Cenotes and Placemaking in the Maya World: Biocultural Landscapes as Archival Spaces

In the Yucatán Peninsula, freshwater sinkholes known as cenotes are the only natural water systems beyond seasonal rainfall. In addition to their role as sustainable sources of water, certain cenotes were sacred to ancestral Maya peoples. Unfortunately, today, cenotes are threatened by pollution and contamination due to trash-dumping, intensive farming, and the effects of tourism. In response to these threats, InHerit: Indigenous Heritage Passed to Present (University of North Carolina), partnered with the Universidad de Oriente (UNO) in Valladolid, Mexico, and nine middle schools in Maya towns throughout Yucatán. Together, we developed curriculum resources focused on the environmental and cultural preservation of cenotes. Our initiative not only generated conservation activities but archival materials related to cenotes. These include photographs and landscape drawings by students, community oral histories about cenotes, and illustrations related to cenotes in the Maya codices—ancestral books of prophecy and fate authored by Yucatec Maya scribes before the sixteenth century. Through our multi-disciplinary exploration of the relationship between biocultural heritage and place, we investigate whether or not cenotes as landscape markers and archaeological caches, themselves, can also be archives—spaces with the capacity to collect, preserve, protect, and convey intergenerational memory and knowledge in the Yucatec Maya world.