is therefore quite possible that our sword may have come into the hands of the Maya in like fashion, if not from the precise confrontations that pitted the Maya of Hubelna against Fuensalidas and his companions. Central Belize remained a haven for the Maya escaping Spanish domination and conversion, and regardless of the means by which the sword made its way to Hubelna, it was ultimately deposited into Rapier Cave, as a result of the confrontational relationship that persisted between Maya and Spaniards in the seventeenth century.

Figure 1. Map of the Roaring Creek Valley showing location of Rapier Cave and Olive Jar Cave in relation to other known sites in the valley. Note the location of the plazuela group where the sherds of gray-glazed olive jar sherds have been discovered, which is just a stone’s throw away from the potential location of the settlement of Hubelna. Cave sites are marked by squares, surface sites by triangles (map by Christophe Helmke, Rafael Guerra and Andrew Bevan).

Figure 2. a) The Spanish olive jar found from the cave in the Roaring Creek Valley. b) Basal view of the same jar with kill hole. c) Green-glazed olive jar found in the vicinity of Orange Walk. d) The Maya jar from the Roaring Creek, with chipped rim as a means of termination (photographs by Jaime Awe).

Figure 3. Map showing location of contact-period settlements and rivers named in the ethnohistoric documents (map by Christophe Helmke, after Scholes and Thompson 1977: Map 2-1 as well as Pendergast et al. 1993: fig. 1).

Figure 4. Olive jar typology (drawings by Christophe Helmke, after Goggin 1960: fig. 1).

Figure 5. Photo of the rockshelter of Rapier Cave, Roaring Creek Valley, Belize. Note the niche in the foreground, where the sword was found (photograph by Rafael Guerra).

Figure 6. Spanish sword (rapier) found in the Roaring Creek Valley. a) Detail of the handle. b) Detail of blade (photographs by Christophe Helmke).

Notes The Western Belize Regional Cave Project was funded by a grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada to Jaime Awe. We are particularly grateful to Mr. Richard Pollack for informing us of the discovery of the olive jar, to Institute of Archaeology Ranger Mr. Longinio Salam who recovered the sword, and to José Portillo for relating the discovery of the glazed olive jar sherds. We also extend a special thank you to John Clements for identifying the type and date of manufacture of the sword, to Alfredo Barrera Rubio and Anthony Andrews for providing information on colonial period objects discovered in the cenotes and caves of the Yucatan peninsula, Mexico. Warm thanks to David Pendergast for carefully reading and commenting on an earlier version of this paper and to Jesper Nielsen for comments and bibliographic suggestions. Last, but certainly not least, we wish to convey our gratitude to Rafael Guerra for securing the location of Rapier Cave, and to all our colleagues at the Belize Institute of Archaeology for their continued support of our research. 1 Ethnonyms, languages and anthroponyms have been updated to the modern spelling that is endorsed by Academia de Lenguas Mayas de Guatemala (ALMG) and the association of native linguists known as Oxlajuuj Keej Maya Ajtziib (OKMA). Thus we speak of the Itza’, of Yukatek and Ch’ol and refer to Kan Ek’ as well as Ajk’in Pol, instead of the colonial forms of these terms (i.e. <Itza>, <Yucatec>, <Chol>, <Canek> and <Ah Kin Pol>; note also that we use angled brackets to denote colonial spellings). In contrast, toponyms are presented using their original colonial orthography, but accents are omitted since these are considered hispanicisms. Nevertheless, in order to clarify the etymology of Native American toponyms and their presumed form, using the modern orthography, we list the toponyms cited in the text, alphabetically, below: <Hubelna> (Yukatek): /jub-el-naj/ ‘shell’s house’. <Lamanai> ~ <Lamanay> ~ <Laymaná> (Yukatek): /lam-a’an-áayin/ ‘submerged-crocodile’. <Oxkutscab> ~ <Oxcutzcab> (Yukatek): /ox-k’utz-kaab/, ‘three-tobacco-land’. <Peten> (Ch’olan): /peten/ ‘island’, but also ‘province, district’ in the Classic period. <Sacalum> (Yukatek): /sak-a’-lu’um/, ‘white-place-earth’, or alternately, ‘white-water-earth’. <Taiza> ~ <Tah Itza> ~ <Tayasal> (Yukatek): /ti-aj-itza’/, ‘at the (place) of the Itza’’ (Boot 2005: 164-166, 2010). The term itza’ is itself a toponym, although it was eventually used as the well-known ethnonym. The toponym can be analyzed as /itz-a’/, ‘enchanted, magical-waters’ initially naming one of the central Peten lakes, if not the Lago Peten Itza (see Boot 2005: 37; Helmke 2009: 196). <Tepú> ~ <Tipu> (Yukatek): /ti-puj/, ‘at the reeds’ or more freely “at the place of reeds”. This place name is analogous to the Nawatl toponyms <Tollan> ~ <Tula(n)>. <Yaxteel Ahau> (Ch’olan): /yax-te’el ajaw/, ‘ceiba-forest king’, note yax-te’, lit. ‘blue.green/first-tree’. Remarkably, this toponym is Ch’olan and not Yukatek, attesting to

an earlier stratum wherein the population of the Roaring Creek spoke a Ch’olan language (Helmke 2009: 194-196). <Zaczuç> ~ <Zaczus> (Yukatek): /sak-sus/, ‘white-sands’. 2 The original states: “como caſi tres leguas” (López de Cogolludo 1688: bk. 11, chap. 13, 645). 3 The original states: “Hallaron tambien quemadas ſus caſas, y Igleſia, y la campana arrojada al monte” (López de Cogolludo 1688: bk. 11, chap. 13, 645). 4 The use of the term machete here is relevant since López de Cogolludo does not use espadas ropeas, the Spanish equivalent of the English rapier. In fact, as far as we can ascertain only two mentions are made to eſpadas ‘swords’ in the whole of the Historia de Yucathan, and surprisingly, both cases refer to Maya weaponry (López de Cogolludo 1688: 2, 6). The first instance is used in reference to Maya warriors, who are said to carry “bows, and arrows, lances, and shields, swords” (p. 2), whereas the second describes the obsidian blade-studded wooden club, known as a maa’kwawitl (<macuahuitl>) in Nawatl (p. 6). As a result, one is left to wonder which term López de Cogolludo would have used to described a rapier, especially considering that machete(s) crop up only six times in the whole Historia, with four occurring precisely in the chapters outlining the Hubelna conflicts (i.e. bk. 11, chaps. 13 & 14, 643, 647, 648, 649). 5 The transliteration of the original text is as follows: “Al que mas maltrataron, y deſnudaron fue à Lazaro como à criado, que ſabian era de los Padres, y le quitaron vn buen machete que tenia, que ſino quizà con el enojo, matara à alguno de ellos. […] Mientras eſto paſſaba, ya auian començado a cargar con los ornamentos, y poca ropa de los Religioſos, rompiendo las caxas en que eſtaban, y de ello raſgaban con vltraje en ſu preſencia. Hizieron pedaços las imagines que hallaron, con gran menoſprecio, y lo que mas ſintieron fue, vèr quebrantar vna de vn Santo Crucifixo, diziendo mil blasfemias al hazerle pedaços, que por tan iniquas no es bien ſingularizarlas. A eſte tiempo el Indio llamado Kuxeb […] dixo: Bictun vthan à Kuul cech mam? ¿Que te dize tu Dios abuelo? Y aſsi los dexaron ſolamente con los habitos, que tenian veſtidos” (López de Cogolludo 1688: bk. 11, chap. 14, 647, 649). References Adams, Abigail, E., and James E. Brady

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