The northern Yucatan peninsula has no rivers on its surface; rainfall drains almost immediately through the region's porous limestone bedrock into an underground water table, reaching the surface only through natural sinkholes called cenotes, and this made cenotes both the region's principal water source and, for the Maya, a natural point of contact with the watery underworld and the deities associated with rain and fertility, chief among them Chaac. The Sacred Cenote at Chichen Itza, separated from the city's main ceremonial plaza by a raised stone causeway built specifically to connect them, was maintained as a dedicated site of offering rather than a source of drinking water, its counterpart, a second cenote closer to the city center, served the practical function instead.
Drought anxiety appears to have driven much of the votive activity at the Sacred Cenote, and the range and value of recovered offerings, jade beads and figurines, gold discs worked with elaborate scenes, worked shell, textiles, copal incense, alongside the human remains of both adults and children, indicates a site treated as capable of carrying petitions directly to the rain gods in a way ordinary ritual space could not.