Rock Images at La Casa de las Golondrinas and the Kaqchikel Maya Context in Guatemala

This paper places La Casa de las Golondrinas, a Pre-Columbian rock image site, in its Kaqchikel Maya cultural context. This is an exploration of both the cultural situation of the paintings and the meaning of a selection of the images. A comparison of sacred locations in contemporary use in the Kaqchikel highlands to the prehistoric locations of La Casa de las Golondrinas reveals that the same features are present in both the contemporary and Pre-Columbian milieu. Further comparisons show that there is a concordance of themes in the Pre-Columbian rock art with those found in the Kaqchikel ethnographic studies. Some of the matters covered are portals to the spiritual world, mythological deities and other spiritual beings, sacrifice and ritual celebrations, and the quincunx, which defines the sacred world’s four corners and center. This paper discusses a variety of single images and image clusters pertaining to seasonal rituals and creation using ethnographic information by Kaqchikel Maya archaeological and cultural scholars, the Popul Vuh, and sources on Maya cosmology and art.