The practice of depositing objects and, in some contexts, individuals into cenotes — the practice most dramatically exemplified at the Sacred Cenote of Chichén Itzá — can be understood within this framework as a form of offering or communication with the underworld, with the supernatural forces that inhabited it, or with the ancestors who had passed into it.

Caves carried similar significance.

Many of the surviving Maya religious sites include natural caves or cave systems that were used for ritual activity, often involving water in the cave interior or at its entrance.

The darkness of the underground, the cool and damp air, the sounds of dripping water and the echoes of enclosed space: these qualities made caves distinctive sensory environments that marked them as different from the surface world, as places where the normal conditions of ordinary life did not apply.

Chultúns — the artificial underground chambers that the Maya carved into the limestone bedrock — shared something of this symbolic geography.