The Bats'ub cave is a karst rockshelter located within the Columbian Forest Reserve of Belize. At the back of the cave archaeologists discovered a burial chamber which had been walled off in antiquity, but was partially breached before excavations commenced in the mid 1990s.
A surface collection of the sealed chamber site recovered ceramic pots, a rosewood shaman's stool, a scatter of human remains, spondylus shell beads, a hematite earspool, and a fragmentary maize cob. The chamber included the skeleton of an adult male, with a set of grave goods including a jade necklace, and several ceramic vessels of Early Classic Maya tradition, decorated with ritual iconography.
A small plain unslipped bowl containing five cacao beans was discovered inverted over man's pelvis. Radiocarbon dates on wood fragments from the excavation returned dats between AD 83 and 410.
Reearchers believe the Bats'ub burial may be a shaman's cave, based on the location in the back of a cave, the grave goods, and the cacao beans.
Source
This glossary entry is part of the Guide to the Maya Civilization and the Dictionary of Archaeology.
Prufer, Keith M. and W. J. Hurst 2007 Chocolate in the Underworld Space of Death: Cacao Seeds from an Early Classic Mortuary Cave. Ethnohistory 54(2):273-301.
