Use of Honey in Maya Construction

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Abstract/Contents

Abstract: Maya villagers interviewed in Yucatan, Mexico, claim that before the advent of modern cement in the first half of the twentieth century, their elders mixed honey with other substances to make a material described as mortar, glue, or cement. The claims are that the “honey-mortar” was used not only for small patching repairs around the house, but also to build homes, churches, and even ancient monuments. Follow up interviews with local Maya men reveal various ways of mixing honey and lime (calcium oxide) for a variety of construction purposes, including: daub for pole-and-thatch housing, mortar for stone-and-mortar housing, adhesive for sealing cracks, material for roofing, and finish for walls and roofing. The purpose of this research is to investigate the use of honey in Maya construction by analyzing ethnographic and historic data, conducting mechanical tests on honey-mortar materials sourced locally from the Yucatan, and comparing chemical composition and microscopy imaging data with existing literature on archaeological mortars.

Type of resource	text
Date created	2015

Author	Dezso, Genevieve
Advisor	Fox, Jim
Advisor	Durham, William
Degree granting institution	Stanford University, Department of Anthropology

Subject	Maya
Subject	Yucatan
Subject	Mexico
Subject	modern cement
Subject	twentieth century
Subject	honey-mortar
Subject	micorscopy imaging
Subject	archaeological
Subject	archaeology
Subject	mayan
Subject	construction
Subject	ethnographic
Subject	mechanical tests on honey-mortar materials
Subject	Stanford University Department of Anthropology.
Genre	Thesis

Location	https://purl.stanford.edu/mm776bx7884

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License: This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial No Derivatives 3.0 Unported license (CC BY-NC-ND).

Preferred Citation: Dezso, Genevieve. (2015). Use of Honey in Maya Construction. Stanford Digital Repository. Available at: http://purl.stanford.edu/mm776bx7884

Graduate Research Papers from the MA Program, Department of Anthropology, Stanford University.

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