gems, jade, jadeite, fei cui, Mesoamerica, Mexico, Guatemala, Costa Rica, Mayans, Olmecs, Aztecs, archaeology, history, archaeogemology, Pre-Columbian jade; Costa Rica; Maya; exchange; iconography, lapidary

For over a century, from at least AD 800–900, Maya lords—with perhaps noble Maya women among them—gathered on the plaza of Chichén Itzá, probably on the buildings known as the Northern Platforms or on the steps of the great pyramid we now call El Castillo. They included in their number young men and women just on the cusp of puberty, and in a ritual that must have been reassuringly familiar—for how else to overcome the horror?—they set off down the elevated causeway to Chen Ku, the “holy well,” known today as the Sacred Cenote. There, from the small shrine on the south side of the deep natural sinkhole, some of these young men and women were hurled over the edge. What was the particular principle that guided this sacrificial practice? What belief was made tangible by this human offering? And when other offerings were made, what did the Maya at Chichén Itzá believe would be the result? We have only a few clues from the era of the Spanish Conquest, when Chichén Itzá was still ritually “alive,” though largely uninhabited. In his Relación de las Cosas de Yucatán, Bishop Landa promises the reader that “We will tell about the well into which they threw living men in sacrifice, as well as other beautiful things” (1941:19). Additionally, he notes, “sometimes they threw living victims into the well of Chichén Itzá, believing that they would come out on the third day …” (ibid., 120). Finally, in a more discursive part of his text, Bishop Landa adds that “into this well, they have had, and then had, the custom of throwing men alive as a sacrifice to the gods, in times of drought, and they believed that they did not die though they never saw them again. They also threw into it a great many other things, like precious stones and things which they prized. And so if this country had possessed gold, it would be this well that would have the greater part of it, so great was the devotion which the Indians showed for it” (ibid., 179–182). In making these statements, Bishop Landa discusses Chichén Itzá a number of times in his text—surely it made a clearer impression on him than any other ancient sacred place he visited—but he never explicitly identifies the Cenote as a place for the worship of Chaak or other rain gods, although the opportunity to do so was present. In fact, in later arguing that the primary motivation for Cenote ritual was the supplication of rain, A. M. Tozzer had to extrapolate from the general need for rain brought on by drought, rather than from any specific text (1957:200). Additionally, from the custom of hurling sacrificial victims into the Cenote so that they might mediate with the gods for favourable agriculture, Tozzer deduced that a second goal of Cenote sacrifice was divination in general (ibid., 201).