Abstract
The mortuary rituals of the ancient Maya were laden with symbolism and this extended to the foods that they produced during ceremonies and offered to gods and revered ancestors. Comestibles placed in tombs were not simply meals, but tangible obsecrations meant to ensure the intercession on behalf of the living by ancestors with ancient gods. Such meals undoubtedly embodied the best that the community had to offer and were produced with an adherence to strict laws governing who could collect and create foods for rituals. Communing with the dead would have been a serious undertaking with great care taken in the construction of ritual gifts. The range of dishes placed in tombs and offerings were attached to a legacy of myths and the use of certain foods, and possibly food combinations, would have been intended to produce a particular outcome. This chapter is focused upon comestibles containing cacao, which were created for offerings in three Early Classic (c. A.D. 430–600) Maya royal tombs, an elite burial, and a cache associated with a tomb. I will first explore the motivation behind offering food to deceased ancestors, and then discuss the importance of cacao to ancient Mesoamericans, following this with a description of its use in tombs and offerings at Copan, and the connection of cacao to Maya conceptions of death and rebirth.
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Notes
- 1.
The word Ladino is used for people of mixed or European ancestry who do not follow lifeways strongly rooted in traditional Mesoamerican belief systems.
- 2.
For the Maya and people of other Mesoamerican cultures, maize (an herb) is also commonly represented as one of the “World Trees.”
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Acknowledgements
I would like to thank John E. Staller and Michael D.Carrasco for editing this volume. I also greatly appreciate the work of W. Jeffrey Hurst in analyzing the samples from the Copan vessels. I would like to thank Robert J. Sharer for including me on the Early Copan Acropolis Program at Copan. Lastly, I am grateful to the Instituto Hondureño de Antropología e Historia for facilitating my research in Honduras.
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McNeil, C.L. (2010). Death and Chocolate: The Significance of Cacao Offerings in Ancient Maya Tombs and Caches at Copan, Honduras. In: Staller, J., Carrasco, M. (eds) Pre-Columbian Foodways. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4419-0471-3_12
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