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130AMCS Bulletin 12 — Chapter 7Figure 7.1. Modified micro-cenote, El Naranjal (afterWinzler and Fedick 1995:fig. 6.7).through Actun Pech is reminiscent of Chan Kom,where Redfield and Villa Rojas (1934:139) describea cenote that “. . . can be reached only by crawlingthrough a dark and slippery tunnel, about 30 m inlength. The difficulty of entrance, and the snake-wisemovement of the torch-lit procession, enhance theawesomeness of the ritual act.”In this respect, the situation in Actun Pech is fundamentallydifferent than that described by Stephensat Bolonchen (1843:96–104), where drinking waterwas collected from the cave when all other means wereexhausted. It suggests that the wetlands, open cenotes,and wells that surround caves such as Actun Pechserved as the primary sources of drinking water, whilethe caves may have represented more restricted or sacredenvironments and were therefore reserved forceremonial activities.The importance of this fact cannot be stressed toostrongly. Because caves in the Yalahau were not theonly, indispensable water source, nor even the mostaccessible one, we would not expect evidence of culturalactivity to be associated with simple utilitarianwater collection. As already noted, archaeologists havetended to focus on caves/cenotes as water sources tothe exclusion of all other functions. While it has beenpointed out that cenotes used for drinking water arealso important ritual features in the ethnographic literature(Brady 1997a:604), this point seems to havehad little impact on archaeological thinking. The removalof the function as water source from the cavesof the Yalahau region allows us to separate the ritualfunction from the utilitarian function. The ritual patternisolated here allows us to identify the underlyingmeaning carried by these features. Those insights canthen be applied to cave/cenotes throughout the peninsulato provide a more comprehensive appreciation oftheir multifaceted significance.This, however, does not necessarily preclude thecollection of drinking water from certain caves, whicharguably could have been a ritualized, albeit routine,activity. Seasonal trips into the cave at Bolonchen, forexample, were no casual affair but were marked byceremonial activities in the nearby village. At the Grutade Chac, the non-normal nature of the site was underscoredby gender reversals in which men, as opposedto woman, did the actual water collection. John LloydStephens (1843, II:16) observed “that there were nowomen, who, throughout Yucatán, are the drawers ofwater, and always seen around a well, but we weretold that no woman ever enters the well of Chack; allthe water for the rancho was procured by the men,which alone indicated that the well was of an extraordinarycharacter.”Figure 7.2. Excavated well, El Naranjal (after Winzlerand Fedick 1995:fig. 6.3).