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Caves may have been the most sacred places in the ancient Maya
landscape, but up until two decades ago, they had been all but
ignored by archaeologists. The discovery of Naj Tunich in 1980 and
its publication in the August 1981 issue of National
Geographic was to change all of that.
Naj Tunich is the preeminent Maya cave site, boasting the
most cave architecture ever found, the only elite masonry tombs
reported from caves and the largest (and most exceptional) corpus of
Maya cave inscriptions and paintings. The investigation of the site
throughout the 1980s and the attempt to understand its obvious
importance was the catalyst that led to the formation of the field
of Maya cave archaeology.
Naj Tunich is the Mopan Maya term for cave and literally means
"stone house", because caves were conceived of as places
where the gods lived. But among caves, Naj Tunich must always have
been something extraordinary. All the Q'eqchi' Maya in the area
agree that it is the largest cave and, shortly after its discovery,
one man expressed the opinion that this was where the corn god
dwelt. By 1986, Naj
Tunich was drawing regular pilgrimages from local villages of groups
making petitions for rain and a good harvest. This is ironic because
the hieroglyphic inscriptions suggest that the cave drew visitors
from numerous sites and I have proposed that Naj Tunich was an
important pilgrimage center on at least a regional scale.
The site has always produced its share of surprises. Initially, the large corpus of inscriptions a nd
paintings located deep within the tunnel system received the
greatest attention. In carrying out the archaeological survey of the
cave, I was fortunate that Dr. Andrea Stone agreed to undertake the
painstaking task of recording each and every image. While working
with Stone in 1988, geologist George Veni found a previously undiscovered
passage that dramatically increased the size of the cave and
yielded a number of important new paintings. That brought both Stone
and myself back in 1989 for more recording. Stone finally completed
the illustration and analysis of the entire
corpus in 1995 in a wonderful book, Images
from the Underworld: Naj Tunich and the Tradition of Maya Cave
Painting. But the surprises didn't end there. While recording
the paintings with Dr. Gene Ware in 1999 using multispectral
imaging, we discovered several totally unexpected cases of
over-painting that are now making us suspect that the history of the
paintings is far more complex than we had
 thought.
In 1989, the cave was vandalized,
the pictures defaced and treasures looted. A gate put at the
entrance to the cave only partially protected it. Further measures
of protection have been put in place. More research of the cave and
the painting is projected for future seasons. Naj Tunich cave still
has secrets to be discovered.
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