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Experiments in ancient Maya bloodletting: quantification of surface wear on obsidian blades

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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.

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Acknowledgments

The authors would like to acknowledge the valuable comments provided by the two anonymous reviewers which improved the quality and overall clarity of this paper. We extend special thanks to Dr. Christopher A. Brown, Director of the Surface Metrology Lab, Mechanical Engineering Department, Worcester Polytechnic Institute, USA, for use of the Olympus LEXT laser scanning confocal microscope (LSCM) and Surfract (www.surfract.com) for use of Sfrax software for calculation of relative area (RelA) and the F tests. We would also like to thank Dr. Jaime Awe, Director of the Institute of Archaeology in Belize, for his collaborations involving the understanding of ancient Maya ritual and sacrifice.

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  1. Surface Metrology and Archaeological Research Technologies Project, Department of Sociology/Anthropology, Keene State College, Keene, NH, USA

    W. James Stemp

  2. Surface Metrology Lab, Mechanical Engineering Department, Worcester Polytechnic Institute, Worcester, MA, USA

    Mason D. Andruskiewicz, Matthew A. Gleason & Yusuf H. Rashid

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Stemp, W.J., Andruskiewicz, M.D., Gleason, M.A. et al. Experiments in ancient Maya bloodletting: quantification of surface wear on obsidian blades. Archaeol Anthropol Sci 7, 423–439 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12520-014-0204-5

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