Archaeology Magazine - January/February 1983 - 43

bow and arrow. Formerly, Lacandones knapped
flint only in the "god house," a religious structure
where prayers and religious ceremonies are conducted. With the commercialization of bow and arrow
manufacture, however, this practice has been
abandoned.
The quality of stone points used on arrows has
also begun to degenerate since the Lacandones
began to sell the weapon to tourists. Points made
today generally are crudely shaped and would break
if fired into a game animal or enemy. As recently
as the 1940s when the Danish archaeologist Franz
Blom and his wife, Swiss journalist Gertrude
Duby Blom, collected bow and arrow sets used by
Lacandones of that era for hunting and defense,
stone arrowpoints were beautifully worked, unifacially retouched artifacts that showed a high degree
of skill and control in manufacture. As with all
aspects of Lacandon bow and arrow making, some
men continue to take greater care than others to
produce good arrowpoints. Some, in fact, specialize
in flint knapping and trade finished points for
cane, fiber or unworked bow blanks.
The gradual degeneration of the quality of bows
and arrows among the Lacandones is understandable. They began to drop the weapon in favor of
muzzle-loading muskets and powder horns as early
as 1905, as Alfred Tozzer reported in his early
monograph. Their ability to obtain these firearms,
which were antiques even then, coincided with
their realization that bows and arrows could be used
for trade with outsiders. In the mahogany-cutting
camps that dotted the Lacandon rainforest at the
turn of the century, Lacandon men exchanged their
hand-crafted bows and arrows for salt, cotton
cloth, gunpowder and, inadvertently, contagious diseases. Even then, Tozzer noted, they made those
sets expressly for trade. "It is very seldom," he wrote,
"that they will consent to part with those they
actually use in hunting, as in many cases these also
have some ceremonial use."
In the early 1940s, when the Bloms first explored
the Chiapas jungle, many Lacandones still used
the bow and arrow as a hunting and defense weapon.
Older Lacandon men still remember the years
when the bow and arrow was their primary means
of hunting game. And some men, in hushed tones,
will still speak of using the weapon in raiding parties, to protect their wives or to steal those of other
men. But raids and warfare were purged from
Lacandon society in the late 1940s, and sometime
during the 1950s the Bloms photographed and collected examples of what probably were the last
Lacandon bows and arrows in use for defense and
hunting.
Even the major part of the ceremonial use that
Tozzer noted has since faded from Lacandon society. Arrow shafts formerly were painted with two
round spots of annato and presented to the gods
as a prayer for success in the hunt. Today, the only
surviving remnant of ceremonial bow and arrow
use is the presentation of a small set to the gods at
the puberty rites of a Lacandon boy. As late as
the 1950s, young boys still learned to hunt and shoot
accurately with these bows and arrows. But today,
while men still teach their sons to make bows and

arrows in the old tradition, the sons- like the fathers
themselves- sell the sets to tourists, using the
money to buy salt, cotton cloth, kerosene, radios,
watches, plastic shoes, and .22 caliber rifle cartridges.
In a sense, perpetuation of this ancient tradition
has helped to propel the Lacandon Maya into the
modern era.
The modern tourist version of the Lacandon bow
and arrow is more easily produced than the traditional bow and arrow, but the modern set without a
doubt duplicates many aspects of the Postclassic
weapon of the Precolumbian Maya- at least of those
in the tropical rainforest of Chiapas and the Guatemalan Peten. The same natural materials, environment and cultural traditions undoubtedly resulted
in similarities in such artifacts as the bow and arrow.
Bows and arrows must rank in importance with
the use of fire, the domestication of plants and the
invention of the wheel as one of the most significant
developments in human prehistory. Yet, strangely,
by the time the Maya began to use the bow and
arrow, much of the glory of Maya civilization already
lay buried in jungle vegetation. The subsequent
history of the descendants of the first Maya archers
is less mysterious. Many spend their days planting Old World crops like coffee and bananas on land
robbed from them when Spaniards invaded the
Maya world four centuries ago. Others, like the still
proud Lacandon Maya, make their living selling
pieces of the past to the descendants of their
invaders.

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1983
January/February

Archaeology Magazine - January/February 1983

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Archaeology Magazine - January/February 1983