Dig Yields Signs of Feminism in Mayan Culture

An archeological dig in the jungles of Central America has yielded evidence of an early form of feminism in the ancient Maya civilization built on warfare and conquest, researchers say.

The excavation of the 6th-Century city-state of Caracol also challenges earlier assumptions about Mayan society being ruled by a small hereditary elite, archeologists Arlen and Diane Chase said last month.

Women in Caracol, unlike women in other Maya city-states such as the widely-studied Tikal, had apparently “gained respect and wielded power,” Diane Chase said.

Monuments Depict Women

She said the evidence unearthed at the 100-square-mile site on the border of Belize and Guatemala includes hieroglyphics and monuments depicting women, and tombs where females were buried.

“Clearly, the male-centered view of Maya society is not universally sound for all of the region the Maya people controlled,” she said.

Diane Chase and her husband, both assistant professors at the University of Central Florida, head a 55-member team that has spent parts of two years excavating tombs and monuments at Caracol.

They said the site has yielded evidence of a seemingly large upper class, not a tiny elite, that lived in comfort and privilege throughout the complex.

“Clearly, the upper class of Caracol did not take up homemaking in just the high-rent district of the central city, where the largest structures were built,” Chase said.

Warfare Was Important

However, the findings “confirm the central importance of warfare to the economic and political fortunes of Maya city-states,” Chase said.

Caracol conquered both the city-states of Naranjo, 30 miles to the northwest, and Tikal, 60 miles beyond that, the Chases said. These took place in the 6th and 7th centuries.

Caracol, which the Chases said thrived while the rest of the Mayan nation was declining, had its peak period about AD 500. It appears to have been abandoned in the year 1150, more than 300 years before Columbus sailed to America.

Their excavation of the overgrown jungle area of Caracol, discovered in 1938, reveals a combination urban-rural area consisting of alternating agricultural terraces and city-like, high-density housing.