Reconstructing the Past: Studies in Mesoamerican and Central American Prehistory 9781841717517, 9781407329840

Table of contents :
1-34.pdf
37-40.pdf
43-159.pdf
Front Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
CONTENTS
CONTRIBUTORS
INTRODUCTION
1. Flying in Search of the Ancient Maya: Hal C. Ball, 1916–1984
2. Ecab: A Remote Encomienda of Early Colonial Yucatan
3. Palenque Painting Practices and the Iconographic Content of Color in the Late Classic
4. Architectural Transformation in the Late Middle Formative at Cuello, Belize
5. Patterns of Cache Composition and Placement at Lamanai, Belize
6. Fear and Loathing in Nineteenth-century Copan
7. A Re-evaluation of Maya Militarism in the Southern Lowlands
8. A Distinctive Maya Architectural Format: The Lamanai Temple
9. Knuckle-Dusters in Formative Mesoamerica
10. Housework in Postclassic El Salvador
11. Comments on Bálsamo and Other Little-known Sculptures of Western El Salvador
12. Due South: Learning from the Tropical Experience

Citation preview

BAR S1529 2006  PENDERGAST & ANDREWS (Eds)  RECONSTRUCTING THE PAST

Reconstructing the Past Studies in Mesoamerican and Central American Prehistory

Edited by

David M. Pendergast Anthony P. Andrews

BAR International Series 1529 B A R

2006

Reconstructing the Past Studies in Mesoamerican and Central American Prehistory

Edited by

David M. Pendergast Anthony P. Andrews

BAR International Series 1529 2006

ISBN 9781841717517 paperback ISBN 9781407329840 e-format DOI https://doi.org/10.30861/9781841717517 A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

BAR

PUBLISHING

In sadness at the loss both to ourselves and to the profession we dedicate this volume to Stan Boggs, whose death on December 30, 1991 deprived him of the chance to see his contribution in print, and us of a long-time friend.

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CONTENTS

Contributors ..................................................................................................................

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Introduction David M. Pendergast and Anthony P. Andrews .......................................................

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1. Flying in Search of the Ancient Maya: Hal C. Ball, 1916-1984 Anthony P. Andrews and David M. Pendergast ................................................

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SITES 2. Ecab: A Remote Encomienda of Early Colonial Yucatan Anthony P. Andrews, Antonio Benavides C., and Grant D. Jones .....................

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3. Palenque Painting Practices and the Iconographic Content of Color in the Late Classic Merle Greene Robertson ..................................................................................

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4. Architectural Transformation in the Late Middle Formative at Cuello, Belize Norman Hammond ...........................................................................................

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5. Patterns of Offering Composition and Placement at Lamanai, Belize David M. Pendergast .......................................................................................

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HISTORY 6. Fear and Loathing in Nineteenth-Century Copan Ian Graham .....................................................................................................

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REGIONAL 7. A Re-evaluation of Maya Militarism in the Southern Lowlands Richard E. W. Adams .......................................................................................

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8. A Distinctive Maya Architectural Format: The Lamanai Temple H. Stanley Loten ...............................................................................................

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9. Knuckledusters in Formative Mesoamerica E. Wyllys Andrews V .......................................................................................

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CENTRAL AMERICA 10. Housework in Postclassic El Salvador Karen Olsen Bruhns .........................................................................................

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11. Comments on Bálsamo and Other Little-Known Sculptures of Western El Salvador Stanley H. Boggs ...............................................................................................

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LESSONS FROM FIELDWORK 12. Due South: Learning from the Urban Experience in the Humid Tropics Elizabeth Graham ............................................................................................

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CONTRIBUTORS

Richard E. W. Adams

Division of Behavioral and Cultural Sciences, University of Texas, San Antonio, Texas

Anthony P. Andrews

Division of Social Sciences, New College of Florida, Sarasota, Florida

E. Wyllys Andrews V

Director, Middle American Research Institute, Tulane University, New Orleans, Louisiana

Antonio Benavides C.

Centro Regional de Campeche, Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia, Campeche, Mexico

Stanley H. Boggs

Late of the Departamento de Arqueología, Museo Nacional "David J. Guzmán," San Salvador, El Salvador.

Karen O. Bruhns

Department of Anthropology, San Francisco State University, San Francisco, California

Elizabeth Graham

Institute of Archaeology, University College London, London, England

Ian Graham

Peabody Museum, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts

Merle Greene Robertson

Pre-Columbian Art Research Center, San Francisco, California

Norman Hammond

Department of Archaeology, Boston University, Boston, Massachusetts

Grant D. Jones

Department of Anthropology and Sociology, Davidson College, Davidson, North Carolina (emeritus)

H. Stanley Loten

School of Architecture, Carleton University, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada (emeritus)

David M. Pendergast

Honorary Research Fellow, Institute of Archaeology, University College London v

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INTRODUCTION David M. Pendergast and Anthony P. Andrews

This volume had its genesis in the sad event of Hal Ball's death, now more than twenty-two years ago. For some time after 1984 those of us who had known him and had derived so much from his friendship sought means to give expression to our feelings in volume dedications and in many other ways. Among such endeavours we conceived of a book that embodied the writings of some of Hal's friends as the most fitting tribute possible. It was, after all, Hal's love of books, expressed through his library, now a permanent research facility at New College of Florida in Sarasota, that spoke with the greatest and most enduring eloquence about his involvement in Maya studies. The twelve chapters that make up the volume deal with specially selected aspects of each author’s current research in the ancient past of the Maya, Mesoamerica, or Central American peoples. The result is a collection of writings that does not address a single theme or purport to have some unifying thread woven through it, apart from the motivation for the volume itself. The work is, instead, a compilation of individual studies that reflects the present state of knowledge on a considerable range of subjects. In very real a way it reflects the diversity of Hal’s interests in life in the ancient worlds represented; to a degree as well it mirrors the many and varied ways in which scholars approach the reconstruction of that life. Despite the chapters’ evident variety, there is some logic to their organization. Following a chapter by the editors that provides a small window on Hal’s life come four that deal specifically with the sites of Ecab, Palenque, Cuello, and Lamanai. A rollicking tale of an episode in the nineteenth-century history of Copan comes next; it is succeeded by a group of general studies that embrace a wide range of topics, from Maya warfare to the Lamanai Temple type and an unusual class of artifact found in non-Maya Mesoamerica. The volume’s next section consists of two contributions on Central American themes, housework at Cihuatán and stone sculpture in El Salvador, and the last is a single chapter that suggests what one can learn from working in the tropical setting in which all of the research recounted here has taken place. In addition to their broad spectrum of topics and very considerable chronological range, the chapters span a fair amount of time as regards their production. Several came into our hands within a year of Hal's death, whereas others have been submitted in ensuing years, almost entirely in reflection of the editors’ schedules rather than as a result of authors’ reluctance to put words on paper. The final versions of a few reached us just after the end of the millennium in which Hal’s life ran its course, and in which his contribution to the expanding knowledge of the Maya world began. Its end is nowhere in sight.

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1 Flying in Search of the Ancient Maya: Hal C. Ball, 1916–1984 Anthony P. Andrews and David M. Pendergast

Hal Ball was a remarkable avocational archaeologist, and among the truly outstanding supporters of Maya archaeology in recent times. Although he was not trained as an archaeologist, no one would deny him the title of Mayanist. His knowledge and love of the Maya and their ancient culture was commensurate with that of scholars who have devoted their entire lives to the study of the Maya world. Moreover, few archaeologists could match the breadth of Hal's travels in the Maya area, which took him to countless sites in the most remote corners of the Maya jungle.

contract to the Air Transport Command, and Hal flew military cargo in C-46s to South America for the next three years. After the war, in September of 1945, Hal began flying for Eastern on domestic flights in the United States. The following Spring he was promoted to Captain; he flew his first flight in such a capacity, in a DC-3, in July of 1946. He was flying 727 jets at the time of his retirement 29 years later in 1975. Hal's penchant for exploration began while he was still a teenager. In the summers of 1934 and 1935, he served as a “workaway” on merchant marine ships across the Atlantic, which enabled him to tour Europe. On one of his return trips his ship went through a hurricane, and he left a detailed account of the adventure in his personal files. In 1936, after his first year in college, he and his friend Bill Milnes took a canoe trip down the Mississippi from St. Louis to New Orleans. This Twainish adventure, which lasted almost a month, received ample coverage in the St. Louis papers. The following summer, Hal undertook another unusual jaunt, a 3,200 mile road trip from St. Louis to Saltillo, Mexico. This he did in a 15 year-old Model T Ford, camping along the way.

Hal's main contribution to the field lies not in scholarly tomes, but in the many and diverse ways in which he provided support to scholars and their projects in the field. Hal and his wife Alberta were well known in Maya circles, and many field project reports acknowledge their enthusiastic assistance. Beyond the field, Hal was well known for promoting the cause of Maya research, and disseminating news of ongoing projects and new discoveries. He was one of the founding members of the Institute of Maya Studies, in Miami, Florida, and served as Editor of the wellknown monthly I.M.S. Newsletter from 1973 to 1979. In November of 1979 he joined the staff of Mexicon as the representative for the United States, a post he held until his death.

It was through flying that Hal came into Maya archaeology. In 1956, at the age of 30, Hal joined Bill Rich in his single engine Piper Tripacer for a trip to Yucatán. In this first trip they visited Cozumel and Merida, and several of the better known sites in Yucatán. Over the next four years he and Rich continued their travels, visiting many archaeological sites in Mexico and Guatemala. In 1963 Hal bought his own plane, the blue and white Piper Apache N2114P known as “El Quetzal.” His trips continued to take him to more remote locations over the years; almost always accompanied by Alberta, Hal made more than 120 trips to various parts of Mesoamerica, from northern Mexico to Panama: the log of the Quetzal alone registers 80 flights and 123 landing sites. Some of us who flew with Hal came to appreciate his liberal interpretation of the term “landing site;” Hal was an extraordinary pilot and there

Hal was born on August 4th, 1916, in St. Louis, Missouri. He attended high school at nearby Maplewood, and later went to college at Washington University in St. Louis, and at Southwestern University in Memphis, Tennessee. While in college Hal pursued a general studies curriculum, with an emphasis on geology. His true interest was in flying, however, and he began while in college; his first solo flight was in December 1936. Two years later, on April 19th, 1938, he married Alberta How of St. Louis, a nurturing companion and adventurous spirit with whom he shared his abiding interests in flying and Maya archaeology. By 1941 he was working as a flight instructor at the Embry-Riddle School of Aviation in Miami, and it was there that he met a lifelong friend, Willard Rich. After the war began, Hal joined Eastern Airlines as a co-pilot in 1941; Eastern was under

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were few strips he wouldn't fly into — many were barely clearings in the jungle.

Hal became involved with many projects over the years. The first of these was the Tikal Project, as Hal and Bill Rich used the Tikal airstrip as a base for their early forays into the Petén, and often placed their plane at the service of the project. One of the more memorable events of Hal's early career as a Mayanist was an invitation by Aubrey Trik, then field director of the project, to witness the “off-season” opening of the splendid tomb of the 8th century “Ruler A” (later identified as Ah Cacau) beneath Temple 1, in 1962.

Hal's interest in Maya sites soon became more than a hobby. His explorations took him to sites seldom visited by any other than archaeologists and chicleros, and he and Alberta located several new sites. Alberta enjoyed traveling with Hal and shared his interest in Maya archaeology; she also took advantage of their travels to collect orchids and establish contacts with orchid collectors throughout the Maya area. Over the years, Alberta accumulated one of the finest Central American orchid collections in southern Florida.

In 1968 Hal and Alberta became explorers in their own right and discovered the new Classic period sites of Wamil, Hillbank, and Haltunbal in central west Belize (then British Honduras). Hal filed reports on the sites with the Archaeological Commissioner's office in Belize City, and published a brief account and map of Haltunbal (Ball 1969). He was also the first to report the site of Pozo del Cedro, in the northeast Petén, which he visited while on a mule trek to Kinal, near Rio Azul. Hal published an account and a detailed drawing of a prehispanic Maya well at the site, one of two known in the Maya area at the time (Ball 1972).

Hal was an avid photographer, and soon amassed a substantial photo and slide collection of Maya sites, which included a superb collection of aerial views of Maya buildings. He also began collecting a library, and giving lecture-slide shows to groups in Miami and elsewhere. His enthusiasm for Maya studies was contagious, and led him and several friends to establish the Institute for Maya Studies, an affiliate organization of the Miami Museum of Science, in 1971. He served on the Board of Directors, and in 1973 became editor of the Institute's newsletter.

In 1968 Hal and Alberta joined Edwin Shook during the initial survey of the Monte Alto project on the Pacific Coast of Guatemala. Hal was designated the official pilot of the project, and during the next three years spent considerable time on flights into the area. Hal and Shook conducted another survey in 1971, of the Acapán region near Retalhuleu, which resulted in the location of more than 30 sites, 14 of them never before recorded. A newly discovered site from this survey, Balberta, was named after Alberta Ball. During these surveys Hal came to know many of the local landowners, and was made an honorary member of the Retalhuleu Rotary Club. Through Hal's efforts in 1972 the Miami Museum of Science became the official sponsor of the Monte Alto Project.

Hal's travels ultimately benefitted everyone, for he shared the latest news through his monthly newsletter. His trips put him in touch with most of the ongoing projects, and he was often the first outsider to see a newly discovered site or witness a major find. He took two or more trips a year and would often visit three or four countries and a number of sites and projects on each trip. Hal's newsletter eventually became an international medium for disseminating the latest information on Maya field research. The newsletter reached readers all over North America, Central America and the Caribbean, as well as Europe and Japan. Many of the items Hal published in the newsletter were reprinted in other newsletters, bulletins and journals, in the United States, Austria, Germany, Guatemala, Honduras and Mexico.

During the next few years Hal made many flights over the Pacific coastal regions of Guatemala and El Salvador. He became good friends with Stanley Boggs, Chief Archaeologist of El Salvador, and aided local survey efforts through reconnaissance flights in that country. These led to the aerial location of many new sites, including La Floridita and Miraflores, which Hal first sighted and later visited by land.

In the course of his wide-ranging travels Hal came to know many Maya scholars. It soon became evident to archaeologists that this airline pilot was well acquainted with the literature on the Maya, and up to date on the latest site reports. Moreover, Hal came to help, and his enthusiasm and generosity knew no limits. The offers of a flight over one's site or an aerial survey of a region, opportunities rarely available to archaeologists, were warmly appreciated. Countless aerial photographs in site reports throughout the Maya area were taken from “El Quetzal.” In addition to his aerial survey work, Hal was always willing to fly in food, medical supplies, equipment and mail, as well as to bring mail and equipment back to the States.

Hal and Alberta also spent a considerable amount of time flying around Yucatán over the years, and aided greatly in Andrews’s coastal surveys, which in 1973 located and photographed the church of Ecab in the far northeastern corner of Quintana Roo. In January of 1978 we returned to the site with Antonio Benavides, an archaeologist on the staff of the Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia. After landing on Holbox Island we proceeded to Ecab by launch, spending the

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night at Cabo Catoche along the way. We then spent several days camping out at the church, recording the Spanish structures and exploring the surrounding area. The results of this project, which was sponsored by Hal, were published in Mexico (Benavides Castillo and Andrews 1979); a revised version of the report appears in this volume.

meetings of the I.M.S. He also became an outspoken critic of looters and collectors of Maya artifacts, and on occasion advised Miami Customs officials on illegal shipments intercepted at the Miami airport. Hal's position on the collecting of antiquities put him in the limelight of Maya archaeology in 1979. In that year the I.M.S. had received two donations of PreColumbian art from private collectors, and Hal took strong exception to the Institute's getting into “the collecting business.” After a meeting in which he and the members of the Board of Directors failed to agree on acquisition policies, Hal resigned from the Institute. His courageous stand became a cause célebre and brought on a massive wave of protest from I.M.S. members and archaeologists in the U.S. and Mesoamerica. In the end, the Institute adopted a policy of not accepting further donations. Moreover, it began to explore ways in which to divest itself of previously held collections. In a discussion of the controversy, one writer commented:

Hal's first visit to the Royal Ontario Museum excavations directed by Pendergast at Altun Ha, Belize, came in 1965. The trip was the beginning of his close involvement with the ROM's research in the country, a focus that remained strong for the remainder of his life. In journey after journey, first to Altun Ha through 1970 and then to Lamanai between 1974 and 1983, Hal and Alberta brought cheer to the field camps, both through their presence and through the

“It took courage on the part of Mr. Ball and the IMS members who wrote to express their opinions and to force the issue into open consideration by the Institute. We can sympathize with the difficult decisions of all those involved in the IMS dispute. They may be proud that they have confronted, rather than ignored the hard questions” (Vitelli 1979:472). Hal died young and still filled with vigor, felled by a heart attack at the age of 67 on January 9th, 1984, in Miami, Florida. His widow Alberta, his daughter, Virginia Ball Latner, and two grandchildren share with his friends the knowledge that he is survived by the legacy of his contribution to Mesoamerican anthropology, which will live on for countless years to come. By the time of his death Hal had built a library of over 2000 volumes and hundreds of reprints on Mesoamerican archaeology, mostly on the Maya area. The library also includes more than 5000 slides and negatives of Maya sites and artifacts. Hal also accumulated a collection of 50 ethnographic masks from Mexico and Central America, and a small number of ethnographic and archaeological artifacts. In 1985 Alberta donated the collection, as well as a large number of Hal's papers, photographs, and field notes to what is now the New College of Florida in Sarasota.

Figure 1.1 Hal at Lamanai in 1983, beginning the first rubbing of the now-famous Stela 9. many edibles and other surprises that emerged from their luggage. By 1978 Hal's absorption of the results of the Lamanai work, both in the field and at home, was so thorough that he presented a paper on the project at the Society for American Archaeology annual meeting. For years thereafter he and Pendergast chuckled over his continuing receipt of letters addressed to Dr. H. C. Ball, Director, Lamanai Project, sent to his supposed Toronto address.

Alberta’s gift set in motion a series of events that would have pleased Hal no end. It led to the construction of the Hal C. Ball Anthropology Laboratory by the university; additional funding for furniture and equipment was provided by Mr. Charles Hamilton, of Naples, Florida, and university students assisted in the final stages of construction. The

Hal retired from Eastern Airlines in 1975 after 33 years of service. This gave him more time for his Maya pursuits, his editorship of the I.M.S. Newsletter, and continued trips to Mayaland, He gave public lectures in the Miami area, and was instrumental in bringing many outside speakers to the monthly

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laboratory, dedicated in January of 1987, will house the library and collection in perpetuity. It serves as a very active seminar room and workplace for anthropology students, and is open to interested scholars. Mr. Hamilton also set up a generous endowment for anthropological research which provides regular funding for student and faculty fieldwork. Few liberal arts institutions offer students such opportunities, and it is a fitting tribute to Hal and Alberta and Mr. Hamilton that several graduates have gone on to pursue higher degrees in Mesoamerican anthropology.

2(9):8–11. Eastern Airlines. A Maya Well in Northern Guatemala. Muse News III (10):398–401, 419. 1973 Maya Archaeology in British Honduras. Muse News IV(7):232–237, 259. Museum of Science, Miami. 1973-79 Newsletter (ed.) of the Institute of Maya Studies, Museum of Science, Miami, Florida. 1974 Jungle Best Probed for Ruins from Air. Museum 6(5)7–9, 33–37. Museum of Science, Miami. 1974 Pilot-Archaeologist Discovers New Site Flying over El Salvador. The Falcon (Eastern Airlines), September. 1978 Archaeological Investigations at Lamanai, Belize. Paper presented at the 43rd Annual Meeting of the Society for American Archaeology, Tucson, Arizona, May 1978. 1979 El Quetzal. Flying Apache Association Newsletter II (7). 1979 Archäologisch geophysikalische Untersuchungen in El Salvador. Mexicon I(5):60. 1980 Review of: The Pre-Columbian Ballgames — A Pan-Mesoamerican Tradition, by Stephan F. de Borhegyi. Mexicon II(2):31. 1981 Review of: Pre-Columbian Art, by Lee A. Parsons. Mexicon III(3):51–52. 1972

Hal remains sorely missed not only by his relatives and his friends in Maya archaeology but also by countless people in Mesoamerica with whom he became acquainted over his 28 years of travels. Friends in many cities and towns in Mexico and Central America reflect the warmth and generosity that made him the rarest of ambassadors. Every one of us who enjoyed his friendship remains richer for having known a remarkable example of an amateur in the best root sense of that term.

Bibliography of Hal C. Ball 1937 1964 1969

St. Louisan Tells of Trip to Mexico in Old 'Model T'. Star–Times, St. Louis, Mo. Archaeology as a Hobby. The Airline Pilot 33(7):16–17. Haltunbal. Flight Talk/News Letter

REFERENCES CITED Andrews, Anthony P. 1985 Hal C. Ball (1916-1984). Mexicon VI(6):78–79. Benavides Castillo, Antonio, and Anthony P. Andrews 1979 Ecab. Poblado y Provincia del Siglo XVI en Yucatán. Cuadernos de los Centros Regionales. Centro Regional de Yucatán. Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia, Mexico. Eastern Airlines 1964 Eastern Captain is Amateur Archaeologist. The Falcon, June. Herrick, Lynn 1973 On the Ball... On the Line. A Monthly Newsletter for Flight Officers 2(9):3. Eastern Airlines. Hollander, Sid 1984 In Memorium. Hal C. Ball. Institute of Maya Studies Newsletter 13(2):3. Huson, Whit 1967 Flying Archaeologist. Flight Talk/News Letter 1(3):2–5. Eastern Airlines. Kaplan, Allan A. 1965 If Capt. Ball drums up $2.75, he beats it to the ruins. Miami News, April 18. Skinner, Olivia 1970 Exploring Land of the Mayas. St. Louis Post-Dispatch, December 4. (Article about Hal Ball). Vitelli, Karen D. 1979 The Institute of Maya Studies Dispute. Journal of Field Archaeology 6:471–472.

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2 Ecab: A Remote Encomienda of Early Colonial Yucatan Anthony P. Andrews, Antonio Benavides Castillo, and Grant D. Jones

Introduction

(Kramer and Lowe 1940) and the archaeological atlas of Quintana Roo (Muller 1959) as “Gran Cairo”. It is presently listed as site 16Q-e(2):2 in the files of the Archaeological Atlas of Quintana Roo (see Garza T. de González and Kurjack 1980).

The Postclassic Maya and early Colonial community of Ecab has long been a topic of interest among historians and archaeologists. Located near Cabo Catoche in northern Quintana Roo, it lies in the far northeastern corner of the Yucatan Peninsula. First sighted and named Gran Cairo by the Spaniards in 1517, Ecab was the landing place of the first official expedition to the Spanish Main. Under Spanish jurisdiction, it survived as an isolated encomienda until its abandonment in the

Figure 2.1 Aerial view of the church from the northeast. late seventeenth or early eighteenth century. Only its prominent sixteenth-century church and adjoining curate's residence, in ruins and covered by forest, remain visible today (Figure 2.1). The location of Ecab is recorded in several archaeological atlases of the peninsula. It appears in the Atlas Arqueológico de la República Mexicana (1939) as “Janjon”, and in the 1940 Tulane Map

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Prior to 1970, little was known about the history of Ecab. Some reports placed Ecab at Cabo Catoche proper, whereas others suggested that the church at Boca Iglesia belonged to a later community known under several different names. This confusion led the senior author of this report to begin an investigation of the subject. In March of 1973 Hal Ball and Andrews made an aerial reconnaissance of the Ecab region, plotting the exact location of the church and surrounding features. In the following years several more flights provided detailed aerial coverage of the coasts along the northeast corner of the peninsula (Figure 2.2). By this time, we were reasonably convinced that the ruins at Boca Iglesia were those of Ecab, as the historian Ralph L. Roys had originally suggested in 1957, without ever visiting the site. In November 1976 the Centro Regional del Sureste of the Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia organized an expedition to Ecab, led by Arqlgo. Norberto González Crespo, then director of the Centro. The then Governor of Yucatán, Dr. Francisco Luna Kan, kindly provided us with a helicopter. González was accompanied by Andrews, Benavides, Fernando Robles, Alfonso Llanes (the pilot), and Angel Garrido.

northeast corner of the Yucatan Peninsula, 16 km southeast of the Cabo Catoche lighthouse. Its UTM coordinates are 16Q EU 023 785 (NAD 1927). The Prehispanic and Colonial remains of this site lie next to the west shore (mainland side) of a large shallow lagoon opposite the narrow channel of Boca Iglesia, which connects the lagoon to the open sea (Figures 2.2–4).

We set up a base camp and refueling station for the helicopter at Punta Coco, 17 km north of Puerto Juárez, and spent two days reconnoitering Ecab and the nearby coast (Figure 2.3). On this trip we found the previously unreported site of Porvenir, 16 km northwest of Ecab, which consists of a single Late Postclassic shrine surrounded by several housemounds. We were also able to determine that no major site lies near the Cabo Catoche lighthouse, although we could not rule out the possibility of midden sites. At Ecab proper we cleaned the Spanish structures, and Robles and Benavides located the remains of the Prehispanic community.

Boca Iglesia (“mouth or channel of the church”) owes its name to the large sixteenth-century church of Ecab, which can be seen from several km out to sea; it has been a prominent coastal landmark for sailors for more than four centuries. Boca Iglesia lagoon is separated from the open sea by a narrow sandbar that runs along this stretch of coast from Cabo Catoche down past Ecab. This sandbar is interrupted by a series of bocas, or channels, so that the coastline resembles a chain of islands stretching from Isla Holbox around the cape and from there southward (Figure 2.3).

A second expedition, which involved Ball, Andrews, and Benavides, took place in January 1978. This trip

Ecab means “point of land,” which undoubtedly refers to the Cabo Catoche area, the northeasternmost point of the Maya world. In some early reports we find the spelling “Ekab” or “Ecabo.” The former spelling is also used in the Diccionario Maya Cordemex, and may be the correct form (Barrera Vásquez 1980:149). For purposes of convenience we have opted for the more widely used modern spelling. Access to Ecab is difficult, and the easiest approach is by helicopter. When we first used this method in November 1976, however, there was no place to land; we were therefore obliged to jump from the air into the lagoon, go ashore, and chop a clearing in the bush for the helicopter. The most common approach is by seagoing vessel from either Holbox or Isla Mujeres; one then anchors in front of Boca Iglesia, and crosses the lagoon in a light tender. A third way, which we followed in January 1978, is by a light skiff from Holbox through the interior lagoons. This approach involves crossing Yalahau Lagoon, passing inside Cabo Catoche by way of Angostura Pass and continuing southeast along the waterway behind the coastal sandbar. The route is not always feasible, as Angostura Pass is often too shallow to navigate at low tide.

Figure 2.2 Map of the Yucatan Peninsula, showing the location of major sites referred to in the text. was sponsored by Ball. Hal flew us in to Holbox, and from there we took a small boat and followed the inland waterway behind Cabo Catoche to Ecab. After setting up camp in the church, we spent three days surveying the area and taking notes, measurements, and photographs of the Spanish structures, assisted by two able crew members, Manuel Betancourt and Román Cruz. Given the context in which this report appears, it is worth noting that Hal Ball was the first person to disseminate news regarding these expeditions, which he did through the Institute of Maya Studies Newsletter (Ball 1977, 1978).

The shores of the lagoon are fringed by mangroves, interrupted by rare patches of beach or limestone outcrop on the mainland side. The beaches are only a few meters long. The only substantial ones in the area are on the outside of the sandbar, facing the open sea. The shoreline in front of Ecab is mostly mangrove

Location and Description of Ecab Ecab is located in the state of Quintana Roo near the

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of not more than one to three square kilometers. The size of the church suggests that it served the needs of at least several hundred people.

Prehispanic Ecab Spanish and Yucatecan historians often referred to the region of northern Quintana Roo as having been the Prehispanic province of Ecab, a notion that has carried into modern times (see Benavides Castillo and Andrews 1979; Roys 1957). Many scholars working in the region have noted the total absence of any substantive evidence that Ecab was, in fact, a Prehispanic province. For example, Ralph Roys stated long ago that Ecab was a “...kind of territorial entity, which I hesitate to call an organization; and I call such areas provinces because the first Spaniards did ... They consisted apparently of loosely allied groups of towns....” (Roys 1957:6). There is no evidence that Ecab had any kind of central political organization or political boundaries, and none that it was perceived as a definable territory in Prehispanic times. Most recently Harada (1994) has argued that Ecab was very probably not a Prehispanic province.

Figure 2.4 Map of the colonial structures of Ecab. swamp, but a break in the mangrove provides a tiny sand cove where small craft can be beached. From this cove a trail leads approximately 120 m southwest to the colonial part of the site (Figure 2.4). The Spanish settlement lies on higher ground, above the mangrove shore, on limestone bedrock. The area is today covered by low and dense scrub forest, similar to that of much of the northern Yucatecan landscape. The site can be divided into two parts that comprise the remains of the Spanish and Prehispanic settlements. The first consists of two main structures, the large sixteenth century church and the adjoining casa cural, or curate's residence. Near them are the foundations of several housemounds, and a well that is probably Spanish. On the surface lay a scattering of domestic remains: mano and metate fragments, colonial and modern glassware and a substantial amount of historic and modern garbage.

Because our visits to Ecab were very short and were concerned primarily with its Spanish Colonial remains, we neglected the Prehispanic site and can presently say very little about it. Ecab may not have been a very

The bulk of the Prehispanic settlement lies some 200 to 300 m SSE of the church. Owing to time limitations, we were not able to explore or sketch the site adequately, but we did encounter large numbers of low walls and housemounds arranged in patterns similar to those found at Cozumel and other east coast sites. The part of the site that we saw probably included several hundred housemounds spread over several thousand square meters. We did not, however, locate the core of the site, which we suspect lies farther to the west. From the helicopter we had previously spotted a cluster of mounds and a partially standing structure that may represent the main group of the site, but we were unable to reach this group by land. Further exploration will be necessary to determine the full extent of the Prehispanic site. Our preliminary impression is that Ecab was a small to medium-size site

Figure 2.3 Map of the northeast corner of the Yucatan Peninsula.

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cited as the European discovery of Yucatán. This discovery occupies a prominent place in the annals of New World exploration. Early Spanish (and native) accounts, however, offer different versions of the events that have led to an array of varying interpretations, with consequent controversy and confusion. Leading historians on the subject have, however, recently agreed on the basic sequence of events, which is as follows.

large town, although its importance as a Prehispanic port cannot be overlooked. If for no other reason than its location, it can be safely assumed that Ecab was a strategic node along the sea route that circled the northeast corner of the peninsula in Postclassic times. A number of scholars have discussed this route and its importance in the Prehispanic trade networks, including Andrews (1983, 1998b); Andrews and Robles Castellanos (1985, 1986); Cardós de Méndez (1959); Chapman (1957); Edwards (1976:201); Roys (1943:13–14); Sabloff and Rathje (1975); Scholes and Roys (1948:320–321); and Thompson (1970:126–134).

All early histories of the area mention the encounter between Columbus and two trading canoes off Guanaja island during his fourth voyage in 1502. This incident is often cited as the first encounter between Maya and Spaniard, but several scholars have questioned whether the merchants were actually Maya (Lothrop 1927; Rubio Mañé 1957:145–149).

Ecab is the only site of any size in the Cabo Catoche area, and it lies at the southern terminus of an inland waterway that was undoubtedly employed by seafarers who wished to avoid the often tempestuous seas off the cape. The inland waterway, which runs from Yalahau Lagoon to Ecab (Figure 2.3), offers fast and secure transit for light vessels and their cargoes. An earlier survey by Edwards (1976:201) and our own excursions bear this out.

Most historians no longer consider valid the early sources that attribute the discovery of Yucatán to Juan Díaz de Solís and Vicente Yáñez Pinzón in 1506 or 1507 (see Rubio Mañé 1957:149–153, but also Edwards 1985:62–63). After the Guanaja incident, the first recorded encounter between the Maya and Spaniards took place in 1511, when the shipwrecked survivors of the Valdivia expedition arrived on the east coast of the peninsula. Most sources suggest that they landed somewhere north of Polé (Xcaret). The famous account of the two survivors of this expedition, Gonzalo Guerrero and Jerónimo de Aguilar, is reported in a number of early histories (see Rubio Mañé 1957:153–162 for a summary of these sources and their interpretation).

Ecab would have been a logical way-station for shipping between the north and east coasts of the peninsula. It would have provided a link between the towns on the shore of Yalahau Lagoon (Yuukluuk, Conil/Chiquilá, and Vista Alegre) and coastal communities to the south such as El Meco, Isla Mujeres, and Cancún (Andrews 1998, 2002; Romero Rivera and Gurrola Briones 1995). The Prehispanic and early Colonial town of Conil was located at the modern town and archaeological site of Chiquilá (Andrews 1985, 1998a; Andrews and Jones 2001; Benavides Castillo and Andrews 1979).

It has been suggested that the first visit of a Spanish expedition to the shores of Yucatán might have been one led by Juan Ponce de León in June of 1513. A retracing by Tió (1972) of the route indicates that the expedition made a landfall on the north coast of Yucatán somewhere between Progreso and Cabo Catoche. The expeditionaries reported entering and anchoring in a large bay to get water and supplies. The north coast offers only one large bay of sufficient depth and width to accomodate Spanish sea-going vessels: Yalahau Lagoon, which they would have entered by way of the Boca de Conil. The Spanish later managed to find their way back to Cuba without knowing where they had been, and reported that they had reached the island of Bimini.

By virtue of its location at the mouth of Boca Iglesia, Ecab may also have been a transfer point for shifting of cargo between small low-draft lagoon canoes and larger sea-going craft. Southbound shipping had to leave the protected waterway and proceed along the open coast of the bay of Isla Mujeres. Even though this route is partially sheltered by the Contoy-Isla Mujeres barrier reef, if is often a far rougher passage than the one through the placid waters of the northern waterway. As a point of transfer between these two different sea lanes, Ecab may also have been a minor, albeit prominent, Postclassic trading port (Andrews 1990).

Further evidence for the landfall might be recorded in the Maya books of Chilam Balam, which — according to some interpreters — report that the first Spanish expedition arrived in Yucatán in 1513 (Closs 1976; Edmonson 1986:40, 55). In spite of this cor-

Spanish Arrival and Conquest The most interesting chapter in the history of Ecab begins with the Spanish arrival in 1517, an event often

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roboration, several authors have challenged Tió's reconstruction of the Ponce de León route and argued that he never touched Yucatecan shores (Barreiro-Meiro 1977; Edwards 1985:63–65; Weddle 1985:52–53); the issue has not been resolved. Regardless of the outcome of the debate over Ponce de León, his visit was an accident of little consequence, because the expedition at the time of the landfall had no idea where it was.

From this account it would appear that the Spanish anchored in front of the mouth of the shallow lagoon, as they were able to see the town of Ecab on the mainland shore. The account goes on to relate that they were invited ashore to visit the town and were subsequently ambushed in the woods along the way. The Spaniards were able to defend themselves, though not without suffering wounds to fifteen of their men. While retreating they killed fifteen natives and took two prisoners, whose services as interpreters were to prove valuable in later expeditions. One of these may have been the aforementioned Nacóm Balám. They also saw part of the settlement of Ecab:

The “official” discovery of Yucatán is attributed to the expedition led by Francisco Hernández de Córdoba, which made its first landfall on the coast near Ecab on March 1, 1517. Many early sources describe this episode. Some state that the expedition stopped first at Isla Mujeres, and others indicate Cozumel as the first landing site. These versions have been invalidated by most recent historians, and it is now generally accepted that Ecab was the site of the first landfall of the Córdoba expedition. For summaries of early sources and their interpretations see Chamberlain 1948a, 1948b:11–12; Lothrop 1924:13–14; Roys 1943:13–14, 1957:150; Rubio Mañé 1957:163–168; Saville 1918; and Wagner 1942.

"Near the place of this ambuscade were three buildings of lime and stone, wherein were idols of clay with diabolical countenances, and in strange unnatural postures, and several wooden chests which contained similar idols but smaller, some vessels, three diadems, and some imitations of birds and fishes in alloyed gold. The buildings of lime and stone, and the gold gave us a high idea of the Country we had discovered.... Having re-embarked, we proceeded as before, coasting towards the West.” (Díaz del Castillo 1927 [1632]:30-31)

There is also a native reference to the arrival of the Spanish in the Chilam Balam de Chumayel, where it is stated that they arrived at the port of Ecab and seized a man called Nacóm Balám (Roys 1933:80–81). The date of arrival, 1541, is erroneous, as is the statement that this happened in Katún 11 Ahau (Roys 1933:80–81; see also Edmonson 1986:11–12, 40). There is no mention of the capture of Nacóm Balám in the recent Edmonson (1986) translation of the Chumayel. According to López de Cogolludo (1957 [1688]: Bk. 2, Ch. 5) Nacóm Balám was from Conil.

The account of Díaz del Castillo was not published until 1632, and many of the Spanish historians in the sixteenth century, such as Gómara and Cervantes de Salazar, had to rely on second-hand reports, which accounts for some of the early confusion over the details of the Córdoba expedition. Most historians writing after 1632 have tended to accept the Díaz account (e.g., López de Cogolludo 1957 [1688], Bk. 1, Ch.1). It is clear from the account that the Spaniards reached the outskirts of the town where they reported the three stone structures. It seems to us, however, that they somewhat exaggerated the greatness of Gran Cairo.

The most widely accepted version of the Ecab landfall is that of Bernal Díaz del Castillo, a participant in the Córdoba expedition: “On the eighth of February 1517... we sailed from the port of Agaruco... and in twenty-one days from our leaving the island of Cuba, we saw land which had never before been discovered. We also on approaching saw a large town, at the distance of two leagues from the coast, which from it exceeding any town in Cuba we named Gran Cairo.”

On the basis of the Díaz history and the second-hand account of Peter Martyr d'Anghiera (1530; cited in Cardós de Méndez 1959:70), later scholars have described Ecab as a major metropolis and trading center ( Cardós de Méndez 1959; Chapman 1957; Roys 1943). This should be clarified. Peter Martyr never saw the New World, and most of the scholars who have written about Ecab never saw the site. Although the Prehispanic remains and the large church assure a sizeable community, we doubt that it was as large as some of the major Late Postclassic sites farther down the east coast, such as Polé-Xamanhá (Xcaret-Playa del Cármen), Paamul, Xala (Xelhá) and Zama-Xamanzama (Tulúm-Tancah). Subsequent Spanish expeditions to Yucatán were far more

“On the morning of the fourth of March, five canoes came off to us. These vessels are like troughs, made of one entire tree, and many of them capable of containing fifty men.” (Díaz del Castillo 1927 [1632]:29)

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impressed by these sites than by Ecab; Juan Díaz, the chaplain of the 1518 Grijalva expedition, wrote enthusiastically about the communities, in particular that of Tulúm-Tancah, which he likened to Seville. It would appear that the importance of Ecab diminished in the eyes of the Spaniards as they encountered the larger sites.

presumably Ecab, Belma had to be Ecab. Given the absence of any evidence that Ecab was a Prehispanic province, however, this position is no longer tenable. It is difficult to believe that the Montejo expedition overlooked the large Late Postclassic coastal town of El Meco, opposite Isla Mujeres, on their trek up the east coast. Excavations by I.N.A.H. at the site have revealed that this community was occupied at the time (Robles Castellanos and Andrews 1986; Trejo Alvarado 1984). Although we have no way of proving it at present, it is possible that El Meco may have been Belma, as Lothrop originally proposed many years ago (cited in Tozzer 1941:49).

The exaggerated descriptions of Gran Cairo, or Ecab, are probably the result of its having been the first mainland community the Spaniards sighted, and the fact that it was much larger than any town they had seen in the Caribbean. The small tribal communities on Cuba and Hispaniola were bound to suffer by comparison with Ecab, a village of several hundred thatched houses and several stone structures, of a kind that the Spaniards had not seen before in the New World. As Bernal Díaz wrote, “which from its size, it exceeding any town in Cuba we named Gran Cairo.” It is also clear from his account that they were impressed by the stone structures.

Oviedo also reported that the area between Belma and Conil was heavily populated with many large towns. Very little land to the west of Ecab is habitable, as it is mostly swamp; in fact, with the exception of Vista Alegre, no major sites have been reported between Ecab and Chiquilá/Conil. In contrast, several large sites lie between El Meco and Chiquilá/Conil, and at least two of them, San Angel and Monte Bravo, were occupied in Late Postclassic times (Figure 2.3).

Another item in the Díaz account that should be corrected is his placing of Ecab “two leagues from the coast.” Roys, although he never visited Ecab, thought the distance was exaggerated (Roys 1957:151); in fact, Ecab lies less than three km from the open coast at Boca Iglesia.

The Colonial Period In 1542 Francisco de Montejo the Younger consolidated his position as conqueror of Yucatán and founded the capital city of Mérida on the ruins of ancient T'ho. By late 1543 or early 1544, Francisco de Montejo the Nephew had subdued eastern Yucatán, including Ecab. This was, however, only a brief period of submission, as the natives of the eastern provinces rose up in the Great Revolt of 1546-47.

After the unfortunate first encounter between the Maya and a Spanish exploring party, Ecab enjoyed a respite of several years before the next group of visitors arrived. In 1518, the Grijalva expedition passed near Ecab and encountered a group of natives on the coast near Cabo Catoche, but did not attempt to visit the town (Relaciones de Yucatán [henceforth RY] 1:74; Roys 1957:150). As far as we know, the Cortés expedition of 1519 did not stop in the area.

The role of Ecab in the revolt is not well understood. At the time of the Spanish conquest of Yucatán, the cacique of Ecab was reputed to be a man called Ek Box (Rubio Mañé 1957:107). According to the Chronicle of Chicxulub, he attacked and captured a Spanish ship in 1547, an event that may have been related to the Great Revolt. The same account has it that the Spanish led a punitive expedition against his son (Brinton 1882:231). We have not been able, however, to find any corroboration of these events in the Spanish histories or documents.

Tradition has it that the next Spanish party to visit Ecab was the Montejo expedition of 1527–1528. On his march up the east coast during his first attempt to conquer Yucatán, Francisco de Montejo the Elder is reported to have proceeded from the town of Mochi (Mulchi, 10 kms south of Puerto Morelos) to the “head town of a province next to the sea, which is called Belma.” Here the Spaniards stayed for two months before continuing to the port of Conil (Chiquilá). The primary source for the details of this campaign is Oviedo y Valdés (1851–1855, Bk. 32, Ch. 2). Chamberlain (1948b:46), one of the best interpreters of Oviedo, identifies Belma as Ecab, an idea that has had wide acceptance (Roys 1957:150; Rubio Mañé 1957:329). Chamberlain's argument appears to be based on the single premise that because Belma was the head town of the province, and the province was

Ecab appears in the 1549 Tax List, under the name of Boxchén, as an encomienda of Juan de Triana (AGI Guatemala 128). It had 210 tributaries, from which Roys (1957:150) estimated a population of 945. It is not clear if the church had been built by 1549. It may have been erected shortly after the encomienda was established, but we have found no written record of the

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structure prior to 1571 (see below).

well as those of the shoreline and sea. The lagoon of Boca Iglesia is a rich source of fish and shellfish (see below). We also know that the people of Ecab travelled down to Isla Mujeres to harvest salt there (AGI Mexico 72; cited in Andrews 1983:44).

By 1565 Ecab had another encomendero, Juan de Cárdenas, a well-known conquistador who had fought beside Montejo at the siege of Ciudad Real de Chichén Itzá in 1534. In 1565 Cárdenas was a regidor in Valladolid (Scholes and Adams 1938:321). Roys learned of his Ecab encomienda from a document in the residencia of the alcalde mayor Don Diego de Quijada (AGI Justicia 245, cited in Roys 1957:150) which reported that Boxchén was an alternate name for Ecab. This document lists the names of the principales (local native authorities) as “Hoh” or “Hoch” (probably Huh, according to Roys) and Pablo and Gonzalo Pat.

The outstanding feature of the town was the large stone church, also said to be on high ground and visible far from land. Cárdenas provides a description of the church, and notes that the parish was attended to by itinerant Franciscan friars who made occasional visits; the number of Franciscans being few, Ecab had no resident friar: “the Indians receive religious instruction from the friars of San Francisco to whose monastery in Chancenote they go for mass, and from time to time a friar goes to them to perform mass, give a sermon, baptize and marry them.” (RY, 2:174)

Our best source of information on sixteenth-century Ecab is the “Relación de los Pueblos de Tecon y Ecabo con sus anexos”, written by Juan de Cárdenas the Younger in 1579 (RY [2]:172–175). By this time Cárdenas the Elder had died, and his son had replaced him as encomendero. He reports that Ecab lay near Cabo Catoche, 40 leagues (224 km) from Valladolid and eight leagues (45 km) from Conil. These distances would have been those of winding trails, not straight lines. The distances given in leagues in early colonial reports are only rough estimates, and the league itself varied in length; in this report we use the rate of conversion for the early colonial legua larga (long league) as 5.6 km. Cárdenas reports that the town of Ecab was located on high ground, and could be seen from four leagues out to sea. He states that the soil was not particularly good for agriculture, and some people grew their maize in the Conil area.

In the 1582 Catalog of Churches Ecab is listed as a visita (dependency visited occasionally by clergy and others) of the convent of Chancenote, 20 leagues to the southwest (Scholes et al. 1936-1938 [2]:61). Ecab was the most remote visita of the convent of Chancenote, in the far reaches of a vast, barely known Indian and pirate territory that was difficult and dangerous to traverse. Owing to its isolation, Ecab was often neglected by the friars, and the local folk occasionally complained. One such complaint was lodged in 1601 (Farriss 1984:511, note 34). The clerical neglect of Ecab was part of a region-wide pattern that characterized all of eastern Yucatán. A variety of factors, including a severe depopulation of the area, a shortage of friars, and lack of cooperation from the encomenderos, gradually transformed the area into a marginal zone that was beyond the control of ecclesiastic and civil authorities from the late sixteenth century onwards. It also became a haven for natives fleeing the Spanish-controlled interior, and a frontier where pirates and English logwood cutters roamed about freely. For a brief survey of the colonial communities of the coast of Quintana Roo, see Andrews and Jones (1987).

We know from the 1549 Tax List that the inhabitants of Ecab were engaged in the production of corn, beans, cotton, domestic fowl, wax, and honey. The list of tribute items exacted annually by Juan de Triana in 1549, and presumably also later by Cárdenas, includes the following: 3 fanegas (a colonial measure of capacity that varied considerably, depending on the product, the time, and geographical region [see Andrews 1983:136–138]). In northern Yucatán, a fanega of corn may have been the equivalent of 1.6 bushels [Roys 1957:15]) of corn, ½ fanega of beans, 220 mantas of cotton, 160 hens (“gallinas de Castilla o de la tierra”), 1 arroba of honey (11.5 kg.) and 8 arrobas of beeswax (92 kg.). This tribute was paid in installments, every four months. Moreover, two Indians were compelled to serve in the encomendero's residence in San Francisco de Campeche (Tasaciones 1549, 1942:43–44).

One form of Spanish contact with these coastal settlements was maintained through Maya participation in the rescue of coastal shipwrecks. An example occurred in 1566, when a ship loaded with silver and gold wrecked on or near Isla Mujeres. Sixteen inhabitants of Zilán (Dzilám), Conil (Chiquilá), and Boxchén (Ecab) were paid to accompany the Spaniards in four canoes to search for survivors and goods. One of those from Boxchén was the aforementioned

As a complement to Ecab's domestic economy the natives also exploited the nearby forest resources, as

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Gonzalo Pat, who received 45 tostones (silver coins) for his services (AGI Justicia 250, “Sobre el navio que dió otra vez en puerto de Mujeres, 1596").

One of the witnesses, a 28 year-old indio ladino (Europeanized native) from Guatemala, reported that the pirates had enticed Pablo Pat to eat meat on a Friday, and upon his refusal to do so, had rubbed his face with it. Even more damning was the testimony, of witnesses from Cozumel, that the pirates had defecated and urinated in the church at San Miguel. Needless to say, such behavior was not to go unpunished, and after the requisite torture, public penance, and flogging, Sanfroy and his cohorts spent many years behind the oars of His Majesty's ships (Jiménez Rueda 1945).

Shipwrecks along this stormy coast were common throughout the next century. The most spectacular was the destruction of a fleet of seven ships carrying asogue (quicksilver) and other merchandise at the island of Contoy during a storm in 1614. As in 1566, the Spaniards who rescued these ships took the local Maya inhabitants with them in canoes to bring back the victims and the recovered goods. This rescue was far greater in scale, and involved a large number of Spaniards and Mayas.

The next recorded visitors to Ecab were two friars, Fray Gregorio de Fuenteovejuna and Fray Hernando de Sopuerta, who passed by Ecab on their way to Cozumel in 1573. Although they undoubtedly attended to the routine clerical needs of the parishioners, we have no details of their visit (AGI Mexico 369, Documents pertaining to the establishment of the Franciscan mission at Cozumel, 1573).

Beginning in the 1560s, settlements along the Spanish Main came under attack by French, English, and Dutch pirates, and Yucatán was no exception. In 1571 Ecab was one of several towns along the Yucatán coast raided by a group of French pirates. Led by one Pierre Sanfroy, the buccaneers went on a veritable rampage from Cozumel to Sisal and back to Cozumel, attacking shipping, ransacking churches, and stealing liturgical instruments and ornaments. Among the churches ravaged by the pirates were those of Hunucmá, Ecab, Polé (Xcaret) and San Miguel de Cozumel.

The inhabitants of Ecab and other nearby coastal towns included many indios huidos (fugitives) from the more tightly controlled interior encomienda towns, particularly those in the partido de Chancenote of which they were nominally a part. The area around Chancenote was particularly troublesome for the Spanish, and problems of “idolatry” continued well into the seventeenth century (many of these cases are discussed by Sánchez de Aguilar [1937], who served as a beneficiado of Chancenote in the early seventeenth century).

The Spanish finally caught up with the pirates in Cozumel, killing several and taking the survivors, Sanfroy among them, captive. They were then subjected to a formal inquisitorial process, and witnesses were brought in from all along the coast to testify against them. The large collection of documents that resulted from this process, transcribed and published by Jiménez Rueda (1945), offers some of the most interesting reading on the history of sixteenthcentury Yucatán. This affair is also treated in AGI Mexico 114 (“Pleito del capitán Juan García de Hermosilla,” 10 December 1593).

Part of the stimulation for such anti-colonial sentiment undoubtedly stemmed from the excessive Spanish practice of repartimientos (the forced distribution of money and goods for finished products received at less than their actual value) throughout the Chancenote and east coast regions. Ecab, in fact, was one of a number of communities that in 1571 registered complaints against Juan de Cárdenas, Ecab's encomendero, for such activities (AGI Justicia 252, “Procesos contra Juan de Cárdenas,” 1571; see also “Cargos contra Juan de Contreras,” 15 March 1571 for similar charges in Contreras's encomienda towns of Cozumel, Nabalán and Tahcab).

Several witnesses from Ecab testified before the Inquisition, the most prominent among them the aforementioned Pablo Pat, 50, who was then the indio principal y mayordomo (principal native person and overseer) of the town. Pat testified that the pirates had burned a box of books in the church, but had not stolen the ornaments, as they had been hidden in the forest. Several other witnesses also testified that the French camped out in the church, painted and scratched inflammatory slogans and pornographic scenes on the walls of the church (“suciedades y naturas de hombres”), made numerous derrogatory remarks about the Pope and the King of Spain, questioned the Virgin birth, and ate meat on Fridays. To judge from the many times it is mentioned in the proceedings, this latter sin was of great concern to the inquisitors.

As was the case throughout Yucatán, the Spanish response to Maya flight was inevitably that of forced “reduction,” the purpose of which was to return runaways to their original encomienda towns (Farriss 1978, 1984). In many cases, however, legitimate local inhabitants were probably removed from their own communities. Ecab is very likely to have been subjected to such reductions from time to time, as must

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have been the case in 1592, when Governor Antonio de Voz Mediano commissioned Juan de Contreras, then serving as alcalde ordinario of Valladolid, to reduce the “fugitive” Indians living on the island of Contoy, off Ecab.

generations of the Cárdenas family, the maximum allowed. In 1614 Governor Antonio Figueroa, while carrying out his own general visita (tour of inspection), presented a visita commission to Juan de Contreras the Younger, a member of the powerful Valladolid family that had held the Cozumel encomienda for many years. Contreras was to carry out for the governor a general visita of the northeast coast, including Ecab, Polé, Tzama, and San Miguel and Santa María on Cozumel. His title as juez visitador (visita judge) gave him the authority to impose fines or whippings on native leaders and to audit the community account books; such visits were not anticipated lightheartedly. He was also to take a census of the towns, a routine procedure that allowed encomenderos to identify runaways from their own and others' encomiendas and return them to their place of origin (AGI Mexico 910, “Comisiones a Juan de Contreras,” 1614; see also Roys et al. 1940:3). Unfortunately, the outcome of this particular visita is not known.

Contreras took a group of Spaniards and Mayas with him, the latter commanded by Don Juan Chan, the governor of Chancenote who participated as a native leader in numerous subsequent reductions east and south of Valladolid (see Scholes and Roys 1948:229). The party went to Contoy “and other parts,” where they “removed many Christian Indians who had been settled in them” practicing idolatry. They also rounded up non-baptised “gentiles” and took the entire lot inland to Chancenote. This reduction seemed to have had little effect, for Contreras and Chan led a second entrada to Contoy in 1597 and brought back another “quantity” of Indians who had run away and still others who had not yet been baptised (López de Cogolludo 1957 [1688]: Bk. 7, Ch. 13, 15). It is difficult to imagine the degree of confusion and insecurity that the remaining natives of Ecab must have suffered during the final years of the existence of their community in the seventeenth century. On the one hand, they had to co-exist with a great many pirates and foreign logwood cutters (who in many cases may have been one and the same). On the other, they were paying tribute to their encomenderos, hosting the occasional friar, giving sanctuary to runaways from the interior, paying fines to the occasional governor's juez de comisión (see below), and assisting the Spanish expeditions to capture pirates and foreign refugees. They were also the victims of pirate raids, as in May 1637, when both Holcobén (Río Lagartos) and Ecab were sacked and burned (AGI Mexico 920, Testimony on enemy landings at Holcobén and Ecab, 1637). It would not be hyperbole to state that they were living on the cutting edge of a wild frontier, in the “wildest” sense of the term. Such, in fact, was the experience of coastal dwellers all the way from Cabo Catoche to Verapaz.

In 1620 and 1621 Hernando de Landeras received similar commissions from Governor Losada y Taboada to visit Cozumel and the surrounding coastal towns, including Ecab. In 1620 Landeras had carried out an exploratory mission from Cabo Catoche southward to Bahía del Espíritu Santo, and he apparently found the colonial villages to be in a neglected state, with Cozumel's churches collapsed and the forests full of runaway Mayas. Although there were few signs of foreign presence, his report suggested considerable potential for pirate mischief along the hidden bays of the eastern coast. Landeras carried out a modest reduction in the area around Bahía del Espíritu Santo, to which he first gave its name. It is highly likely that he carried out the commissioned visita, for he was awarded the encomienda tributes of his new reduction town upon the arrival of the new governor in late 1621 (AGI Mexico 906, Expediente concerning reductions around the Bahía del Espíritu Santo, 1620–21). The formal abandonment of Ecab took place in 1644, following troubled times and a series of dramatic events throughout Yucatán. A major uprising had broken out in the towns under the control of the remote villa (principal town) of Salamanca de Bacalar during 1638, and all efforts to retrieve the runaways from the Bacalar encomiendas over the following several years had failed (López de Cogolludo 1957 [1688]: Bk. 11, ch. 12–17; AGI Mexico 369, Bishop to Crown, 3 March 1643). Bacalar itself, located near the coast far south of Ecab, had been destroyed by pirates in 1642 and appears never to have been re-inhabited at its original location during the seventeenth century (AGI

As a result of all this, Ecab increasingly lost its identity as a stable community of continuing inhabitants. In 1606 it was listed as part of the encomienda of Francisco Mallén (“los pueblos de Tiscacal, Ecab, Yalzihon”), which had a total value of 60 mantas, equivalent to a tributary population of 240 adult tribute-paying males (AGI Mexico 1841, “Minuta de los encomenderos de esta provincia y la renta que cada uno tiene” 1606; see also García Bernal 1978:519; Gerhardt 1979:133). Mallén was a man of 40 at the time and must have recently been awarded the encomienda, which had probably been held for three

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Mexico 160, Governor to Crown, 7 February 1643, with documents on 1642 pirate attacks). As Spanish control over the southeastern frontier was contracting, the entire province of Yucatán was experiencing a period of increased abandonment of the encomiendas by the native population. In 1643 the governor and church officials complained that 20,000 to 30,000 Indians had fled the encomiendas for less accessible locations (AGI Mexico 303, Governor to Crown, 3 February 1643).

(Xamanhá? i.e., modern Playa del Cármen?). All of these were said to be located in the “province of Cozumel” (AGI Mexico 154, Alonso Magaña Pacheco and Agustín de Vargas [alcaldes ordinarios of Mérida] to Crown, 11 June 1644). Salazar Montejo took with him the Franciscan priest Fray Martín Tejero, who had gone with Fray Bartolomé de Fuensalida to the Bacalar province in 1640 to try, unsuccessfully, to quell the rebellion there. He also took eight Spanish soldiers and a number of mulattos. Each of the destroyed towns had a church, but there were no bells or church ornaments for performing mass. More than 400 persons of all ages were reduced from these towns, and some over the age of 20 had never been confessed — which suggests that a priest had not visited them in many years.

This situation led colonial officials to meet with the Franciscan hierarchy in Mérida in early 1644 to hammer out plans for a massive three-pronged reduction throughout the peninsula of runaways and inhabitants of particularly remote regions (AGI Escribanía de Cámara 308A, “Testimonio... sobre la reducción que se hizo en tiempo del governador Enrique de Avila y Pacheco”). One prong of this military reduction, which lasted more than six months and resulted in the resettlement of over 9,000 individuals throughout Yucatán, had the responsibility of reducing certain villages in the region that included Chancenote, Valladolid and Cozumel. The officer in charge of this latter campaign, maestre de campo (field commander) Juan de Salazar Montejo, focused much of his troops’ energy in the area of Ecab. His sergeant in command, Francisco de Mena, reported that (freely translated):

The captured persons were taken to Cehac, located a short distance from Chancenote, where Fray Martín gave them a sermon before they were removed to their villages and towns of origin. All of these were apparently treated as runaways, not as legitimate inhabitants of the destroyed towns. Given the massive sweep of this reduction, however (Salazar Montejo reduced a total of 5081 persons), it is likely that such matters were not given close consideration; treating them as runaways might have been simply a convenient fiction to enable the Spaniards to relocate them on active encomiendas.

“In the partido de Chancenote, which is under secular [rather than Franciscan] administration, the said maestre de campo learned that three towns called Tzuc Ek, Yaxik and Honhon [Ecab] had been founded; that these were all indios forasteros [Indians not originally from these towns]; that they were living in a state of freedom even though they were supposedly administered by Lic. Don Agustín de Magaña, the secular priest of Chancenote; and that it was common knowledge that they were living licentiously in concubinage with women they had taken from other towns. Realizing that they were practicing much idolatry in these towns and that it was necessary to reduce them to their native towns, the said maestre de campo, by means of a cleverly designed plan, removed them to a town three leagues from there and sent soldiers and friendly Indians and burned the three towns so that the said Indians would not return to live there in such a scandalous state as that in which they had been living.”

Even after the formal abandonment of Ecab, a few Mayas may have continued to live in the Cabo Catoche area; however, we have no direct evidence for these years. The foreign traders of this period who worked around Laguna de Términos obtained much of their logwood from the native population, and those who settled near Ecab and Conil may well have supplemented Miskito Indians and African slaves with local labor. The Spanish reported that at Laguna de Términos English, French and Dutch ships anchored offshore, sending canoes upstream carrying goods which they sold to the Indians in exchange for cut wood. Many of these foreigners, however, established temporary settlements on the mainland. By 1674 it was estimated that more than 2000 of them were living at Laguna de Términos (where there were said to be more than 600), Bahía de la Ascención, Cozumel, Cabo Catoche, and the area known as “Bocas de Conil” (Yalahau Lagoon) (AGI Mexico 159, Cedula to Virrey of Nueva España, Madrid).

In addition to the towns of Tzuc Ek, Yaxik and Honhon, we learn from another source that Salazar also depopulated the towns of Tihuh and Xamaná Ke

Isla Contoy, the site of Juan de Contreras' reductions of 1592 and 1597, had likewise become by this time a

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base for French and English pirates, and for English logwood cutters from Jamaica. The logwood cutters were in the Cabo Catoche area from at least 1662 (Ancona 1917, 2:267–270; Calderón Quijano 1944:42); they knew Contoy as “Loggerhead Key,” and had denuded the immediate coastline around Cabo Catoche by 1675, when William Dampier (1906 [1675]:115) reported that logwood cutting in the area was no longer feasible, as they had to go too far inland to find trees.

abandoned for some time (González [1766] Guelle 1955 [1734]; Muñoz 1955 [1767]); one, the well known “Mapa del Pescador” of 1776, still shows the church as “Nuestra Señora de HomHo” (AGI Mapas y Planos, Guatemala 223; in Miller 1982:81). The other three colonial communities on the northeastern Quintana Roo coast were also abandoned in the seventeenth century, and relocated in the interior. The inhabitants of Cozumel were moved to Boloná (Xcan) in the 1650s (López de Cogolludo 1957 [1688], Bk. 4, Chap. 19), and the remaining populations of Polé (Xcaret) and Tzama-Xamanzama (Tulúm-Tancah) had been relocated at Boloná and nearby Chemax by 1668 (AGI Mexico 245; cited in Miller 1982:79).

Governor Antonio de Layseca Alvarado ordered a series of successful attacks on these foreign operations in 1680. He first attacked Laguna de Términos and later sent a fleet to clean out the logwood cutters around the east coast, where his captains “captured and burned ships and discovered ports, lagoons and settlements on Cabo Catoche ... of which [even] the most informed had no knowledge; there they found Englishmen, whom they captured, and a quantity of logwood, which they burned” (AGI Escribanía de Cámara 321A, Residencia of Governor Antonio Layseca Alvarado, 1683). Still, the pirates and logwood cutters continued to maintain bases at Isla Contoy, Isla Mujeres and Cozumel, as well as at Ascención and Espíritu Santo Bays, throughout the eighteenth century (Calderón Quijano 1944:73, 85, 104, 162–163, 392). Stephen Caiger, an Anglophile historian of Belize, regarded the British presence in Yucatán to be a legitimate commercial and territorial venture, as, of course, did the logwood cutters themselves. In reading that side of this story we realize how close the east coast of Yucatán came to being incorporated into the British sphere of influence (Caiger 1951:51–53).

The reasons for the abandonment of the east coast are now reasonably well understood. Three major factors stand out. The first is a decline in population; it is widely believed that the native population of the east coast declined by as much as 90 percent during the first hundred years after the conquest. The primary causes were diseases introduced by the Spaniards, against which the natives had no immunity (Edwards 1957:131). This estimate of decline, however, is based largely on official records of tributaries in established towns, and fails to take into consideration the large numbers of refugees living in dispersed hamlets throughout the interior (Roys 1957: 131). Research by Farriss (1978, 1984) leaves little doubt that there were large numbers of uncounted natives out in the forests. Another major factor was the lack of Spanish interest in the area. A shortage of native labor discouraged colonization and the establishment of encomiendas. Only six encomiendas were granted in northern Quintana Roo: Kantunilkín, Conil (Chiquilá), Ecab, Polé (Xcaret), Zama (Tancah-Tulúm) and Cozumel. In 1549, these communities had a total population of less than 3000 souls; by the end of the sixteenth century the population had declined by at least half. In addition, the shortage of friars, insufficient indoctrination, and the continuation of idolatrous practices created an atmosphere of very loose ecclesiastic control (Farriss 1984; González Cicero 1978; Sánchez de Aguilar 1937).

By the late 1670s there must have been few Mayas left along the northeastern coast, although some may have drifted back to Ecab following the 1644 reduction. López de Cogolludo (1957 [1688], Bk. 4, Ch. 19) refers to Pachihomhom (an alternate name for Ecab; see below), as a visita of Chancenote as late as 1656. Although its name appears on encomienda lists in both 1666 and 1668 as part of the encomienda of Tixcacal, Yalsihón and Ecab (García Bernal 1978:120, 124), it is doubtful that the original town of Ecab still existed as a tribute-paying population in these years (see also Miller 1982:79-82; Roys 1957:151). If there were any inhabitants left at the beginning of the eighteenth century they probably did not stay beyond 1717, when the town was again sacked and burned by pirates; according to the historian Molina Solís (1904–1913, 3:138), the town was never re-occupied thereafter.

Piracy was a third factor. Buccaneers were harassing coastal towns as early as the 1560s, and they continued to do so well into the nineteenth century (Ancona 1917, 2; Calderón Quijano 1944; López de Cogolludo 1957 [1688], Bk. 6, Ch. 9; Miller 1982:78–79; Roys 1957:149-50; Stephens 1843, 2: Chs. 19, 22). As we have noted, Ecab was raided on at least three occasions. When Stephens traveled down the coast in

Several later eighteenth-century maps show a ruined church at Ecab, which suggests that the place had been

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1842 he was told by a local informant that the old Spanish town of Boca Iglesia (i.e., Ecab) had been “destroyed by bucaniers, or in his own words, by the English pirates” (Stephens 1843, 2:243). This was very probably a reference to the final raid in 1717. After Ecab was abandoned, the church and casa cural continued to provide refuge for occasional visitors. Fishermen and hunters have long used the spot as a campsite, and it was probably used as such by pirates in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

In a previous site index of the east coast, Ecab (which is equated with Ekab, Gran Cairo and Belma) and Boca Iglesia (equated with Pachihomhom, Hom Hom, Xon Hom, Jan Jom) are listed as separate localities (Andrews IV and Andrews 1975:105). It is now clear that all of these names refer to Ecab, with the possible exception of Belma, which may (or may not) be El Meco. Ray Clare has brought to our attention an early claim by Augustus Le Plongeon that Ecab was located on Isla Cancún (in Salisbury 1877:102-03); Alice Le Plongeon (1888:329) also shows its location to be opposite Isla Mujeres, at the present site of El Meco. Needless to say, there is no supporting evidence for these claims.

Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries Even after it was abandoned, Ecab was a well-known landmark on the northeast coast of the peninsula. It appears prominently on maps from 1734 onwards, under a variety of names. It is these names which have given rise to a great deal of the confusion surrounding the identification of the site as Ecab. Take for example, Roys's confusion over the name “Pachihomhom”:

As we have noted, the Spanish structures at Ecab were occasionally re-occupied after the abandonment of the community. But the occupation was not only by itinerant pirates and fishermen. On an 1821 map of the Cabo Catoche area, the site is indicated as “Casa que fué de Guardia en la Guerra” (AGI, Mapas y Planos, México 512; 1821). This would appear to indicate that the buildings had served as a base for coastal militia, during a campaign against pirates.

“Colonial records mention a town near Cape Catoche named Pachihomhom (behind the rushing tide? or “behind Hom Hom Island”). On some modern maps we find in this vicinity a site, probably a hamlet, called Homhom, Scholes assures me that it was a separate town in colonial times and not a later name for Ecab. I have thought it possible that after the sixteenth century a village may have settled at the landing place of Ecab.” (Roys 1957:151)

The first modern reference we have to Ecab is found in the 1817 survey of the Yucatecan coasts by Miguel Molas (1845), who notes that the church and other buildings were then abandoned and in ruins. Interestingly, Molas also provides us with additional evidence corroborating the final removal of the inhabitants of Ecab to the Chancenote area following the reduction of 1644; he notes that the main icon and patron saint of the church of Ecab, a Virgin known as “Nuestra Señora de JomJom” (“Jom Jom” was yet another alternate name for Ecab), was housed in the main church at Chancenote. He claims to have seen it there on several occasions (Molas 1845:126). The Chancenote church was subsequently gutted by fire during the Caste War in 1848, and no trace or memory of the Virgin survives today.

Roys apparently believed Scholes, for he shows Ecab and Homhom as separate localities on his map of the province of Ecab (Roys 1957:144). But Scholes was mistaken. When Morley and Gann visited the Ecab church in 1918 the local fishermen still referred to it as “Xon Hom” (Gann 1924:160). It also appears on nineteenth century maps as “Jan Jon.” “Boxchén,” “Pachihomhom,” “Homhom,” “Jan Jon” and “Xon Hom” are, therefore, alternate or later names for Ecab. “Pachi” translates as “behind”, and “Homhom” as “waves” or “surging seas;” from this the Diccionario Cordemex suggests a full translation of “behind the island of Homhom” (Barrera Vásquez 1980:230, 616).

The next visitors to Ecab were John L. Stephens and Frederick Catherwood, who anchored off Boca Iglesia in 1842; they lacked a small craft, however, and were unable to cross the lagoon and visit the church as Stephens had intended (Stephens 1843 [2]:242–243). The Caste War and its aftermath discouraged any further visits by outsiders for the rest of the nineteenth century. During the 1850s Ecab served as a garrison for a group of independent (non-Cruzob) Maya rebels who finally capitulated to Yucatecan authorities in 1859, and settled in Kantunilkín (Antochiw 1999). In the latter years of the century, the north coast, from Rio Lagartos to Cabo Catoche, was re-colonized by

In fact, Hom Hom is the barrier island in front of Ecab, on the north side of the pass of Boca Iglesias, which leads into the lagoon. The island is a narrow spit of sand and mangrove, far too narrow to support a settlement; moreover, there are no sources of drinking water on this spot. Therefore the historic community of Hom Hom that appears on maps could have been no other than the remains of Ecab on the mainland.

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outsiders who exploited the saltworks, extracted forest products, and operated sugar plantations and mills. The area around Ecab, however, remained uninhabited throughout the twentieth century.

told us that the scattered Indians came from miles round to make these offerings, and to perform their novenas at this old deserted church.” (Gann 1924:159) The “lucky beans” may have been the well-known colorines (Erythrina sp.) widely used in folk ritual throughout Mexico. The presence of wooden crosses and associated objects brings to mind the Cult of the Cross which developed during the Caste War in the nineteenth century. Reed (1964:199) notes that around 1867 in the church of Chan Santa Cruz,

In the early years of the twentieth century, the Englishmen Arnold and Frost visited the church and “monastery” (the casa cural) and gave it a brief mention in their book. Their description of the buildings is brief, and they erroneously suggest that the structures were built in the eighteenth century (Arnold and Frost 1909:137).

“candles guttered on the altar, illuminating a number of small crosses, some of them dressed in huipils, others decorated with mirrors, colored paper, ribbons and sea shells.”

The most detailed recent report of Ecab is that of Gann (1924:156–160), who visited the church with Sylvanus Morley in 1918. Gann gives a good general description of the church, which he believed to be a seventeenth-century structure. Oddly, he fails to mention the casa cural and states that there are no Prehispanic remains in the vicinity. In a rather ambiguous passage, Gann gives the impression that he and Morley found the remains of a chacmool under the altar at Ecab. On the basis of this passage Andrews IV and Andrews (1975:70) list the presence of such a statue at Ecab. Peter Schmidt has pointed out to us that Gann's account is misleading, as he was referring to a statue from the site of Chacmool, on the southern coast of Quintana Roo. As far as we know, there is no evidence for a chacmool at Ecab. Interestingly, Gann notes that the old ruin was still being used as a shrine by itinerant visitors; the altar of the church was bedecked with an assortment of crude ritual paraphernalia: “The altar... had upon it a curious collection of objects, some of which appear to have been there for years, while others had evidently been placed there quite recently. These consisted of several lumps of native incense... a number of loose “lucky beans;” a few conch shells; some flowers made from coloured shells; a glass full of lucky beans; a roughly made wooden cross, 2 ft high, draped in ribbons; three crosses — the central one large, the side ones small — on a wooden stand; and lastly a tablet, upon which was painted a crude picture of the Virgin, pinned to which were several gorgeously colored butterflies. The pilot

The essential details differ little from those that Gann described at Ecab, and this raises the possibility that the Church may have served as a shrine of the Cult of the Cross well into the twentieth century. On a visit to Ecab in 1961, Loring Hewen found that the three wooden crosses were still on the altar, accompanied by candle stubs and empty liquor bottles. He ventures the opinion that “the last time ceremonies were conducted would have been four or five years ago” (letter to Ralph Roys, April 14, 1961). His photographs and related correspondence with Ralph Roys are in the files of the Middle American Research Institute of Tulane University. Neither the crosses nor any paraphernalia remain today, and it seems unlikely that the church has seen any ritual activity over the last few decades.

Figure 2.5 Aerial view of the church from the east.

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In the past 30 years a number of people have visited Ecab, and we have corresponded and talked with several of them. In the summer of 1976 Dr. Gilbert Kliman of New York led a small party in to visit the church; he later submitted a report to the Centro Regional del Sureste of the Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia in Mérida. A few months later the Yucatecan journalist and historian Luis Ramírez Aznar visited Ecab and published a series of newspaper articles on the history of the site (Ramírez 1977a, 1977b, 1977c). More recently, during three field seasons between 1997 and 1999 Luis Leira Guillermo and Elia del Carmen Trejo Alvarado, of the Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia of Quintana Roo, conducted new explorations at the site and carried out clearing and consolidation operations in the church (Trejo Alvarado and Leira Guillermo, personal communication 2001). A recent newspaper article notes that local tour guide operators are interested in taking visitors to Ecab, but that further restoration work is necessary (Diario de Yucatan 2000).

necessary to attend to the needs of the population. Each visita generally included a church or open chapel. The most common type of structure consisted of a presbytery with a barrel-vaulted roof, beside which were two similar rooms, one of which served as sacristy and store room, the other as baptistry and choir. In front there was generally a long roof of perishable material, the nave within which the faithful attended religious services. Occasionally there would be additional passageways to shelter the friars, and an atrium or wall sometimes surrounded the complex (Bretos 1983:404–405; McAndrew 1965:521). Such complexes constituted the sole seats of authority in many isolated communities of the peninsula. The church and casa cural are the only two buildings that attest a Spanish presence at Ecab. They are located on high ground less than 100 m from the coast of the Boca Iglesia lagoon (Figure 2.4). This location provided easy access to the lagoon and the open sea; a conglomeration of rubble near the landing place may represent the remains of a pier where small craft docked. As a colonial port, Ecab was in close contact with other sixteenth-century settlements along the Caribbean littoral such as Xamanhá, Polé, Cozumel, Salamanca de Xelhá and Tzama-Xamanzama.

The Colonial Structures at Ecab During the early colonial period the jurisdictional area of a Franciscan convent was known as a guardianía, a region comprising the number of visitas deemed

Figure 2.6 Church: Groundplan and sections; high wall and merlon over chancel arch are conjectural.

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Figure 2.7 Church: Elevations.

The Church

supported a large gabled thatched roof. The church stands atop a platform that rises an average of 120 cm above the surrounding terrain. The platform undoubtedly served the same function as an atrium, namely to separate sacred from secular space, an idea consonant with the religious notions of the time. As is the case with almost all known sixteenth-century churches, the Ecab building faces west. The main axis

“en este dicho pueblo de ecabo tienen los yndios una yglesia labrada de cal y canto con su sacristia e coro, debisase en la mar muy lexos aquella yglesia por estar estar a la orilla dela mar en un alto y en el dicho pueblo tienen los yndios ornamentos, de caliz e patena, frontales y retablos con que se celebra el culto divino...” (Juan de Cárdenas, 1579, in RY 2:174). The church is an imposing building crowned by a string of merlons that brings to mind other early colonial churches and convents throughout Yucatán. It is not as large as the constructions at Izamal, Valladolid, and Maní, but it shares with them a common Franciscan origin and an architectural style with a heavy medieval flavor (Figures 2.1, 2.5–12, 2.17). The structure is composed of four units: a presbytery or chancel, a sacristy, a baptistry, and a nave. The first three rooms are roofed with large barrel vaults, still intact. The nave, which is lined by masonry walls interrupted by doors and windows,

Figure 2.8 Aerial view of the church from the west.

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The nave of the church takes the form of a large irregular rectangle with four doorways (Figures 2.6, 2.11). Two are located next to the presbytery walls, one is in the north wall of the nave, and the fourth lies at the east end of the church. Oddly enough, there are no traces of a stair leading up to this last door; a wooden staircase is a possibility. Additional lighting in the nave was provided by two windows along the south wall. Beneath the base of one of these windows are two small shelves of unknown purpose (Figure 2.12). The interior of the nave is relatively clean and free of rubble, which underscores the fact that the space was covered with a pole-and-thatch roof rather than one of masonry. The espadaña, or bell screen, of the church consists of two superimposed arches (Figure 2.13). Both of these arches still contain the original crossbeams from which the bells hung. The style and arrangement of the arches blend rather well with the mass of the overall structure. As a whole, the church can be visualized as a group of massive cubic units, each containing a rounded arch set in its superior section to create a general impression of ample interior space. Another feature that contributes to the overall harmony of design is the use of merlons to decorate the tops of the church walls. The merlons give the structure a

Figure 2.9 Church: The altar, showing looter's excavations. of the church had a magnetic orientation of 95 degrees in 1978. Although the presbytery, sacristy and baptistry have similar dimensions, the roof of the former is 70 cm higher than those of the flanking rooms. The large presbytery arch facing the nave also creates a sense of much greater spaciousness in this central room than in the others. Along the center rear wall of the presbytery are the remains of a heavily looted altar (Figure 2.9). As reported by Cárdenas, the altar was once framed by a retablo, or altarpiece. No trace of the retablo remains. Vandals have gouged a huge cavity in the wall above the altar; the dimensions of the hole suggest that a rectangular vertical niche may have originally occupied the space. In fact, the niche may have housed the image of Nuestra Señora de Hom Hom. In the debris in front of the altar we found two metate fragments and other historic and recent artifacts, which attest the post-abandonment use of the presbytery as both a shrine and an encampment space. In the north and south walls of the presbytery, broad doorways lead to the sacristy and bapistry. The visual link with the first room is enhanced by a window that flanks the door (Figure 2.10). The entrance to the bapistry consists of a single frame of well-cut stones.

Figure 2.10 Church: View of the sacristy door from the chancel.

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The main dwelling area is most impressive. Rooms 1 and 2 have heavy barrel-vaulted roofs, elaborate exterior windows, and interior wall niches. Room 3 had a large gabled roof of perishable material; it retains an elegant main doorway (which served as the front entrance), two interior wall niches, and two windows. Room 6 is an open porch or terrace that served as the main entranceway; it may have had a perishable roof, though we found no evidence of such construction. Rooms 4 and 5 form a separate unit, with separate access, and are linked to the main part of the structure only by a window between Rooms 3 and 4. This two-room complex, or addition, is shown to have been less important than the main dwelling area by thinner walls, very simple doorways and the lack of exterior windows and interior wall niches. The two rooms have no traces of masonry roofing, and were probably capped with perishable materials. The architects who prepared the drawings for this report have elaborated as follows on the probable use of the rooms in the casa cural: Figure 2.11 Church: View of the sacristy door from outside; note upper socket from door hinge.

“The curate's residence probably originally had an unroofed entry court (Rm. 6), a sala or living room. (Rm. 3) cell, or study-bedroom (Rm. 2) and a private chapel (Rm. 2). The study faces the entrance in the surrounding stone wall, so that the priest was aware of visitors. The other two rooms (Rms. 4 and 5) were probably added later and used as storage facilities, guest sleeping areas or servants' quarters. These two rooms were undoubtedly roofed with logs covered with a thin coat of mampostería (plaster)” (Gordon and Ann Ketterer, personal communication 1978).

medieval aspect reminiscent of European castles and fortresses. In its original design, the merlon was an integral part of a defensive parapet; it later developed into a stylistic element of rooftop decoration. The slim merlons at Ecab obviously served no defensive function. The only other roof features are eight drain holes, two each in the north and south wall and four along the east wall.

The Casa Cural, or Curate's Residence

The casa cural lies approximately 50 m northwest of the church. The building is not as well preserved as the church, although it displays several interesting architectural features (Figures 2.14–2.16). Its six rooms, all relatively small, average 15 square meters of floor space. The outstanding features of the rooms include doorways, windows, wall niches, and possible percheros (hammock pegs). The building is rectangular and oriented lengthwise along a north-south axis. The whole structure is enclosed by a low wall.

The wall surrounding the curate's residence takes the form of an arrow. Its only clear entrance, at the wall's highest point (1.5 m) on the south side, features a parapet. The entrance faces the church and provides access to a well some 10 m to the southwest. Most of the wall surrounding the casa cural is substantially lower than its southern portion, and may have served as a foundation for a wooden stockade (Peter Schmidt, personal communication 1978). There is little doubt that the wall surrounding the casa cural was defensive in nature; it has a classic medieval layout, in which all sections of the wall could be covered by armed soldiers stationed at the various protruding points.

Careful examination of the walls indicated that rooms 1, 2, 3 and 6 were built as a unit, which clearly served as the main dwelling area. Rooms 4 and 5 appear to have been added later, and were clearly of secondary importance.

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Figure 2..12 Church: View of nave window from inside.

Figure 2.13 Church: The espadaña, or bell screen.

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Figure 2.14 Casa Cural: Groundplan. Prehispanic buildings in their structures, evidence suggests that a good deal of the stone was carved specifically for the colonial buildings. Stones such as those framing the outside entrance to the sacristy, for example, were carefully shaped to form three parallel inset frames. Once again, this is a classic decorative feature of sixteenth-century Spanish architecture. The stone-carvers also manufactured door hinges composed of large stone sockets in the upper and lower interior part of each entrance; these held the inner posts of the doorways, and enabled them to swing freely (Figure 2.15).

Elements of Construction

Most of the church and curate's residence are of early Spanish masonry construction, which consisted of stone slabs and chinking laid in mortar. It is also characterized by walls up to a meter in thickness, and by the use of carved stone to outline corners, windows, and entrances. Wood was used for the window frames and grilles that enclosed several of the windows, and for some of the lintels over the entrances. It was also used, in the form of long sticks, in the mortar of the barrel vaults. Perishable materials such as wooden poles, sticks, and palm leaves were a major ingredient in the roofing of such spaces as the nave of the church and Rooms 3, 4, 5, and possibly 6 of the casa cural. Owing to the lack of iron in Yucatán, and also as a result of limited economic resources, metal nails were rarely used (McAndrew 1965:521–522). As a result the pole-and-thatch roofs at Ecab must have been constructed in much the same fashion as were those of native houses. Even today, natives commonly speak of “tying” a house rather than “constructing” it.

Another sixteenth-century ornamental feature found on the upper portions of the entrances, windows, and niches of Ecab is the shell or semi-hemispherical sunken arch (Figure 2.16). This feature gives the impression of greater space, and allows more light to penetrate the interiors of the rooms. Unlike the construction of the main buildings, the wall around the casa cural was built of uncarved dry-laid stones. In the south section, wherein lies the entrance, crudely carved stones were used to form the parapet. All of the interior walls of the rooms in the church and

Although the Spanish probably re-used materials from

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Figure 2.15 Casa Cural: Sections and elevations. casa cural were plastered, concealing the rough texture of the masonry construction. In several rooms we observed thick plaster floors.

fragments were found inside the church. A very large limestone pila (basin) was located north of the casa cural, outside the outer wall; whether this is a Prehispanic or Colonial artifact is not clear. The only

The church and casa cural occupy approximately 750 and 1000 meters, respectively. They also contain a substantial volume of masonry. The platform beneath the nave of the church, alone, contains close to 600 cubic meters of stone. The size of the construction, and the quality of the stonework is indicative of a large-scale project and the expectation of a lengthy occupation. As we have indicated above, the historical evidence indicates that the church was built between 1547 and 1571. The casa cural was probably built during the same period. The architectural style, construction elements and decorative features of both structures correspond well to the architectural canons of that period (Figures 2.17, 2.18). This style of construction is also characteristic of other religious structures of sixteenth-century Yucatán.

Surface Artifacts

A collection of surface materials from the environs of Ecab yielded a variety of Prehispanic, Colonial, and modern artifacts. We also made a small checklist of modern molluscan species from the Boca Iglesia lagoon. The Prehispanic remains include large quantities of potsherds; most were badly eroded, but Fernando Robles was able to identify a fair number as Late Postclassic Tulum Red ware. Several housemounds had limestone metates, and two

Figure 2.16 Casa Cural: View of the window in Room 3 from inside; note sunken "shell" arch.

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Figure 2.17 Perspective reconstruction of the church.

Figure 2.18 Perspective reconstruction of the casa cural.

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other lithic artifact we encountered was a fragment of a basalt mano that appears to have been re-used as a pestle.

a more massive type of structure, known as a ramada church. These buildings had a chancel flanked by two or more siderooms, built of thick masonry walls and masonry roofs that were either flat- or barrel-vaulted. They had framed doorways, windows, and niches set in their interior walls. The siderooms flanking the chancels served as sacristies and baptistries. The naves were either open or enclosed by masonry walls, and covered by large perishable ramadas. The overall plan of the structures is T-shaped. The church at Ecab is an example of this stage of architectural development; similar structures have been reported at many localities on the peninsula, most notably at Chalamté, Dzibilchaltún, Hunactí, Maní, Tahcabó, Tamalcab, Tecoh, Tixcuncheil, Tixpehual, and Xlacah.

The Colonial and modern artifacts include a few nondescript sherds and a large quantity of fragments of early blown glass bottles of various sizes and shapes, of diverse hues of green and brown. Among these were the remains of an enormous demijohn of dark green glass. There were also remains of nineteenth and early twentieth-century bottles; among these was a bottle of “Barry's Tricopherous” (1880s) and another with the inscription “Murray and Lanman Agua de Florida.” More recent liquor, beer and soft-drink containers were ubiquitous. A heavily rusted nail 15 cm in length was found in the church.

Andrews (1991) offers a typology and comparative discussion of the early ramada chapels and churches of Yucatán and Belize that includes a listing of known structures, illustrations of the major types, as well as an extensive bibliography on the subject. More recent reports of early Christian structures in Yucatán include those of Chalamté (Millet Cámara and Burgos Villanueva 2000), Ek Balám (Hanson 1995), Tecoh (Millet Cámara et al. 1993), and Tzemé (Góngora Salas et al. 2000). Other general discussions of early 16th century ramada churches occur in the works of Bretos (1983, 1987a, 1987b), Hanson (1995), McAndrew (1965), Perry and Perry (1988), and Roys (1952).

The most interesting find was a pendant made from a valve of the shell Codakia orbicularis; it had two perforations in the center, through which a wire had been threaded. This ornament may have formed part the “flowers made from coloured shells” that Gann (1924:159) found among the offerings on the church altar in 1918.

Ecab and the Churches of SixteenthCentury Yucatán Many structures similar to those of Ecab were erected throughout the peninsula during the first century of the Colonial period. Most are listed in the 1582 Catalog of Churches of the Province of Yucatán (Scholes et al. 1936–1938 [2]). In the past three centuries, however, many of the buildings have been destroyed to permit use of their stone in later constructions. Hence few of the original sixteenth- century structures survive; those that remain are for the most part located in remote communities that were abandoned during the Colonial period.

Beginning in the seventeenth century, the ramada churches of Yucatán were gradually replaced by fullscale all-masonry structures. The older buildings were either remodelled — mainly by the addition of an allmasonry nave — or destroyed and recycled into newer constructions. The few ramada structures that survived, in remote abandoned communities such as Ecab, are in ruins today. Still, it is more likely than not that a few more will be located in the years to come, as many churches and settlements listed in the 1582 Catalog of Churches have yet to be found and/or identified.

The earliest buildings dedicated to the Catholic cult, known as ramada chapels, were small and simple in design. These primitive chapels present a simple floor plan made up of a single long room, covered by a thatched roof, which housed both altar and nave; several were surrounded by outer walls that created an enclosed courtyard, or atrium. Examples include the open chapels at Tzemé (Góngora Salas et al. 2000), Ek Balám (Hanson 1995) in Yucatán, Xcaret (Polé), Tancah (Zama), and San Miguel de Xamancab (Cozumel) in Quintana Roo (Andrews 1991), and Tipú (Graham 1991:320–322) and Lamanai (Pendergast 1991:341–343) in Belize.

The remains of the Colonial buildings at Ecab are among the finest surviving examples of sixteenthcentury religious architecture in Yucatán, and should be protected and consolidated. Such a proposal could be made solely on the merits of the standing architectural remains, but Ecab has much more to offer. It is a relatively intact Prehispanic port and early Colonial community, and the landing site of the first official Spanish expedition to the Mesoamerican mainland. Today the site lies abandoned in the forest, at the mercy of the elements and looters; there is clearly an urgent need for further research and

This architectural form was subsequently replaced by

26

Acknowledgments. Many people aided this project, and we thank them for their efforts. Norberto González Crespo supported the project from its inception. Mario González, of Holbox, Q. R., made many arrangements for our second trip and we are grateful for his help. Fernando Robles kindly examined our ceramic collections, and confirmed the Late Postclassic and Colonial occupations of the site. Ann and Gordon Ketterer drafted the plans of the church and casa cural, a contribution the reader will appreciate as much as we do. Barbara McClatchieAndrews and Julian Andrews drafted the maps in Figures 4.2 and 4.3.

preservation efforts commensurate with its status as an archaeological and historic landmark of major significance in the cultural patrimony of the Americas.

This report is a condensed and heavily revised version of a monograph published in Spanish by Benavides Castillo and Andrews many years ago (1979; see also Benavides Castillo 1980, 1981). Jones has added considerable new information on the colonial history of Ecab, based on documents from the Archive of Indies at Seville.

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López de Cogolludo, Diego 1957 [orig. 1688]. Historia de Yucatán. Prólogo, Notas y Acotaciones de J. I. Rubio Mañé. 2 vols. 5th edition. Editorial Academia Literaria, Mexico City. Lothrop, Samuel K. 1924 Tulum. An Archaeological Study of the East Coast of Yucatan. Publication 335. Carnegie Institution of Washington, Washington, D.C. 1927 The Word “Maya” and the Fourth Voyage of Columbus. Indian Notes 4:350–363. Museum of the American Indian, Heye Foundation, New York. McAndrew, John 1965 The Open-air Churches of Sixteenth-Century Mexico. Harvard University Press, Cambridge. Miller, Arthur G. 1982 On the Edge of the Sea: Mural Painting at Tancah-Tulum. Dumbarton Oaks, Washington, D.C. Millet Cámara, Luis, Heber Ojeda M., and Vicente Suárez A. 1993 Tecoh, Izamal: Nobleza indígena y conquista española. Latin American Antiquity 4:48–58. Millet Cámara, Luis, and R. Burgos Villanueva 2000 Chalamté. Un pueblo de Visita Olvidado. Cuadernos de Arquitectura de Yucatán, 11–12 (1998–1999): 168–175. Facultad de Arquitectura, Universidad Autónoma de Yucatán, Merida. Molas, Miguel 1845 Las Costas de Yucatán. Registro Yucateco I:121–130. Mérida. Molina Solís, Juan Francisco 1904-13 Historia de Yucatán. Durante la Dominación Española. 3 vols. (1904, 1910, 1913). Imprenta de la Lotería del Estado, Merida. Muller, Florencia 1959 Atlas Arqueológico de la República Mexicana. Quintana Roo. Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia, Mexico City. Muñoz, D. Gabriel 1955 [1767] “Provincia de Yucatán. Descrypcyon Ygnografyca.” In Cartografía de Ultramar (1955). Servicio Geográfico e Histórico del Ejército, Madrid. Okoshi Harada, Tsubasa 1994 Ecab: una revisión de la geografía política de una provincia maya yucateca. Memorias del Primer Congreso Internacional de Mayistas (San Cristóbal de las Casas, 1989) III, pp. 280–287. Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Mexico City. Oviedo y Valdés, Gonzalo F. de 1851-55 Historia General y Natural de las Indias, Islas y Terra Firme del Mar Oceano. 4 Vols. Real Academia de la Historia, Madrid. Pendergast, David M. 1991 The Southern Maya Lowlands Contact Experience: The View from Lamanai, Belize. In Columbian Consequences Volume 3: The Spanish Borderlands in Pan-American Perspective, edited by David Hurst Thomas, pp. 336–354. Smithsonian Institution Press, Washington, D.C. Perry, Richard, and Rosalind Perry 1988 Maya Missions. Exploring the Colonial Churches of Yucatán. Espadaña Press, Santa Barbara. Ramírez Aznar, Luis 1977a Boca Iglesia, antes Belma, el sitio del primer desembarco de conquistadores. Novedades de Yucatán, February 19. Merida. 1977b Hernández de Córdoba protagonizó la primera batalla en la historia de la conquista de Yucatán. Novedades de Yucatán, February 20. Merida. 1977c Seis años después de conquistado Yucatán, Ekab inicia como encomienda su vida colonial. Novedades de Yucatán, February 21. Merida. Reed, Nelson 1964 The Caste War of Yucatan. Stanford University Press, Stanford. Relaciones de Yucatán (RY) 1898-1900 In Colección de documentos inéditos relativos al descubrimiento, conquista y organización de las antiguas posesiones españolas de ultramar. Segunda Serie, Tomos 11 (1898; RY I) and 13 (1900; RY II). Madrid.

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Robles Castellanos, Fernando, and Anthony P. Andrews 1986 A Review and Synthesis of Recent Postclassic Archaeology in Northern Yucatan. In Late Lowland Maya Civilization: Classic to Postclassic, edited by Jeremy A. Sabloff and E. Wyllys Andrews V, pp. 53-98. University of New Mexico Press, Albuquerque. Romero Rivera, María Eugenia, and S. Gurrola Briones 1995 Los sitios en las márgenes de la Laguna de Yalahau y Santa Rosa, desde el punto de vista del estudio de la navegación como sistema. Memorias del Segundo Congreso Internacional de Mayistas I, pp. 458–476. Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Mexico City. Roys, Ralph L. 1933 The Book of Chilam Balam of Chumayel. Publication 505. Carnegie Institution of Washington, Washington, D.C. 1943 The Indian Background of Colonial Yucatan. Publication 548. Carnegie Institution of Washington, Washington, D.C. 1952 Conquest Sites and the Subsequent Destruction of Maya Architecture in the Interior of Yucatan. Contributions to American Anthropology and History XI, No. 54. Publication 596. Carnegie Institution of Washington, Washington, D.C. 1957 The Political Geography of the Yucatan Maya. Publication 613. Carnegie Institution of Washington, Washington, D.C. Roys, Ralph L., France V. Scholes, and Elizabeth B. Adams 1940 Report and Census of the Indians of Cozumel. Contributions to American Anthropology and History VI, No. 30. Publication 523. Carnegie Institution of Washington, Washington, D.C. Rubio Mañé, Jorge Ignacio 1957 Notas y Acotaciones a la Historia de Yucatán de Fr. Diego López de Cogolludo, O.F.M. Colección de grandes crónicas mexicanas 3. Editorial Academia Literaria, Mexico City. Sabloff, Jeremy A, and William L. Rathje 1975 The Rise of a Maya Merchant Class. Scientific American 233 (4):72–82. Salisbury, Stephen 1877 Dr. Le Plongeon in Yucatan. His Account of Discoveries. Proceedings of the American Antiquarian Society 69. Worcester, Mass. Sánchez de Aguilar, Pedro 1937 [Orig. 1639] Informe contra Idolorum Cultores del Obispado de Yucatán. 3rd edition. E. G. Triay e hijos, Merida. Saville, Marshall H. 1918 The Discovery of Yucatan in 1517 by Francisco Hernández de Córdoba. Geographical Review 6:436– 448. Scholes, France V., and Eleanor B. Adams (editors) 1938 Don Diego Quijada, alcalde mayor de Yucatan, 1561–1565: Documentos sacados de los archivos de España. 2 vols. Bibliografía Historica Mexicana de Obras Inéditas, Vols. 14 and 15. Mexico City. Scholes, France V., Carlos R. Menéndez, Jorge Ignacio Rubio Mañé, and Elizabeth B. Adams (editors) 1936-38 Documentos para la Historia de Yucatán. 3 vols. Merida. Scholes, France V., and Ralph L. Roys 1948 The Maya Chontal Indians of Acalan-Tixchel. Publication 560. Carnegie Institution of Washington, Washington, D.C. Stephens, John L. 1843 Incidents of Travel in Yucatan. 2 vols. Harper & Bros., New York. Tasaciones de los Pueblos de la Provincia de Yucatán... 1549. 1942 Cuadernos del Museo Arqueológico, Etnográfico e Histórico, No. 3. Gobierno del Estado de Campeche, Campeche. Thompson, J. Eric S. 1970 Maya History and Religion. University of Oklahoma Press, Norman. Tió, Aurelio 1972 Historia del descubrimiento de Florida y Beimeni o Yucatán. Boletín de la Academia Puertorriqueña de la Historia II (8):13–267. San Juan. Tozzer, Alfred M. 1941 Landa's Relación de las Cosas de Yucatan. Papers of the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology No. 18. Harvard University, Cambridge.

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3 Palenque Painting Practices and the Iconographic Content of Color in the Late Classic Merle Greene Robertson

that was perfected in Italy around A.D. 1300 (Herberts 1958:49) and brought to its highest development during the Italian Renaissance. Buon fresco is painted with lime-resistant colors on damp lime plaster that has not “set.” The color fuses with the wall and becomes part of it. Nothing can be added after the plaster has set. The critical consideration for all fresco painting is the setting time of the plaster. It is this factor of spontaneous painting quickly and surely executed that gives buon fresco its luminous quality.

Introduction Painting practices and the use of color have not been sufficiently investigated in the Maya area to permit us to determine if there was a pan-Maya sequence of painting procedures, or to what extent color took on iconographic meaning. We do know, however, that at least at Palenque painting practices followed a definite sequence and that color became an iconographic language there in Late Classic times. After three years of working at Chichen Itza and elsewhere in the Yucatan Peninsula I now suspect that the same may have been true over all the Maya area, although not with the same characteristics in each region.

Most of the wall paintings at Palenque, namely those in the western corridor of Houses E and C, the southwest room of House B, and the interior of the North Group structures, were applied in a technique used by the early Greek and Roman painters as well as the Byzantines. Termed “modified buon fresco,” it involves painting on damp plaster that can be kept wet for several days, or even up to two weeks, by “flooding” the wall surface periodically as the painting progresses. The solution of lime becomes carbonated and precipitated by the carbonic acid of the air, and “each time the surface is flooded with water, fresh unadulterated lime is dissolved and brought to the surface” (Bergen 1190, in Laurie 1911:92). Vitruvius (ca 40 B.C.) was familiar with painting on wet lime, which he regarded as the most permanent. The surface of the plaster undercoat was very thick, up to 12.5 cm in Roman painting (Laurie 1911:93), whereas at Palenque the initial surface of plaster and lime stucco varied from 1 mm (virtually part of the wall itself) to 5 cm in thickness.

The History of Wall Treatment at Palenque In the early days of Palenque's history, in the late sixth and early seventh century, walls of buildings were painted a deep solid red with apparently no decoration other than possibly simple bands. At this early turning point in the history of the site the walls of one building, House E of the Palace, were painted white with "isolated motifs" on the western walls as well as on the inner walls of the western corridor. Shortly thereafter some inner walls of Houses E, B, and C were mural painted on dry plaster. This type of wall painting is not very durable and tends to flake off easily. Any type of pigment can be applied in this technique. It is probable that at the same time that flat wall painting was being practiced at Palenque, fresco walls were also being painted. This was not true buon fresco as practiced in the late Renaissance, in which plastered walls were carefully built up and then each "day piece" was prepared by trowelling on a layer of fine lime-slaked stucco (Berger 1901). The area prepared for painting was sufficient for the amount of mural that could be completed in one day.

Stucco breathes, and during the rainy season the intensity of color is enhanced; note how much more brilliant the Bonampak murals are once the rains have begun. In the part of the dry season just before the rains start (April and May at Palenque and in the Usumacinta region), stucco is so devoid of moisture that it would be very difficult to keep wall surfaces sufficiently wet that a fresh layer of lime would adhere to a previously painted surface. Pigment was mixed with fresh lime to improve its bond with the wall, but

The Palenque painting was also not the buon fresco

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Valley at Goreme's Valanli Church, but even closer resemblance existed at the Byzantine St. Saviour in Chora and the painted room at Ephesis. Following a period of use of the "modified buon fresco" technique, there came a time when the Palencanos added a new dimension to wall painting. The vogue for mural-painted walls was replaced by a new idea, stucco sculpted "Narrative Scenes." The change can be seen in the west corridor of House E and the southwest room of House B, where scenes that had originally been painted on flat wall surface in modified buon fresco were re-worked in stucco sculpture that repeated the painting content in a three-dimensional form. The tendency in this new technique was towards comparatively low relief in which the idea embodied in mural painting remained but was raised slightly from the background surface. Rather than giving more freedom to the artist than existed either in mural or in isolated motif painting, the new technique actually added impediments and restrictions, especially in the use of color. In the final development, the stucco sculpture for which Palenque was to become famous came into being. Painted stucco sculpture on load-bearing rectangular columns (Figure 3.1) embellished most of the buildings at the site. The human figure assumed

Figure 3.1 Pier B, Temple of Inscriptions. during the dry season even this would not have resolved the problems in adherence. I therefore believe that mural painting at Palenque and in other parts of the Maya area was undertaken during the rainy season. On modified buon fresco painted walls at Palenque fresh brush strokes are visible, and one can even detect where strokes are built up to create greater color density, deeper tones in a change of hues. Pure pigment mixed with some pure lime was used without the laying on of an initial layer of pure white lime stucco, as was later done in painted stucco sculpture. On stucco sculptured walls or piers, Palenque painters always applied a fresh layer of white lime stucco every time a new color was added. The practice, which helped to bind the layers of stucco together, was to continue from the earliest production of stucco sculpture at Palenque through the days not long before her final collapse. The Palenque technique was also practiced by Byzantine fresco painters when they were painting over old fresco (Laurie 1910:110). When in Turkey during September 1988, I had the opportunity to examine many early Greek, Roman, and Byzantine modified buon fresco painted walls and was able to see and measure the thickness of stucco in the paintings. For the most part, the stucco mural paint was very thin, rarely over 2 mm in thickness. The stucco wall under the paint was, however, sometimes over 12 cm thick. I noted similarities with Palenque application of pigment and stucco at the Edmalt Kilise in the Goreme

Figure 3.2 Meter-high sculptured portrait head on a north sub-structure tier of the Palace.

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Figure 3.3 Palace House E, "Isolated Motif" paintings on the western wall. supreme importance, and there is no evidence that narrative scenes continued to be produced on walls. It was at this time, possibly the last century of Palenque's history (A.D. 700–800), that the iconographic content of color played an important role in the sculptural decoration of the city. Finally, at the very last stage of the city's opulence, full-sized stucco sculptured figures were reduced to greatly enlarged (meter-high) heads of rulers (Figure 3.2) and gods of the sort so prominently displayed on the northern substructure tiers of the Palace.

same color indicated that figures and background were of the same world. Probably the earliest paintings at Palenque are those on the western face of House E (see Greene Robertson 1985a:18–20, Figures 29–52), the earliest building on the upper terrace of the Palace complex. The iconographic language of color does not seem to have played a part in early artistic development at Palenque as exemplified by the House E murals; the background is white, and isolated motifs, of which only a few are visible at the present time, extended across the face of the building in six horizontal rows (Figure 3.3).

The linear dimension remained as important in stucco sculpture as it had been in flat mural painting, with the outline of the figure serving as the line determinant. Often there was very little difference between the background color and the color of the body of the figure attached to the pier, as had held true in wall painting. This use of color can be noted on the eastern side of the western corridor in House E, where the profile face is the same color as the wall, with the black outline of the face and the headdress paraphernalia simply painted against the ground color. It is clear that both in mural painting and in stucco sculpture figures were not meant to be differentiated or set apart from the ground upon which they were placed, but rather were intended to be a part of it. In their iconographic language of color the use of the

On one of the quatrefoil floral motifs (Seler 1915: Figure 132b) it is possible to study the artist's painting procedure (Figure 3.4). First a blob of pink, probably the wash coat paint, was put on the wall, centering the floral motif. Second, the quatrefoil cartouche and the inner circle were outlined in black against the white wall surface. Third, the light red-orange was painted on next to the wide black outer cartouche outline; fourth, the darker orange inner quatrefoil cartouche area and the outer protuberances were painted. In the fifth step, the Maya Blue cartouche, which varied in intensity from a deep Munsell 10BG 6/6 to a lighter 10 BG 7/4, was painted on next to the deep orange one.

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similarity between painting methods there and those at Palenque. True, there are outlines around the Palenque figures, but they are more apt to be in black than in the red of Teotihuacán. Palenque isolated motif painting also uses areas of white or color to separate areas of another color on the same surface, with no line divisions between them. Colors used in "motif" painting are reds (light and dark), blue in several hues, pink, cream, tan, red-orange, yellow-orange, orange, and black, with white used as a "color" and as background also. Color within cartouches was red in the earliest stage and seems to have remained red throughout the artistic development of Palenque, as can be noted on the medallions of House A, but the early paintings at Palenque were certainly not in a style that was to continue throughout the city's history. Figure 3.4 Quatrefoil Floral motif -- the procedure for painting it. The blue color was the least carefully applied, and line thickness varied from very thin at the top to four times that thickness at the bottom. The last major step involved addition of the inner dabs of black pigment, the inner eye, and the small dots in the inner circle to complete the painting process except for the last outlines. At the very last, the rest of the black outlines were painted on directly over the pink center and over the blue in a thin double-line quatrefoil cartouche, as well as over parts of the thick outer cartouche. These black lines were the most carefully done because they carried the visual impression intended for the motif; it did not matter whether they conformed to the color outline beneath them or not.

Seler (1976) suggests that the style of the House E wall motifs is similar to that used in Mexico by Maya settlers. I feel that the techniques may well have been developed by the early Palencanos and that at a later time certain traits associated with the techniques appeared in other areas. One such area is northern Yucatan, where there are numerous motifs at Chichén Itzá and Popolá that are certainly reminiscent of those at Palenque and in highland Mexico. The element that

There is little else at Palenque that recalls the motifs on the House E walls, and no other site possesses similar traits. A few elements fit motifs from Teotihuacán, but a white background is certainly not a Teotihuacán trait. The use of bare stucco for the white of bivalve shells in the Teotihuacán Tetitla Room 7 painting is not typical of Teotihuacán painting, as Miller (1972:4) points out. Miller feels that the use of white is essentially a Maya characteristic. It appears, however, to have been an exclusively early trait at Palenque, perhaps introduced in the House E paintings. Both the style and the color content of the House E motifs are not typical of Palenque's later painting. Nowhere else at the site do we find motifs laid out in rows and columns. Late isolated motifs are more likely to resemble the large red Venus sign on the inner south wall of the upper stair passage in the Tower of the Palace. Though use of isolated motifs is a recurrent element in the art of the Highlands, there is very little

Figure 3.5 Seler's "eye" element in highland motifs.

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remained in use throughout the city's history, although the method of portraying them changed. The House E serpent medallion is outlined in black, and the mouth of the serpent is outlined in red. The House A medallions are sculptured in deep relief stucco and are painted in vivid colors. Snaggle-toothed serpents emerge from the four corners of the cartouche. The background within the cartouche is blue, as are the supraorbital plates, the upper jaws, and the upper half of the balls over the serpents' heads, which Seler refers to as eyeballs. The serpents' eyes, tongues, and snaggle-teeth are red. The triangular cross-hatched areas within the serpent frames are yellow. The three colors — blue, red, and yellow — are the only ones used in the House A medallions. There are no painted outlines, but instead the raised sculptural relief forms the outline. This is a different approach from that presented on the House E medallion, and we find no return anywhere at Palenque to the painting of isolated motifs or isolated cartouches found in House E.

Figure 3.6 Temple of the Sun Pier A, a quatrefoil cartouche. Seler (1915:73) designates an "eye" (the center element shown in Figure 4 [Seler's Figures 132 and 133]) is found many times in the highlands (Figure 3.5). Occurrences include the Mexican Olin (Cook de Leonard 1965:166, Figure 67a), in Duran's Messenger of the Sun (Cook de Leonard 1965:255, Figure 284b), and in the Mexican 4 movement sign (Cook de Leonard 1965:105, Figure 1c), as well as in Codex Magliabecchi (Cook de Leonard 1965:45, Figure 4; 492, Figure 21b,e) and Codex Borbonico (Cook de Leonard 1965:45, Figure 1f). Although the style of wall painting exemplified by House E was not characteristic of later times, certain motifs such as the circular serpent cartouche and the quatrefoil cartouche continued in vogue at Palenque throughout her development. Continuity can be seen from Olvidado times (Mathews and Robertson 1985:Figures 12–14) to use on the Temple of the Sun piers (Figure 3.6) and on the sanctuary roofs of the Temple of the Cross (Figure 3.7). The three-part blossom element (Seler 1915:Figure 128) was used on all Palenque sculpture, as well as wall painting. In wall painting the three-part blossom was sometimes blue as in Seler's Figure 128, in black as in Seler's Figure 126, or in yellow as in his Figure 127. The blossom motif with either dots at the side or bone-ahaus (Figure 3.8) is likewise found throughout the city, as are the crossed bands that have a line unequally dividing each band.

Figure 3.7 Temple of the Cross east sanctuary roof quatrefoil cartouche. As I have suggested, the directional flow of the House E designs is most likely to have been from Palenque to Mexico and the Yucatan. It appears highly probable to me that the Palenque walls were painted by artists who were trained in codex and vase painting and hence were adept at painting isolated glyphs and pictures on white or plain grounds, but in moving to large wall

Another early Palenque isolated painting, though not in the style of the “isolated motifs,” is the medallion (Figure 3.9) in House E, first referred to by Seler (1915:125). Seler points out its similarity to the House A medallions (Greene Robertson 1985b:25–31, Figures 115–138). The idea of framed serpent cartouches (Figure 3.10), first used in House E,

Figure 3.8 Blossom motif with dots and bone ahaus. After Seler 1915:Figures 129d and 130a.

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surfaces were working on unfamiliar ground. Following its development at Palenque, the approach used in House E may have been carried to other highland areas, resulting in the occurrences of motifs noted above. The elements that occur elsewhere may have been carried by trader-diplomats who either remembered or sketched on bark paper the most widely used motif at Palenque, the quatrefoil flower. This is the motif most often imitated in other areas, and because it is used in so repetitive a manner, as in House E, it is the one most likely to have been best remembered.

can be seen on the large bicephalic serpent painting at the northern end of the western room of House E. The results of thin application of paint to create many variations of blue can be seen in the "Hand Extending Bowl" painting of House C (Figure 3.12; Greene Robertson 1985a:41–63, Figures 275–281).

Figure 3.9 Mural painted medallion of House E. After Seler 1915:Figure 125.

Figure 3.10 House A Medallion 5.

The Iconography of Color at Palenque

When Palenque artists proceeded from isolated wall paintings to mural painting the same palette was retained, but scenes became narrative in subject matter. Profile portraits of Maya lords in simple dress took up entire walls of rooms, as evidenced by the paintings on the northern walls of the western rooms of House E, the eastern room of House C, and the northern wall of the southwestern room of House B. Very little remains of the early painting on this wall of House B, although certain features are visible when viewed in proper light. The western figure, a full-scale, simply dressed figure in profile facing east, is the most easily seen today. The only access we have to the real nature of this painting, apart from the portion that remains today, is a drawing by an anonymous artist (Figure 3.11) that appears in Seler (1915:Figure 95). It was directly over this wall that a stucco Narrative Sculpture, of which there is much remaining evidence, was later formed.

If an iconography of color had not already appeared prior to the development of narrative mural painting, it clearly began to manifest itself at this time. Feathers were always blue, as were offering bowls; bodies of human figures seem to have been uniformly red, as they were to remain throughout time unless a figure was deemed divine, in which case it was painted blue. The language of color seems to have been an integral part of the system at the time that flat wall painting was no longer in style and stucco sculptured walls were the vogue. Some ingenious Palenque artist realized that the material he was working with — stucco and earth paint and lime — would, if thick enough, stand out from the wall and produce an effect that was more or less three-dimensional. I have discussed the methods of working and painting such stucco sculpture in earlier papers on Palenque (Greene Robertson 1975, 1977, 1979, 1985a, b).

Mural painting portrayed entire scenes rather than isolated patterns, in an artistic endeavor that had become grandiose. Backgrounds were red and red-pink rather than being left white. Humans were portrayed with their feet on the ground or on masks or pedestals in scenes that involved everyday life and ritual participation. Although the palette of earlier times was retained, the tendency to blend colors created more shades and hues — purple, orange, and numerous intensities of blue and blue-green such as

An example of early Narrative Sculpture is the previously mentioned full-wall scene sculpted on the northern wall of the southwestern room of House B, where the scratched-in lines of the profile figure can be seen clearly, even to minute details. The large portions of the clear Maya Blue feathers of the simple headdress that remain are lined up perfectly with the scratched-in pattern beneath them (Greene Robertson

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Figure 3.11 Drawing by unknown artist of the mural on the wall of the southwestern room of House B. After Seler 1915:Figure 95. 1985a:43–46, Figures 160–163). Considerable stucco and paint also remain on the central throne under the Ik opening in the center of this wall. Paint was no longer applied in thin watery coats, except for initial wash coats of red-pink that were applied to all Palenque stucco sculpture before the application of additional sculptural elements or the initial color coat, as well as before any repainting job.

now involved only three colors: red, blue, and yellow (Figure 3.13). The same three were also used on Palenque stone sculpture. All of the House A, C, D, and A–D sculptured piers, all of the medallions of House A, the masks of House C, and the piers of the Temple of the Inscriptions, as well as the sculptured piers, roof sculptures, and sanctuary roof sculptures of the Cross Group Temples were painted in the basic red, blue, and yellow, albeit in varying shades. The shades of red ranged from the deep dark reds of early times (Munsell 10R 4/8-5/8) to the light red-pink washes and the light red-orange (Munsell 10R 6/6-6/8) of Houses A and D.

The uniform use of blue for feathers is also in evidence in the scene on the southwestern wall of the western room of House C. Here a grand sweep of Maya Blue feathers is almost all that remains of the scene, except for the small profile figure who holds the umbrella in the backrack headdress of the principal personage. At the base of the wall (also a part of the sculptured scene) are considerable remains of a sculpted skyband border laid directly over an earlier mural painted skyband. The coloring of the border was to remain in use throughout the city's history: the background color is dark red and the bars separating the skyband elements are blue, as are all beads on the band and celestial elements within the rectangular borders. Basically, blue was the color chosen for all skyband component parts. There are instances in which yellow was used, but they are rare and were all later painted over in red.

Blues varied more than the other colors, with a range from Munsell 2.5B 8/4 and 6/4 of the lightest hues to 10BG 3/6-4/6 of the House C sculpture. On Houses A and D sculpture, blues are more consistently in the 7.5BG range (5/4, 6/4, 6/5, 5/6, and 6/10). Most blue was a clear color, with only occasional graying. Yellow seems to have been the color least frequently used, but it may be that because of its perishable quality less remains today than was originally present. It is found mainly on jaguar tails and spots, cross-hatched areas, a few skyband elements, and glyphic blocks not in whole texts. The cataloguing of thousands of examples of colors and their uses has made it possible to determine the

The iconography of color in painted stucco sculpture

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Figure 3.12 House C Narrative Sculpture. significance of the color code for the Maya at Palenque. When the use of color is broken down and one takes a look at the specific features for which a given color was designated, it becomes possible to assign meaning to color. The nature of the object, motif, or element determined the color to be used; as a result, colors had different meanings, as we shall see, and some features (but not all) changed color over time. It is the study of these meanings with which we are here concerned, because as Kubler (1969:48) points out, "iconography concerns intended meanings and their changes through time and space."

west (black), and south (yellow) (Thompson 1960 and Leon-Portilla 1973:69).

Red

Red was the color of mortals, of human involvement, and was used on the bodies of humans and the settings in which they performed or were portrayed (background areas of piers on which figures are sculptured in stucco), as well as the walls of the buildings in which they carried on their tasks of city management and ritual confrontation with the gods. The hair of mortals, as well as their clothing (except those portions that took on specific meaning), was always red, and it remained red throughout the entire time of Palenque's artistic accomplishments. The only variation was in the intensity of color, which shifted from dark to light and to dark again in late times. The shift could have resulted from the preferences of kings or the availability of certain hues. Red was also the color of serpent scales, fangs, and teeth, although blue was used as serpents' body color.

It is well known that the Maya assigned colors to the five world directions. Red was the color of the east, black the west, white the north and yellow the south. A fifth direction, a vertical dimension at the center, was apparently assigned the color green. The Codex Tro-Cortesianus 75,76 portrays examples of world directions in which each sector is accorded its own glyph. West is shown at the top, south at the left, north at the right, and east at the bottom. Leon-Portilla (1973:66-67) emphasizes that “....these glyphs, with the sole exception of the one for the north, are exactly the same used to denote the cosmic directions in the earlier carved inscriptions of the Classic period,” and that “...each sector represented in the Madrid Codex also has its own deity painted with their corresponding colors.” Glyphs mark the east (red), north (white),

For the red of the east, the year bearer was Kan (Thompson 1960:245). Ceh, one of the four Cauac months, was associated with red and was god of the eastern sky. The red sky monster of the east is the glyph of this month (Thompson 1960:18). Directions of color are referred to in the Chilam Balam of Kaua (Leon-Portilla 1973:52):

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Ix Kan, Lady of the Maize, Also wealthy, Ix Kokobta, the wryneck bird, is its omen. The Precious singer, are its birds. Chac Imix Che, the red ceiba tree, is its tree. Sage.

of red for all stucco sculptured figures of humans was either to indicate a journey through the underworld already negotiated by the ancestor kings or to signify their eventual emergence into the middle world in the eastern sky. The significance of red would therefore be rebirth, reincarnation.

Yellow

In The Ritual of the Bacabs (Roys 1965; Leon-Portilla 1973:62,63), the crocodile (of the Itzamna house) is brought in:

The determination of the iconographic meaning for yellow rests in part on the function of yellow as the directional color of the south, the direction assigned to death and calamity, and under the guardianship of the death god (Thompson 1960:112). Yellow also represented negation, and as Thompson (1960:49) points out, “...may represent actual growth or it may be a symbol of the earth and the underworld;” as with other underworld associates, it symbolized rain and storms (Thompson 1960:112). The Lacandon refer to the south as “below the sun” (Blom and La Farge 1927:477).

Crocodile of the red quadrant, come to me, thirteen are the waters of my red gutter, when I guard my rear behind the east sky. The Chilam Balam of Chumayel (Roys 1933:64; Leon-Portilla 1973:64) relates, when referring to the cosmic ceibas that correspond to each worldly quadrant:

The Chilam Balam Katun 11 Ahau prophecy cited above, after stating that the yellow bird Kan xib yuyum will perch on the primeval red ceiba, continues (Leon-Portilla 1973:77):

The red flint stone is the stone of the red Mucencab. The red ceiba tree of abundance is his arbor which is set in the east. The red bullet-tree is their tree. The red zapote... The red vine... Reddish are their yellow turkeys. Red toasted corn is their corn.

Then will also rise [from the underworld] Kan Imix che, primeval yellow ceiba, to the south of the flat land, as a sign of annihilation. There will perch Kan tan picdzoy, bird of the yellow breast.... One of the four cauac months is Yax, which means green (Thompson 1960:112) but is not associated with world directions unless, as Thompson suggests, there was a fifth (center) direction to which that color was assigned. He points out, however, that the central element of the glyph for south in the codices is the Yax prefix.

The Katun 11 Ahau prophecy in the Chilam Balam of Chumayel (Leon-Portilla 1973:73), in describing the end of the devastation of the world and the struggle of the thirteen celestial deities and the nine gods of the underworld, states: At the end of this devastation will rise Chac Imix Che, primeval red ceiba, the column of the heavens, sign of the dawning world, tree of the Bacab, outpourer, on which will perch Kan xib yuyum, the yellow bird.

Kelley (1976:165) discusses logographs that convey “several different meanings,” and cites Brinton's (1895:109) reference to Kan, “yellow” as an example of a color term used in different contexts with different meanings. Maya years were named for their days, according to Landa, and a yellow Bacab ruled the south and Kan years. Yellow Pauahtun was also the name of a Maya deity Ix Kan le-ox, a goddess named for the yellow ramon leaf (Roys 1965:171), but Roys (170) also notes that Kan years were ascribed to the east and the Cauac years to the south, as shown by the calendar wheel of the Chilam Balam of Ixil.

The “primeval red ceiba,” indicating the rising in the east, could refer to the rising of the sun in the east after its journey through the underworld. Thompson (1960:249) notes that tzalzibun is the word for east in Manche Chol, and that it might indicate “where the sun gets strength and perhaps refers to the clothing of the sun with flesh in its departure from the underworld.” By extension, this could suggest that the reason for use

Landa (1941:14,15) notes that of the four Bacabs who held up the sky the south one was Hobnil, or Kanal Bacab, the yellow Bacab whom he calls Kan

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Blue

Blue is the most difficult color to which to assign meaning on the basis of written references in Maya documents. There is, however, mention of the interchangeability of blue and green, and reference to yellow replacing green in later times as the color of the south (Thompson 1960:112, 251, 252). In addition, there is reference to Yax as green (south) and its association with the Venus monster. In the art of Palenque, however, it is much easier to determine the meaning intended for blue (Maya blue-green). It is always the color of the celestial dragon, of things divine, of gods and godly attributes of men, and of things precious—jade and quetzal feathers—as well as things pertaining to kingship such as thrones, sometimes glyphic texts, and mat symbols. It appears that the Maya assigned color to each thing according to the world in which it existed. All things mortal were depicted in red, the color assigned to the Middle World: bodies of humans, their hair and clothing (except portions deemed sacred or precious or symbols of rulership), the environments in which human beings lived, the Figure 3.13 Reconstruction sculpture of Pier d, House D for the Florida State Museum, walls of their buildings, by the author. and by extension the background on piers embellished with stucco Pauahtun. He feels that these are wind spirits, and that sculpture of humans. For some reason, certain parts of Ix Kan le-ox, goddess of the yellow ramon leaf, would serpents — scales, fangs, eyes, and teeth — were have been the wind spirit of the south. Kelley included in this category, perhaps because these parts (1976:50) agrees that yellow is associated with the were periodically discarded. The skin of the serpent, south and that it also seems to be somehow associated or rather its body, was painted blue in all cases. Red, with death. the color of the Middle World, was the color of rebirth of the sun in the east, as referred to in the Chilam Balam prophecy.

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Yellow was the color assigned to the Underworld, to the region under the guardianship of the death god, and to the realm “below the sun.” Jaguar spots and jaguar tails are always yellow, most likely in reference to the Jaguar God of the Underworld. Jaguars are known to prowl at night, and their natural habitat includes caves and dark places “within the earth.” Yellow is also used on the inner portion of the Yax border of Pier D, House D; the combination of blue and yellow on this glyphic border raises interesting questions as to the possibility of a double interpretation for yellow.

extensive study of other areas will it be possible to determine if this was the case. The Maya were not the only ancient people who assigned meaning to color. The Classical Greeks assigned colors to the span of life processes, as shown in Homer's Iliad (Lattimore 1951; Greene 1963). Red signified challenge and warning; yellow was the dawn, shining and bright; white denoted peace, protection, and pity; green was the color of fear; grey stood for balance; rose signified immortality; blue was the color of tranquility and supernatural calm; and purple denoted godliness.

Blue was the color assigned to the Upper World, the Heavens and all things divine or precious. The iconography of the Upper World seems to fall into three categories: 1) things divine — gods and their paraphernalia such as their staffs and mirror cartouches in the forehead, axes, serpents' bodies, serpent cartouches, part serpent bodies of infants such as those on the piers of the Temple of the Inscriptions, and divine persons such as dwarfs; 2) things precious — jade pendants, earplugs, wristlets, and anklets, feathers, and water or blood; and 3) things pertaining to the divine right of kings — thrones, mat symbols of authority, the le glyph of accession and heir rights of rulers, as well as portions of clothing or rulers or lords deemed precious or sacred.

The opulence of color of Classic times was not to last. At Palenque, and quite possibly at other centers as well, almost all of the city was painted over in red, a deep dark red, in the final days just before the collapse. The reason for this action remains an enigma; perhaps the gods directed the Palencanos to do just as the gods directed the Achaeans.

Acknowledgments. I am indebted to Kathlene Keith for the idea of the “trader-diplomat,” which she gave to me while working with me at Palenque during the time she was doing research for a novel about the Maya.

Conclusions In Classic times the entire city of Palenque was ablaze with color, temples and palaces all red but embellished with figures, gods, and serpents, each assigned its proper color — a city magnificent to behold, all in vivid reds, blues, and yellow. This may have been the pattern of other Maya cities as well, and the iconographic language of color, of red, blue, and yellow, may possibly have been pan-Maya. Only after

REFERENCES CITED Berger, Ernst 1901 Quellen für Maltechnik während der Renaissance und deren Folgezeit (XVI-XVII Jahrhundert) in Italien, Spanien, den Niederlanden, Deutschland, Frankreich und England nebst dem De Mayerne Manuskript (zum ersten Male herausgegeben, mit übersetzung und Noten versehen). Beiträge 4. Munich. Blom, Frans, and Oliver LaFarge 1927 Tribes and Temples, Vol. II. Middle American Research Institute, Tulane University, New Orleans. Brinton, Daniel G. 1895 A Primer of Mayan Hieroglyphs. University of Pennsylvania Series in Philology, Literature, and Archaeology Vol. 3, No. 2. University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia. Cook de Leonard, Carmen 1965 El México Antiguo. Sociedad Alemana Mexicanista, Mexico City.

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Codex Tro-Cortesianus 1967 Akademische Druck und Verlagsanstalt, Graz, Austria. Greene, Merle 1963 Homer's use of Color in the Iliad. MS in possession of the author. Greene Robertson, Merle 1975 Stucco Techniques Employed by Ancient Sculptors of the Palenque Piers. In Actas del XLI Congreso Internacional de Americanistas, Vol. 1, pp. 449–472. Mexico City. 1977 Painting Practices and their Change through Time of the Palenque Stucco Sculptors. In Social Process in Maya Prehistory: Studies in Honour of Sir Eric Thompson, edited by Norman Hammond, pp. 297–326. Academic Press, London. 1979 A Sequence for Palenque Painting Techniques. In Maya Archaeology and Ethnohistory, edited by Norman Hammond and Gordon R. Willey, pp. 149–171. University of Texas Press, Austin and London. 1985a Sculpture of Palenque, Vol. II: The Early Buildings of the Palace and the Wall Paintings. Princeton University Press, Princeton. 1985b Sculpture of Palenque, Vol. III: The Late Buildings of the Palace. Princeton University Press, Princeton. Kelley, David H. 1976 Deciphering the Maya Script. University of Texas Press, Austin. Kubler, George 1969 Studies in Classic Maya Iconography. Memoirs Vol. XVIII. Connecticut Academy of Arts and Sciences, New Haven. Lattimore, Richmond 1951 The Iliad of Homer. Translated by Richmond Lattimore. University of Chicago Press, Chicago. Laurie, A. P. 1910 Greek and Roman Methods of Painting: Some Comments on the Statements made by Pliny and Vitruvius about Wall and Panel Painting. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. 1911 The Materials of the Painter's Craft in Europe and Egypt from Earliest Times to the End of the XVIIth Century, with Some Account of their Preparation and Use. J. B. Lippincott, London and Edinburgh. Leon-Portilla, Miguel 1973 Time and Reality in the Thought of the Maya. English translation by Charles L. Boiles and Fernando Horcasitas. Beacon Press, Boston. Mathews, Peter, and Merle Greene Robertson 1985 Notes on the Olvidado, Palenque, Chiapas, Mexico. In Fifth Palenque Round Table, 1983, Vol. VII, edited by Merle Greene Robertson and Virginia M. Fields, pp. 7-17. Pre-Columbian Art Research Institute, San Francisco. Miller, Arthur G. 1972 Maya Influence in Some Teotihuacan Mural Paintings. Paper presented at the symposium Maya Art, Tulane University, New Orleans. Munsell Book of Color 1966 Macbeth Division of Kollmorgen Corporation, Baltimore. Roys, Ralph L. 1933 The Book of Chilam Balam of Chumayel. Publication 438. Carnegie Institution of Washington, Washington, D. C. 1965 Ritual of the Bacabs. University of Oklahoma Press, Norman. Seler, Eduard 1915 Beobachtungen und Studien in den Ruinen von Palenque. Verlag der Königl. Preuss. Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Berlin, Berlin. 1976 Observations and Studies in the Ruins of Palenque. Translated from the German by Gisela Morgner, edited by Thomas Bartman and George Kubler. Robert Louis Stevenson School, Pebble Beach, California. Thompson, J. Eric S. 1950 Maya Hieroglyphic Writing: An Introduction. Publication 589. Carnegie Institution of Washington, Washington, D. C. 1960 Maya Hieroglyphic Writing: An Introduction. University of Oklahoma Press, Norman. Tozzer, Alfred M. 1941 Landa's Relación de las Cosas de Yucatán. Papers of the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology No. 18. Harvard University, Cambridge.

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4 Architectural Transformation in the Late Middle Formative at Cuello, Belize Norman Hammond

Introduction

test excavations in 1976 showed the precinct to be of Late Formative through Classic period date. Surrounding the center is a zone of dispersed settlement covering about 1 sq km. Some 300 m southwest of the center is Platform 34, a broad low elevation about 80 m square and 4 m high, with a small pyramid, Structure 35, rising another 5 m at its western end. Several similar platforms, most now damaged by bulldozer action, are in the vicinity.

The long and well-known stratigraphic and cultural sequence at the Preclassic Maya site of Cuello in northern Belize is based on the excavations of 1975-80 in Platform 34, which yielded architectural construction and occupation deposits beginning in the early Middle Formative, ca 1200 B.C., and terminating in the Early Classic, ca A.D. 300 (Hammond et al. 1979; Hammond 1980a, b; Hammond and Miksicek 1981; Andrews and Hammond 1990).

Test excavations in Platform 34 in 1975 were followed by excavation of 50 sq m to bedrock in 1976, and by further investigations in 1978–1980 during which the area was enlarged to include some 3000 sq m of Late Formative deposits. Within this a “Main Trench” of 300 sq m was dug to a lower level; the southern 200 sq m were excavated either to the buried palaeosol or to bedrock beneath it. The northern 100 sq m, the “North Square,” however, owing to a profusion of burials and buildings in the upper levels (Hammond 1980b), was dug only to the base of the Late Formative deposits in 1980; hence the disparity in area between Figures 4.1 and 4.2. The later Middle Formative levels of the North Square, dug in 1987, are shown in Figures 4.4 to 4.6, 4.8, and 4.9.

For the most part the stratigraphic sequence in Platform 34 consists of superimposed structures, floors, occupation and fill deposits that betoken continuity of use of specific loci. This pattern divides into two periods, however; in the earlier, from ca. 1000 to 400–300 B.C., a set of buildings clustered around a small patio or courtyard (Figure 4.1), whereas in the latter, from 400–300 B.C. to ca. A.D. 300, a broad open platform supported a succession of buildings at its northern end and another on the west (Figure 4.2). The transition between these two long periods of stasis in site-planning was short, violent in its changes, and stratigraphically complex; renewed excavations in 1987 finally clarified the detailed sequence of events. This paper is concerned with those events, occurring around the time of this Middle-to-Late Formative transition, which suggest a fundamental reorganization of both world-view and its architectural expression at Cuello.

The ceramic chronology begins with the Swasey complex, which is followed by the Bladen, both within the Swasey ceramic sphere. The Bladen complex and the coeval Bolay complex at neighboring Colha have links with the Xe sphere of the Pasión, and with the Eb complex at Tikal (Andrews 1990; Kosakowsky and Valdez 1982; Valdez 1987; Kosakowsky, personal communication 1988). These suggest a span of ca. 900–700 B.C. for Bladen, and a date of perhaps 1200–900 B.C. for Swasey (Andrews and Hammond 1990). The sequence continues after 700 B.C. with the late Middle Formative Lopez Mamom and Late Formative Cocos Chicanel complexes, full members of their respective ceramic spheres, with a Mamom–Chicanel transition generally placed at about 400–300 B.C.

Cuello The small Maya site of Cuello lies some 5 km west of Orange Walk Town in northern Belize at 18º 05' N, 88º 35' W, on the crest of the low limestone ridge between the Rio Hondo and the Rio Nuevo at about 20 m above sea level. The site consists of a minor ceremonial precinct of two plazas, each with a pyramid ca. 9 m high and a number of long “range” structures;

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Figure 4.1 Simplified plan of the Central and South Square excavations at Cuello, showing architectural features of stratigraphic phase IVA, stage e, following destruction of the buildings around the courtyard and immediately preceding its infill with rubble ca 400 B.C.

Previous Excavations The 1976–1980 excavation of the Central and South Squares showed that at the end of the late Middle Formative, plaster-surfaced platforms supporting timber superstructures stood on the north, west and south sides of the courtyard (the east being unexcavated), each platform the latest in a long succession of superimposed buildings of gradually increasing size. Associated pottery was of the Lopez Mamom ceramic complex. On both the north and south sides the superimposition was only partial, the courtyard having been enlarged some 2 m in each direction during the later Middle Formative by the demolition of the pre-existing structures and the extension of the courtyard floor over their leveled remains. The building on the north side had been given a masonry-walled superstructure, or at least one with a masonry façade, of limestone cobbles laid in courses and faced with plaster (Structure 315, Building Stage d; Gerhardt 1988; all citations of architecture in this paper refer to Gerhardt's monograph). The stratigraphy and associated late Lopez Mamom pottery date this enlargement of the patio and the structural innovation to ca. 400 B.C. The building on the west side (Structure 317) and that on the south (Structure 316) had timber-framed superstructures, which at the time of destruction had

been set on fire and fallen into the courtyard, where their smoldering timbers had left long scorch marks on the plaster surface. This destruction, in which the façades of the three substructures were ripped off, took place at the end of the Middle Formative, 400–300 B.C. Jade beads were scattered in the demolition scar of Structure 317, and a carefully patterned offering of jade and Spondylus shell beads (F190) set in the courtyard floor on the axis of Structure 316 (Figure 4.1). The front of the step and terrace of Structure 315d were torn away, the stone-walled superstructure demolished to within 0.2 m of its base (although the 1987 excavation suggests that these events may be farther apart in time than was thought in 1976; see below), and two large stones from the terrace set across the doorway as a barrier. The courtyard was then filled in with limestone and chert rubble up to the tops of the substructures, a depth of ca. 0.9 m, and paving of flat limestone slabs was laid over the rubble at its northern edge to maintain access to Structure 315. A shallow hollow was left in the rubble over the center of the buried courtyard, and in it was deposited a mass sacrificial burial of approximately 32 individuals, all except one identified as male and the exception as either an abnormally gracile male or a female (Robin 1989; Saul and Saul 1991:157). Most of the bodies had been

46

butchered, and articulated body parts were piled together. The central skeletons of the burial were accompanied by seven carved bone tubes, five bearing a pop motif indicative of rulership in Classic Maya art (Hammond 1980b:Figure 5) and by an assemblage of pottery vessels transitional in type between the Mamom and succeeding Chicanel spheres. The best ceramic parallels are in the Tzec complex at Tikal and the Puncuy complex from Nohmul, and perhaps in the Mamom complex as originally defined at Uaxactun (Kosakowsky 1987).

Matrix, derived from a compaction of the modified Harris Matrix (Harris 1979) used for stratigraphic description at Cuello since 1975. All contexts judged to be quasi-coeval (for instance the fill, walls, floor and postholes of a structure) are compacted into a numbered group, which is treated as single unit relative to other groups in the stratigraphy. The 1987 Cuello Group Matrix (Figure 4.3) compacts the 212 contexts into 26 units in four construction phases, divided by three episodes of destruction. An account of the stratigraphy is combined with a reconstruction of events to complement those given for the southern part of the Main Trench.

Figure 4.2 Simplified plan of the North, Central and South Square excavations at Cuello, showing architectural features of stratigraphic phase VA following construction of the first version of Platform 34 over the infill of the earlier courtyard and the remains of the buildings surrounding it. The preceding layout is shown in Figure 4.1; the tranformation documented in Figures 4.4-6, 8, and 9 took place between the two stages. The bodies were covered with a further layer of rubble, and the entire courtyard area was then buried by a deposit of brown soil filled with cultural material before a plaster floor was laid over it as the surface of the broad open Platform 34. The excavations up to 1980 documented events around and in the courtyard itself, but did not expose the interiors or hindward portions of the buildings. The 1987 investigation explored the interior and rear of the northern building, Structure 315, and added substantially to our understanding of the sequence of events.

1987 Excavations The 1987 field season was planned to complete excavation of the North Square to the buried palaeosol, including structures and occupation deposits of the Lopez, Bladen and Swasey phases; in the event, the complexity of terminal Lopez activity was such that the layers of the two earliest phases remained to be investigated at the end of the season. To describe the sequence of events I use the concept of the Group

The earliest context uncovered in 1987, underlying (as it turned out) most or all of the construction in the North Square, was Q4058, a hard-trodden brown earth surface with many sherds and other comminuted debris pressed into its surface (Figure 4.4: note that the prefix “Q” used for 1987 contexts is omitted on plans). In the course of the season this surface, which seems to have extended beyond the Phase IVA plaster patio floor as a yard area beside and behind the buildings, was progressively exposed and was left at the end of the 1987 season as the sealing layer for future investigation. Initial use of the surface seems to date to the end of the Bladen or beginning of the Mamom phase, probably in the seventh century B.C. (the Group Matrix [Figure 4.3] shows Q4058 in its final period of exposure at No. 18, but also at earlier times when larger areas of it were exposed at Nos. 15, 11, 7, 3, and 1). Above this and apparently built over Q4058 was the earliest construction exposed in 1987, Str. 315c, with a fragmentary floor Q4192 over a fill retained by two arcuate boulder walls Q4202 stepping down on the north and west sides Figure 4.4: F291). Their curvature suggested an overall length of ca. 5 m and a width over

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Figure 4.3 Group Matrix consolidating the stratigraphic contexts of the 1987 North Square excavation, (Q4000-4211), into 26 groups. Figure 4.1 shows Structure 315 following the destruction of group #12, and Figure 4.2 a stage later than #26, excavated in 1980.

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3 m, but the southern frontal portion of the building had been destroyed by construction of the succeeding stage d. In the rest of the North Square the hard earth surface Q4058 remained exposed. Structure 315d had possessed a south frontage wall of limestone cobbles faced with plaster inside and out (Donaghey et al. 1979: Figures 10–11), notable as an early use of a stone-built superstructure. Unfortunately little more could be learned from the 1987 excavation, because the cutting-back in Phase V removed all trace of any west and north walls (Figure 4.5: F283/288).

The internal floor of this stage (Q4136) was eroded over most of its former area, and survived only in the southeast corner. Cut into its subfloor fill was a nest of four pottery-lined “firepits” cutting each other and clearly sequentially used (Figure 4.5: F284–287). Dumped into one was a mass of fine chert and chalcedony debitage together with a complete triangular chert axe. Two of the pits had both a pottery and a clay lining; one was lined only with pottery (from the bases of large ollas). They suggest a lengthy period of domestic use for the building, as does the condition of floor Q4136. The

Figure 4.4 Structure 315 stage c, exposed at the lowest level excavated in 1987, with floor (Q4197) and retaining walls (Q4202), and pottery-lined pits F289-290. This building is antecedent to the courtyard layout shown in Figure 4.1; its front was cut away during construction of the succeeding stage d shown in Figures 4.1 and 4.5.

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substructure had been slighted by cutting away its north and west sides to a depth of 0.3 - 0.5 m; (the destroyed south front was excavated in 1976 [Donaghey et al. 1979:Figures 12, 18]; the east end remains unexcavated). The surrounding plaster spread at ground level preserved the base of the vertical plaster facing (Figure 4.5: 41330) of the walls, however, showing that the western half of Str. 315 exposed in the North Square was 5.75 m long and 4 m wide, with straight front and rear walls and a slightly convex west side.

on its north, west and south sides. Several large post holes remained, but the precise plan of the superstructure cannot be determined. The hearth (Figure 4.6: 4013-4) within the building suggests some history of occupation, and although it is possible that the entire history of Structure 315e lay within the short period of the Phase V transformation, it is more likely that this stage was in fact coeval in use, and destroyed coevally, with Structures 316 and 317. In that case, the destruction of the stone-walled superstructure of Structure 315d, previously ascribed to the Phase V transformation, would have been

Figure 4.5 The foundations of Structure 315 stage d as excavated with the plaster wall facing (Q4133) cut off at ground level during subsequent destruction, and a small area of the internal floor (Q4136) surviving (matrix group #5, destruction in group #16). Structure 315 in its final form was a timber building on floor Q4005 (Figure 4.6). The floor was cracked and reddened, possibly by burning, and had been cut away

a slightly earlier and separate event, perhaps contemporary with the penultimate modifications to the buildings on the west and south sides of the courtyard.

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The slighting of the substructure must still have occurred when Structure 315e was destroyed, however, for otherwise floor Q4005 would have had no stable margins.

still joined (Figure 4.7), from the flat chest possibly male. A complicated sequence of marls and clays (Figure 4.6: 4048) was piled in behind wall Q4110 and a second coeval sequence (Figure 4.3: Group No. 17), dumped

Figure 4.6 Construction of Platform 34: an intermediate stage during the dumping of the rubble fill Q4063/4077 and marl and soil fills Q4048 south of them (matrix group #17). The final floor (Q4005) of Structure 315 is not yet covered, but fill is banked up against its west and north sides, which have been cut back. The destruction was followed by the construction of Platform 34. On its north side the platform was retained by a wall (Figures 4.6, 4.8: 4110), subsequently almost totally demolished. Among the earliest of the fill deposits, forming a solid mass against the truncated north side of structure 315e, was recycled midden Q4091; a notable find from this was a Middle Formative figurine with the head and body

northward from the gap between Structures 315 and 317. The two sets of fills lay around the north and west sides of Structure 315 respectively. There followed, over the northern portion of Q4048, deposition of a series of massive boulder fills (Figure 4.6: Q4063), much of it freshly quarried material, running the width of the excavated area and including roughly constructed pens into which looser boulder fill was poured.

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The boulder fill completed the initial stage of construction of Platform 34, and must be seen as precisely coeval with the rubble infill over the patio to the south. Above the entire complex of massive fills, dumps of recycled midden containing large quantities of pottery and carbon then created a level surface for the construction of the plaster platform floor Q4001. Cultural material, including debitage, sherds and charcoal, was found throughout the boulder and rubble fill; it may have been integral with it, or might have sifted down through the loose rubble from the dumps above.

speaking they form the initial events of the construction sequence of Phase VA shown otherwise in Figure 9). In this phase the new wall Q4100 was built some 2 m north of Q4110 and the space filled in with dumps of soil, marl and rubble (Figure 4.3: Group 24). In them was found the skeleton of a male of 25–40 years of age (F274), partly disarticulated and with the head much lower than the legs; a complete red-slipped bowl with incised decoration (Figure 4.10b) by the knees indicated deliberate burial, but the sprawled disorder of the bones

The plaster surface of Q4001 extended beyond the east and west sections and reached the south edge of the excavated area in an eroded state (Figure 4.8: Platform 34 is designated as F260/F278 with 4001 as its upper surface). The north side of Q4001 had been chopped away along a straight line with a steeply sloping cut removing the rear wall (Q4110) and about 0.3 m of fill behind it. When re-excavated at the beginning of the 1987 season an area of exposed soil and marl construction fill (Q4073) was found to slope down from this cut line to a low boulder wall (Q4100) running parallel to the edge of the plaster (Figures 4.8, 4.9). In 1980 this wall had been interpreted as the northern boundary of the initial construction of Platform 34 (F260) in Phase V; in 1987 it rapidly became clear that it belonged to a later construction phase in the early Late Formative, almost certainly to the substructure of Structure 312 of Phase VA, hence its isolation in Figure 9. Below these Late Formative contexts were the cut-away rear edge of Q4001 and the remaining basal course of its retaining wall Q4110, which survived across the western 6 m of the excavation together with a plaster surface Q4111 running north from it (Figure 4.8). Cut into the plaster was a grave containing two child burials (Q4121, 4181) in a shallow pit. The eastern body, of a child of 0.5–1.5 years, had been interred first, followed by the other, slightly older at 1.5–2.5 years, whose head had been removed and a small jar inverted over the stump of the neck. The vessel (an early form of Sierra Red: Figure 4.10a) projected above floor level and it seems that the interments occurred just before the fills behind wall Q4100 were deposited, as part of the same sequence that included an adult burial (F274) at a higher and slightly later level. A large lens of gray ash Q4117, lying on the surface of the floor just north of the grave, seems also immediately to antedate deposition of the fills and to form part of the same set of activities. (They are shown in Figure 8 for clarity, although strictly

Figure 4.7 Figurine fragment from a recycled midden (Q4091) used as fill. The flat chest with nipples marked suggests that a male is shown; the figure wears circular ear flares and a head band. Height 8.8 cm. suggests that the body was dumped on the sloping surface of the fill, and that it was either already decayed enough to fall apart, or was dismembered by the impact and movement of the fills deposited on top of it. Wall 4100 was founded on a layer of daub from a demolished pole-walled building, perhaps the one that had stood on floor Q4001. North of the wall a layer of brown soil Q4119/Q4192 was built up that contained Cocos Chicanel pottery (Figure 4.9). Two complete, newly struck and unused obsidian blades close to the base of the wall may have been intentionally deposited. Three calibrated radiocarbon dates of 410–275 B.C., 405–270 B.C. and 405–205 B.C. (Table 1: laboratory numbers Q-3199, 3200, 3211) suggest a date for this construction episode in the fourth century B.C.,which agrees with the conventionally accepted age of early Chicanel sphere ceramics.

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Figure 4.8 Initial construction, Platform 34 north end, surfaced by plaster floor Q4001 and retained by wall Q4110 (matrix groups #19-20). The child burial F276-7 cut into the exterior plaster surface Q4111 was interred immediately preceding the addition in Figure 4.9. The void south of center is a later chultun shaft (F246) cut from a higher level.

Ceramic Sequence Pottery recovered in the 1987 excavations falls into two groups: burial vessels in coeval contexts, and sherds from construction fill, including recycled middens. The former has only two pots, associated with the extension northward of Platform 34 in construction Phase VA (Figures 4.9, 4.10); the earlier, in stratigraphic terms (Figure 4.3, Group No. 22: 4144) is from the double child-burial F276-7 and is a small red-slipped jar of transitional Mamom–Chicanel (Joventud/Sierra Red) character (Figure 4.10a); the later (Figure 4.3, Group No. 24: 4093), a bowl with

incised decoration (Figure 4.10b), accompanied the adult burial F274 which lay behind wall Q4100. One vessel which, judging by its completeness, may have been deliberately deposited on the surface of Q4058 just before the dumping of the massive fill is a bowl of Guitara Incised type within the Joventud Red ceramic group, dating to the end of Lopez Mamom (Figure 4.11a). These vessels place the architectural transformation firmly at the very end of the late Middle Formative, in the transition to the Late Formative, and corroborate the date assigned in 1980 on the basis of vessels accompanying the mass burial in the rubble over

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Figure 4.9 Northward extension of Platform 34 with the addition of fill Q4073 and wall Q4100 (matrix group #24) to create the foundation for the early Chicanel layout seen in Figure 4.2. the buried courtyard center (Hammond 1980b; Kosakowsky 1987:Figure 6.29). Analysis of the sherds showed, as might be expected, a mixture of types from different ceramic complexes; what is striking is that all contexts from Q4003 (the recycled midden under floor Q4001) downward (Figure 4.3, Groups Nos. 1–17) contain no pottery later than Lopez Mamom. What may be early Cocos Chicanel pottery appears in small quantities in group No. 19, and definite Chicanel material is the dominant complex in groups Nos. 24–25. Earlier material was found mixed in most contexts, including a few Swasey sherds, and Bladen Xe pottery mixed with Mamom in almost all layers. The bulk of the pottery is of the Joventud, Muxanal, and Chicago Groups (Figure

4.11a–c), as in the Mamom deposits excavated in previous seasons (Kosakowsky 1987:41–53). This indication that fairly fresh late Lopez Mamom trash was being used for the fill is borne out by the clustering of the radiocarbon dates.

Radiocarbon Dates Eight samples of carbon were assayed by the Radiocarbon Dating Research Laboratory at Cambridge University (Table 1). Six were of small charcoal fragments collected from the recycled middens used as fill; hence none of them was expected to date the construction process itself, but it was hoped that the chronological spread of the middens might be estimated,

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present (b.p.), b.c., and calibrated in calendar years B.C. are in descending stratigraphic order.

Table 1: 1987 Radiocarbon Dates from Cuello Context/gp # age bp

Figure 4.10 a: incised red-slipped bowl (Unnamed Sierra Group incised: variety unspecified) accompanying Burial F274; diameter 17 cm. b: red-slipped jar of Sierra Red: Sierra variety that accompanied the western child burial F277. bearing in mind that their ceramic content was overwhelmingly Mamom. The two latest were from midden accumulation against the Phase VA north wall (Q4100) of Platform 34. The eight radiocarbon ages fall very close together; the radiocarbon ages before

Figure 4.11 Mamom pottery from the fills that buried Structure 315 and underlying Platform 34: a: Guitara Incised: Grooved-incised variety; b: Muxanal Red-on-cream: San Lazaro variety; c: Chicago Orange: Warrie Camp variety. Diameter of a 30 cm.

age bc date B.C.

lab #

Q4119/25

2260±45 310±45 405–270

Q-3200

Q4092/25

2250±50 300±50

405–205

Q-3211

Q4073/24

2280±55 330±55

410–275

Q-3199

Q4002/19

2265±36 315±36

405–280 Q-3208*

Q4063/17

2275±50 325±50

405–275

Q-3197

Q4059/17

2230±55 280±55

400–200

Q-3210

Q4104/17

2235±50 285±50

400–210

Q-3209

Q4070/13 2255±55 305±55 405–255 *mean of two runs on a split sample

Q-3198

The spread of the calibrated dates is from just before 400 B.C. to 200 B.C., but with the tendency toward the earlier end of that range, in the fourth century B.C., emphasized by the four dates with the smallest range. The dates suggest that the entire process of transformation should probably be placed ca 400 and 300 B.C., within the conventionally accepted period of the Mamom-Chicanel transition, and that the middens recycled for fill in this process were themselves fresh, perhaps coeval, deposits. Five other radiocarbon dates, run on samples from the 1976–1979 seasons (Table 2), are relevant. The first comes from the rubble infill on the courtyard, the second from the organic soil component of the banded soil/marl fills between Structures 315 and 317, the third from the recycled midden layer over the rubble and fill and underlying the plaster surface of Platform 34, the fourth from an occupation buildup against a north-facing wall which can now be seen to be the continuation eastward of either (Q4110) or Q4100), and the last from a posthole in Structure 354 within the pyramid. Four of the dates fit the pattern of 1987 dates closely; the one that does not, Q-1901, is also the sample most likely to be from an old rather than quasi-coeval recycled deposit.

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Table 2: Radiocarbon Dates from Phase V Context #

age bp

age bc

date B.C.

lab #

35/30 (99+111) 2375±150 425±150

790–370

Q-1901

35/30(69) 2140±150 190±150

390–AD20 Q-1904

45/50(454) 2305±45 355±45

399–378

25/20(766) 2180±70

375–159, LJ (La 139–123 J o l l a ) 4916

230±70

Q-1915

Discussion The constructions excavated in 1987 lie almost wholly within Mamom and the transition to Chicanel, roughly 700–400 B.C. They document an aspect of the transformation of the Middle Formative courtyard into the Late Formative Platform 34 not seen in the earlier excavations of 1976–80 — the treatment of the lateral and rear portions of the buildings around the courtyard. The ripping away of the courtyard frontages can now be seen to have been accompanied by similar removal of the other sides of the substructures. No evidence for the function of the buildings survived their partial demolition; the absence of burials within them is worth noting, but not necessarily significant. The rubble infill of the courtyard was extended northward by the masses of marl, clay, and boulders that were dumped west and north of Structure 315, and the soil layer overlying the rubble can be interpreted as a leveling and cushioning layer for the subsequent construction of the first continuous floor over Platform 34. The broad plaster surface Q4001 was the earliest of a succession of floors spanning the whole width of the North Square, and represented the initial transformation of Platform 34 into an elevated open space. It can probably be equated with floor (76/29) in grid 35/35 to the south, which covered the top of the rubble infill of the Phase IVA patio, although the eroded state of the floor prevented stratigraphic certainty. The overall succession of events remains close to that elucidated in 1980, and a number of distinct episodes

of offering and sacrifice can be defined during the process of transformation, quite apart from the partial demolition of the buildings themselves, which would seem to have been ceremonious rather than purely practical. The first set of apparently concerted actions was the ripping away of the façades of Structures 315–317 and the side and rear of at least Str. 315, the demolition (?Str. 315d) or firing of their superstructures, the scattering of jade and shell beads in the demolition scar of the front step of structure 317, and the placing of the jade/shell bead offering [F190] in the patio floor in front of Str. 316. There followed the infilling of the courtyard and the side and rear of Str. 315 (and, logically, of the other buildings), with masses of rubble, marl and earth, including both quarried rock and recycled midden deposits. These fills were held by retaining walls, of which Q4110 excavated in 1987 is the best-documented section. In the top of the fill over the center of the buried courtyard was deposited the mass burial of some 32 individuals; all, or perhaps only the two central complete interments with their abundance of pottery vessels and carved bones, may have been members of the Cuello community. In the latter case, the identification of at least 31 of the individuals as males, and most as young to middle adult in age, would suggest the capture of warriors from another community, either fortuitously in battle or specifically for this sacrifice. Further study of the dentition of the individuals, and comparison with the other human remains from Cuello, may allow resolution of this point. The rubble was then covered by a layer of recycled midden, in which further sacrifical and decapitated burials were deposited, one with tied wrists and accompanied by the teeth of a third individual. An infant was buried at the base of the north retaining wall, and the fills and walls were finally surfaced with plaster to create the open raised plaza of Platform 34. A precursor of the pyramid (probably Structure 354) stood on its western margin, but no buildings lined the north side of the plaza at this point. The 1987 excavations documented the first expansion of Platform 34 to the north, with the construction of wall (Q4100) and its retained fills, associated with the double burial of two young children, one decapitated, and an adult male. It was after this Phase VA enlargement that the first of the long succession of structures standing on the north side of the plaza was built, and Platform 34 attained the plan that it was to retain for several centuries.

Conclusions The evidence from excavation of the interior and rear of buildings on the north side of the Middle Formative courtyard buried below Platform 34 at Cuello complements that obtained in 1976–1980 from the

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frontal areas of the structures on the north, west and south sides. The process of careful partial demolition prior to burial of both the courtyard and its surrounding buildings can be seen to be an integral part of the program of transformation of the closed courtyard group into the broad open elevation of Platform 34. This program was both practical, in achieving a desired architectural change accompanied by structural stability, and ritually sanctioned by the offering of jades at the beginning of the transformation, before and during the demolition phase, and human sacrifices during the succeeding phase of infill and platform construction. The use of Mamom phase middens, containing earlier sherds also, as fill is documented by ceramic analysis and confirmed by the vessels accompanying burials late in the sequence; the close spacing of radiocarbon dates confirms a rapid construction program. Although the manner of the transformation and its architectural purpose — the creation of a broad open platform with an apparently ritual structure at one end — are clear, the underlying motives are not. Speculation is, however, possible and permissible. A striking characteristic of the Phase IV–IVA (Lopez–Mamom) utilization of the courtyard is that the construction of firepits in its surface, common in Phases II–IIIA (Swasey–Bladen), virtually ceased, and those firepits that were used lay on the margins of the patio floor beside ancillary structures (Gerhardt 1988). At the same time, the burial of a mature/old male, perhaps a venerated lineage head, in the center of the patio floor took place (Robin 1989:Burial 22), and shortly afterwards dedicatory burial of a young adult male (Burial 4) was placed under the stair leading up to Structure 315d, the first building with freestanding stone walls built at Cuello. This increase in formal, and decrease in domestic, activity may indicate a shift from purely residential function ascribed to the Swasey and Bladen phase courtyard group by Gerhardt to one including community ritual structures and acts. If this is the case, then the shift from an inward-looking ceremonial space with restricted access and participation, perhaps confined to the resident lineage, to a raised, highly visible and publicly accessible ceremonial precinct might well have accompanied a shift in social structure at Cuello.

Platform 34 to a new locus), can be seen as the architectural reflection of a more centralized society.

Acknowledgments. Excavations at Cuello in 1976 and 1978 were supervised by Sara Donaghey, in 1979 by Donaghey and Juliette Cartwright (now Gerhardt), and in 1980 by Cartwright, Mark Horton and Michael Davenport. In 1987 the supervisors were Amanda Clarke and Deborah Muyskens. Duncan Pring was ceramics analyst in 1976, Laura J. Kosakowsky from 1978 onwards. Excavations were carried out by Rutgers University, University of Cambridge, University of Arizona and other students, Belizean workers and volunteers, and directed by the author. The site plans in Figures 4.1 and 4.2 were drawn by Juliette Gerhardt, and in Figures 4.4–4.6 and 4.8 and 4.9 by Amanda Clarke and Sheena Howarth; Figure 4.3 is by Amanda Clarke, Figure 4.7 by Sheena Howarth, and Figures 4.10 and 4.11 by Justine Hopkins. Radiocarbon dates were run at Cambridge University by Roy Switsur and Alan Ward, at UCLA by Rainer Berger and Suzanne de Atley, and at La Jolla by Hans Suess and Timothy Linick (Linick 1984). One of my favorite aerial photographs of Cuello, and one that introduces every lecture I have given on the work there since 1979, was taken on a stomach-lifting low-level run across the site in El Quetzal; every time I show it, I remember Hal Ball. Grácias y adios, amigo. The research was carried out under a permit from the Government of Belize through the Department of Archaeology, where we received every assistance and courtesy from successive Archaeological Commissioners, Ms (now Dr.) Elizabeth Graham and the late Mr. Harriot W. Topsey, and their staff. Local help and hospitality were given by Cuello Brothers, owners of the site, and by Belize Sugar Industries Ltd, and logistical assistance by the British Forces in Belize. The project was funded principally by grants (1856, 1967, 2077, 2156 and 3504) from the National Geographic Society's Committee for Research and Exploration; we acknowledge with gratitude the Society's continued support of work at Cuello and especially the help of Dr. Edwin W. Snider, Dr. George Stuart, and Mrs. Mary Griswold Smith. The other principal sources of funding were grants from the Research Council of Rutgers University and the Trustees of the British Museum; we also received support from the Crowther-Beynon Fund at Cambridge University and the Research Fund of the Society of Antiquaries of London.

The pop motif on the carved bone tubes (?fan-handles) from the mass burial over the buried courtyard center suggests that the power of the ruler not merely existed, but had achieved iconographic definition and display, by the fourth century B.C. The creation of Platform 34 in Phase V, the only major change of design in the core of the Cuello community over a period of some 1200 years (followed in Phase XIV by the even more dramatic shift of the ceremonial precinct from

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REFERENCES CITED

Andrews, E. Wyllys, V 1990 The Early Ceramic History of the Lowland Maya. In Vision and Revision in Maya Studies, edited by Flora Clancy and Peter D. Harrison, pp. 1–19. University of New Mexico Press, Albuquerque. Andrews, E. Wyllys, V, and Norman Hammond 1990 Redefinition of the Swasey Phase at Cuello, Belize. American Antiquity 55:570–584. Donaghey, Sara, Juliette Cartwright, H. Soraya Carr, Carl P. Beetz, Peter Messick, J. Ward, and Norman Hammond 1979 Excavations in Platform 34, Cuello, May-June 1978. In National Geographic Society– British Museum– Rutgers University Cuello Project 1978 Interim Report, edited by Norman Hammond, pp. 20–44. Rutgers University Archaeological Research Program, New Brunswick, New Jersey. Donaghey, Sara, Duncan Pring, Richard Wilk, Frank P. Saul, Lawrence H. Feldman, and Norman Hammond 1976 Excavations at Cuello, 1976. In Archaeology in Northern Belize: Cambridge University Cuello Project 1976 Interim Report, edited by Norman Hammond, pp. 6–59. University of Cambridge Centre of Latin American Studies, Cambridge. Gerhardt, Juliette C. 1988 Preclassic Architecture at Cuello, Belize. BAR International Series 494. BAR, Oxford. Hammond, Norman 1980a Cuello, 1979: A Summary of the Season. Belizean Studies 8(3):33–44. 1980b Early Maya Ceremonial at Cuello, Belize. Antiquity 54:176–190. Hammond, Norman, and Charles H. Miksicek 1981 Ecology and Economy of a Formative Maya Site at Cuello, Belize. Journal of Field Archaeology 8:259– 269. Hammond, Norman, Duncan Pring, Richard Wilk, Sara Donaghey, Frank P. Saul, Elizabeth S. Wing, Arthur V. Miller, and Lawrence H. Feldman 1979 The Earliest Lowland Maya? Definition of the Swasey Phase. American Antiquity 44:92–110. Harris, Edward R. 1979 Principles of Archaeological Stratigraphy. Academic Press, London and New York. Kosakowsky, Laura J. 1987 Preclassic Maya Pottery at Cuello, Belize. Anthropological Papers 47. University of Arizona, Tucson. Kosakowsky, Laura J., and Fred Valdez, Jr. 1982 Rethinking the Northern Belize Formative Ceramic Chronology. Paper presented at the 47th Annual Meeting of the Society for American Archaeology, Minneapolis. Linick, Timothy W. 1984 La Jolla Natural Radiocarbon Measurements X. Radiocarbon 26:75–110. Robin, Cynthia 1989 Preclassic Maya Burials at Cuello, Belize. BAR International Series 480. BAR, Oxford. Saul, Frank P., and Julie Mather Saul 1991 The Preclassic Population of Cuello. In Cuello: An Early Maya Community in Belize, edited by Norman Hammond, pp. 134–158. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. Valdez, Fred, Jr. 1987 The Prehistoric Ceramics of Colha, Northern Belize. Ph.D. dissertation, Harvard University. University Microfilms, Ann Arbor.

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5 Patterns of Cache Composition and Placement at Lamanai, Belize David M. Pendergast

probably span almost the entire period of the site's history, from ca 1500 B.C. to after A.D. 1640.

Introduction The results of the excavations at Lamanai, in the Orange Walk District of Belize (Figure 5.1), from 1974 through 1986 provide an opportunity to view a very wide range of processes and practices in the

Presentation of a very considerable series of complex architectural sequences will obviously be essential to the full assessment of Lamanai's caches in the intrasite context. Nevertheless, the quantity and variety of offerings join with the site's very long occupation span to argue for synthetic treatment of continuities and changes in offertory practice in advance of complete presentation of the architectural data. It is therefore true that except for the rare instances in which the basis for temporal placement of a cache is inherent in the contents themselves, dating based on stratigraphic interrelationships will have to be taken on faith by the reader. As is true at all Maya sites, Lamanai's caches fall into into three categories that are defined by context. The preponderant portion of the caches occurred in communally built structures that were, like the caches themselves, focused on public use and on the maintenance of connections with the realm of deities. The second group occurred in residential contexts, where offerings presumably had the same function but were usually if not always of a private rather than a public nature. The final category comprises monument-related offerings that, owing in part to their comparatively small number and in part to their context, had functions that are somewhat more difficult to assess than in the other two groups.

Figure 5.1 Map of Belize, showing the location of Lamanai.

The categories would serve as the principal framework for comparison and contrast on a synchronic level, but because we did not recover data on the second and third groups from all periods the presentation that follows is organized on a chronological rather than a category basis. This summary of Lamanai's caches utilizes selected examples to illustrate offering form and contents over time, and does not pretend to provide a full exposition of cache contents. The focus

perspective of more than three millennia of occupation (Pendergast 1981a, 1986a, b, 1990b, 1991). Among the practices, particular interest attaches to cache deposition because of the evidence cache contents appear to provide regarding conservatism and innovation in both material and non-material culture over time. This type of information yield is enhanced at Lamanai by the fact that we have data that very

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is on the significance of caches in the broad sweep of the community's history, rather than on the meaning of specific offerings in their individual contexts.

caches give us glimpses of Lamanai as one of the vital elements in the socioeconomic structure of lowland Maya life.

As is true of many other classes of evidence, the caches reflect the site's position within the mainstream of southern lowlands prehistory at the same time that they document qualities that set the community apart from all others examined thus far in the southern lowlands. Intersite comparisons and contrasts do not form part of this discussion, because through the end of the Classic they are generally so extensive as to require full treatment in final excavation reporting, whereas for the later periods they are most often either exceedingly thin or nonexistent. I have therefore restricted

The Preclassic The earliest evidence of what can surely be identified as offering activity at Lamanai encompasses neither artifacts nor a context that is fully understandable. The data are nevertheless significant because of their implications regarding both the site's occupation span and the use of a major topographic feature that may well have played a critical role in the early life of the community. The feature, which we have denominated The Harbour (see Figure 5.2), cannot now be shown to have been connected to the main body of New River Lagoon, but the fact that it contains water in the rainy season, and exhibits clear indications of silting-in of much of the entrance portion, has suggested the possibility of ancient use as a harbor or related facility. Coring of sediments in the entrance area has revealed evidence that certainly buttresses identification of the feature as having held a special place in the site’s history, and suggests a kind of offering activity that is highly unlikely to have occurred on dry land.

The core contained corn pollen in a concentration several orders of magnitude greater than normal for the site (Richard Hebda, Figure 5.2 Lamanai site plan; survey by H. Stanley Loten and crew. personal communication 1981), with absolutely coverage to a consideration of internal dynamics at no indication of architectural or other cultural Lamanai rather than an exploration of the community's association. The presence of such a high pollen count role in the southern lowlands over its 3200 years or is surely evidence of non-standard activity, and more of occupation. Despite the restriction, however, offering of whole young corn plants tossed into the the patterns that emerge from examination of the waters of the harbor seems the most likely explanation.

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The possibility that coring could have struck a land locus at which such an offering took place is extremely min-imal, especially in the absence of an architectural con-text for the event. Offering of corn from a boat or other watercraft is therefore very probably indicated.

primary-axis placement, as opposed to transverse-axis or architectural feature-related placement, that remained the most common approach to offering deposition at Lamanai through at least Early Postclassic times.

The radiocarbon date from wood stratigraphically associated with the pollen has a mean of 1500 B.C. (Richard Hebda, personal communication 1982). The date is the earliest from the site, and on its face it indicates occupation of Lamanai during the Early Preclassic. In the circumstances there is, however, unavoidable uncertainty regarding the origin of the wood, including the possibility of a total lack of culturally significant association between the sample and the pollen. This means that the date does not necessarily fix the time of deposition of the corn pollen or provide solid evidence of human presence at Lamanai in the mid-second millennium B.C. Apart from this somewhat equivocal evidence, we have no data on Early Preclassic offertory practice at Lamanai. Use of the site during this period is, regrettably, documented only by random sherds from later contexts.

Cache P8-9/1 consisted of a blackware vessel with form and surface treatment characteristics unknown elsewhere in the Lamanai ceramic collection (Figure 5.3), within which was an inverted small outcurving-side dish. At the east side of the dish lay two marine shells, and a single obsidian core rested south of the dish. Although the vessels are not characteristic of Lamanai's Preclassic assemblage, the use of pottery in caches was almost universal in this period of the site's occupation, and was to remain so throughout the site's history. The context of the cache was also typical of Lamanai; the container vessel simply sat in core, without surrounding cribbing or other protection. Farther south, and perhaps slightly later, builders of a very large platform (Structure P8-12) that was very probably related to the harbor inserted caches in several modifications of the structure. Similar practice probably also marked the primary structure, but we were unable to penetrate the building deeply enough to recover data on this point. Three caches primary to construction were encountered in P8-12; all included vessels. The earliest of the three, Cache 5, included a badly smashed and only partly reconstructable redware bottle, a barrel-shape jade bead, one lamina of crystalline hematite and a tiny fleck of jade. Possibly very shortly after deposition of Cache 5 came Cache 3, which consisted of two upright nested dishes, the upper one filled with a pile of small burnt stones (Figure 5.4). The latest in the series, deposited long before the final construction activity in P8-12, was Cache 2, a single blackware dish set upright in core. The remaining two caches from the structure were deposited after abandonment, and neither offers any solid clues to the time of deposition. Besides the persistence of vessel caches, P8-12 provides an example of another common phenomenon at Lamanai from Preclassic through Terminal Classic times: the empty pit, often on or very near the primary axis, with every indication that use as a cache container was either contemplated or actually carried out. Such pits, which we came to know as "Lamanai Holes,” were maddeningly common. The frequency of their occurrence suggests that they were not incorrectly placed offering pits for which correction was subsequently made, a phenomenon possibly in evidence at Altun Ha (Pendergast 1990a:252). Many in fact occur without associated caches nearby. It is therefore very likely that the pits contained offerings

Figure 5.3 Blackware vessel of Cache P8-9/1. Height 17.8 cm. It is not until the Late Preclassic, probably 400 B.C. or later, that we begin to see offerings in architectural context, but unfortunately the structures are uniformly communal and ceremonial in nature. In the northern suburb of the site, ca 300 m north of the boundary of the Central Precinct, lie several buildings in the five to seven meter height range, of which we have excavated only one (Structure P8-9/1). From core of the structure we recovered a cache that exemplifies the pattern of

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Figure 5.4 Cache P8-12/3. Diameter of lower dish 35.8 cm. that were composed entirely of perishable artifacts or unmodified materials. In some cases such pits have a thin stratum of organic decay product at their bases, but not even this element is universal. Occasionally, as in P8-12, the pit is heavily burnt, and hence one can envision offering practice that involved combustion of perishables. It is obvious, however, that the amount of guesswork involved in assessment of the pits is greatly in excess of the data the features contain.

a single primary-axis offering that seems of minor significance when set against the massive scale of the structure. The offering consisted of a lone flaring-side redware dish (Figure 5.5) that contained the skeleton of a juvenile bird from which the beak and frontal portion of the skull appear to have been removed. The most likely explanation for this type of mutilation is that the missing portions remained with the skin when it was removed intact, probably for longer-term ceremonial use. The vessel, which was placed upright in core of the lowest stair, also contained portions of the skeleton of a second bird, and possibly minimal remains of one or more additional birds. Although the contents were presumably of considerable ceremonial import, the deposition of the dish seems a minuscule dedicatory event for a building that set in motion such radical change in the area. If the years following this dedication effort saw some sort of topping-off ritual, our excavations failed to reveal it, and so the dish and its contents appear to have stood alone in marking N10-43's rise. The first two major modifications to the primary structure of N10-43 seem to have gone unaccompanied by cache deposition or other dedicatory activity. It was not until the beginning of the third reconfiguration of the structure, which resulted in a new stair and significant changes in the main lower landing area, that the work was dedicated in proper fashion with an offering placed in a pit cut into the plaza floor at the base of the original stair.

Structure N10-43 provides examples of Preclassic offerings in a major Central Precinct structure; the size and nature of N10-43 indicate, in fact, that the building was one of the principal foci of Late Preclassic ceremonial activity at Lamanai (see Pendergast 1981a:41, Figure 12). Here one might expect the summit of Lamanai's Preclassic offering practice, albeit in the recognition of the fact that at this site not Figure 5.5 Redware dish of Cache N10-43/5. Diameter 47.4 even major-temple status guaranteed that a cm. building would be graced by offerings. Witness the near-contemporaneous structure in the N9-56 Although situated on the primary axis and hence sequence: although it was obviously an undertaking of unquestionably a dedicatory effort in advance of the very considerable significance, and was embellished new construction, the cache scarcely raised the level with highly important stair-side outset masks, it represented by its earlier counterpart. In the pit lay boasted no offerings, insofar as our extensive two pairs of redware dishes, one pair conformal and excavations along the primary axis and deeply into the other of distinctly dissimilar shapes, with the upper core of the platform showed. Luckily N10-43 fared vessel of each pair inverted over the lower. Only the somewhat better in the offering lists, though even this dissimilar pair bore contents, in the form of a single imposing 30 metre-high structure can scarcely be said tubular jade bead. This cache is the earliest to have been overly endowed with caches. documented occurrence of paired vessels as cache elements or containers at Lamanai. The earliest effort in the N10-43 series, which initiated large-scale ceremonial construction on a spot that had previously seen only residential use, was graced with

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A later offering in the same modification of N10-43 was a very considerable departure from its predecessors both in form and in contents, though its quality and size still seem less than commensurate with the obvious importance of the structure in both

temples at Lamanai are limited in the extreme. From Structure P8-14, a small residential platform in the northern part of the site center near the apparent harbor, comes a single offering of two dishes that very closely resemble those from the second cache in N10-43, and are presumably of roughly equivalent date. Apart from P8-14 and P8-9, no other Preclassic structures in the northern suburbs of the site yielded caches. Elsewhere we encountered only remnants of Preclassic construction, engulfed by platforms of far later date and devoid of architectural features as well as offerings.

Figure 5.7 Contents of Cache N10-43/6. Height of jade bib-helmet pendant 4.7 cm.

Figure 5.6 Blackware container vessel and lid, Cache N10-43/6. Height of container 20.2 cm. religious practice and community planning. In what had been a landing at the top of the lowest stair the builders deposited an unusual lidded black cylinder (Figure 5.6) that housed two small figurines, one of Spondylus shell and the other of jade (Figure 5.7; see also Gallenkamp and Johnson 1985:102). The shell figurine is related, in the treatment of mouth and eyes as well as in the depiction of the legs, to Olmec-style infant representations, whereas the jade specimen is a bib-and-helmet figure related to others found in northern Belize, though with an unusually large pierced bib. The cache appears to have been deposited between about 100 B.C. and A.D. 100, with weak stratigraphic arguments for a date in the latter half of the two-century period. The elements of Olmec style may therefore indicate heirloom status for the shell figurine, or may document persistence of parts of the Olmec esthetic in the Lamanai artistic tradition until near the end of the Preclassic.

Although the evidence that bears on Preclassic offertory practice is sharply limited, it shows quite clearly that the focus in the early centuries of Lamanai's occupation was on pottery vessels as the principal, and often the only, element in caches. With the exception of the single jade bead and the jade bib-and-helmet figurine from N10-43, no material imported from any great distance seems to have played a part in cache assemblages. One could deduce from the evidence that Lamanai's trade connections were less than extensive in the Preclassic, but the shaky foundation for such a deduction is readily apparent. It is equally likely that the seemingly parsimonious approach adopted for Preclassic offerings was simply a matter of preference, and in fact much of the later record seems to bear out this interpretation of the earliest cache data.

The Early Classic We have no information on offerings during the Protoclassic, but the opening years of the Classic brought with them a considerable amount of building renewal and probably some building starts, with accompanying offertory activity in some cases. As in earlier times and indeed throughout Lamanai's history, there was clearly no hard and fast requirement that offerings be placed along the primary axis of new construction, or in any other context. A building renewal might contain an offering although its predecessor had none, and the presence of such an

Data on Preclassic offertory practice outside the main

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offering did not dictate similar deposition in succeeding modifications. In contrast with Altun Ha, Lamanai's builders disregarded far more than half of the opportunities for cache placement, and only rarely did they create offerings as lavish as those deposited by their coastal neighbours.

surface qualities in the sherd collection supports identification of the bowls as specialized cache vessels. Because there are some differences in shape among the nine vessel pairs recovered, the sample appears at first to embody some potential for chronological separation on this basis. However, the largest group of contemporaneous twin-vessel caches, five from the stair of Structure N9-53, includes four different body profiles. Since some of the caches share members of paired jade objects, the conceptual links among all five must have been strong. Hence it is reasonable to attribute variation in vessel profile to potters' idiosyncracies rather than to subtle differences in shape significance. This circumstance shows that even when

Lamanai's Classic offerings resembled those of Altun Ha in one respect: the overall makeup of their constituent elements conformed to no pattern whatsoever, except during a brief period in the middle Classic and then probably only in two neighbouring structures. The absence of patterning in cache contents, combined with the seemingly erratic distribution of offerings, leads all too easily to the asessment of cache characteristics as a reflection of the relative importance of various construction efforts: a building modification with a cache must have been more important than one without, and a large offering must have reflected greater importance than a small one. In fact we have no knowledge of the rationale that determined cache size, or of the basis for choice of one piece of construction as an offering site and rejection of another. The variety in both of these characteristics is so great that it might as easily be laid to caprice as to conscious decision in Lamanai ritual practice. Early Classic caches have the singular defect of lacking, in most cases, a secure basis for dating within the two centuries or more of the period. The problem here lies largely in the failure of Lamanai's inhabitants to include pottery vessels among offering contents. Unhappily, the basic archaeological concept of ceramic phase markers seems to have been of little consequence in the lagoon-side city's religious life. When vessels did form part of an offering they consisted of paired unslipped large round-side bowls that served as container and lid (Figure 5.8) and were unquestionably made specifically for cache use.

Figure 5.8 Lid and base vessels of Cache N9-53/4. Diameter of base vessel 25.2 cm.

In most instances the vessels are roughly finished, with no smoothing of the irregular sharp lip margins produced by cutting of the clay or flattening with a non-flexible spatulate implement. The effects of “wiring off” at the base likewise generally remain clearly visible, with the result that most of the bowls would not only have scraped any surface on which they were set, but also have teetered rather precariously on bases too small and rough to provide adequate support. Finger impressions and marks of scraping tools are moderately common on vessel walls, and most of the bowls are so porous as to suggest widespread minor air entrapment, inclusion of small organics, insufficient manipulation of the clay throughout production, or a combination of all three. Every aspect of surface treatment bespeaks hasty production for one-time use, and the absence of congruent forms with similar

some degree of uniformity is discernible in Lamanai caches, it embraces part of the variety encountered in the remainder of the site's offertory material. Cache contents in all twin-vessel offerings consist of small jade or jade and shell mosaics, none reconstructable, usually accompanied by individual jade and shell objects, often in the ear-ornament category. One of the caches, in Str. P9-2, included fern spores (R. Hebda, personal communication, l982), and the presence of apparent organic decay product in the bottoms of all container vessels suggests that ferns, flowers, and other decorative botanical materials may have formed part of this group of offerings. Unfortunately, none of the artifact assemblages

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contains objects that can be assigned a restricted date; the organic decomposition products in some caches may provide samples for radiocarbon dating, but the possibilities in this area are limited. Hence dating rests almost entirely on relationships to architectural sequences, which in very few if any cases allow precise placement of the offertory activity in time.

nonetheless, that although as the Early Classic drew to a close there was some measure of shift in emphasis regarding vessels as cache components, the predominant Classic Lamanai perception of offerings remained one that included ceramics as an essential ingredient.

As the Early Classic was drawing to a close, a major new temple building, Structure N10-9, was begun as part of the development of the south end of the site center (Pendergast 1981a:35–36). The new temple faced northward across a plaza to the Plaza N10/3 Group, a partly contemporaneous pair of joined courtyards bordered by residences and what appear to have been structures that combined private and public functions. Taken together, the two units of construction represented a very considerable areal expansion of the ceremonial precinct. In the temple and several of the residential structures offerings were placed in the middle or later stages of the construction; in common with efforts of preceding centuries, the buildings seem not to have begun with any equivalent of cornerstone-laying, unless this sort of ritual occurred well back in the area occupied by the construction, or was of such a nature as to leave no physical traces.

The Late Classic With the arrival of the Late Classic came what appears to have been a significant leap forward in the opulence of offerings. The seeming augmentation of quantity and quality that took place about A.D. 600 was accompanied by a very considerable change in all but one of the basic characteristics of large-structure offerings. Retained from earlier times was the nearly ubiquitous use of paired vessels, now generally translated into a combination of a deep bowl as the container with a second dish-shaped vessel, probably not originally designed as a mate to the bowl, as its lid. A major cache of this class occurred in Structure N109, where a vessel pair housed dedicatory material for a transformation of the upper central stair through addition of a Lamanai-type chambered building. In

In the temple, the pattern of multiple offerings that marked Structure N9-53 was repeated, but in a form that differed almost entirely from that of the more northerly occurrence. Worshippers placed in the core of the upper part of the stair two separate mosaic objects, one of which, a large mask, survives nearly intact (Pendergast 1981a:Figure 6). Unfortunately the other object, which was of lesser total volume and does not appear to have been a mask, consists largely of patternless fragments. The mosaics can be seen as reminiscent of the much smaller objects that formed part of the N9-53 and other offerings, but this is surely true only in the broad sense of technique. The only other human or deity faces in mosaic at Lamanai, from Tomb N9-56/1, were of ear-ornament size and Figure 5.9 Cache N10-9/8 (LA-240), probably 9th century; lid black on probably essentially two-dimensional. red dish with animal at center, smashed atop black on red bowl The N10-9 mosaic offerings are unusual containing shells, coral, jade,crystalline hematite, a pyrite mirror, and in the Lamanai Classic inventory because a single ceremonial flint. they were not contained in pottery vessels. Decreasing use of vessels as containers may addition, several examples both with and without in fact have been a phenomenon of the last century of vessel contents were associated with modifications of the Early Classic, but in the absence of a large sixthStructure N9-56 through approximately the first century cache sample this matter can only be judged on century and a half of the Late Classic. the basis of evidence from later years. It is clear,

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Although these and other caches perpetuated one element of Early Classic offering practice, the standard contents of preceding centuries were gone. Their place was taken in a number of instances by groups of ceremonial flints and a variety of other objects that were usually of larger scale than those used in earlier times. The assemblages were often of very considerable size, as in the lower-level offering pit in Structure N10-9 (Figure 5.9). Similarly impressive groups were also deposited in N10-15, one of the elite residential structures in the Plaza N10/3 Group. A

however, the artifacts all retained some potential for re-use and hence constituted a certain measure of true wealth beyond the intrinsic value conferred on obsidian by the distance it had traveled to reach Lamanai. The message conveyed by the obsidianbased offerings was therefore surely as forceful as those embodied in earlier offerings of less utilitarian material, especially in view of the great bulk deposited. The Late Classic also produced the single clearly datable monument related offering encountered at the site. Stela 9, which was erected in a room of Structure N10-27 about A.D. 625, was accompanied by a substela offering that was originally throught to have been largely limited to the remains of several young children (Pendergast 1988:5; Closs 1988:11). An opportunity for further examination of building core beneath the stela butt revealed a group of 13 ceremonial flints that underlay the skeletal material, and gave the offering a degree of similarity to a number of other Late Classic structural caches. A second monument-related offering, which consisted of a mass of chert chips, was encountered beneath an insecurely dated giant altar northwest of N10-27 (Pendergast 1983:3–4). Re-use of Classic ceremonial flints also occurred in the offering placed beneath an altar in Plaza N10/2 that was moved to the spot in Postclassic or later times.

Figure 5.10 Cache N10-18/5. Length of flint 77.5 cm. variation on the theme occurred in another residential unit in the same complex, StructureN10-18, where two vessels with comparatively limited contents rested atop the largest ceremonial flint known thus far in the Maya area (Figure 5.10; Pendergast 1982b:2–3; Gallenkamp and Johnson 1985:190, Figure 147).

The Postclassic Postclassic offerings at Lamanai began with several large and relatively rich assemblages in both the structure- and the monument-associated categories. The variety of dedicatory activity combines with reshaping of the Plaza N10/3 Group, perhaps the largest single construction effort at the site (Pendergast 1986a:231–232), to indicate that the community retained very considerable vigor. The construction work was initiated with one of the larger offerings known at Lamanai, which involved massive burning of wood and possibly other materials together with the deposition of a large number of specialized vessels (Pendergast 1981b:4). The offering and the labor expenditure that ensued bespeak the community's strength during the period of dissolution at many neighboring centers, as does the slightly earlier offering of vessels and mercury beneath the marker disc of a very small ballcourt (Pendergast 1982c).

Apart from the flints, which with few exceptions closely resemble in form the large assemblage from Altun Ha (Pendergast 1979, 1982a, 1990a), the most striking new offering element was unquestionably obsidian. The material was often deposited in quantities above one kilogram, and was generally but not uniformly accompanied by one or more pottery vessels plus a limited number of other artifacts. The maximum amount in a single cache occurred in the seventh-century modification of Structure N10-43, where almost 15.6 kg formed the principal element in a primary-axis offering (Pendergast 1981a:41). Much of the obsidian in every offering comprised exhausted and shattered flake blades, but in addition most lots included small to very considerable lots of polyhedral cores, generally also in exhausted or nearly exhausted condition. With limited exceptions,

During the Middle and Late Postclassic, concentration and restructuring of the community created a focus in

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the southern portion of the Central Precinct. In the period from the thirteenth century onward the use of quantities of artifacts in offerings was frequently but not always replaced by single vessels (Figure 5.11) or other objects. In addition to their standard dedicatory use, single-item offerings now came to be part of a focus on largely or wholly abandoned structures that stood in ruins. The reduction in offering size may have been partly a reflection of the decrease in the Lamanai polity, but it is dangerous to take the change as evidence of economic decline. Extensive proof of Lamanai's continuing internal and external economic strength suggests very forcefully, in fact, that reduction in cache size reflects a shift in values rather than a decline in means.

(Pendergast 1990b).

The Contact Period Archaeological evidence shows that the period of Spanish influence over life at Lamanai, which began about 1544 (Jones 1989:41–43, 301, 306), was marked by disruption of indigenous offering practice at the publicly visible level. The last identifiable sixteenthcentury act in the Precolumbian tradition, the burial of a small bat effigy vessel, took place in circumstances of secrecy during construction of the first Spanish church at Lamanai. The insertion of the vessel into the partly demolished Postclassic structure over which the Christian building was being superposed is very likely to have been a single individual's attempt to appease the ancient gods and at the same time seek the favor of their European replacements.

Figure 5.11 Single vessel of Cache N10-43/1. Diameter 19.0 cm. Part of the evidence of Lamanai's Postclassic economic strength consists of large-scale termination ritual activity on the surfaces of buildings, beginning in the thirteenth century. The structures thus honored were either long abandoned, as was the case with N9-56, or in their final days of use, as was true of N10-9 (Pendergast 1981a:44, 51). As the smashing and scattering of 30 or more Mayapan-related figurine censers, both locally made and imported, over and around Structure N9-56 (Pendergast 1981a:51, Figure 27) attests, the use of high-value objects attained levels equal to those of earlier times. The richness of the smashed and scattered material appears to suggest that the importance of termination rituals had outstripped that of dedicatory offerings by Middle Postclassic times. In fact, however, the smaller size of dedicatory offerings is not necessarily any better an indicator of reduced ritual importance than it is of economic decline. Like so many other facets of the Postclassic at Lamanai, the changes in offering contents and practice are best understood as part of a continuing evolution out of the Classic base, and not particularly likely to be illuminated by comparisons with earlier patterns at the site or elsewhere

The cessation of public offering deposition in Christianized Lamanai extended to the two churches, where a native attempt at placation of both Maya and Catholic deities might reasonably be expected. The apparent absence of offerings deposited in these two specifically Christian contexts during construction may be attributable to close Spanish supervision, which is especially likely to have been a factor in the later church (Pendergast 1993; Pendergast and Graham 1993). Extensive use of the earlier church as a burial place (Pendergast 1991:344) may have destroyed evidence of post-construction offering deposition, and it is possible that the period of Spanish-influenced use of the later church was too short to have permitted such activity until after the European presence was no longer felt. Evidence from residential structures suggests, however, that the effect of the Christian belief system on cache deposition in public settings may have been pervasive. Structure N11-18, the principal piece of residential construction of the period and probably the home of the Spanish-supported alcalde (Pendergast 1991:341– 351; Pendergast and Graham 1993), yielded no evidence of cache activity. The nearby slightly smaller Structure N12-26, in all likelihood a contemporaneous residence, likewise contained no dedicatory material, and none was detected in any of the less imposing domestic buildings of the period. The suppression of cache activity is an entirely predictable result of the impact of Christian precepts on Maya religious practice, if one assumes that the first Spaniards who reached Lamanai were already aware of the importance of cache deposition in pre-contact belief. The persistence of Precolumbian practice that was at least related to cache deposition, if it did not

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contents, which included a resmoothed portion of an Early Classic jade full-face figure pendant, were of classes that would have been chosen prior to European contact, but the sacred space in which the activity took place was now defined by Christian belief. Similar conjoining of Christian sacred space and Precolumbian cache practice is reflected in at least three of the other six caches placed within the nave and at the face of the church's masonry chancel. The remaining three offerings comprised one group of miniature human face effigies and animal figurines (Figure 5.12) and two ceramic mythical crocodilian creatures (Figure 5.13), surely a restatement of the crocodile association reflected in the community's name (Pendergast 1981a:31–32). The close resemblance of the figurines to ones deposited elsewhere in the community more than a century earlier is direct physical evidence of the maintenance of the Precolumbian tradition alongside Christian belief.

Figure 5.12 Group of miniature effigy vessels from Cache YDL II/4. Height of largest human effigy 5.1 cm. include such activity, is nevertheless documented by numerous references to idolatry in the ethnohistorical record. Lamanai's role as a reduction center may have involved somewhat greater recurrence of Precolumbian practice than was standard elsewhere. It is obvious, however, that archaeology is very unlikely to provide solid evidence regarding clandestine continuation of proscribed offering practice.

In addition to the other sorts of information they embody, the ceramic figurines in post-Spanish Lamanai offerings document the survival of detailed iconographic knowledge. This is true both of objects placed beneath the floor of the later church and of

Although the Christian proscription against native cache deposition appears to have held sway until the end of Spanish hegemony in 1641 (López de Cogolludo 1971[1688]:Bk. 11, Ch. 13; Jones 1989:214–224), there is clear evidence that pre-contact attitudes and esthetic traditions continued to be a powerful part of a bidirectional Maya/Spanish accomodation (Graham et al. 1989). The most obvious reading of the archaeological evidence is that the Maya, once freed of the pressures of the Christian belief system, reintroduced earlier practices that had been held in abeyance for roughly a century. It is far more likely, however, that the practices had continued throughout the time, but with context and focus Figure 5.13 Cache YDL II/5 mythical crocodilian figure. that reflected the aforementioned bilateral Length 20.8 cm. accomodation. This interpretation is suggested by similarities in pre-contact and post-contact cache offerings in residential structures within the sixteenth composition, and is given strong support by the fact and seventeenth-century community boundaries. At that the settings for post-1641 cache deposition and the same time there was limited re-use of earlier other ritual activity were often determined at least in material, such as the resmoothed portion of a Classic part by Christian considerations (Graham et al. jade pendant deposited beneath the stela erected within 1989:1257; Pendergast 1991:346–347, 1993). the church nave. Because no individual who had engaged in offering activity before 1544 was alive to The strongest expression of the resurgence of Preguide renascence of such practice in 1641, the columbian practice in a partly syncretic form was the continuities must reflect either maintenance of a strong placement of a stela with accompanying substela cache and detailed oral tradition or perpetuation of prein the ruined nave of the second church. The cache Columbian activities throughout the time of Spanish

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hegemony. Unfortunately neither the archaeological evidence nor the very limited ethnohistoric documentation allows a choice between these two equally plausible alternatives.

matter for the Maya, whereas our judgment is with rare exceptions rooted in engineering and traffic-flow concerns because there are no readable clues to ceremonial impact.

In contrast with the profusion of church offerings, axial and other caches are nearly absent in what is very likely to be either a Spanish-period or a post-1641 settlement zone at the south end of the site (Pendergast 1985:2). The scarcity of offerings may indicate diminished concern with dedicatory matters in residential context, but it is equally probable that it reflects an overall reduction in resources or the closing off of trade in some classes of material. These matters have so many ramifications in themselves that their full consideration goes well beyond the bounds of the present discussion. There is no question, however, that Historic-period offering practice bespeaks a Maya dedicatory tradition that was durable enough to withstand and accommodate to the onslaughts of a new belief system, and to survive into the post-European period with most or all of its essential elements intact.

Monument-associated caches at Lamanai may well have had both of the functions ascribed to primary-axis caches in communal structures. Uncertainty regarding this point arises out of limitations in our knowledge of the intended functions of the monuments themselves. If they were seen solely as statements on the part of rulers, associated caches are most likely to have had a purely dedicatory intent. If, on the other hand, either the power of the ruler or the power of a deity to whom he or she was linked also resided in the monument, then something of the amplification purpose may also have been served by a cache. In recent years a number of additional caches have emerged from excavations carried out as part of a new research project at Lamanai directed by Elizabeth Graham (Graham 2001a, b), and it is very likely that more will be appearing not long after this volume goes to press. They have added, and unquestionably will continue to add, to the inventory of objects included in offerings, but there is every indication that they will leave unaltered the fundamental patterns evident in the material reported here.

Conclusions It is abundantly clear from the record that the primary axis was the principal determinant of cache position in communally built structures. Evidence suggests that the Maya established this vital structure lifeline by visual identification rather than precise measurement. As a result the position of an offering might deviate slightly from a true measured axis, and the deviation was likely to be greater in upper portions of a structure than at the base, presumably because those depositing an offering found visual keys to axis position more difficult to encompass within their view.

The 126 caches recovered at Lamanai between 1974 and 1986 illustrate forcefully both conservatism and innovation in material and non-material culture over time. Of greatest importance, however, is the significant light that the data shed on the determinants and the motivations that lay behind offering activity at the site. Full assessment of the data will obviously not be possible until the offerings are set in the context of complete excavation reporting. Nevertheless I trust that the foregoing discussion of cache composition and placement provides an overview that will be of value both for comparative purposes and for reconstruction of the internal dynamics of religious activity over the course of Lamanai's very long history.

One of the aims in placement of a cache on the primary axis can surely be understood as support for or enhancement of the function of the axis itself, which appears to have been dual. As related to the axis as structural identifier, a cache can be seen as purely dedicatory, especially if it lay beneath, or at a low level within, new construction. It is readily apparent that continuing focus on the primary axis should have led to rededication with every significant remodelling of the structure, but the history of cache deposition at Lamanai shows that this seemingly logical approach was far from uniform in application. The actual significance of a given construction effort, as opposed to the archaeologist's assessment thereof, may be at issue here. Significance was surely a ceremonial

Acknowledgments. The Lamanai excavations were supported by grants from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, by research funds of the Royal Ontario Museum, by capital equipment grants from the Richard Ivey Foundation of London, Ontario, and by generous gifts from a number of other donors.

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REFERENCES CITED

Closs, Michael P. 1988 The Hieroglyphic Text of Stela 9, Lamanai, Belize. Research Reports on Ancient Maya Writing 21. Center for Maya Research, Washington, D.C. Gallenkamp, Charles, and Regina E. Johnson (editors) 1985 Maya: Treasures of an Ancient Civilization. Harry N. Abrams Inc., New York. Graham, Elizabeth 2001a Collapse, Conquest, and Maya Survival at Lamanai, Belize. Archaeology International 2000/2001:52-56. 2001b Lamanai, Belize: The Sequel. Paper presented at the 66th Annual Meeting of the Society for American Archaeology, New Orleans. Graham, Elizabeth, David M. Pendergast, and Grant D. Jones 1989 On the Fringes of Conquest: Maya-Spanish Contact in Colonial Belize. Science 246:1254–1259. Jones, Grant D. 1989 Maya Resistance to Spanish Rule: Time and History on a Colonial Frontier. University of New Mexico Press, Albuquerque. López de Cogolludo, Diego 1971[1688] Los Tres Siglos de la Dominación Española en Yucatán, o sea Historia de Esta Provincia. Facsimile of 2nd ed., Mérida-Campeche 1842–1845. Akademische Druck und Verlagsanstalt, Graz, Austria. Pendergast, David M. 1979 Excavations at Altun Ha, Belize, 1964–1970, Volume 1. Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto. 1981a Lamanai, Belize: Summary of Excavation Results, 1974–1980. Journal of Field Archaeology 8:29–53. 1981b Lamanai 1981 (II): Buds, Sweat, and Gears. Royal Ontario Museum Archaeological Newsletter, n.s., No. 199. 1982a Excavations at Altun Ha, Belize, 1964-1970, Volume 2. Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto. 1982b Lamanai 1980: Ottawa, Stella Dallas, and the Woodlice. Royal Ontario Museum Archaeological Newsletter, n.s, No. 203. 1982c Ancient Maya Mercury. Science 217:533–535. 1983 Lamanai 1983: A Real Glyph-Hanger. Royal Ontario Museum Archaeological Newsletter, n.s., No. 215. 1985 Lamanai 1985: Stop Me Before I Dig Again. Royal Ontario Museum Archaeological Newsletter, Series II, No. 11. 1986a Stability through Change: Lamanai, Belize, from the Ninth to the Seventeenth Century. In Late Lowland Maya Civilization: Classic to Postclassic, edited by Jeremy A. Sabloff and E. Wyllys Andrews V, pp. 223–249. University of New Mexico Press, Albuquerque. 1986b Under Spanish Rule: The Final Chapter in Lamanai's Maya History. Belcast Journal of Belizean Affairs 3(1&2):1–7. Belize College of Arts, Science, and Technology, Belize City. 1988 Lamanai Stela 9: The Archaeological Context. Research Reports on Ancient Maya Writing 20. Center for Maya Research, Washington, D.C. 1990a Excavations at Altun Ha, Belize, 1964-1970, Volume 3. Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto. 1990b Up from the Dust: The Central Lowlands Postclassic as seen from Lamanai and Marco Gonzalez, Belize. In Vision and Revision in Maya Studies, edited by Flora S. Clancy and Peter D. Harrison, pp. 169–177. 1991 The Southern Maya Lowlands Contact Experience: The View from Lamanai, Belize. In Columbian Consequences Volume 3: The Spanish Borderlands in Pan-American Perspective, edited by David Hurst Thomas, pp. 337–354. Smithsonian Institution Press, Washington. 1993 Worlds in Collision: The Maya/Spanish Encounter in Sixteenth and Seventeenth Century Belize. In The Meeting of Two Worlds: Europe and the Americas, 1492-1650, edited by Warwick Bray, pp. 105–143. Proceedings of The British Academy No. 81. Oxford University Press, Oxford. Pendergast, David M., and Elizabeth Graham 1993 La Mezcla de Arqueología y Etnohistoria: El Estudio del Período Hispánico en Lamanai y Tipu, Belice. In Perspectivas Antropológicas en el Mundo Maya, edited by Maria Josefa Iglesias Ponce de León and Francesc Liggored Perramon, pp.331–353. Sociedad Española de Estudios Mayas, Madrid.

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6 Fear and Loathing in Nineteenth-century Copan Ian Graham

In the course of a visit he made to an archaeological project where I was at work in the 1960s, Hal Ball noticed at some point an audible lack of harmony between two members of the expedition. This prompted a discussion concerning the strains that tend to arise in a group of men and women, some of them young, who are obliged to live cheek-by-jowl in an isolated spot. When Hal remarked that this sort of friction had perhaps been rare among archaeologists of an earlier generation, I replied that I wasn't so sure about that, though I was unable to cite instances of difficulties to support my view.

and mapping the site. But in addition he carried out some excavations that were, in both senses, ground-breaking. One was a trench into Mound 4 that he took down to bedrock, twelve feet below plaza level; it is worth noting that in this excavation Maudslay took the trouble to preserve not only stone and ceramic artifacts but also animal bones, which he dipped in glue for preservation so that they would withstand shipment to London for identification. Along with all the other tasks Maudslay also attempted to solve by excavation the puzzling appearance of the visible portion of the Hieroglyphic Stairway.

Years later, as I was browsing through papers in the archives of Harvard's Peabody Museum, I came across a letter describing developments at the museum's expedition to Copan, Honduras, which bore a boldly pencilled exclamation: "The expedition is falling apart!" Intrigued, I delved further, with the result that when I visited Hal in Miami not long afterwards I could recount to him a tale of bygone woe at Copan. It made him laugh.

The ball was now rolling, and six years later the Peabody Museum decided to take up the work at Copan where Maudslay had left off. The museum's initial interest in the Maya area can be traced to a visit by Charles Pickering Bowditch to Yucatan in 1888, in the course of which he became impressed by the importance of archaeological research in that land of ancient culture. Bowditch was a banker and businessman whose interest in Mesoamerican archaeology led to friendship with Professor Frederic Ward Putnam, Curator of the Peabody; later it would lead him to a serious study of Maya calendrics (Bowditch 1910).

The vignette of camp life I present here has only slight historical significance, though it throws some light on the personalities concerned. One of the actors in the drama was to make a name for himself; a second showed promise of achieving great distinction, so that his death from fever a few years later was a real loss. The third character, after making a modest contribution to Maya archaeology, faded from the scene. The time was not long after the dawn of American archaeology, and the era of careful excavations had just commenced. The beginning of the story was, in fact, the first conscientious (or scientific) excavation of Maya ruins; it is rather sad that we allowed the centenary of that event, a small milestone in the history of Mesoamerican studies, to pass unremarked.

On his return from Yucatan, Bowditch persuaded a score of friends of the Peabody Museum to join him in supporting a museum project of research at Labna. But because no course of study in archaeology then existed at Harvard, there were no students available to undertake the work. It was clear that an outsider would have to be engaged as leader of the expedition, and the museum's choice fell on Edward H. Thompson, an antiquarian who was already living in Yucatan as U.S. Consul. Work began at Labna under his direction in December, 1888, and a second expedition resumed the study two years later.

In 1885 Alfred Maudslay spent five months at the ruins of Copan with the principal objectives of photographing and making moulds of the sculptures,

It has to be said that no great insights, either conceptual or material, resulted from the excavations at Labna. The work did, however, contribute to an

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With a group of investors led by one E. W. Perry, he made a difficult journey up the Patuca River in Honduras to investigate a region the moneyed members of the party were considering for commercial development (Hinsley 1984). I have failed to learn more of E. W. Perry, unless he was Enoch Wood Perry (1831–1915), a native of Boston. He was a suitably peripatetic man, but the American Dictionary of Biography gives no hint of his involvement in financial affairs; his life was occupied instead in the painting of historical and genre scenes. Figure 6.1 John G. Owens, setting out from Copan with porters carrying moulds to Although delays in this Yzabal. journey cost Bowditch his hoped-for visit to Copan, improved understanding of Maya archaeology through he returned home with a resolve to help organize a studies of chultuns and house-mounds at the site. Peabody Museum expedition to those ruins. Shortly Putnam was sending Thompson instructions by mail, before, in July, 1889, Perry himself had obtained from but neither of them really knew what the excavations the Honduran government a concession to work in the were looking for. As Putnam wrote in a memorandum ruins, but apparently Bowditch persuaded him to make to Bowditch, “Mr. Thompson must understand how it over to the Peabody. By July, 1891, negotiations little information we have that is of importance in with the Government of Honduras had yielded a determining who were the people who made the great contract for a ten-year project that had as one of its structures, beyond that obtained from the misty history terms the requirement that the museum send yearly of the time of Cortes, and the Maya and Nahuatl expeditions. myths.” During the summer of 1891 Owens was again a In the fall of 1890 two graduate students registered at member of the Hemenway expedition, which this time Harvard in the Division of American Archaeology. went to Hopi country. Once more Owens showed his The course had, in fact, yet to be established, but this athletic powers, this time by winning a foot race was soon accomplished. One of the students was John against the Indians. Before the beginning of Owens' G. Owens (Figure 6.1) of Lewisburg, Pennsylvania, a second year at Harvard Mrs. Hemenway, impressed by graduate of Bucknell College, whose enthusiasms, first his abilities as an anthropologist and archaeologist, for marine zoology and then for geology, had taken endowed a fellowship in American archaeology, which him to study at Woods Hole and at Harvard Summer was duly awarded to him. Times have changed a bit in School. Then a meeting with Walter Fewkes, Director the fellowship field in the last hundred years. of the Boston Museum of Natural Science, led Owens to go to work with him and thereby gain a new As the Copan expedition became a reality, Owens was enthusiasm, archaeology. He spent the summer of named Executive Officer. The Director would of 1890 with the Hemenway Southwestern course be Professor Putnam, who would remain at Archaeological Expedition to Arizona, which Fewkes Cambridge. The post of Scientific Assistant went to then directed and, incidentally, demonstrated his Marshall H. Saville, a native of Rockport, athletic prowess by breaking the record for the climb Massachusetts, whose talents had somehow come to down from the edge of the Grand Canyon to the river Putnam's notice. In 1889 Saville had been persuaded, and back again (Owens 1891). at the age of twenty-two, to leave his position in the window-dressing section of Filene's Department Store Earlier that year Bowditch, too, had been travelling. to become a student assistant in the museum, with a

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Owens and Saville, with many crates of stores, arrived at the little port of Yzabal, as the town's name was spelt in those days, on the south shore of Lake Izabal about November 22, 1891. Price reached the town a day or two later, and was conducted to the house where Owens and Saville were staying. The meeting did not go well; indeed, it went so badly that almost at once, and in great indignation, Price sent Putnam an account of it. According to Price, when he was introduced, “Mr. Owens got up and received me civilly but Mr. Saville scarcely rose from his seat, and his whole conduct to me then and during the rest of the evening was of the Figure 6.2 Hugh Price (left) and Don Teodor Destephen, Commandante of Santa coolest and most uncivil Rita. description. Almost his Visiting Committee Fellowship provided for his first speech was to intimate in these very words that support. your directions to me regarding the securing of a free entry for our goods into the two countries had not been During the planning stages, Bowditch had evidently attended to. This speech was again repeated by him written to Maudslay to ask for practical advice and for during the course of the evening....”. suggestions regarding other personnel they might engage. Maudslay replied with two suggestions: as So disgusted was Price that, so he wrote, he very surveyor and camp manager he recommended Hugh nearly withdrew from the expedition the following W. Price (Figure 6.2), an Englishman who had been morning, but by the time he reported to Putnam he had with him as surveyor at Palenque, and as an expert in mastered the inclination. Still, he was a gentleman by making paper moulds Maudslay recommended his birth and education, as he trusted Putnam was aware, trusted helper Gorgonio López (Figure 6.3), a ladino and he could only treat men on an equal footing who from Cahabon in Alta Vera Paz, Guatemala. Bowditch were of similar breeding. He was, he explained, the and Putnam accepted both suggestions, and both Price son of an English clergyman, now deceased, and his and López, together with others of the latter's family, cousin living in New York was the widow of a great were engaged. friend of Abraham Lincoln and William Henry Seward. Price was named Resident Agent of the museum, and on about November 10th he received from Putnam a copy of a ten-page letter of instruction addressed to Owens, Saville, and himself. This was sent to him in Coban, whither he had gone from Palenque with Gorgonio López after Maudslay ended his work at those ruins the previous May. Among the tasks assigned to Price was securing duty-free passage of the supplies through Guatemala on their way to Copan, but in the few days left to him before he was to set out for the rendezvous with Owens and Saville he could do no more than write to the U.S. Minister in Guatemala requesting that he see to the matter.

Owens, for his part, wrote to tell Putnam of Price's arrival, describing him as a man of good proportions and very gentlemanly but confessing that he and Saville were much disappointed because they had understood that he was a veteran of those regions. Price had, however, shown him some of the work he did while at Civil Engineering school, and on this basis Owens judged him to be at least well qualified as a surveyor. Owens also expressed disappointment with the only member of the López family yet to have arrived, and said that he had learnt from Price that Maudslay did not treat them as “gentlemen” but rather as servants, and that was how the expedition staff

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would treat them.

Following this earnest request, Price ended the letter with the observations that Saville's attitude had improved.

From Saville Putnam heard complaints that Price had been opening the carefully packed boxes, rummaging through them and getting the contents muddled up. What may be a revealing light on Price's motive for

The expedition arrived in Copan on December 10, and its members had to endure considerable discomfort until a large pole-and-thatch building was erected. Meanwhile, relations between Price and his companions did not improve. On January 1, 1892, Price wrote Putnam a 12-page letter in which, among other things, he complained that Saville and Owens had control of the stores, and had left a box out under a tarpaulin with the result that the dried beef in it had been spoilt. He himself had been extremely busy trying to engage a cook, more labourers, and more mules. This and others of Price's surviving letters testify both to his energy and to his moderate competence in Spanish. Nevertheless, on January 19th Owens felt obliged to send Putnam a very unfavorable assessment of Price's character and attainments. As an interpreter he would not be of service owing to his slight acquaintance with Spanish and because of an impediment in his speech; his competence as a surveyor was doubtful; and as an archaeologist he certainly seemed fond of the work, but “I have never known a young man who could make up his opinion as positively in so short a time as he can — full of theories.” Meanwhile, Price had been able to remedy the lack of the tonic that was better than any medicine. Within two weeks of arrival he had made arrangements with the commandante of Santa Rita to acquire three bottles of rum, and later he sent a request for beer, cigars, and a bottle of three-star cognac.

Figure 6.3 Gorgonio López, at Copan. these investigations is shed by a letter he sent to Putnam on November 29, while still at Yzabal. Putnam had asked for suggestions, and now Price had one:

February 2nd found Owens relaying to Putnam his dissatisfaction with the López clan. Two of them had left, Gorgonio was threatening to leave unless he was paid more, and all the time they were charging exorbitantly for the hire of their mules. Moreover, a sick mule of theirs was simply consuming the Expedition's corn. To this Putnam replied with a fatherly letter, explaining that “Mr. Lopez was certainly regarded and treated by Mr. Maudslay as a friend in whom he had perfect confidence and reliance. He was not in any way treated as a servant but as a faithful assistant, and perhaps you have not fully understood that condition.” He was told not to worry about the corn the sick mule was eating; it was more important to secure the faithful services of the animal's owner.

“I consider it very necessary that a supply of brandy and wine should be sent....I am not a great drinker myself, but there have been times when a dose of brandy has done me more good than any medicine I know....Mr. Maudslay is never without a supply of brandy and Vermouth on his journeys here. I do not mean, in recommending a supply of these drinks, that they should be used for quenching thirst or satisfying the palate, but that they should be used as tonics....Mr. Owens I am aware is a temperance man, and never having had acquaintance with this climate he could not, at the time he protested against the sending of liquors and wine, have known how necessary they are....These liquors should also be on hand in the very probable event of visits to the Ruins by prominent or official persons....”.

A visitation of the kind Price had anticipated took place on February 28th (Figure 6.4). The Governor of

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came to my hammock and said ‘You fellows think that I am screwed, but I am not, this is just policy.’ I said ‘Yes, but do not carry it too far.’ He then returned in front of the Governor's quarters and resumed his singing. He was still singing when I dropped asleep. Mr. Saville says that finally the Governor dismissed him by saying in EngFigure 6.4 The Bishop of Comayagua sitting at left of Stela B; the Governor of the lish, ‘I am very Department of Copan at right of stela; Colonel López and guard of Honduran soldiers sleepy, I wish to standing at right; Don Teodor Destephen in check suit, elbow on gun. go to sleep’ ” the Department and the Bishop of Comayagua, together with the Governor's wife and Secretary and several servants, the Comandante of Santa Rita and his wife and servants, a colonel and a squad of soldiers, all descended on the Expedition's camp. Price gave up his room to the Governor, Owens's went to the Bishop, and Saville's was given to the Comandante; the three original occupants moved into tents nearby. Next day the distinguished visitors were shown round the ruins, and Saville photographed them in the Grand Plaza. The Bishop then departed, but the rest of the party remained for another night.

According to Owens, Price slept late the next morning when he should have been up looking after the commissary, and he made no preparations for breakfast but instead told Owens and Saville that they could get it ready themselves. Owens replied that Putnam's letter of instruction gave Price that duty. This exchange and resulting unpleasantness led to Price's immediate resignation from the Expedition. Price left at once and made his way to Belize, the capital of British Honduras. In the account that he sent Putnam from there on March 15th he had the breakfast incident occurring before the visitors' arrival, thus avoiding any suggestion that a hangover was responsible for his failure to prepare the morning meal. In the absence of an account from an unbiased witness, Price's version of the incident is no less plausible than Owens'report:

The visitors had arrived quite late in the day, but as Owens recounted in a long letter to Putnam, "....of course, they brought plenty of 'good cheer' with them. Mr. Price imbibed freely. About 8 o'clock, at the suggestion of the Governor, I think, all but Mr. Saville and myself had a good sing, Mr. Price leading and occasionally treating the company to a smutty song. The song of course was in English but the Governor understood some English. About l o'clock all said ‘goodnight’ and retired to their various quarters. By that time Mr. Price was in a very happy frame of mind and instead of retiring, as the rest of us did, he stopped in front of the quarters of the Governor and sang in a boisterous and most ungentlemanly manner for about half an hour. At one time he stopped for a moment and

“On the morning of February 27 I was writing a letter to you hastily to catch the mail when Mr. Owens and Mr. Saville came in and wanted to know what there was for breakfast. As they had no particular choice I mentioned that a certain tin of meat might be opened. Mr. Owens immediately said it was not his duty to open tins. I had been opening them previously whenever needed, but I replied that I did not know that it was a special duty to do so. Mr. Saville then said insultingly, ‘Yes, that was what you were hired for!’ ”

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Not much is known about Price's later activities. Two months after his arrival in British Honduras he managed to satisfy his yearning to dig a mound himself by opening one on the fruit plantation at Kendal (Price 1899). Whether he then went home or stayed on in the colony is uncertain, but it was from there that he went over to Quirigua in March, 1894, to build a camp for Maudslay and to map the site for him. In fairness to Price it must be said that he had made a good job of mapping Palenque in 1890; unfortunately he came down with a bad case of malaria just as he was beginning the survey of Quirigua, and as a result he returned to England. In April, 1896 he was back at Kendal excavating on both sides of the Sittee River. A letter written to Bowditch a good many years later reveals that he migrated to New Zealand, where he settled in the town of Cambridge and bestowed on his house the name “Palenque.”

likelihood, there was some fault on each side, though Price's handling of others on the basis of his “gentlemanly” upbringing may have been one of the more potent ingredients in the mix. Owens and Saville got through the remainder of the 1892 season, apparently without conflict; Saville continued as a Mesoamerican scholar for the rest of his long career, but Owens's promise was snuffed out by a fever. At nearly a century's remove from the events, who can assign blame to Price as opposed to Owens and Saville, if indeed there is any to be assigned? The root of the problem lay, in fact, in the throwing together of people who had not come to know one another before the expedition began, and found themselves thrust into unfamiliar surroundings where they had to exist side by side and depend on one another. The fundamental lesson taught by the first season at Copan remains as applicable today as it was a century ago. I would hazard the guess, however, that increasing cultural homogenization and diminishing class stratification, together with a number of other forces one could think of, may have reduced the chances that the kind of tensions evident in this tale will recur today. On the other hand, one must allow that other forces, such as an occasionally recognizable increase in egotism, may have a counterbalancing effect that makes a general repeat of 1892 Copan a possibility even in today's sophisticated world.

Neither Putnam nor Bowditch seems to have been much disturbed by the fact that on a single occasion Price had “imbibed freely.” On the contrary, they appear to have accepted Price's arguments for providing a modest store of liquor; a listing of stores for Customs inspection, undated but perhaps for the following season, includes “2 cajas de licores conteniendo una docena botellas de Champana, vino, brandy y whiski para medicina.” And when, in January, 1895, George Byron Gordon, the Director of the Fourth Copan Expedition, had completed his negotiations with the Honduran government, he confidently requested that Putnam send him Robert Burkitt and “some whisky and wine” (Danien 1985).

Acknowledgments. My sources, apart from the references cited, have been correspondence preserved in the Archives of the Peabody Museum of Harvard University, most to be found in files of Bowditch and Putnam correspondence and in “Honduras Expedition Correspondence 1891–1892.”

Though liquor may have been the catalyst, the ingredients for an explosion were obviously present long before the fateful night of wine and song. In all

REFERENCES CITED

Bowditch, Charles Pickering 1910 The Numeration, Calendar Systems and Astronomical Knowledge of the Mayas. Privately printed, Cambridge, Massachusetts. Danien, Elin 1985 Send me Mr. Burkitt....Some Whisky and Wine! Expedition 27(3):26–33. Hinsley, Curtis M. 1984 Wanted: one good man to discover Central American history. Discovery (special section of Harvard Magazine) November–December issue. Owens, John G. 1891 The Grand Cañon. Youth’s Companion 64(3):419. Price, Hugh W. 1899 Excavations on the Sittee River, British Honduras. Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of London, n.s.,17:339–344.

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7 A Re-evaluation of Maya Militarism in the Southern Lowlands Richard E. W. Adams

survives, mutatis mutandis, in the interpretations of scenes on polychrome and other elaborate vases as almost wholly mythical and legendary (e.g., Coe 1973).

Introduction This paper has three objectives. The first is to place on record in preliminary and summary form some of the data from Rio Azul, Guatemala, on the nature of Maya militarism in the Classic period. The second is to review material on Maya militarism and to consider its relationship to the Teotihuacan appearance and the much later collapse of Maya civilization. The third objective is to suggest a revised model for militarism among the Classic Maya. I shall deal with these topics in the above order after a short review of previous work on the subject.

The Terminal Classic military intrusion at Altar de Sacrificios suggested to me that the military factor in the collapse might have been more important than previously thought, and that Seibal might also be fortified (Adams 1964:377, 93). Partly based on later excavations at Seibal, Sabloff and Willey (1967) re-interpreted the Altar data and added new information. They read the record as indicating only one intrusion into Seibal, and attributed the Altar invasion to the same event or set of events. I disagreed (Adams 1973) and argued for two separate intrusions, a view partially supported by Graham's (1973) study of the Seibal monuments. This is an important point to be considered below because it is affected by the new data from Rio Azul and its resolution has a bearing on processual considerations.

The History of Maya Warfare Research Follett (1932) was probably the first modern scholar to consider the Maya as militarists, but his study of military iconography was against the doctrine of the times and was largely ignored. The famous Bonampak murals with a battle scene and one of sacrifice of captives were interpreted simply as a depiction of a raid for the purpose of securing captives (Ruppert et al. 1955:52). The discovery of the fortifications of Becan in 1943 was viewed with scepticism, and the military features were thought to be late and a sign of degeneracy and decadence. Indeed, as late as 1965 H. E. D. Pollock suggested that the great moat at Becan might be nothing more than a large borrow-pit, a source for building materials.

Puleston and Callender reported extensive Early Classic earthworks of the dry moat and parapet type at Tikal in 1967; Eduardo Martinez discovered a matching set of defenses in the south later in that year (Haviland 1983:xii). These are still the most extensive earthworks known in the Maya lowlands, some 15 km long on the north side of Tikal, and perhaps 25 km long on the south (Puleston 1983:Figure 1; personal communication 1970). The southern system has never been adequately mapped or even explored. Probably the work with the most impact on the subject was that of the Rio Bec Archaeological Project, particularly that of the research group of 1970. David Webster's exploration and excavations of the Becan defenses left no doubt that the place was a fortress and that it dated from the Early Classic or even the Late Preclassic (Webster 1976). Important processual implications were drawn from the work (Webster 1976, 1977, et passim). These views suggested the

Pollock’s suggestion was a latter-day expression of the prevailing view of most Mayanists until about 1960, a reflection of an idealized, nearly inhumanly peaceable, cultured society, headed by philosopher kings. Morley (1946) and Thompson (1966) were principal proponents of this view, although Thompson changed his mind later in his career, under the impact of Proskouriakoff's (1960) discoveries of the historical nature of much of Maya writing. The older view still

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role of warfare among the Maya as a prime mover in the competitive environment that led to the development of Maya civilization (Webster 1977). I have argued that Maya warfare was essentially aristocratic and prestige-enhancing as well as a politically profitable elite game (Adams 1977a:153–156), while admitting the anomaly of the large earthworks and substantial fortifications of other types. Rands (1973:Figure 21) suggested that our image of Maya warfare might be incorrect, based on evidence such as standardized uniforms for soldiery depicted on a Late Classic Piedras Negras lintel. Demarest (1978) suggested a reconciliation of these anomalies and views by a construal that emphasized the variable intensity of Maya warfare in reflection of the closeness of the cultural variants involved. According to this perspective, inter-regional wars would be the most destructive and the most unlimited, whereas the internal wars between adjacent cities would be of limited destructiveness. I therefore presume that there would also be fluctuation in intensity according to the stakes involved and the stages of state formation at which conflict occurred.

buffer zone lacks any settlements of significant size (threecourtyards or more) (Adams et al. 1984:65). Because the remains of Early Classic settlements should be just as apparent as those of Late Classic sites, it is likely that the site-free corridor represents a long standing boundary that was established in the Early Classic or Late Preclassic. The tentative explanation for the presence of Rio Azul in its fortified position is therefore that the site was a frontier guard for Tikal. This view is strengthened by data from Early Classic tomb murals. The tombs of the fifth century at Rio Azul are those of noble families who depicted their familial affiliations in paintings, Tomb 1 is that of Ruler X (b. A.D. 416, d. 480+). His tomb mural has been interpreted as indicating that he was the son of Stormy Sky, the Tikal ruler (Adams 1990:31). The importance of the Teotihuacan linkage of Stormy Sky has been noted by Jones and others (Coggins 1975; Jones and Satterthwaite 1982). Rio Azul Ruler X also is connected with Teotihuacan. Two adult males were buried later on either side of him. Tomb inventories, skeletal features, and a tomb mural suggest that the burials (Tombs 19 and 23) are those of Teotihuacan advisors. Full documentation for these assertions will be found in the Rio Azul annual reports of 1984 and 1985 (Hall 1985; Adams 1985). A preliminary inference is that the expansion of the Tikal Regional State into the Rio Azul area occurred in the fifth century A.D., and that it appears to have been accomplished by military means and with Teotihuacan help.

At present there is no consensus regarding Maya warfare, perhaps because of its variability through time and space. However, our sample is beginning to reach the point where patterns are emerging and the following is an attempt to make some sense of these still fragmentary structures.

Data from Rio Azul

Rio Azul is also on a river intermittently navigable by canoes which leads to the Rio Hondo and thence to the Bay of Chetumal and the Caribbean. This access to the Caribbean and circum-peninsular trade routes would have been of great importance for importation of salt from the north coast of Yucatan. If one assumes that the radar data are even marginally correct in their indications of major canal routes through the bajos north of Uaxactun (Adams et al. 1981), then the Rio Azul drainage may have extended to within 20 km of Tikal.

Although the data from Rio Azul are incomplete in themselves, and still subject to change through future work at the site, it nevertheless seems useful to discuss the information as it now exists. The site is probably fortified, and is certainly defensible. The location is within a river bend and on a ridge that would give the defensive advantages of height and difficulty of access. The river (Rio Azul) protects the west side. The probable fortifications are arranged in an arc around the east side of the site and consist of a dry moat with parapets crossed by causeways, one of which was probably bridged by a wooden structure.

To summarize, the defensible center of Rio Azul is posited to have been situated where it is for political, commercial, and military reasons. Furthermore, it seems to have been established as a frontier fortress during the fifth-century military expansion of the Tikal Regional State with Teotihuacan aid.

The reasons for the defensive works lie partially in the geopolitics of the Classic Maya. Rank-size analysis of the Late Classic cities of the Tikal and regions (Table 9.1) indicates that both cities headed regional states (Adams and Jones 1981). A buffer zone about 20 km wide and at least 80 km long formed the northwest boundary of the Tikal state with that of Calakmul (Figure 7.1). Rio Azul and the river from which it takes its name lie in and along that frontier area. The

The military history of Rio Azul includes an episode of abandonment during the hiatus (A.D. 534–593), possibly a period of civil wars among the Maya. Reoccupation of Rio Azul ca A.D. 600 was followed by a

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Figure 9.1 Tikal earthworks (field fortifications).

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period of moderate building activity. It is not yet known if this included the building or rebuilding of defenses. In any case, a period of intense contact with northern groups occurred during Tepeu 2 at ca A.D. 692–830, as evidenced by the occurrence of large

quantities of late types of Slate Ware, and lesser amounts of Late Classic Trickle Ware, Pabellon Modeled-Carved (Altar Fine Orange Group), and Yacatee style polychromes. The architectural sequence from the A-11 palace complex (Eaton 1985) indicates a period of abandonment at the end of Tepeu 2 during which buildings became very dilapidated or deteriorated by reason of deliberate destruction just before abandonment. There followed a brief period of reoccupation associated with rough and ready rebuilding and Tepeu 3 ceramics. A lesser palace structure, D-29, shows some evidence of burning and collapse at the end of Tepeu 2 and debris includes fragments of human bones. Stela 4 at Rio Azul is crudely carved in low relief in a manner reminiscent of the Uxmal monuments (Morley 1970). It shows a person engaged in a scattering activity, which motif has been interpreted as indicating the start of a new reign (Jones 1977:35).

Table 7.1: Index Guide to Tikal and Calakmul Regions as Shown in Figure 7.3 Index Name No.

Number of Courtyards

Tikal Region 1 Tikal 2 Naranjo 22 Rio Azul 3 Uaxactun 4 Kinal 5 Yaxha 13 Xultun 6 Caracol 7 La Honradez 8 Nakum 9 Ucanal 10 Tayasal 11 Chochkitam 12 Ixkun 14 Benque Viejo 15 Chunhuitz 16 San Clemente 17 Hatzcab Ceel 18 Holmul 19 Ixlu 20 Cahal Pichik 21 Itsimte 23 Motul de San José 24 El Encanto 25 Uolantun 26 Xmakabatun 27 Yaltitud

85 42 32 23 20 20 20 17 16 16 11 10 8 8 5 5 5 5 5 5 4 4 3 1 1 1 1

Calakmul Region 28 Calakmul 29 Mirador 30 Naachtun 31 Nakbe 32 La Muñeca 33 Oxpemul 34 Uxul 35 Alta Mira 36 Balakbal 37 La Muralla 38 Pared de los Reyes

42+ 47 21 14 11 11 9 8 5 1 1

Hierarchical Level

I

Taken together, the data summarized above suggest a period of contact with the North (Puuc?) in Tepeu 2, followed by a violent episode of destruction of buildings at the site. This and other evidence leads me to the interpretation that Rio Azul was perhaps contacted by long distance merchants from northern Maya regional states, probably from the Puuc, and then the center was overrun in a military raid. The Puuc style Stela 4 indicates a new political regime, but one which was apparently brief, because of the reoccupation of the site by people using Peten style (Tepeu sphere) ceramics.

II

III

Depopulation of the region around the center seems also to have occurred about the end of Tepeu 2. Thus, three major episodes at Rio Azul seem to be reflective of militarism. In the Early Classic the presence of Teotihuacan is in some way connected with warfare. By implication, the hiatus period seems to have been one of violence, but there is less evidence for war in this episode than in the others. The Late Classic (Tepeu 2–3) sequence of events is tied up with trade, northern Maya, and a devastating raid. Let us now review evidence from other parts of the Maya lowlands for similar and perhaps correlated events.

IV

I II

Evidence for Teotihuacan Militarism in the Maya Lowlands

III

Direct evidence for Teotihuacan military intervention in Maya Lowland affairs is scarce. Considering the serious difficulties of defining the better known and less concealed evidence for the Late Classic, we should

IV

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not be surprised at this yet more difficult situation. Early Classic remains are notoriously obscured by Late Classic remains, and the ephemeral evidence of conflict would have been tidied up. The Late Classic situation is different owing to the often terminal nature of the conflict involved in the Classic collapse. At the end there were few organized people around to clean up, and therefore we can hope to find more direct evidence of warfare at this point, such as the unburied battle casualties and the remains of the executed elite at Colha.

Richard Jones and I have argued that Rio Azul, Uaxactun, and Tikal were all members of the same state organization, with the capital at Tikal (Adams and Jones 1981). The Rio Azul Tomb 1 mural documents the relationship of Ruler X to Stormy Sky and Bird Claw as their son, and as the descendant of Curl Nose and, ultimately, of the Sun God (Adams et al. 1984:8–10). Ruler X seems also to be depicted and named on Tres Islas Stela 1 and 2, a site some 120 air km south of Rio Azul (Peter Mathews, personal communication 1984). Based on Ian Graham's drawings, the iconography on Tres Islas Stela 2 resembles that in Rio Azul Tomb 1 in its emphasis on the Storm God or Lightning Beast. Further, on Stela 2 the principal figure, Ruler X, is shown wearing a Teotihuacan-style headdress. Stela I also names Ruler X, and shows him wearing Teotihuacan warrior costume as well.

Teotihuacan presence in the Maya Lowlands has been largely interpreted as commercial and political (Morley et al. 1983:115; Webster 1977). The evidence has often been remarkably fragmentary and equivocal. Clemency Coggins (1975) has, however, suggested that military muscle was involved in the displacement of the Jaguar Dynasty at Tikal by the Sky Dynasty, and that military aid from Teotihuacan was involved. I am in agreement with this interpretation, and wish to add new data in support of it.

Circumstantially, Tikal, Rio Azul, and Becan are all fortified and all are sites with strong indications of Teotihuacan presence. Uaxactun is defensible, but no formal fortifications of the moat and parapet kind have been found there.

Evidence for Teotihuacan militarism is in the form of four kinds of information: 1, depictive; 2, ceramic; 3, circumstantial correlation of events; and 4, hieroglyphic.

The available evidence makes it possible to expand Coggins's suggestion that Teotihuacan military might was a factor in the overthrow of the Tikal dynasty by Curl Nose. The later military extension or consolidation of the Tikal state seems to have been by military means, under the leadership of Curl Nose's son and grandson. It is crucial that both seem to have used Teotihuacan military aid. The evidence for or against this theory will undoubtedly come fitfully and painfully, but it may be useful to make this relationship explicit in order to stimulate attention to the possibilities.

Depictive documents include three Tikal stelae and two from Tres Islas, all from the late fourth and early fifth centuries A.D. Cylinder tripod Balana Black vases from elite tombs at Tikal, Uaxactun, and Rio Azul are from the same period. A cache vessel with ceramic figurines and jade figures is from the Early Classic fortress of Becan (Ball 1974a). Hieroglyphic texts from Tikal Stela 31 and Rio Azul Tomb 1 (Adams et al. 1984:8–10) refer to events from the early fifth century. The fortifications from Tikal, Becan, and Rio Azul are all from the Early Classic or were used during that period.

Terminal Classic Lowland Militarism

The Teotihuacan-influenced ceramics in the elite tombs at Tikal, Uaxactun, and Rio Azul are all related to prestige and status, given that they were presented to important persons upon their deaths and burials. A butterfly decorated vessel was found in Tikal Burial 48, which Coggins (1975) argues is the tomb of Stormy Sky, the second of the Teotihuacan-backed rulers. Butterflies are symbols for souls in Teotihuacan iconography, and distinctly not a part of contemporary Maya symbolism. Further, Stormy Sky was flanked in his tomb by two male attendants or retainers. On Stela 31, the same ruler is flanked by two Teotihuacan warriors (Jones and Satterthwaite 1982:Figures 51, 52).

Evidence for militarism in the Terminal Classic period is of several kinds: 1, depictive; 2, hieroglyphic; 3, ceramic; 4, architectural; 5, skeletal; 6, circumstantial; and 7, linguistic. It has been noted that the military intrusion into Rio Azul was preceded by a strong presence of slate ware and other northern Maya lowland pottery types. At Colha, slate ware also preceded the occurrence of a convincing case for northern military activity. An estimated twenty individuals are represented by scattered and apparently unburied skeletal parts on Structure 27, and are associated with Terminal Classic pottery (Potter 1982:104). Potter interprets the skeletal remains as disturbed Late Classic burials.

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Approximately 100 meters away in front of Structure 4, a pit was found dug into the plaster floor which contained at least 28 human skulls (Eaton 1980:149–150). The skulls had been deposited in the pit while fresh, judging by the articulation of many of the mandibles with the crania, and by the common presence of the cervical vertebrae (Steele et al. 1980:165, Table 1). The small palace type structure above had been burnt and some of its debris had collapsed over the skull pit.

northern traits are quite distinctive in the large body of sculpture from the period (Willey 1975:42; Sabloff 1973; Graham 1973). There is no disagreement that the final Seibal phase probably represents a change in leadership that was Mexicanized. Iconography, square glyph cartouches, and other elements in the sculpture are compelling evidence on this point (Sabloff and Willey 1967). What is in dispute, however, is the origin of the intruders in the Pasión River centers as a whole.

Men, women, and children are all represented among the skulls, with an age range from infants to oldsters. The interpretation is that the skulls represent a group of people who were beheaded (Steele et al. 1980:167). The ceramic sequence shows a severe disruption at this point with a nearly complete replacement of all functional types. That is, Terminal Classic pottery (Masson Complex, Tepeu 2–3 Ceramic Sphere) is completely replaced by an Early Postclassic complex (San Antonio , New Town Sphere) with no typological continuities between the complexes as was the case in earlier portions of the sequence (Adams and Valdez 1980:27; Valdez and Adams 1982:27).

I have argued that there were two intrusions, the earlier from the north (Puuc?) at Seibal (Adams 1973), and the later from the west (Tabasco) at Altar de Sacrificios (Adams 1963, 1971). Graham's study of the Seibal sculpture seems to fit better with my scheme than with that of Sabloff and Willey (1967), who argue for only one intrusion into the Pasión Valley. The new evidence of a northern intrusion that comprised separate and widespread events at several centers reinforces the two-intrusion theory. To the north of the Peten there is some evidence from Becan, where the Terminal Classic complex ends at about the same time as most or all of the events dealt with above (Adams 1977b:89–90). The fortifications were out of military use in Terminal Classic times, and the moat served as a trash dump. This was evidently imprudent behavior because ultimately the fortress was occupied by squatters in the immediate Postclassic period (Xcocom ceramic complex), when some Chenes-style structures may have been built at nearby Chicanna.

Taken together, the evidence suggests a battle on and around Structure 27 between northerners and people from Colha, with the latter losing. The execution of the remaining elite followed as well as the destruction of many of the formal buildings at the site (Structure 4 and skull pit). The continuation of large-scale stone tool production in the Early Postclassic at Colha suggests that the new overlords remained on the spot at least for a few years.

South and west of the Rio Bec area is Calakmul, evidently the capital of a large regional state (Adams and Jones 1981), which has a group of distinctly different Terminal Classic sculptures. Six stelae at the center are very late in style according to Proskouriakoff (1950:Figure 79), and appear to have affinities with stelae from Uxmal (Morley 1970), the probable capital of the Puuc state. Specifically, Calakmul stelae 15, 17, 50, 65, 84 and 91 are classified by Proskouriakoff as from the period of extreme decadence, with 50 and 65 probably dating from 9.19.0.0.0+ 2 katuns (A.D. 810 + 40 years). Rio Azul stela 4 is similar to these sculptures, as are Oxpemul stelae 10, 12. 15, and 17 (Ruppert and Dennison 1943:Plates 55, 56). Possibly the Calakmul-Oxpemul stelae signal a northern elite takeover.

At Nohmul in northern Belize there is evidence for Yucatec architecture at the site in Early Postclassic (Hammond 1982:69–70) associated with slate ware pottery. Complete replacement of the Terminal Classic complex at Barton Ramie by New Town Sphere pottery suggested to Gifford (1965:384–386) that something drastic had happened, but no additional evidence was available to indicate the nature of the event. At Quirigua, the Terminal Classic rulers appear to have been replaced by intruders, based on the change in pottery, and the appearance of copper bells, a chacmool sculpture, and other materials distinct from those of the Classic tradition at the site. The new pottery shows affinities to the New Town Sphere ceramics, and Tabasco coast traders may have been involved in the downfall of the Classic at Quirigua (Sharer 1985:252).

A recent linguistic study of Cholan and Yucatec languages and scripts (Justeson et al. 1985) concludes that Yucatec influences on Cholan languages of the southern lowlands occurred at about the time of the Terminal Classic and Early Postclassic.

Inland, at Seibal, Bayal-Boca pottery was associated with the final florescence of that center. Puuc characteristics are present in the architecture, and late

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Patterns discernible in several kinds of evidence now reinforce Ball's (1974b) suggestion that northern lowland groups from the Puuc, together with possible allies from the Tabasco coast, moved south against the Central and South Lowlands Classic states. Patterns of dates and sequences of events suggest that at least three major movements may have been involved. One set of intrusions seems to have been via the coastal canoe trade routes. The events at the sites of Colha, Barton Ramie, Nohmul, and Quirigua would be explained by raids along the coast and inland from it. Rio Azul's downfall might also be attributable to this movement due to the fact that the river (Rio Azul) offers an access route to the Caribbean.

explanations. One would be that the people outside the center were driven south as refugees. Another is that the rural population were carried off into a sort of Babylonian captivity by the northerners. Cowgill (1964) suggested this some time ago, and it is attractive for two reasons. It would partially explain the sudden rise in population in the Puuc area, and it would provide another motivation for the raids by the northerners into the south. Captive populations would be an economic goal worth pursuing.

A Revised Model of Maya Warfare and Militarism

Seibal is located so far inland that it is difficult to judge from which direction the strike against it may have come. However, the rivers Pusilha and Machaquila are routes of access to the Caribbean coast which might have served a determined group. The center of Seibal appears unique in the amount of development investment put into it by the new regime, whereas Rio Azul seems to have been occupied briefly and Colha only slightly longer. The late dynastic monuments at Calakmul and Oxpemul may indicate more permanent and longer occupation. Judging by the continuity of ceramic sequence and other evidence from Lamanai, that center continued in operation as an urban administrative point until the Spanish conquest (Pendergast 1985).

It seems clear that the present vaguely agreed-upon picture of Maya militarism is inadequate in the face of data on the material remains of field fortifications and on the processual events in which warfare played a part. That is, the characterization of Maya warfare as elite-dominated in the sense of champion-oriented combat (e.g., Adams 1977a:162), is becoming increasingly incongruent with new information about the collapse, the hiatus, and the beginnings of the Early Classic. On the other hand, these great events of widespread effect may well have been episodic and uncharacteristic in themselves of the majority of the

Because this is an examination of the nature of a cultural institution, warfare, we cannot examine the nature of a processual event, the Maya Collapse, to any degree. However, the motivations in that case, both long and short term, remain to be explained. It is possible that drought (Gunn and Adams 1981), combined with a new ideology partially derived from Central Mexico, led to predation on the southern lowlands zones by Puuc centers. The military intrusions from the Tabasco coast by presumed Chontal speakers would have been opportunistic raids into an already disturbed and politically weakened area. It may be that these people were allied to the northerners and, as Ball (1974b: 91–92) has suggested, were the proto-Itza. Finally, the depopulation of the rural zone around Rio Azul during the intrusion episode might have several

Figure 7.2 Schematic map of Becan fortress (after Thomas 1981 , with additions by R. E. W. Adams).

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Maya Classic period, as has been argued by Demarest (1978). It is worth noting that such information as we possess on the chronology of southern fortifications indicates that all were begun and mainly used in the Early Classic or even in the Late Preclassic. This includes Tikal, Becan, Rio Azul, and Mirador; Aguacatal seems also to have been early. North of the southern lowlands, Edzna's fortress is dated as possibly Late Preclassic; once more it seems that after the initial construction of defenses, they went out of active use (Matheny et al. 1983:195–196). Defensive works at all of the sites mentioned above share certain similarities. All use moats and interior parapets, but only Edzna's moat is flooded. It is not known what embellishments might have been made to the defences. They could have included palisades, thorny bushes, pungi stakes, snakes, and a number of other unpleasant additions. An interrupted causeway across the putative defense ditch at Rio Azul implies a drawbridge. Dry moats, drawbridges, parapets, and palisades were all features of Maya warfare in the sixteenth century, as they seem to have been in the Classic period as well (e.g., Chamberlain 1948). Siege towers are also known from the Early Postclassic period as shown in Temple A at Chichen Itza (Miller 1977: Figure 7.3 Maya Lowlands with selected sites (see index in Table 1) Figure 3) and called to my attention by and suggested regional state boundaries. David Kelley. Contemporaneous defensive systems in the central and northern lowlands seem to emphasize walls (Calakmul, of wood, stone, and other materials. Advisor A in Uxmal, and Chichen Itza?). Chichen Temple A Mural Tomb 19 at Rio Azul was buried with a jade necklace 1 probably shows walls being attached by siege towers. of 13 small human heads which could have been intended to represent the real items (Hall 1985). The emphasis on hand-to-hand combat in the weapons Javelins, stones, knives, clubs, are the weapons most system of the Classic Maya is reflected in the depictive often shown. The melee is the only certain classic materials. One of the subsidiary aims of Maya warfare tactical situation shown, but that is likely to be more was to take trophy heads, a practice reflected in both the result of tactical usage than of the whole system the Bonampak (Ruppert et al. 1955) and the Mul Chic itself. We have no direct indication of what Maya murals (Piña Chan 1963). Sculptured stelae seem to tactics might have been, but certain parameters can be show the presence of trophy heads attached to belts drawn around them. and sometimes perhaps in a shrunken condition. It may well be, of course, that the heads were surrogates

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Logistics are a prime constraint on the numbers of men to be maintained in the field, at what distance, and for how long. Maya communication and transport systems were limited to human porters overland, and to canoes on water. Defensive works would also be logistically defined, with a need for water, food and other supplies inside the defended zone. Tikal, Becan, Rio Azul, and Edzna all have adequate water storage within the defensive perimeters (Figure 7.2), and at least Becan has what were probably large grain magazines in Structure VIII, although Potter (1977:51) believes that their utility would have been slight.

Tikal has the largest known defensive works and is quite different from any other center in that regard. It may be that at the time of construction of the earthworks Tikal was militarily much more sophisticated than any of the competitive and contemporary states. In order to make the 15- and 25 km-long Tikal defenses effective, certain measures would have been imperative. Specifically, if one did not man the defenses with an immense number of men, then a fire-brigade system of defense would have been necessary. Economy of force would dictate outposts, pickets, listening posts, and small unit defenses in front of the main line of defense. Main bodies and reserves would be located in central areas within the lines. Communications and a clear chain of command would be needed in order to make these effective and to ensure that reserves were brought up in time.

Taken together, the evidence indicates that Maya campaigns were probably short, swift, and based on the mounting of a surprise raid. Given even minimal warning, populations, and especially elite people, could have taken refuge within the defensive zones rapidly. The longer the distance over which the raid was to be mounted, the greater the need to sustain the raiding party with the supplies that could be obtained in enemy territory. Though it is true that the massive armies of Napoleonic France operated in this manner, it was always difficult for them when they were compelled to mount a siege, even though they employed a transport system superior to that of the Maya.

If a system of the sort posited above was in place in Tikal in the Early Classic use of the defensive line, then it would have been unique in the Maya Lowlands. Yet one must concede that the site of Tikal is unique in its size, and also in its contact with Teotihuacan, which might have furnished the necessary military expertise and organizational experience. Again, if such a system was in place during the Early Classic it went out of use later, apparently during the period of the hiatus. Coggins (1975) has suggested that the hiatus was the result of an attempt on the part of the displaced older dynasties to recapture power from those allied with Teotihuacan. This attempt followed the withdrawal of Teotihuacan from the Lowlands in the sixth century A.D. Internal revolt, conspiracy, and civil war are often quite different from warfare among competing states. After that period of unrest, and with the advent of political stability in the early part of the Late Classic, the older (Preclassic) raiding pattern probably reasserted itself among the Maya elite.

Defense against raids must have been in the form of several kinds of early-warning systems. Traditionally, farmers living in buffer zones have been counted on for such warning. Formal outposts, lookouts, and patrols are traditional features as well. All of these imperatives as well as the fortresses themselves argue for a more systematic militarism than we have allowed the Maya previously. Rands (1973:Figure 21) has pointed out that there are hints of this sort of system in such depictive pieces as Piedras Negras Lintel 2 in which uniformed soldiers (36 of them?) kneel in lines before a similarly garbed officer.

The final episode of culture history in the south which reflects organized violence is the already discussed Great Collapse. This need not be reprised here except to note that the element of extensive and repeated raids from north, east, and west seems to have been a greater factor in the Maya downfall than had been assumed before. The renewed military sophistication, ideological fervor, and possibly the use of the bow and arrow by the northern Maya states presumably gave them the edge over southern Maya region which had enjoyed perhaps 250 years of relative peace.

The foregoing suggestions include no allowance for the differences among the Maya regional states. As indicated by such analyses as the Rank-Size rule (Adams 1982; Adams and Jones 1981), centers and regions differed among themselves in the degree of centralization. Although Smith and I have offered a feudal model for the Classic Maya of Rio Bec (Adams & Smith 1981), we did not mean to disallow variation in administration among the Maya states. The RankSize rule and hieroglyphic analyses (Marcus 1976) show variation among the states; Tikal and Calakmul are identified as most centralized whereas the Chenes and Rio Bec areas seem to have had the characteristics of loose confederations of elite centers. Warfare should, therefore, have differed among those centers.

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REFERENCES CITED

Adams, Richard E. W. 1963 The Ceramic Sequence at Altar de Sacrificios, Guatemala. Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Department of Anthropology, Harvard University. 1964 Seibal, Peten: Una Secuencia Cerámica Preliminar y un Nuevo Mapa. Estudios de Cultura Maya 3:85– 96. Reprinted in IDAEH 16:3–12, Guatemala 1964. 1971 The Ceramics of Altar de Sacrificios. Peabody Museum Papers 63, No. 1. Harvard University, Cambridge. 1973 Maya Collapse: Transformation and Termination in the Ceramic Sequence at Altar de Sacrificios. In The Classic Maya Collapse, edited by T. Patrick Culbert, pp. 133–163. University of New Mexico Press, Albuquerque. 1977a Prehistoric Mesoamerica. First edition. Little, Brown and Co., Boston. 1977b Rio Bec Archaeology and the Rise of Maya Civilization. In The Origins of Maya Civilization, edited by Richard E. W. Adams, pp. 77–99. University of New Mexico Press, Albuquerque. 1982 Rank Size Analysis of Northern Belize Maya Sites. In Archaeology at Colha, Belize: The 1981 Interim Report, edited by Thomas R. Hester, Harry J. Shafer, and Jack D. Eaton, pp. 60–64. Center for Archaeological Research, University of Texas, San Antonio. (CAR/UTSA). 1985 Rio Azul Report, The 1984 Season. CAR/UTSA, San Antonio. 1990 Archaeological Research at the Lowland Maya City of Rio Azul. Latin American Antiquity 1:23–41. Adams, Richard E. W., W. E. Brown, and T. Patrick Culbert 1981 Radar Mapping, Archaeology, and Ancient Maya Land Use. Science 213:1457–1463. Adams, Richard E. W., Grant D. Hall, Ian Graham, Fred Valdez, Stephen L. Black, Daniel R. Potter, Douglas J. Cannell, and Barbara Cannell 1984 Rio Azul Reports, Number 1: Final 1983 Report. CAR/UTSA, San Antonio. Adams, Richard E. W., and Richard C. Jones 1981 Spatial Patterns and Regional Growth among Classic Maya Cities. American Antiquity 46:301–322. Adams, Richard E. W., and Woodruff D. Smith 1981 Feudal Models for Classic Maya Civilization. In Lowland Maya Settlement Patterns, edited by Wendy Ashmore, pp. 335–349. University of New Mexico Press, Albuquerque. Adams, Richard E. W., and Fred Valdez, Jr. 1980 The Ceramic Sequence of Colha, Belize: 1979 and 1980 Seasons. In The Colha Project, Second Season, 1980 Interim Report, edited by Thomas R. Hester, Jack D. Eaton, and Harry J. Shafer, pp. 15–40. CAR/UTSA, San Antonio. Ball, Joseph 1974a A Teotihuacan Style Cache from the Maya Lowlands. Archaeology 27:2–9. 1974b A Coordinate Approach to Northern Maya Prehistory: A. D. 700–1200. American Antiquity 39:85–93. Chamberlain, Robert S. 1948 The Conquest and Colonization of Yucatan, 1517–1550. Publication 582. Carnegie Institution of Washington, Washington, D. C. Coe, Michael D. 1973 The Maya Scribe and His World. Grolier Club, New York. Coggins, Clemency C. 1975 Painting and Drawing Styles at Tikal: An Historical and Iconographic Reconstruction. Ph.D. dissertation, Harvard University. University Microfilms, Ann Arbor. Cowgill, George L. 1964 The End of the Classic Maya Culture: A Review of Recent Evidence. Southwestern Journal of Anthropology 20:145–159. Demarest, Arthur A. 1978 Interregional Conflict and Situational Ethics in Classic Maya Warfare. In Codex Wauchope, edited by M. Giardino, Monroe B. Edmonson, and Winifred Creamer, pp. 101–111, in Human Mosaic. Tulane University, New Orleans. Eaton, Jack D. 1980 Operation 2011: Investigations within the Main Plaza of the Monumental Center at Colha. In The Colha Project, Second Season, 1980 Interim Report, edited by Thomas R. Hester, Jack D. Eaton, and Harry J.

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Shafer, pp. 145–162. CAR/UTSA, San Antonio. Operation 6: An Elite Residential Group at Rio Azul. In Rio Azul Reports, No. 2: The 1984 Season, edited by Richard E. W. Adams, pp. 54–68. CAR/UTSA, San Antonio. Follett, P. H. F. 1932 War and Weapons of the Maya. Publication No. 4. Middle American Research Institute, Tulane University, New Orleans. Gifford, James C. 1965 Ceramics. In Prehistoric Maya Settlements in the Belize Valley, edited by Gordon R. Willey, William R. Bullard, Jr., John B. Glass, and James C. Gifford, pp. 319–390. Peabody Museum Papers 54. Harvard University, Cambridge. Graham, John A. 1973 Aspects of Non-Classic Presences in the Inscriptions and Sculptures Art of Seibal. In The Classic Maya Collapse, edited by T. Patrick Culbert, pp. 207–219. University of New Mexico Press, Albuquerque. Gunn, Joel, and Richard E. W. Adams 1981 Climate Change, Culture and Civilization in North America. World Archaeology 13:87–100. Hall, Grant D. 1985 Results of Tomb Investigation at Rio Azul; Season of 1984. In Rio Azul Reports, No. 2, The 1984 Season, edited by Richard E. W. Adams, pp. 69–110. CAR/UTSA, San Antonio. Hammond, Norman 1982 Colha in Context. In Archaeology at Colha, Belize: The 1981 Interim Report, edited by Thomas R. Hester, Harry J. Shafer, and Jack D. Eaton, pp. 65–71. CAR/UTSA, San Antonio. Haviland, William A. 1983 Preface. In The Settlement Survey of Tikal, by Dennis E. Puleston, pp. xi-xiii. Tikal Report 13. The University Museum, Philadelphia. Jones, Christopher 1977 Inauguration Dates of Three Late Classic Rulers of Tikal, Guatemala. American Antiquity 42:28–60. Jones, Christopher, and Linton Satterthwaite, Jr. 1982 The Monuments and Inscriptions of Tikal: The Carved Monuments. Tikal Report 33, Part A. The University Museum, Philadelphia. Justeson, John S., William M. Norman, Lyle Campbell, and Terrence Kaufman 1985 The Foreign Impact on Lowland Mayan Language and Script. Publication No. 53. Middle American Research Institute, Tulane University, New Orleans. Marcus, Joyce 1976 Emblem and State in the Classic Maya Lowlands. Dumbarton Oaks, Washington, D.C. Matheny, Ray T., Deanne L. Gurr, Donald W. Forsyth, and F. Richard Hauck 1983 Investigations at Edzna, Campeche, Mexico. New World Archaeological Foundation Paper 46. Brigham Young University, Provo. Miller, Arthur G. 1977 Captains of the Itza: Unpublished Mural Evidence from Chichen Itza. In Social Process in Maya Prehistory, edited by Norman Hammond, pp. 197–225. Academic Press, New York. Morley, Sylvanus G. 1946 The Ancient Maya. Stanford University Press, Palo Alto, California. 1970 The Stela Platform at Uxmal, Yucatan, Mexico. Edited with notes by H. E. D. Pollock. In Archaeological Studies in Middle America, edited by Margaret A. L. Harrison and Robert Wauchope, pp. 151–180. Publication No. 26. Middle American Research Institute, Tulane University, New Orleans. Morley, Sylvanus G., George W. Brainerd, and Robert J. Sharer 1983 The Ancient Maya. Fourth edition. Stanford University Press, Palo Alto. Pendergast, David M. 1985 Lamanai, Belize: An Updated view. In The Lowland Maya Postclassic, edited by Arlen F. Chase and Prudence M. Rice, pp. 91–103. University of Texas Press, Austin. Piña Chan, Roman 1963 Informe Preliminar sobre Mul-Chic, Yucatán. Anales del Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia 15(44):99–118. Mexico, D.F. Pollock, H. E. D. 1965 Architecture of the Maya Lowlands. In Handbook of Middle American Indians, vol. 2, edited by Gordon R. Willey, pp. 378–440. University of Texas Press, Austin. 1985

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Potter, David F. 1977 Maya Architecture of the Central Yucatan Peninsula, Mexico. Publication No. 44. Middle American Research Institute, Tulane University, New Orleans. Potter, Daniel R. 1982 Some Results of the Second Year of Excavation of Operation 2012. In Archaeology at Colha, Belize: The 1981 Interim Report, edited by Thomas R. Hester, Harry J. Shafer, and Jack D. Eaton, pp. 98–122. CAR/UTSA, San Antonio. Proskouriakoff, Tatiana 1950 A Study of Classic Maya Sculpture. Publication 593. Carnegie Institution of Washington, Washington, D. C. 1960 Historical Implications of a Pattern of Dates at Piedras Negras, Guatemala. American Antiquity 25:454– 475. Puleston, Dennis E. 1983 The Settlement Survey of Tikal. Tikal Report 13. The University Museum, Philadelphia. Puleston, Dennis E., and Donald W. Callender, Jr. 1967 Defensive Earthworks at Tikal. Expedition 9:40–48. Rands, Robert L. 1973 The Classic Maya Collapse: Usumacinta Zone and the Northwestern Periphery. In The Classic Maya Collapse, edited by T. Patrick Culbert, pp. 165–205. University of New Mexico Press, Albuquerque. Ruppert, Karl, and John H. Denison 1943 Archaeological Reconnaissance in Campeche, Quintana Roo, and Peten. Publication 543. Carnegie Institution of Washington, Washington, D. C. Ruppert, Karl, J. Eric S. Thompson, and Tatiana Proskouriakoff 1955 Bonampak, Chiapas, Mexico. Publication 602. Carnegie Institution of Washington, Washington, D.C. Sabloff, Jeremy 1973 Continuity and Disruption during Terminal Late Classic Times at Seibal: Ceramic and Other Evidence. In The Classic Maya Collapse, edited by T. Patrick Culbert, pp. 107–131. University of New Mexico Press, Albuquerque. Sabloff, Jeremy A., and Gordon R. Willey 1967 The Collapse of Maya Civilization in the Southern Lowlands: A Consideration of History and Process. Southwestern Journal of Anthropology 23:311–336. Sharer, Robert J. 1985 Terminal Events in the Southeastern Lowlands: A View from Quirigua. In The Lowland Maya Postclassic, edited by Arlen F. Chase and Prudence M. Rice, pp. 245–253. University of Texas Press, Austin. Steele, D. Gentry, Jack D. Eaton, and A. J. Taylor 1980 The Skulls from Operation 2011 at Colha: A Preliminary Examination. In The Colha Project, Second Season, 1980 Interim Report, edited by Thomas R. Hester, Jack D. Eaton, and Harry J. Shafer, pp. 163–172. CAR/UTSA, San Antonio. Thomas, Prentice M., Jr. 1981 Prehistoric Maya Settlement Patterns at Becan, Campeche, Mexico. Publication No. 45. Middle American Research Institute, Tulane University, New Orleans. Thompson, J. Eric S. 1966 The Rise and Fall of Maya Civilization. Second edition. University of Oklahoma Press, Norman. Valdez, Fred, Jr., and Richard E. W. Adams 1982 The Ceramics of Colha After Three Field Seasons: 1979–1981. In Archaeology at Colha, Belize; The 1981 Interim Report, edited by Thomas R. Hester, Harry J. Shafer, and Jack D. Eaton, pp. 21–30. CAR/UTSA, San Antonio. Webster, David L. 1976 Defensive Earthworks at Becan, Campeche, Mexico. Publication No. 41. Middle American Research Institute, Tulane University, New Orleans. 1977 Warfare and the Evolution of Maya Civilization. In The Origins of Maya Civilization, edited by Richard E. W. Adams, pp. 335–372. University of New Mexico Press, Albuquerque. Willey, Gordon R. 1975 Excavations at Seibal, Introduction: The Site and its Setting. Peabody Museum Memoirs 13. Harvard University, Cambridge.

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8 A Distinctive Maya Architectural Format: The Lamanai Temple H. Stanley Loten

At Lamanai, as at Tikal, the ancient Maya maintained and repeated the same distinctive temple form over a significantly long time span at different locations within the site. This review outlines the Lamanai example and considers comparable patterns of variation in architectural forms of pyramid-temples at other sites in the Maya area.

Introduction Towering pyramidal temples, arresting dynastic portraits, fantastic mythological figures; they leap to our eyes from the forest canopy, from incised stelae and from sculptured mask panels. These are the great signature pieces of Maya artistic production. They cap the ruins that initially attracted archaeological attention, and they continue to draw world-class tourism to the Maya area. A constant stream of vacationers shuffles past these great works, now cleared and restored. But they are seen merely as curiosities touted to sell excursions from Caribbean resorts. In ancient times, however, they were certainly not for holiday amusement; they were central to the civic and political life of Maya communities. Over centuries the Maya invested an enormous amount of time, energy, skill and resources in their production, and their functioning is generally acknowledged to have been critical to Maya civilization.

As a secondary theme I am concerned with the conceptual role played by the pyramid, and with the underlying reasons that impelled the Maya to include such costly and time-consuming features as prominent parts of their major temples. It is generally taken more or less for granted that Maya pyramids were employed to raise the “temples” at their summits to a commanding position of height (see, for example, Stierlin 1968:96). This view of the structures is certainly correct, and the idea has obvious value; I suspect, however, that it may not be the whole story. A quite different motivation may actually have been more fundamental as an incentive for including pyramidal components in major temples. This review of the Lamanai Temple serves to open up the subject, at least in a preliminary way.

There is hardly an ancient Maya settlement of any size that does not have at or near its center a pyramidal temple, a group of such structures, or several groups, some with pyramidal components, others without. It is probably true to say that every Maya temple is unique in some way, and in the corpus of Maya temple architecture there must be hundreds, if not thousands, of pyramid-temples, large and small, each with its own specific formal properties. The norm, then, would seem to be that each temple presents unique architectural features within the general framework of Maya architectural conventions.

The attempt to confront a question such as the underlying intentions behind Maya temple design is obviously a game that can be played only in the realm of speculation. The Lamanai Temple, as I show below, provides particular physical evidence that I believe offers a modest grounding in support of experimental interpretative probing. Here I hope to establish at least a basic premise or starting point for the comprehensive treatment appropriate to a more complete analysis.

At Tikal, however, we find a striking exception to this rule. A distinctive temple type was repeated over and over again with relatively minor variations in different parts of the site and across many centuries. As far as I am aware, Lamanai, in Belize, is the one other Maya site where we find a comparable practice.

The Pyramid-Temple The practice of building numerous pyramid-temples in more or less the same distinctive form at the same site,

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or at related sites, seems to have been most energetically pursued at Lamanai, Tikal, and Chichen Itzá. The Cross Group at Palenque would appear to provide another example of a distinctive pyramidal temple type used more than once at the same site. In this case, however, the three temples involved were all built at the same time, and form related parts of a single architectural complex. They are, for this reason, not quite like the Lamanai Temple and Tikal Temple situations, in which the same architectural format was repeated at widely different times and in different locations.

other instance of a comparable practice within Mesoamerica involves the double temple of the Mexica, at Tenochtitlan (Matos Moctezuma 1988:123–145), Tenayuca (Marquina 1964:164–177), and other centers around the Valley of Mexico. This temple model was employed throughout the time of Aztec dominance at the Templo Mayor site, and appears in various other locations, as for example, Tenayuca, Santa Cecilia, Tlatelolco, Teopanzolco and Cempoala (Pasztory 1983:95–183). The Temple of the Sun and the Temple of the Moon at Teotihuacán are certainly distinctive and similar in form, but relate to no other known examples other than the much smaller versions at Kaminaljuyú (Kidder et al. 1946:12–38). Tablero/talud terrace profiles may well be emblematic of Teotihuacán, but are applied to many buildings, not just pyramid-temples, and may carry a general implication of “sacredness” (Kubler 1973:279) rather than a proprietary one attached to a particular place.

Kaminaljuyú and the Rio Bec region provide other examples of a similar but less extensive practice using very different forms of temples. The particular temple model employed at Lamanai has been described as the “Lamanai Building” (Pendergast 1981:35–36). Here I propose to rename it the “Lamanai Temple,” review its very limited presence in other Mesoamerican sites, develop a definition, and briefly consider at least some possibilities that it may raise for interpretation of pyramidal components in Mesoamerican temples generally. I proceed on the assumption that the term “temple” does not require definition. Although it is a functional term that implies certain activities which cannot always be demonstrated, in normal usage it is applied morphologically, that is, to structures with certain properties of form (see Andrews 1975:39 ff). It is in this sense that the structures I discuss here are customarily referred to as “temples.” All specific architectural terms that I employ here follow Loten and Pendergast (1984).

The Tikal Temple Type The notion of a temple type identified with a particular locus is best exemplified by the “Tikal Temple,” a name that I apply to structures that possess a distinctive feature in their Building component. I use the term “component” in the sense in which it is employed by Satterthwaite (1943:16), who as far as I know was the first to use it in reference to the major morphological bodies that typically make up the aggregate form of pyramidal temples, not solely in the Maya area but throughout Mesoamerica. I have extended Satterthwaite's definition to include the notion of implied three-dimensional completeness, that is, none of the elements of a component extends into other components (Loten 1971:39).

The Lamanai Temple, the Tikal Temple, and the Castillo at Chichen Itza are examples of distinctive pyramid-temples that present architectural forms not found elsewhere. The Rio Bec temple, with twin towers formed as images of pyramidal temples (Piña Chan 1985:94–98), would provide a fourth example were it not for the fact that similar structures appear at Becan (Potter 1977:46–56), Xpuhil and Chicanna (Piña Chan 1985:35–44, 46–50) as well as at Rio Bec — and hence are not clearly associated with any one site. In addition, each of the sites has only one example of the form. The structures do, however, provide an indication of the presence of formats similar to those of the Tikal Temple and Lamanai Temple at various sites. Their distinctive forms suggest that they might have served a function loosely analogous to that of emblem glyphs.

The best known example of the Tikal Temple is Great Temple I (Coe 1990:589–613), a highly distinctive pyramidal temple simply by virtue of its height and vertical proportions. But the diagnostic feature that identifies it as a Tikal Temple pertains only to the Building component, and sometimes the Building platform (as a standard type of component, the “Building platform” may be defined as a platform that directly supports a Building component and has the same plan configuration, or “footprint” [Loten 1971:38]). The diagnostic feature of the Tikal Temple appears on north and south sides of the Temple I Building, which because of this feature has a distinctive compound appearance, as if it were actually two buildings, one pasted in front of the other.

Although the major temples at most sites no doubt embody strong local associations, and many are indeed quite distinctive in architectural form, the practice of repeating the same form over time and in different localities does not show up at other sites in the Maya area to the same extent as at these three. The obvious

The definition of the Tikal Temple never includes the pyramid, a component that is essentially vertical in

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form and usually embodies at least three terraces — with some exceptions, as for example the structure known as the “Cono”, at Coba (Folan et al. 1983:75). It also excludes the basal platform, the component that is lowest in the vertical stack and set off by distinctive features of its own, often a wider stair, masks, different terrace profiles, or a larger surface area. Likewise the definition does not include the roof comb, a component usually obvious as an element located on the roof of a vaulted Building component with no apparent function other than that of displaying figural imagery. At times it may resemble an upper story, but it is usually not accessible, and is shaped in ways that do not suggest buildings. An exception is Structure 5D-91at Tikal, which has a roof comb with rooms, doorways and windows.

The Tikal Temple turns up at several sites other than Tikal. Piedras Negras, the most remote, and with many Peten architectural traits, has two examples, Structures O13 and O15, with the side inset in their Building components, and three others, R1, R5, and K5, that display this feature only in the Building platforms and not in the Buildings they support (Satterthwaite 1943:Figure 3). Uaxactun, very close to Tikal, has only one example, Structure A-XVIII, a highly elaborate building of two stories that stands above a lower substructure platform not high enough to qualify as a pyramid (Smith 1937). Structure B of Group II at Holmul, only slightly farther away from Tikal, has the side inset in a Building that eventually had a total of four rooms (Merwin and Vaillant 1932:36).

At Tikal, the set of components listed above - basal platform, pyramid, building platform, Building, and roof comb, together with a sixth, the supplementary platform, apply to all major temples. This may be something unique to the site.

Structure A-XVIII at Uaxactun is Early Classic, quite comparable in date to Structures 5D-23 2nd and 5D-24 2nd on the North Acropolis (Coe 1990:417–418, 432), which are the earliest known examples of Tikal Temples at Tikal. Chronological controls are not sufficient to indicate whether A-XVIII predates the Tikal examples. Building B, Group II at Holmul, in Merwin and Vaillant's (1932:20–41) Period II is also Early Classic, but has some properties, such as block masonry in Building walls, that suggest a date closer to the Middle Classic or at least late in the Early Classic, even though the structure directly overlies Protoclassic Holmul I material. Block masonry is ashlar in which the units are squared and relatively thick as compared with veneer masonry. Preclassic work often has block masonry on terrace facings but rubble masonry in Building walls of the same structure. Appearance of block masonry in Building walls may mark the late stages of the Early Classic; at least this is the tendency in monumental construction at Tikal.

The element that produces the “dual Building” effect in Temple I is a recess in the exterior wall surface known as a “side inset” (Loten and Pendergast 1984:13). As far as I am aware, it was first discussed by Satterthwaite (1941:188[“indentation”]) in relation to temples at Piedras Negras, and he interpreted it there as an import from the Peten. At the time Satterthwaite wrote, the side inset form was well known from Maler's and Tozzer's plans of Temples at Tikal (Maler 1911:Figures 5, 29, 41, 44), though their text does not mention this feature specifically. Their Tikal map shows side insets on no less than 31 temples, several of which (Temples V and 33, for example) actually lack this feature. There may be in the neighbourhood of 30 Tikal Temples at Tikal (Loten 1971), the earliest of mid-Early Classic date, on the North Acropolis, and the latest possibly Temple III or one of a number of smaller temples among the final works of monumental construction at the site.

Chichen Itza Temples The Castillo at Chichen Itza provides the other well known example of a Maya site at which a highly distinctive pyramidal temple form appears in more than one location. The format is distinguished by a pyramid with stairs on all four sides that supports a Building with doorways on all four sides, but with one doorway elaborated by the presence of “serpent columns”. There are three known examples at Chichen Itza: the Castillo, the Temple of the Jaguar below and within the body of the Castillo, the Osario (Marquina 1964:Figures 262 and 275); and a fourth nearby, the Castillo at Mayapan (Marquina 1964:Appendix Figure 9). The last example is particularly germane here because the Mayapan temple is known as a device whereby the authority of Chichen Itzá, a legendary “Tollan”, was claimed by the upstart Cocom lineage in support of their dynastic legitimacy (Morley et al.

Great Temple IV illustrates how thoroughly, by Late Classic times, Tikal temple builders had come to see the side inset as an exclusively external element, not at all related to interior room disposition. This was a departure from the practice in the Early Classic, where it appears to have originated in direct relation to the sizes of the three rooms normally found in the temples. From this beginning at Tikal the side inset evidently took on a life of its own, and perhaps acquired some emblematic significance that may or may not have been present initially. Its extreme point of development can be seen in the Late Classic group known as the Seven Sisters, which have side insets, external implications of the presence of at least two rooms, on buildings that enclose single rooms.

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1983:164–171). This is the best-known Maya case in which the distinctive form of a temple is clearly associated with a site and its ruling elite.

organized as one vertical stack, but rather as two, one behind the other. The pyramid is placed behind the Building and does not support a Building on its summit.

The Architectural Format

The Format and Post-modernism. Architectural

The characteristics that identify the Lamanai Temple are more complicated than the simple presence or absence of a single feature as in the Tikal Temple, and involve a notion that I call “architectural format”. The Lamanai Temple is identified by the presence of a distinctive format rather than a specific feature. I use the term “architectural format” to refer to a pattern of relationship among the major parts, or components, of a structure. In the great majority of Maya temples major components are simply stacked vertically. For example, Temple I at Tikal (Coe 1990), and the Temple of the Inscriptions at Palenque (Ruz 1973), both have four components: a pyramid, a Building platform, a Building, and a roof comb. Although the two temples have very different architectural properties, in both cases major components are arranged vertically, one on top of the other in a simple stack, and we can say that they both have the same architectural format.

formats can be thought of as basic ordering devices. The term used in the architectural profession is “parti,” derived from the Ecole Des Beaux Arts and currently used conspicuously by post-modernists who wish to declare their liberation from positivist reductionism and orthodox modernism (Van Zanten 1977:115). The implication of parti in such usage is that of explicit formalism. In late twentieth- and early twenty-firstcentury architectural discourse, to declare that a building follows a parti is to acknowledge that the prime ordering considerations are essentially formal in nature and specifically not derived from functional, structural, climatic, economic or some other kind of technical analysis keyed to efficiency, as orthodox modernist architectural ideology demanded. It is then incumbent upon the post-modernist designer to substantiate the position that a formal parti is not simply a self-indulgent whim but actually embodies something of value to those who will build, pay for, and use (or live with) the resulting structure.

The Castillo at Chichen Itza has only two components, a pyramid and a Building, but again they are arranged in a vertical stack and although the architectural character is decidedly unlike that of the Palenque and Tikal temples, the same format remains in effect for all three. In contrast, at Lamanai a more complicated and quite different arrangement of major components typifies the major temples. The components are not

In an attempt to assess the implications of different formats or partis in Mesoamerican temples, the two models — modernist vs. post-modernist — define the range of possible interpretations. At one end stands the architectural expression of concerns regarding factors such as energy, cost, availability of materials, prevailing techniques of construction, modes of organizing labour, or intended patterns of usage. At

Figure 8.1 Lamanai Structure N10-9, Early Classic (sixth–early seventh century A.D.) form.

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Figure 8.2 Early Classic Structure N10-9, alternative Building reconstruction. the other is the embodiment of a world view which holds that the building provides an image of some fundamental truth; in so doing it reveals and substantiates the reality of the beliefs underlying the institutions that brought the building into being and “motivate” the activities housed within or immediately around it. It is my contention that the post-modernist approach is the more appropriate for interpretation of monumental Maya temple architecture, but full investigation of this proposition would require a treatment far beyond the scope of this chapter.

Consequently, a very considerable amount of time and effort went into excavation of Preclassic and Classic structures, and the latter provided our examples of the Lamanai Temple type.

Structure N10-9

The first investigated, N10-9 is a 20 m-high structure that was excavated as an example of a major pyramidal temple, as was initially evident from the debris pattern. Preliminary clearing in 1975 on the upper centerline of its north face confirmed that this was the structure's front, and revealed anomalous features that eventually coalesced into a vaulted, two-room Building that had been placed part way up the structure (Figure 8.3), in an episode of construction of early Late Classic date (Pendergast 1981:35) that was confined to the frontal (north) face.

For convenience here, and because there is no other term in general use, I group all temples that share the simple vertical stack arrangement under the rubric“Tikal format,” although of course the great majority are not Tikal Temples with Buildings that have side insets. The Lamanai Temple obviously exemplifies the Lamanai format. A casual survey of Maya temple architecture indicates that the Tikal format is by far the more common and the Lamanai format comparatively rare. I shall describe briefly below the few examples found at sites other than Lamanai and Altun Ha, but first it will be useful to describe the examples known at Lamanai, more or less in the order of their clearing and excavation.

As far as I am aware, the only other known instance of a building component other than a small “shrine” — an example of which is also present below this Building — located in such a position on a Maya temple that also incorporates a substantial pyramid is the western (Rio Bec style) building on the Pyramid of the Magician at Uxmal (Marquina 1964:768), in northern Yucatan. Interestingly, as had already emerged in ceramic analysis, there are other links to northern Yucatan at Lamanai (Pendergast 1981:48). However, there does not appear to be anything that suggests a specific connection between Lamanai and Uxmal, and there are no other similarities with northern Yucatan evident in Lamanai architecture. In any case, as will soon become clear, the Pyramid of the Magician is not an example of the Lamanai Temple type.

Lamanai Temples at Lamanai The Lamanai Project, directed by David Pendergast, operated in the field from 1974 through 1986 (Pendergast 1981). Although the site’s Postclassic occupation was a primary focus of the research, it was not pursued without regard for the site as a whole.

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Figure 8.3 Lamanai Structure N10-9, early Late Classic (seventh century A.D.) form. also be true of Tikal format temples, in which this very obvious substructure role may mask the other, more fundamental one.

The Lamanai Temple: Contrasts.

In the widespread Tikal format, the Building component is always positioned directly above the pyramid, and as a result, the pyramid is classified as a substructure feature. In the Lamanai Temple, the pyramid sustains the Building below its top. This turns out to be a prime diagnostic of the Lamanai Temple: a pyramid component that does not sustain a major component on its uppermost surface, and therefore is not used to elevate a Building to the maximum extent possible. In the Lamanai format, the top of the pyramid is usually, though not always, the highest element of the temple, analogous in this sense to the roof comb that often, but not always, crowns examples of Tikal format temples.

It can now be seen why the Magician Pyramid at Uxmal is not an example of the Lamanai Temple: it sustains a major component on its upper surface and this feature, a Building, is the highest part of the temple. The Late Classic version of Structure N10-9 that we have just considered was a modification of an Early Classic structure (Figure 8.1) which had itself been built on top of a heavily demolished earlier fabric. There are four components: a basal platform, a pyramid, a low Building platform, and a Building. In the reconstruction the Building is shown as vaulted, but in fact there was no evidence either for or against this form. The number of front doorways is not known, and the lateral extent is also unclear. The Building as shown does not extend past the stair because surviving evidence was limited to this area. But a feature that could be the remains of a Building platform does extend farther on the west side, and hence it is possible that the Building could have been much larger (Figure 8.2).

Because the Tikal format is the normal one in the Maya area, the term “temple” is often applied to the Building component only (see Andrews 1975:39), and the implied function of the pyramid is often considered to be merely that of elevating the temple to a commanding height. Although this effect is unquestionably created, a different possibility is introduced by the appearance of a pyramid that does not do this but instead reserves the most dominant, uppermost position to itself. This implies that the pyramid may have some intrinsic value or significance independent of its use as a substructure device employed to set a Building component in an elevated position. If this is true of the Lamanai Temple it may

In either case, we see a Building component set quite low in front of a pyramid that looms very much higher behind it. Even with the larger of the two possible

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Building forms the pyramid is far and away the dominant feature. It has eight terraces, rounded corners, side outsets, and stair-side outsets. Apron moldings are definitely absent on terrace faces; they may have been present on side outsets but not enough material remained in place to show this. The top of the pyramid had been badly damaged by tree growth and further disturbed by a small looter's pit, but even with these problems the presence of a summit feature would have left some evidence. There was no indication of even a small platform or altar on the pyramid’s top surface, which apparently was just an area large enough to permit the staging of some sort of activity.

intended. There even may be a complicated compound form here intended to support a dual reading as both eight terraces and nine terraces or either one, as the occasion might require. In any case, the fact that both the pyramid and the basal platform, including the mask panels, were painted monochrome red suggests that the entire assemblage was meant to be perceived as a single entity. Acceptance of this structure as having a basal platform rather than a nine-terrace pyramid, and classification of it as an example of a Lamanai Temple, allows a formal definition, given that in this case the Building component is not actually supported on the pyramid at all. It stands in front, on a basal platform that supports both the pyramid and the Building platform. This leads to the following definition: a Lamanai Temple is a structure with a pyramid and a Building (and possibly other components), with the Building placed below the top of the pyramid, and with no Building at the pyramid summit.

The basal platform is somewhat problematic. It is so similar to the general form of the pyramid that one is tempted to see it as a basal terrace of a pyramid with nine terraces, but I feel that it is sufficiently differentiated from the upper terraces to indicate that it should be considered as a separate component. The stair at its front is much wider than the upper stair, and is flanked by mask panels rather than stair-side outsets; the mask panels are similarly much wider than the corresponding outsets above. It therefore seems correct to consider the component as a basal platform rather than a basal terrace; in a way, this is a little uncomfortable.

It is my hope that the foregoing discussion will serve to identify new examples of Lamanai Temples both at Lamanai and elsewhere. It is not sufficient, however, to distinguish them by definition from others of similar form but different concept, as the discussion of Puuc examples, below, will show.

Classification of the basal feature as a separate component leaves the pyramid with only eight terraces, which makes it one of the few, if not the only, eightterrace Maya pyramid known. Of course this does not rule out the possibility that eight terraces were indeed

The Role of the Structure Top. At Palenque, one of

the titles associated with the ruler Pacal is “he of the pyramid” (Kubler 1972:318; Schele 1976:12), possibly tied to a ceremony in which a member of the ruling

Figure 8.4 Structure N10-9, final (Early Postclassic, ca twelfth century A.D.) form.

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elite appeared on a pyramid. The arrangement of N10-9 would have provided a large stage on which such a ceremony could have been performed, with the individual on the very top of the structure rather than part way up as would have been the case at Palenque and the many other sites with temples arranged in the Tikal format. Something of the sort may be implied by the final version of N10-9 (Figure 8.4), built in the early Postclassic (Pendergast 1981:44). For this structure the original Early Classic pyramid and Late Classic building were retained but new frontal terraces and new stairs were built. As in the Late Classic arrangement, the stairs rise from the roof of the Building to reach the higher top of the pyramid behind it. Again the arrangement suggests staging of activity on the pyramid top.

even though they were in fairly advanced stages of disrepair; masonry of the Postclassic frontal terraces abutted core surfaces on the east side where Early Classic facings, by now at least seven centuries old, had sloughed off (or had been removed, a possibility that seems not unlikely in view of the small volume of debris). In effect, the Postclassic terracing was placed in front of a pyramid that might have looked like a natural hill, possibly covered with trees or brush. This may confirm the foregoing interpretation of the pyramid as a component conceptually distinct from the basal platform, because the latter was resurfaced whereas the former was not, and the top must have been very dramatically emphasized as a place singled out for special activity of a prominent nature. An odd feature of Structure N10-9, in view of its commanding position and large size, is the very poor quality of its workmanship. Terrace facing stones are roughly shaped, plaster surfaces are uneven, and core masonry is quite loose. Large core aggregate consists of unmodified chert boulders in a very low grade, set

In the late form of N10-9 the earlier lower shrine was eliminated, and the mask panels on the front of the basal platform were covered with new, blank panels. The focus was now all on the summit. The terraces of the pyramid, on sides and rear, were left untouched,

Figure 8.5 Lamanai Structure N10-43, Late Preclassic (first century B.C.?) form.

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in an earthy matrix, grey in some task units and almost black in others, but generally not very adhesive. In these circumstances tunnels were impossible without bracing and trench sides had to be sloped back quite far for safety. Owing to the conditions it was not feasible to trench very deeply, and as a result the earlier, badly demolished structure remains largely unexplored.

activity, for there is no evidence of a stair to its summit level. Ceremonial performances would have taken place in front of the mask, at the top of the triple stair system. In this version of N10-43, the top of the pyramid, given over to display of sculptural imagery, would have very strongly paralleled the roof combs that crown many Tikal-format temples. A major renewal of the structure in Late Classic times transformed N10-43 into the best example of a Lamanai Temple to emerge so far (Figure 8.6). We now see a single long Building that would be regarded as a canonical multi-doorway palace, were it not a component of a temple. Its eleven doorways stretch all the way across the very extensive front, atop a Building platform, as well as a basal platform that also supports the pyramid behind it, just as in N10-9. The triple stair has been replaced by a wide central stair that rises to the summit, where a small platform indicates that the structure’s top was the scene of some kind of activity. The pyramid is made up of two platform components. There is a fine tension between the horizontally powerful building and the vertically dominant pyramid with its great stairway rising to the summit, which now is recast as the setting for some sort of activity, presumably ceremonial.

Structure N10-43

The next in order of investigation was Structure N10-43, at 30 m the highest building at the site and the largest Lamanai Temple now known. As built in the Late Preclassic (Pendergast 1981:41), over an earlier quite large structure that may still survive relatively well preserved beneath it, this is the most complicated of the Lamanai Temples (Figure 8.5). Initially it had a total of ten components; a basal platform, a pyramid of three components, two building platforms, two Buildings, and two small axial platforms. The basal platform is similar to that of N10-9; it can almost be regarded as a frontally extended basal terrace, but is just different enough to qualify as a separate component. The small axial platform on the basal platform has the appearance of a Building platform, but evidence of the presence of a Building was inconclusive. The upper small axial platform also looks like a Building platform, but seems quite clearly not to have supported a Building.

In the renewal the upper stairs are sunk into the terraces of the pyramid and new, blank panels conceal the flanking masks in much the same way, and at roughly the same time, as on N10-9. Inset stairs like these are more typical of the Preclassic than the Late Classic, but an engineering constraint may have been at work here. The only way that a typically Late Classic outset stair could have been built on N10-43 would have been by starting it from the roof of the Building, as was done on N10-9. In N10-43 the builders chose instead to bring the pyramid stair down behind the Building as though it were accessible through rear doorways. There are no such doorways, although there is nothing obvious that would have prevented their installation. To reach the pyramid stair it is necessary to edge around the narrow space at the two ends of the Building. This seems a strange arrangement, but certainly would have the effect of restricting access to the main pyramid stair and separating events or individuals on the pyramid from those in the Building, on the stair leading up to the Building, or in the plaza out in front.

The three pyramid platforms collectively make up a pyramid that rises up to an apparently inaccessible summit. The uppermost of the three is shaped like a Building platform, but its frontally extending element, which suggests a stair, may be a large mask panel. Evidence on the point is not conclusive; no mask fragments were found, and destruction from tree root action was very heavy. The two Building components on their Building platforms — which include mask panels flanking the stairs — stand on the top of the lower of these three pyramid components, and below the level reached by the triple stair system. The pyramid rises up higher than the Buildings, but as a stack of three components, not just one. Again, as in N10-9, surviving paint fragments indicate that the whole structure was painted monochrome red. Later, probably still within the Late Preclassic, two more red painted Buildings were added (not illustrated) on the top of the second platform of the pyramid, closely flanking the central, summit platform and facing inward. They now formed the highest elements of the structure. This would weaken identification of the modified N10-43 as a true Lamanai Temple, were it not for the likelihood that the uppermost component of the pyramid may have been a large mask panel, as mentioned above. This indicates importance of the summit feature, though not as a stage for ceremonial

This arrangement would have allowed an “appearance” on the pyramid to be staged very dramatically. The Late Classic renewal made no use of red paint, so the rich vestments of participants, and the blood so important in ceremonies, would have stood out boldly. As first built, the temple would have made a grand,

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Figure 8.6 Structure N10-43, early Late Classic (seventh century A.D.) form. glistening white, or perhaps silvery, show rising 30 m above the plaza. The wide single stairway on the Late Classic version of N10-43 not only suggests that the summit of the structure held a special significance, but also may indicate that the stairway itself did. Activities on the stair, and ceremonies involving vertical movement, would have been very effectively displayed in such a setting; more on this below.

platform was understood as the bottom two terraces of the pyramid, as well as a conceptually distinct component, the pyramid would then be considered as an example of the more common nine-terrace type.

Structure N9-56

The third Lamanai Temple extensively excavated at Lamanai is Structure N9-56, on the edge of the New River lagoon. It is the dominant feature of a plazuela group elevated on a plazuela platform. It occupies the east side of the group, facing away from the lagoon, and incorporates a very extensive series of architectural superimpositions and modifications, running from the Late Preclassic through the Late Classic and continuing in terms of ceremonial activity into the Postclassic after the structure had partially collapsed and decayed into mound form (Pendergast 1981:51).

It seems very clear, more so than in N10-9, that the pyramidal components must have had some value or significance of their own, and did not depend on elevating a Building to justify their existence. A final observation on N10-43: the Building of eleven front doorways results from an addition made during Late Classic times to an initial Late Classic Building of seven doorways centered on the axis of the structure. Both of these are unusual numbers of front doorways, just as pyramids of eight (N10-9) and seven (N10-43) terraces are also relatively rare in the corpus of Maya Temple architecture. Again, as in N10-9, if the basal

Here I discuss only two structures from the middle of the series; the complete series, once it is fully worked

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Figure 8.7 Lamanai Structure N9-56, late Early Classic (fifth century A.D.) form. out, will provide several more examples of Lamanai Temples. A late Early Classic version of N9-56 (Figure 8.7), probably of the fifth century A.D., has four components; a Building platform, a Building (inferred, and not included in the illustration), a basal platform, and a pyramid. The basal platform supports the two upper terraces of the pyramid and could be regarded as a lower terrace, but is separated from the upper ones by a wider top surface and the presence of mask panels. The small Building platform in front, attached to the stair, could have supported a Building, but all traces had been obliterated by later construction activity. The assumption that a Building was present reflects the survival of Building fragments in a comparable position later in the sequence.

could be staged. In this case, in contrast with the Late Classic N10-43, the Building seems relatively insignificant, by-passed by wide lateral stairs, and the top of the pyramid appears as the major focus. Again, as in both N10-9 and N10-43, modifications in the Late Classic concealed mask panels which, on N9-56, had been extremely prominent earlier owing both to their size and to the high relief of the modelled masks.

Structure N10-27

Finally, Structure N10-27 (not illustrated), which housed Stela 9 in its building (Pendergast 1988), is the last example of a Lamanai Temple actually excavated at Lamanai, although in this case the pyramidal component was not fully investigated owing to its extensively damaged condition, possibly enhanced by facing-stone robbery in Postclassic times. The Building is placed at approximately basal platform height, and the pyramid rises behind it. Prior to excavation the structure did not appear to be a Lamanai Temple; there was no frontal bulge to suggest the presence of a Building on a basal platform. Debris bulges at the front suggest that Structures P9-21, P9-12 and P9-2 might all be Lamanai Temples. Of these, P9-2 was cleared and partially excavated on the front in the area of the central axis, but the work neither

Once again it seems clear that the top of the pyramid is simply an open space. The masks, and probably the whole structure, were painted a dark grey, almost black. Later in the sequence, possibly in the sixth or seventh century A.D., the structure still has the same four components (Figure 8.8), with the Building now definitely present, complete with evidence for vaults. The top of the pyramid is elaborated as a minor platform component, possibly in recognition of the summit as a place where certain ceremonial activities

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Figure 8.8 Structure N9-56, Late Classic (sixth–seventh century A.D.) form. confirmed nor denied the suggested identification. Counting excavated examples, suspicious debris profiles, and unresolved cases in stratifications that have not been fully investigated, there are probably between ten and twenty examples of Lamanai Temples at Lamanai, and they span from the late Preclassic to the early Postclassic, with the most fully developed forms occurring in the Late Classic. In addition, in both N10-9 and N9-56 ceremonial activity continued until the Late Postclassic, on debris mounds that resembled natural hills (Loten 1985:89).

carved jades, and other items burnt atop the altar and deposited around it (Pendergast 1982:73, 104–106). It is similar in form to the final, early Late Classic version of N10-43, with which it is roughly contemporaneous, with the difference that B-4 2nd A has no basal platform and is much smaller.

Kaminaljuyu

Throughout Mesoamerica there appear to be only a very few structures that have the principal features of the Lamanai Temple, and none is very similar to the examples known at Lamanai and Altun Ha. Structure B4 at Kaminaljuyu, if the projected absence of a Building at the summit is correct, provides an example quite comparable to N10-9, with a Building placed about two thirds of the way up the front. However the tablero/talud terrace profiles (Kidder et al. 1946:Figure 16) render its appearance very unlike that of N10-9 at Lamanai.

Lamanai Temples at Other Sites Altun Ha

The best example of a Lamanai Temple not at Lamanai is Structure B-4 2nd A at Altun Ha. This was actually the first discovered, excavated by David Pendergast between 1965 and 1968 (Pendergast 1982:47–52, Figure 30). Prior to the work at Lamanai, it stood as just an isolated example of an unusual structure form. It confirms the Lamanai Temple hypothesis, that major activity was focused on the top of the pyramid, by the presence of an altar and the remains of copal incense,

Cerros

Structure 6 at Cerros, in northern Belize (Freidel and Schele 1990:Figure 3:17), Late Preclassic, is a pyramidal temple with a small thatched Building at the middle level, and an open platform top at the upper

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level. The upper two-terrace platform has elaborate masks that are interpreted as representations of the daily transit of the sun through the sky, which enabled a ruler to appear in the midst of conceptually loaded imagery (Freidel and Schele 1988:86). Because these masks appear on the upper platform, and the lower platforms are not similarly elaborated, they provide strong support for the intrinsic conceptual importance of the pyramid component, as distinct from the Building, which is very much less impressive in this particular temple.

Pyramid and Structure 6 of the North Group at Uxmal. Rooms are arranged in a quadrangle, facing out, the center area (where the courtyard would be) filled solid, and a stair gives access to the elevated upper surface. Maler's section indicates only the stair, but suggests enough height to allow for a low pyramidal substructure. The center area at the top could be understood as the top of the pyramid even though much of the apparent height seems to be taken up by the Building component. In other words, the form may not be very pyramidal, but may still fit the Lamanai Temple format.

Structure 29C at Cerros (Freidel and Schele 1990: Figure 3:23) is reconstructed without any Building component whatever; it has a format very similar to that of N10-43 at Lamanai, with the upper component flanked by inward facing ones. This is not exactly a Lamanai Temple, but it seems closely related and does serve to reinforce the same interpretation: that Maya truncated pyramids were not always simply devices used to elevate temple Buildings.

Structure 2C6 at Kabah (Pollock 1980:Figure 281), the famous Codz Poop, is essentially the same arrangement but here there is no pyramidal component and no evident means of access to the upper surface provided by the solid inner element. Nevertheless, the format results in an upper surface, above the Building level, where activities could have taken place. Structure A12 at Kabah (Pollock 1980:Figure 290) provides a nice comparison with N10-43 at Lamanai. It has a seven-doorway range-type structure on its own substructure platform connecting behind to a pyramid whose top is accessible by a lateral stair. In this structure, there may be a basal platform sustaining both the Building and the pyramid.

The Puuc

The only other temples remotely similar to the Lamanai Temple all appear in the Puuc region of northern Yucatan.

Uxmal. The Great Pyramid at Uxmal (Pollock 1980:Figure 426) satisfies the definition in the sense that a kind of Building component is placed just below the top of the pyramid, which appears to have been an open space. In this case, however, ranges of rooms extend around all four sides of the pyramid and there is no evident means of access to the summit.

Structure 2 at Kiuic (Pollock:Figure 592), about 11 km south of Labna, might be a very good example of the Lamanai Temple format. It has a pyramidal form with a Building placed on a basal level on the west side. It has never been excavated, so there could be another Building at the top of the pyramid, which would rule it out as a Lamanai Temple, and there may or may not be a stair rising to the summit.

Structure 6 of the North Group, Uxmal (Pollock 1980: Figure 395), is similar except that rooms extend around only the north, east and west sides, so that on the south front only the narrow ends of the east and west ranges are visible. This certainly fits the Lamanai Temple model in the sense that the pyramid top was not just accessible, but very conspicuously so. According to Morley's plan, cited by Pollock (1980:Figure 389), there may have been a north stair, and if so, from that side the structure would have had the appearance of a Lamanai Temple, except that access to the summit may not have been visible.

Possible Additional Belize Examples

Debris profiles suggest that Caracol Structures B10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20,36 and 37, as well as Structures A4, 5, 6, and 7, (Chase and Chase 1987:Figure 47) may well turn out to be Lamanai Temples. Finally, a Lamanai Temple has reportedly been discovered recently by Anne Pyburn at Chau Hiix, which lies between Altun Ha and Lamanai and links the two in other cultural spheres besides the architectural (David Pendergast, personal communication 2001).

The small Temple of the Columns at Uxmal, just west of the Nunnery Quadrangle (Pollock 1980:Figure 224/230), is another somewhat similar example, with a stair rising up at the rear of a building, to give access to an elevated stage or surface at roof level. In this case, though, there is no real pyramid component.

The foregoing are all the examples of Lamanai Temples that I have been able to find at sites other than Lamanai and Altun Ha. They number less than the total present at Lamanai, and are rather different in form even though they satisfy the strict letter of the definition. It seems fairly clear that the Lamanai Temple was a type of ceremonial structure erected at Lamanai and nearby Altun Ha, and possibly at the

Other Puuc Sites. A structure mapped by Maler at

Chacbolay (Pollock 1980:Figure 588) presents another example in the same general format as the Great

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intervening Chau Hiix, and not much utilized elsewhere. In this sense it is similar to the Tikal Temple, which, though quite different in form, was likewise restricted in association to a very limited number of sites. The examples from northern Yucatan reviewed above probably represent the conceptual significance of the pyramid rather than any association with Lamanai or northern Belize.

for another day, but in this setting the differing treatment of the pyramidal component in Lamanai and Tikal temples may briefly suggest the scope of such an analysis.

The Temple as a Mountain

The idea of pyramids as references to natural mountains is well developed in Maya iconography (Broda 1987; Pasztory 1983; Freidel and Schele 1989:233, 241–242). The architectural historian Kostof (1985:21) has proposed that natural landforms such as mountains were very widely interpreted, prior to the development of temple architecture, as places of supernatural power — places where supernatural beings could be confronted and contacted through rituals intended to reinforce the belief in actual supernatural presence.

The Significance of the Maya Temple That Lamanai, Tikal, and Chichen Itza present us with distinctive temple types not widely used elsewhere in the Maya world may indicate that these sites were involved in some unusual kind of ceremonial performance, or that the structures are unusual treatments of a setting for activities essentially common to most Maya centers. The first alternative is difficult to assess because we hardly know with any precision what activities actually took place in temples, and certainly do not know what roles individual components may have played. The second, I believe, has considerable potential.

Kostof does not develop this idea. My extension of his insight is that it is very likely that certain mountains would have been selected as places of power as a result of their natural attributes of form and order, and their context. That is, the structure of natural formal relationships existing within a landform had the effect of drawing attention to one particular natural feature, such as, for example, isolating one particular mountain among others. This effect results from the natural architecture of landform. It is the phenomenon behind the romantic movement in European landscape painting and the search for the sublime by American and European nineteenth-century intellectuals and artists — an idea admittedly a little remote from the Prehispanic Maya, but not on that account something beyond their possible awareness. If this kind of sensibility actually worked for the ancient Maya, the building of pyramidal temples could be seen as a process of strengthening and clarifying a particular property of certain natural features though artificial structures. The structures would thereby possess exactly the same fundamental significance as a natural landform; that is, as places of supernatural power where invisible forces could be confronted and supplicated.

It seems to me that there is usually a significant degree of freedom between architectural form and the functional requirements of buildings. It is certainly true that some forms of architecture can greatly inhibit or even prevent some kinds of functions. It is also true, however, that most functions can be effected perfectly well in a very wide range of formally different settings. I suspect that the actual range of such possibilities may be much wider than is generally thought, because only a very few such alternatives are ever actually realized. A temple form established early in the development of a site may well inhibit the range of alternatives investigated by builders of later temples. Indeed, the very essence of what a temple is, as not merely the setting for ceremonial activities but also the manifestation of the supernatural presence with which the ceremonies seek to communicate, may tend to inhibit further experimentation with architectural form once a satisfactory form has been realized. Acceptance of a particular form and order for a temple as the correct one may make it very difficult to introduce others.

In the natural feature, attribution of a supernatural presence is not at all symbolic; the supernatural is considered literally to be present. It is possible that the same signification obtained for pyramidal temples. It may be that these structures subsequently emerged as the centers of settlements because they functioned as places of power, not merely on a symbolic level but on an operational level engaged with actual power, both religious and political. The pyramidal temple, then, would have had as its primary purpose the incorporation of a form in order to possess the real significance attributed to certain natural features of landform. The evidence suggests that the pyramidal component could be combined with other components

Nevertheless, even the most cursory look at Maya temple architecture reveals that temple forms tended to evolve over time and to vary from place to place. It appears from this that there was room for a degree of invention and innovation within the range of forms that could be accepted as proper and appropriate for Maya temples. The extent and configuration of the variation in the corpus of Maya pyramidal temples is a subject

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of temples in a variety of ways, but thus far it appears that the Maya only extensively explored two, the Lamanai and Tikal formats.

not in fact refer symbolically to mountains but may actually appropriate the real power resident in sacred mountains. They would not have been seen, then, as substitutes for the real thing, but as the real thing itself. In this way, enactment of the Xiucoatl ritual would have had all the direct, dramatic and dangerous implications of the mythic original act on Coatepetl itself. This, I submit, is what would have justified the enormous material and labour cost of erecting high pyramidal temples. Within this frame there could have been room for variation in the way that the stairs ran up the structure; on the one hand, a high substructure pyramid that raised the Building above the vertical drama (the Tikal format), or on the other, a stair extending above the Building to the very top of the pyramid to provide a backdrop specifically designed for vertically moving ritual (the Lamanai format).

Of course architectural treatments entirely different from the pyramidal form could have operated as other strategies aimed at the same result — to secure the presence of real supernatural power through both architectural form and figural elaboration in paint and sculpture, all of which could work on symbolic levels as well as on literal ones.

The Temple as a Vertical Stage

Another line of interpretation may develop around the implications of vertical movement in ceremonial activity. Sahagun describes the ritual of Panquetzalixtli on the Mexican temple, in which a crucial element is the descent of the fire serpent/sword, the Xiucoatl, of Huitzilopochtli (Matos Moctezuma 1987:141). This is one example of a ritual in which vertical movement was vital, and would have benefited greatly from the presence of a high stairway as a stage for its enactment. Considering this Mexica ritual, the major one in the ceremonial year, one could well imagine that pyramidal components had developed vertically in response to an emerging perception of the advantage for staging provided by a high stairway. Such a development would, of course, not preclude the possibility that the pyramid also embodied real supernatural power, as a replication of natural places of power.

In some conquest accounts (Díaz del Castillo 1956 [1632]:20; Relaciones de Yucatán 1900:24) the extant remains of pyramidal temples are referred to as “Cus,” apparently interchangeable with the Maya word “k'u,” which I understand to mean “god” (Tozzer 1941:106), or as I prefer, “supernatural power.” This suggests not only that the pyramidal component might have been the essence of the temple, but further, that it could also have been understood as the supernatural being or power itself, as some writers imply by the term “living mountain” (Freidel and Schele 1990:71–72).

Conclusions

Obviously I do not mean to imply that Xiucoatl rituals took place in Maya temples; but vertical movement may well have had its own place in Maya ceremonial. The Lamanai Temple may actually provide the evidence for this in a way that is somewhat clearer clear than in the Tikal Temple. The pyramid glyph referred to above in connection with the Palenque texts (glyph T 685) shows a pyramid of two or three terraces with a central stair. Michael Closs (personal communication 1999) advises me that Justeson (1984:351) has proposed a reading of this glyph as both “mul-nah” meaning “pyramid” and “k'ul-nah” meaning “temple.” The glyph consists of a pyramid image without any Building on its top. This may imply that the essence of the temple was, indeed, the pyramidal component. In the Aztec realm, Van Zantwijk (1981) cites interpretations of the pyramid temple, obtained from Nahuatl literature, as a mapping of cosmology, and again the focus is on the pyramidal component, not on the summit Building.

The Lamanai, Tikal, and Chichen Itza temple formats appear very likely to have been particularly successful experiments in temple architecture at these sites, successful in the various senses suggested above, as effective stages for ceremonial performances and as convincing embodiments of supernatural power, mediated by local dynastic lineages. Once established, they continued to be used, with modifications, in later temples at the same sites and at a few other sites with which the main centers were related. Excavation at other sites may show that recurring distinctive attributes of architectural form in temples is not as much confined to these three sites as presently appears to be the case. Alternatively, we may find that in fact few other sites developed comparably distinctive temple formats or used them in ways analogous to emblem glyphs. It may be that, at other sites, early experiments in temple form simply did not result in very striking or distinctive solutions that had the capacity to function as site and dynastic emblems. In such cases, there would not have been a comparable pressure to continue employing an already established format, and builders of subsequent temples would had the freedom to venture into new experiments.

The Temple as the Seat of Power

I am inclined to think that temple pyramids have been wrongly interpreted quite frequently as symbolic elements when their true significance may have been as features that incorporated real power. If so, they may

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The whole subject of architectural form in Maya temples is one that remains relatively undeveloped and seems difficult to pursue except through a highly speculative mode of inquiry. The evidence required for such an inquiry is hard to discern even though it may be directly in front of us. The nature of the temple, and the intentions of Maya temple designers, are fields ripe for reflection and theoretical modelling. Some scholars have already opened it up (Ashmore 1992), but much remains to be done. The Lamanai and Tikal temple formats themselves, if they really do reflect broad Maya architectural concepts, need a great deal more explication than I have been able to muster here.

staging for ritual activity. If so, many other aspects of temple form surely have similar significance. The challenge of Maya temple design must have been that of finding the right form for the rich and colorful mythology that sustained the civilization. It may even be that the Mayas’ success in architecture contributed to their development of urban centers and state systems. The challenge for us is to find the Maya ideals through analysis of their structures, even though we may never be able to know with certainty that we have succeeded, and we may recast what we find somewhat in our own terms. This is the very search that Hal Ball so greatly relished in his long engagement with Maya sites and archaeological projects.

As the Panquetzalixtli ceremony shows, and as common sense implies, successful architectural ideas effectively embody powerful cultural ideals. The treatment of pyramids in Tikal and Lamanai temples may represent particularly successful architectural ideas that embodied the myths and beliefs of their people in different ways, and provided dramatic

Acknowledgments. The Lamanai data that I present

here were recovered in excavations funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Council of Canada, the Royal Ontario Museum, the Richard Ivey Foundation, and a number of other donors.

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Andrews, George 1975 Maya Cities: Placemaking and Urbanization. University of Oklahoma Press, Norman. Ashmore, Wendy 1992 Deciphering Maya Architectural Plans. In New Theories on the Ancient Maya, edited by Elin Danien and Robert Sharer, pp.173–184. The University Museum, Philadelphia. Broda, Johanna 1987 The Provenience of the Offerings: Tribute and Cosmovision. In The Aztec Templo Mayor, edited by Elizabeth H. Boone, pp. 211–256. Dumbarton Oaks, Washington, D.C.. Chase, Arlen F., and Diane Z. Chase 1987 Investigations at the Classic Maya City of Caracol, Belize: 1985–1987. Monograph 3. Pre-Columbian Art Research Institute, San Francisco. Coe, William R. 1990 Excavations in the Great Plaza, North Terrace and North Acropolis of Tikal. Tikal Report 14. The University Museum, Philadelphia. Díaz del Castillo, Bernal 1956 [orig. 1632] The Discovery and Conquest of Mexico, 1517–1521. Translated and edited by Alfred Idell. Doubleday and Company, New York. Folan, William J., Ellen R. Klintz, and Laraine W. Fletcher 1983 Coba, A Classic Maya Metropolis. Academic Press, New York. Freidel, David, and Linda Schele 1988 Symbol and Power: A History of the Lowland Maya Cosmogram. In Maya Iconography, edited by Elizabeth P. Benson and Gillett G. Griffin, pp. 44–93. Princeton University Press, Princeton. 1989 Dead Kings and Living Temples: Dedication and Termination Rituals among the Ancient Maya. In Word and Image in Maya Culture, edited by William F. Hanks and Don S. Rice, pp. 233–243. University of Utah Press, Salt Lake City. 1990 A Forest of Kings. William Morrow, New York.

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Justeson, John S. 1984 Interpretations of Mayan Hieroglyphs. In Phoneticism in Mayan Hieroglyphs, edited by John S. Justeson and Lyle Campbell, pp. 315–362. Publication 9. Institute for Mesoamerican Studies, State University of New York, Albany. Kidder, Alfred V., Jesse D. Jennings and Edwin Shook 1946 Excavations at Kaminaljuyu. Publication 561. Carnegie Institution of Washington, Washington, D.C. Kostof, Spiro 1985 A History of Architecture: Setting and Rituals. Oxford University Press, London. Kubler, George 1972 The Paired Attendants of the Temple Tablets at Palenque. In Religión en Mesoamérica, edited by Jaime Litvak King and Noemi Castillo Tejero, pp. 317–329. XII Mesa Redonda. Sociedad Mexicana de Antropología, Mexico City. 1973 Iconographic Aspects of Architectural Profiles at Teotihuacan and in Mesoamerica. In The Iconography of Middle American Sculpture, pp. 24–39. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Loten, H. Stanley 1971 The Maya Architecture of Tikal, Guatemala: A Preliminary Seriation of Vaulted Building Plans. Ph.D. dissertation. University Microfilms, Ann Arbor. 1985 Lamanai Postclassic. In The Lowland Maya Postclassic: Questions and Answers, edited by Arlen F.Chase and Prudence M. Rice, pp. 85–90. University of Texas Press, Austin. Loten, H. Stanley, and David M. Pendergast 1984 A Lexicon for Maya Architecture. Archaeology Monographs 8. Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto. Maler, Teobert 1911 Explorations in the Department of Peten Guatemala: Tikal. Memoirs of the Peabody Museum of American Archaeology and Ethnology Vol. V No. 1. Harvard University, Cambridge Marquina, Ignacio 1964 Arquitectura Prehispánica. Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia, Mexico City. Matos Moctezuma, Eduardo 1987 Symbolism of the Templo Mayor. in The Aztec Templo Mayor, edited by Elizabeth H. Boone, pp.185– 210. Dumbarton Oaks, Washington, D.C. 1988 The Great Temple of the Aztecs. Thames and Hudson, London. Merwin, Raymond E., and George C. Vaillant 1932 The Ruins of Holmul, Guatemala. Memoirs of the Peabody Museum of American Archaeology and Ethnology Vol. III No. 2. Harvard University, Cambridge. Morley, Sylvanus G., George W. Brainerd, and Robert J. Sharer 1983 The Ancient Maya. Fourth edition. Stanford University Press, Stanford. Pasztory, Esther 1983 Aztec Art. Harry N. Abrams, New York. Pendergast, David M. 1981 Lamanai, Belize: Summary of Excavation Results, 1974–1980. Journal of Field Archaeology 8:29–53. 1982 Excavations at Altun Ha, Belize, 1964–1970, Volume 2. Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto. 1998 Lamanai Stela 9: The Archaeological Context. Research Reports on Ancient Maya Writing 20. Center for Maya Research, Washington, D.C. Piña Chan, Roman 1985 Cultura y Ciudades Mayas de Campeche. Editoral de Sureste, Mexico. Pollock, Harry E. D. 1980 The Puuc: An Architectural Survey of the Hill Country of Yucatan and Northern Campeche, Mexico. Memoirs of the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology Vol. 19. Harvard University, Cambridge. Potter, David F. 1977 Maya Architecture of the Central Yucatan Peninsula, Mexico. Publication No. 44. Middle American Research Institute, Tulane University, New Orleans. Relaciones de Yucatán 1900 In Colección de documentos inéditos relativos al descubrimiento, conquista y organización de las antiguas posesiones españolas de ultramar. Segunda Serie, Tomo 13. Madrid. Ruz L., Alberto 1973 El Templo De Las Inscripciones. Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia, Mexico City.

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Satterthwaite, Linton 1941 Some Central Peten Architectural Traits at Piedras Negras. In Los Mayas Antiguos, edited by César Lizardi Ramos, pp. 183-208. El Colegio de México, Mexico City. 1943 Piedras Negras Archaeology: Architecture, Part 1: Introduction. The University Museum, Philadelphia. Schele, Linda 1976 Accession Iconography of Chan–Bahlum in the Group of the Cross at Palenque. In The Art, Iconography & Dynastic History of Palenque, Part III, edited by Merle Greene Robertson, pp. 9–34. Robert Louis Stevenson School and Pre-Columbian Art Research Institute, Pebble Beach, California. Smith, A. Ledyard 1937 Structure A-XVIII, Uaxactun. Contributions to American Anthropology and History IV, No. 20. Publication 483. Carnegie Institute of Washington, Washington, D.C. Stierlin, Henri 1968 Living Architecture: Ancient Mexican. Grosset and Dunlap, New York. Tozzer, Alfred M. 1941 Landa's Relación de las Cosas de Yucatán. Papers of the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology No. 18. Harvard University, Cambridge. Van Zanten, David 1977 Architectural Composition at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts from Charles Percier to Charles Garnier. In The Architecture of the École des Beaux-Arts, edited by Arthur Drexler, pp. 111–324. The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Van Zantwijk, Robert 1981 The Great Temple of Tenochtitlan: Model of Aztec Cosmovision. In Mesoamerican Sites and World Views, edited by Elizabeth P. Benson, pp. 71–86. Dumbarton Oaks, Washington, D.C.

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9 Knuckle-Dusters in Formative Mesoamerica E. Wyllys Andrews V

relief and on portable objects of jade and other stones, and finally are represented in low-relief carvings in the area south of the Olmec Gulf Coast.

Introduction This chapter is concerned with Formative Mesoamerican representations of what is called a “knuckle-duster,” defined in Merriam Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary, 10th edition, as “a set of metal finger rings or guards attached to a transverse piece and worn over the front of the doubled fist for use as a weapon—called also brass knuckles.” Knuckledusters are hand-held and partially hand-covering objects depicted on large Early and Middle Formative Mesoamerican monuments and on portable artifacts such as celts or figurines (Figure 9.1) in the Olmec area and elsewhere.

Twenty published representations of knuckle-dusters are listed in Table 9.1, including sixteen from Veracruz, Tabasco, Chiapas, Morelos, and Puebla, and four without provenience. More are sure to be in private and unpublished collections, but the listed specimens are the best known. No example seems to have been reported in the Maya area or Central America. Of the sample, ten or eleven show a knuckle-duster paired with a torch-like object. Six show two knuckle-dusters, two or three have just one knuckle-duster without a torch, and six show knuckledusters with the scalloped design or with sharp points.

The objects are usually held by standing men who hold them in front of their chests, either in pairs or with what has sometimes been called a “torch” in the other hand, but they may be held near the waist or by the side of the leg with the arm extended. Around the hand-grip, on the vertical front of the knuckle-duster, there is sometimes an incised interior line or a scalloped design with sharp points, or both. These objects are held by humans (e.g., Figure 9.1a, d, i) and by deities or deity-impersonators (Figure 9.1b, f, n), including the so-called “flying Olmecs” (Figure 9.1q, r). They are sometimes shown as abstracted elements (Figure 9.1g, o, p).

Iconography of the Knuckle-Duster and Related Images Formative Mesoamerican iconography has been more difficult to interpret than has the art of the Classic period. Because we lack early inscriptions to help explain the subject matter of the earliest Mesoamerican art, our interpretations must be based on analogies and inferences from later art forms; on the internal structure, patterning, and archaeological context of Formative designs on stone and pottery; and on consistency with what we think we already know about Formative iconography, belief systems, and cosmology. It is difficult to avoid speculation and circular reasoning in this field. The most reliable interpretations are probably those that can show a persistent use of certain motifs and symbols from early times to later periods for which there are historical records, but even in these instances we must remember that similarities of form do not ensure persistence of meaning. The past several decades have nonetheless seen a number of attempts to reconstruct Formative Mesoamerican iconography and belief systems, and some of them surely come closer to reality than did their predecessors.

At least a few of the objects, such as Monuments 10 and 26 from San Lorenzo (Figure 9.1c, d), are Early Formative. Some are Middle Formative, including the two examples from offerings at La Venta (Figure 9.1o, r), probably the monuments from Chalcatzingo (Figure 9.1e), and the ceramic vessel from the environs of Chalcatzingo (Figure 9.1g). A few are probably late Middle Formative, such as the stela from Padre Piedra and the bas-relief carving from Pijijiapan, Chiapas (Figure 9.1a, d). It is therefore clear that knuckledusters were carved during the entire span of the archaeological Olmec, from 1200–900 B.C. to 500 B.C. or later. They appear early in high relief on large sculptured figures, are later found on carvings in lower

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Figure 9.1  Knuckle‐dusters and Related Objects.  All but two are shown; sources listed in Table 9.1.   a:  Padre  Piedra,  Chiapas;  b:  San  Lorenzo,  Veracruz;  c:  San  Lorenzo,  Veracruz;  d:  Pijijiapan,  Chiapas;  e: Chalcatzingo, Morelos; f: Santiago Tuxtla, Veracruz (diam 34 cm, th 13 cm); g: environs of Chalcatzingo, Morelos (ht 45 cm); h: unknown provenience (ht 20 cm); i: Emiliano Zapata, Tabasco (len ca 25 cm); j: unknown provenience; k: San Cristóbal Tepatlaxco, Puebla (ht 11.1 cm); l: unknown provenience (ht 10.9 cm); m: Arroyo Pesquero (?), Veracruz  (ht  16.3  cm);  n:  Pichucalco,  Chiapas  (ht  12  cm);  o:  La  Venta,  Tabasco;  p:  Las  Bocas  (?),  Puebla;  q: unknown provenience (len 22.3 cm); r: La Venta, Tabasco (len 25 cm); s: unknown provenience.

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In the absence of ethnohistoric, historic, or clear pictorial records, the evidence for Formative-period bloodletting consists primarily of archaeological finds of objects known to have been used as bloodletters in later times, depictions of such portable objects in precious stone (sometimes found in ritual contexts), and the reconstruction of ritual practices and symbol systems from carvings on stone and pottery, the iconography of which is far from transparent.

Various interpretations of knuckle-dusters have been put forth, most rather tentatively. Drucker (1952:166), to whom we owe the name of these curious items, describes a celt from a cruciform cache in Mound A-2 at La Venta as showing "two eccentric flints (?) or knuckle-dusterlike objects seen on a few other carvings referable to Olmec art." Michael Coe (1965:764–765) suggests that the knuckle-duster was "Another possible defense against club blows, or perhaps an offensive weapon itself. . . . at times, the knuckle-duster is held as a ceremonial object in one hand, while the other grasps what appears to be a torch.” Cervantes (1969:47, 49–50) rejects the idea that they were defensive weapons, and suggests instead that they were used in some unknown ceremony or ritual, or were perhaps early ballgame handstones. It is agreed, however, that no knuckledusters have been recovered in controlled excavations, and Coe (1965:765) therefore surmised that they were made of wood and have not survived . Here the matter rested until several years ago.

Imported fish and stingray spines were recovered on the floors of Early Formative (1150–950 B.C.) houses at San José Mogote in the Valley of Oaxaca (Marcus 1989:181,184). The context of the artifacts suggests that in Oaxaca bloodletting was a ritual practiced at the household level by the Early Formative. La Venta tombs of the Middle Formative have produced three jade perforators, probably bloodletters or representations thereof, and a jade stingray spine (Drucker 1952:162, 163, 169, Figure 53, right), the last accompanied by a small bundle of real stingray spines. An early Middle Formative cache at Seibal, Guatemala, contained a jade stiletto or bloodletter in a cruciform La Venta/San Isidro–style cache of jade celts and ceramic vessels (Lowe 1981, 1998; Willey 1978:Figures 90, 91, 104, 105).

The frequent letting of human blood from different parts of the body was an important ritual practice throughout Mesoamerica, as was human sacrifice by removal of the heart with subsequent offering of the blood to the gods. Landa's account (Tozzer 1941) of the religious practices of the contact-period northern Maya is replete with mention of blood sacrifice and self-mutilation by males. Bloodletting occurred at the most solemn and important events but was practiced on less momentous occasions as well. Landa writes that "their sons from the earliest age began to practice it, and it is a horrible thing to see how inclined they were to this ceremony" (Tozzer 1941:114). The tools that Landa describes the Maya using to cut or pierce the skin include stingray spines, fish spines, thorns, bones, and stone knives.

The work of Grove, Joyce, and others at the University of Illinois (Grove 1987b; Joyce et al. 1991) on Early and Middle Formative iconography and ritual emphasizes the importance of bloodletting in early artistic representations. They suggest that letting blood as a means of establishing contact with supernatural forces and validating temporal power was an early and widespread focus of Mesoamerican religious beliefs. Their studies rely on comparisons with later bloodletting iconography, but the early evidence also suggests an antecedent basis for the pervasive nature of the ritual in Classic and later cultures of Mesoamerica. Several of their interpretations are based on depictions of torches and knuckle-dusters, which they believe symbolize ritual bloodletters.

Classic Maya stone relief carvings, polychrome vessels, and hieroglyphic inscriptions show the bloodletting ritual practiced by rulers at important events (Joralemon 1974). The blood sacrifice of a ruler and sometimes his wife is depicted in stone and commemorated in the accompanying hieroglyphic inscriptions. Supernatural creatures rising above the individuals may indicate the altered states of consciousness induced by extensive bloodletting and shock, and may document the ruler’s contact with gods and ancestors, as a validation of the inheritance of rulership. The objects used by the Classic Maya were the same as those of the Contact period — thorns, stingray spines, perhaps fish spines, obsidian blades, and flint knives — and they are depicted on monuments and found in burials and ritual caches at sites from Copán to Dzibilchaltún.

Grove (1987b) demonstrates that Formative torches and knuckle-dusters, like Maya bloodletting images, are sometimes associated with knots or bands in sets of three (e.g., Figure 9.1g; Joralemon 1974; Schele and Miller 1986:176); that both objects may be shown with sharp points; that a fish or shark (xoc) zoomorph and its pars pro toto symbols may have been related to bloodletting; and that torches and knuckle-dusters are elsewhere associated with representations of this zoomorph. Fields (1991), Looper (1994), Reilly (1991, 1995), and Schele (1992, 1995), following Joralemon (1971, 1976), have also studied Formative sculptural iconography, with special attention to its persistence

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Knuckle-Dusters as Conch Shells

in later Mesoamerican iconography and cosmology. They believe that several Formative, or Olmec, motifs represent vegetal images, including a sprout (usually maize) and a world tree that may take its place, and four seeds that form a quincunx around the tree or maize sprout. Schele and Fields interpret the “torch” that may accompany the knuckle-duster as “bundled sticks carried . . . as cuttings to reproduce trees,” “banded maize,” or “emerging sprout formations” rather than as bloodletters (Schele 1995:105–107). Schele calls knuckle-dusters “emblems of authority.”

Unlike the sprout bundles or torches, which show great variety, knuckle-dusters seem always to represent the same physical object, aspects of which may be accentuated to a greater or lesser degree. They are probably conch shells (Figure 9.2). Some are decorated with a scalloped or serrated shell motif between the handgrip and the outer edge, suggestive of spines. Some show pointed tips like the spires of gastropod shells. The overall appearance of the knuckle-duster is that of a conch shell with part of the

The formalized fashion in which knuckle-dusters are held, in front of the chest or down at the side, gives little clue as to how they were used. Two depictions, however, differ from the standard forms of representation. The Pijijiapan bas-relief (Figure 9.1d; Navarrete 1974:Figures 2, 3) shows three elaborately dressed individuals. The central person holds what appears to be a knuckleduster in his left hand; his right is extended to the waist of a facing person, and some action seems imminent. Navarrete's (1974:1) description of this scene refers to a curved, erect object below the second person’s waist as an "upward-curving sash" that hangs from a knot. The second carving is a 20-cm-high boulder figure of unknown provenience in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York (Figure 9.1h; Easby and Scott 1970:Number 37). Its central features are a face and two hands clenched in front of the chest. One hand carries a torch, and the other grasps an unidentified, flaccid object, the base of which is wrapped in what might be a cloth or a bag with a loop folded alongside it.

Figure 9.2  Conch shell knuckle‐duster.  Experimental example made from the top of the body whorl of an almost mature milk conch (Strombus costatus Gmelin) from the Gulf of Mexico with broken spire; undamaged spires are pointed.  Strombus costatus and the Caribbean pink conch Strombus gigas are right‐handed, and so could not be held to create a mirror image, as paired knuckle‐dusters are some‐times shown (see Figure 9.1). 

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body whorl cut off, so that the hand is able to fit through the aperture and grasp the columella. In this arrangement the fingers and knuckles are visible from the front.

on Stela 8 from the same site, both objects were probably made of stone. The ornament on the belt of the central figure on Stela 24 at Naranjo (Graham and von Euw 1975), Bricker further suggests, also looks like a knuckle-duster made of shell. The Stela 24 ornament is similar to a knuckle-duster-like ornament on a sash worn over the skirt of a Formative figure of unknown provenience, where it is paired with a torch (Cervantes 1969:Figure 13; Piña Chan and Covarrubias 1964:Figure 32).

The best-shaped candidate is the milk conch, Strombus costatus Gmelin, which is very common in the Gulf of Mexico as far east as Cabo Catoche, at the northeast corner of the Yucatan Peninsula (Abbott 1974:144, Plate 4; Vokes and Vokes 1983:21, Plate 8, no. 3). It grows to about 18 cm, and fresh specimens have a spire sharp enough to draw blood easily. Less likely prototypes are the West Indian chank, Turbinella angulata Lightfoot, and the Florida horse conch, Pleuroploca gigantea Kiener (Abbott 1974:228, 241, Figures 2506, 2644; Vokes and Vokes 1983:27, 28, Plates 16, no. 9, 18, no.1). Neither is common or has a particularly sharp spire, and the horse conch is too long relative to its width to look much like a knuckleduster. It also grows to a length of two feet. The pink conch of the Caribbean, Strombus gigas Linné (Abbott 1974:144, Figure 1583; Vokes and Vokes 1983:21, Plate 8, no. 4), is shaped much the same as Strombus costatus, but it does not occur in the Gulf of Mexico. No Pacific coast shells of Mexico look at all like knuckle-dusters.

The knuckle-duster/conch identification also explains why knuckle-dusters have not been found in the archaeological record if, as seems likely, the objects existed in more than artistic representation. The knuckle-duster would simply be identifiable as a conch shell with part of the body whorl removed. Broken conchs are not rare, at least at Gulf Coast sites, and unless the whorl had been carefully sawed off and the cut marks well preserved, the shell would not be recognized as an artifact, let alone a ritual object. Lest the reader dwell immoderately long on the use of the milk conch as an actual bloodletter, it seems likely that conch knuckle-dusters were, or came to be, symbols of bloodletters, and also of the rank and authority of individuals who would sacrifice of themselves for the good of the community. The bloodletting would have been performed with more manageable and effective implements, such as stingray spines, obsidian blades, or needles.

One pair of knuckle-dusters, engraved on a celt reported to be from Las Bocas, Puebla, shows long, sharp spines projecting from the body whorl (Figure 9.1p; Joralemon 1976:Figure 19i). These shells look nothing like any species native to the New World. The closest resemblance is to a univalve of the genus Lambis, which occurs no closer to Mexico than Tahiti (Harold E. Vokes and Emily H. Vokes, personal communication 1987). This representation must therefore be judged not to be naturalistic.

A Parallel with Chavín Iconography

Forty years ago Willey (1962) pointed out that the beginnings of civilization in Mesoamerica and the Andes were marked by the development and spread of two great art styles, Olmec and Chavín. Although we know far more about Chavín and Olmec antecedents in Peru and Mexico today, the characterizations of these two phenomena remain much the same. Chavín is still considered to represent the first widespread civilization in the Andes, with a span of perhaps 900 to 200 B.C. It was linked to the expansion of a religious cult, and characterized by a distinctive art style that appears in the highlands on stone monuments, clay reliefs, ceramic vessels, woven textiles, gold, and other portable objects (Burger 1992:128, 165, 233). In the early and middle centuries of this Early Horizon, the Chavín style was shared, emulated, and borrowed throughout much of Peru.

The identification of knuckle-dusters as Gulf conch shells helps to explain the association of shell motifs with later bloodletting ritual in the Maya lowlands and elsewhere. The association of the shell with bloodletting continued into Early Classic Maya writing, in which a glyph that has been identified as the bloodletting verb may be accompanied by a serrated motif that resembles a shell and perhaps also a knuckle-duster (Grove 1987b; Schele 1985:Figure 4). The linkage of ritual bloodletting with hand-held implements resembling knuckle-dusters may have continued in Classic Maya sculpture. Victoria R. Bricker (personal communication, 1987) has called to my attention the objects carried by the lords on Naranjo Stela 30, which she notes has a bloodletting compound at A3-A4, and on Stela 33 (Graham 1978). These trilobed, knobbed devices are held by the side in one hand, as were some Formative knuckle-dusters. Bricker suggests that because the knuckle-duster on Stela 30 carries the same markings as the spear point

The Formative Mesoamerican style appears to have been a similar artistic manifestation of widely held cosmological beliefs, although the symbolic message and social role of individual motifs varied from society to society, as did the medium and form in

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which they were depicted (e.g., Grove 1989; Marcus 1989; Tolstoy 1989). This was also the first great art style to be adopted over much of Mesoamerica, between about 1200 and 900 or 800 B.C. The style changed during the following three or four centuries, and many, although not all, of the iconographic motifs of the Early Formative seem to have been lost.

systematic exploration of the parallels. He argues for a central role in both styles of representation of the cayman, harpy eagle, jaguar, and fish, and points out that their most vital function was to bring crops and rain. Lathrap (1982:309) also contends that conch and Spondylus shells were important in Chavín, but that neither is “well represented in extant examples of Olmec art” (1982:309). The identification of the Mesoamerican knuckle-duster as Strombus raises the possibility of a further parallel between the two styles.

Excavations at San Lorenzo and La Venta suggest that the Olmec colossal heads and tabletop altars, as well as most other sculpture in the round, may have been limited to three or four hundred years following 1200 B.C. The archaeological manifestations of Chavín and the Formative Mesoamerican styles may therefore have overlapped for only a short time. Nevertheless, because these two early styles and cosmological

A central deity at Chavín de Huantar is a figure identified by Rowe (1962:Figures 7, 11; 1967:84, Figures 5, 21) as the Smiling God and referred to by Burger (1992:149–150, 174, frontispiece, Figures 140, 175, 183) as the supreme deity. The anthropomorphic deity appears early on the Lanzón in the Old Temple; on a panel from the New Temple; and on the late Raimondi Stone. His ascendancy thus spanned more than half a millennium at Chavín de Huantar. In the New Temple panel he is shown holding a large gastropod, probably a Strombus, in his right hand and a Spondylus shell in his left (Figure 9.3). Burger (1992:174) says that the univalve-bivalve pair “formed a symbolic dyad” of male and female forces and that this symbolism has continued into recent and modern Colombian and Peruvian religious rituals. The early Tello Obelisk (Burger 1992: Figure 141; Lathrap 1982:302) also depicts a Strombus and a Spondylus shell.

Figure 9.3  Deity, Chavín De Huantar, Peru.  From a rubbing made by Rowe (1962, Figure 21) from a slab found in the patio of the New Temple.  The god holds a probable conch (Strombus) in his right hand, and his left holds a Spondylus shell native to Ecuador.

If the interpretation of the two shells held in front of the chest of the Chavín deity as paired and complementary symbols is correct, it may suggest a way of understanding the knuckle-duster and bundle of plants held by early Mesoamerican deities, deity-impersonators, or rulers. The male/female dyad does not seem to apply directly, but if the bundle was understood to represent cuttings or sprouts topped by new growth such as maize, then it would have symbolized the generative principle — life itself. The knuckle-duster with

systems played a significant role in the rise of complex societies in the two hearths of New World civilization, iconographic and ideological parallels between them should be of interest. Several scholars have suggested iconographic and thematic similarities between Chavín and Olmec, but Lathrap (1982) gives us the most detailed and

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which it is often paired might have been conceived of as supporting this generative force. If the knuckleduster was a symbolic blood-letter, it would have provided the substance that the gods required to sustain human life. Statues of rulers holding the two objects would therefore have depicted their claim to be the intermediaries between humans and life-giving supernatural forces.

evidence of agriculture predate the introduction of ceramics. If there was a common Nuclear American belief system that focused on the supernatural forces that sustained agricultural productivity, it is highly likely to have developed well before 5000 B.C. throughout the area, along with what were to become the most important domesticated plants in Mesoamerica and South America. Because the animals associated with the cosmology and incorporated into the early art styles, such as the cayman, jaguar, and harpy eagle, are widespread, they provide us with no compelling reason to attribute the origin of the belief system to one region of Nuclear Mesoamerica as opposed to another.

The identification of the conch as another parallel between the Chavín and early Mesoamerican styles once again raises the question of how these iconographic similarities came to be. Willey (1962:5) hesitantly puts forth the idea of “an ancient undercurrent of belief on which both Peruvian and Mesoamerican societies could have drawn to develop different art styles.” Lathrap (1982:312) argues for a common origin, as well, saying “I would further suggest that the appearance of these parallel mythical systems . . . was due to a gradual outward migration of agricultural colonists with an economic system adjusted to the riverine flood plains of Nuclear America.” The place of origin, he thought, was lowland Colombia. More recently, Grove (1989:12) writes that “an ancient common belief stratum” might explain the widespread Mesoamerican style, although he does not offer an opinion regarding Mesoamerican–Chavín relationships. Marcus takes a similar stance by suggesting the existence of a panMesoamerican belief system including “legacies from a very early epoch.”

Summary and Conclusions Knuckle-dusters were made from the sharp-spired milk conch, Strombus costatus, a large gastropod common along the shores of the Gulf of Mexico as far as the northeast corner of the Yucatán Peninsula. Our sample of Early and Middle knuckle-duster motifs comes from Olmec Gulf Coast sites and from Puebla, Morelos, and southern Chiapas. None is attributed to the Maya area, which is perhaps not surprising, as the Maya lowlands and highlands generally lack the Early and Middle Formative Mesoamerican style often called “Olmec.” The motif is also absent, however, in the Valley of Mexico, in Guerrero and the Balsas drainage, and in Oaxaca, which are farther from the Gulf Coast than the areas from which the motif is known. Because the sample of knuckle-dusters is so small, it remains to be seen whether their apparent concentration in areas around the Gulf Coast reflects accurately their original distribution.

A common foundation of cosmology and origin myths for the earliest Formative societies of Mesoamerica and South America is still moot. It may always remain beyond the ability of archaeology to assess the extent to which early ideology was shared. The earliest known ceramic complexes in Mesoamerica, southern Central America, and northern South America are not alike (Hoopes 1992; Joyce and Henderson 2001), and they give little reason to think that the several early societies were in contact with one another. At what appears to have been an earlier date, however, domesticated plants were being transferred in both directions.

The use of the Gulf Coast conch as a central visual element of the Early Formative ritual complex suggests that Olmec populations were among those that developed this imagery and the belief systems that underlay it. If, as Grove and others have argued, knuckle-dusters symbolized bloodletting, which in the Classic period was an important ritual related to legitimization of rulership, the importance of the practice can be traced to the very beginnings of complex Mesoamerican societies.

Pollen of what is thought to be domesticated manioc, originally from Amazonia, has been dated to about 4600 B.C. in a sediment core from the site of San Andrés, on the coast of Tabasco (Pope et al. 2001). Maize, probably domesticated from teosinte in the Balsas drainage of western Mexico, was present by 5000 B.C. in these Gulf Coast cores. Maize pollen appears in archaeological deposits in central Panama at about 5000 B.C. (Piperno et al. 1985), and maize phytoliths from western Ecuador have been dated to 5000 B.C. or earlier (Pearsall and Piperno 1990).

Among the Early Formative communities the Olmec were precocious in erecting carved stone monuments, including colossal thrones that were sometimes recarved to depict chiefs' heads. No other early leaders in Mesoamerica were as obviously preoccupied with glorifying themselves, and possibly no other Formative culture so strongly influenced contemporaneous societies or had as great an impact on the art styles, iconography, and symbols of rulership of later cultures, at least in eastern Mesoamerica.

All of the archaeological levels that have yielded early

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Knuckle-dusters are often paired with “torches,” which may be bundles of sticks or maize sprouts, according to Fields, Schele, Reilly, and others. If so, the bundles can be understood as symbols of growth and life. The knuckle-duster held in the other hand may have been a complementary symbol of sacrifice to nourish the supernatural forces that in turn ensured life and prosperity, made possible by the continuity in leadership, economic stability, and appropriate rites provided by the leader of the community.

of the group of Formative jade pendants called “spoons” that were suspended on the chests of important individuals and might have been used as snuff trays to hold tobacco or other hallucinogenic plants (Andrews 1986, 1987), a subject not included in this chapter. Emily Vokes cut a Strombus costatus to form the knuckle-duster shown in Figure 9.2, and Kathe Lawton modeled it, but neither can be held liable for my musings on its ancient use. This paper has benefited from the encouragement and suggestions of Anthony P. Andrews, Patricia A. Andrews, Victoria R. Bricker, David C. Grove, Joyce Marcus, and David M. Pendergast; in acknowledging their help and constructive criticism I certainly do not mean to imply that they agree wholly with what I have written.

Acknowledgments. I presented an early version of

this chapter at the III Texas Symposium, entitled "Olmec, Izapa, and the Development of Maya Civilization," at the University of Texas, Austin, in March 1987. My paper, which identified knuckledusters as conch shells, was titled “Pottery, Jades, and Shells: Thoughts on the Olmec and the Maya.” I am grateful to Nancy Troike and the late Linda Schele for that long-ago opportunity to collect some of my thoughts on these subjects. Part of the presentation focused on the distribution and possible significance

114

Table 9.1. Knuckle-dusters in Mesoamerica Provenience VERACRUZ

References

San Lorenzo, Monument 10 (2 knuckle-dusters)

Figure

San Lorenzo, Monument 26 (1 knuckle-duster, 1 torch)

Stirling 1955:Plate 15b; Coe and Diehl 1b 1980:1:Figure 459; Benson and de la Fuente 1996:168, 169 Coe and Diehl 1980:1:Figure 434 1c

Arroyo Pesquero (?), jade figure (2 knuckle-dusters)

Benson 1971:Figures 1, 5

1m

Santiago Tuxtla, stone disk (Tres Zapotes?) (cf. Yadeun 1983) (1 knuckle-duster, 1 torch) Veracruz (?) Museum of Anthropology, Xalapa, carved celt (2 [?] knuckle-dusters in headdress) TABASCO

Cervantes 1969:Figure 1 Yadeún 1983:Figure II.3.5 Coe et al. 1995:303

1f

La Venta, Offering 1942-C, celt (2 knuckle-dusters)

Drucker 1952:Figure 47a

1o

La Venta, Offering 4, celt (1 knuckle-duster, 1 torch)

Drucker et al. 1959:Figure 40, no. 3; 1r Cervantes 1969:Figures 7, 11; Benson and de la Fuente 1996:204 Ochoa 1984:Figure 3 1i

Emiliano Zapata, celt (1 knuckle-duster, 1 torch)

not illust.

CHIAPAS Padre Piedra, Stela (1 knuckle-duster)

Navarrete 1960:Figure 11

0.04

Pichucalco, jade figure (2 knuckle-dusters)

Cervantes 1969:Figure 14

1n

Pijijiapan, Stone 1, rock carving (1 knuckle-duster)

Navarrete 1974:Figures 2, 3

1d

Joralemon 1976:Figure 19i; Coe et al. 1995:228, 229 Coe 1965:Figure 8; Joralemon 1971:Figure 20

0.542

Grove 1984:120, Plates III, 14; 1987a:122–123, Figure 9.14 Grove 1984:120, Plate 20; 1987a:124, Figure 9.16 Gay 1971:Figure 43, Plate 23; Grove 1987b; Coe et al. 1995:288, 289

not illust. 1

Coe 1965:Figure 12; Cervantes 1969:Figure 5 Kelemen 1943:Plate 255c; Coe 1965:Figure 52; Cervantes 1969:Figure 10; Benson and de la Fuente 1996:255 Piña Chan and Covarrubias 1964: Figures 30, 32; Cervantes 1969:Figure 13; Benson and de la Fuente 1996:208, 209 Joralemon 1971:Figure 33; Coe et al. 1995:302; Benson and de la Fuente 1996:272, 273

1l

PUEBLA Las Bocas (?), celt (2 knuckle-dusters) San Cristóbal Tepatlaxco, jade figure (1 knuckle-duster, 1 torch) MORELOS Chalcatzingo, Monument 12 (1 possible knuckle-duster [eroded], 1 torch) Chalcatzingo, Monument 20 (1 knuckle-duster, 1 torch? [top missing]) Chalcatzingo (?), ceramic vase (1 knuckle-duster, 1 torch) UNKNOWN PROVENIENCE Cleveland Museum, jade figure (1 knuckle-duster, 1 torch) Museo Nacional de Antropología, México, D.F., jade clamshell (1 knuckle-duster, 1 torch) Unknown collection (1 knuckle-duster, 1 torch)

Private collection (1 knuckle-duster)

115

1k

1g

1q

1j

1s

REFERENCES CITED

Abbott, R. Tucker 1974 American Seashells. Second edition. Van Nostrand Reinhold, New York. Andrews, E. Wyllys, V 1986 Olmec Jades from Chacsinkin, Yucatan, and Maya Ceramics from La Venta, Tabasco. In Research and Reflections in Archaeology and History: Essays in Honor of Doris Stone, edited by E. Wyllys Andrews V, pp. 11–49. Publication No. 57. Middle American Research Institute, Tulane University, New Orleans. 1987 A Cache of Early Jades from Chacsinkin, Yucatan. Mexicon 9:78–85. Berlin. Benson, Elizabeth P. 1971 An Olmec Figure at Dumbarton Oaks. Studies in Pre-Columbian Art and Archaeology No. 8. Dumbarton Oaks, Washington, D.C. Benson, Elizabeth P., and Beatriz de la Fuente (editors) 1996 Olmec Art of Ancient Mexico. National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. Burger, Richard L. 1992 Chavin and the Origins of Andean Civilization. Thames and Hudson, New York. Cervantes, María Antonieta 1969 Dos elementos de uso ritual en el arte olmeca. Anales del Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia, 1967-1968, séptima época, tomo I, pp. 37–51. INAH, Mexico City. Coe, Michael D. 1965 The Olmec Style and Its Distribution. In Archaeology of Southern Mesoamerica, part 2, edited by Gordon R. Willey, pp. 739–775. Handbook of Middle American Indians, vol. 2, Robert Wauchope, general editor. University of Texas Press, Austin. Coe, Michael D., and Richard A. Diehl 1980 In the Land of the Olmec. 2 vols. University of Texas Press, Austin. Coe, Michael D., Richard A. Diehl, David A. Freidel, Peter T. Furst, F. Kent Reilly III, Linda Schele, Carolyn E. Tate, and Karl A. Taube 1995 The Olmec World: Ritual and Rulership. The Art Museum, Princeton University, Princeton, New Jersey. Drucker, Philip 1952 La Venta, Tabasco: A Study of Olmec Ceramics and Art. Bulletin 158. Bureau of American Ethnology, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C. Drucker, Philip, Robert F. Heizer, and Robert J. Squier 1959 Excavations at La Venta, Tabasco, 1995. Bulletin 170. Bureau of American Ethnology, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C. Easby, Elizabeth Kennedy, and John F. Scott 1970 Before Cortés: Sculpture of Middle America. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Fields, Virginia M. 1991 The Iconographic Heritage of the Maya Jester God. In Sixth Palenque Round Table, 1986, edited by Merle Greene Robertson and Virginia M. Fields, pp. 167–174. University of Oklahoma Press, Norman. Gay, Carlo T. E. 1971 Chalcacingo. Akademische Druck- u. Verlagsanstalt, Graz, Austria. Graham, Ian 1978 Naranjo, Chunhuitz, Xunantunich. Corpus of Maya Hieroglyphic Inscriptions 2(2). Peabody Museum, Harvard University, Cambridge. Graham, Ian, and Eric von Euw 1975 Naranjo. Corpus of Maya Hieroglyphic Inscriptions 2(1). Peabody Museum, Harvard University, Cambridge. Grove, David C. 1984 Chalcatzingo: Excavations on the Olmec Frontier. Thames and Hudson, New York. 1987a (editor). Ancient Chalcatzingo. University of Texas Press, Austin. 1987b "Torches," "Knuckle-dusters," and the Legitimization of Formative Period Rulership. Mexicon 9:60-65. Berlin. 1989 Olmec: What’s in a Name? In Regional Perspectives on the Olmec, edited by Robert J. Sharer and David C. Grove, pp. 8–14. School of American Research. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.

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Hoopes, John W. 1992 Early Formative Cultures in the Intermediate Area: A Background to the Emergence of Social Complexity. In Wealth and Hierarchy in the Intermediate Area, edited by Frederick W. Lange, pp. 43–83. Dumbarton Oaks, Washington, D.C. Joralemon, Peter David 1971 A Study of Olmec Iconography. Studies in Pre-Columbian Art and Archaeology No. 7. Dumbarton Oaks, Washington, D.C. 1974 Ritual Blood Sacrifice Among the Ancient Maya: Part I. In Primera Mesa Redonda de Palenque, Part II, edited by Merle Greene Robertson, pp. 59–75. Robert Louis Stevenson School and Pre-Columbian Art Research Institute, Pebble Beach, California. 1976 The Olmec Dragon: A Study in Pre-Columbian Iconography. In Origins of Religious Art and Iconography in Preclassic Mesoamerica, edited by H. B. Nicholson, pp. 27–71. University of California at Los Angeles Latin American Center and Ethnic Arts Council of Los Angeles. Joyce, Rosemary, Richard Edging, Karl Lorenz, and Susan D. Gillespie 1991 Olmec Bloodletting: An Iconographic Study. In Sixth Palenque Round Table, 1986, edited by Merle Greene Robertson and Virginia M. Fields, pp. 143–150. University of Oklahoma Press, Norman. Joyce, Rosemary A., and John S. Henderson 2001 Beginnings of Village Life in Eastern Mesoamerica. Latin American Antiquity 12:5–23. Kelemen, Pal 1943 Medieval American Art. 2 vols. MacMillan, New York. Lathrap, Donald W. 1982 Complex Iconographic Features Shared by Olmec and Chavin and Some Speculations on Their Possible Significance. In Primer Simposio de Correlaciones Antropológicas Andino–Mesoamericano, edited by Jorge Marcos and Presley Norton, pp. 301–328. Escuela Politécnica del Litoral, Salinas, Ecuador. Looper, Matthew G. 1994 Observations on the Morphology of Sprouts in Olmec Art. Notes on Precolumbian Art, Writing, and Culture 58. Austin, Texas. Lowe, Gareth W. 1981 Olmec Horizons Defined in Mound 20, San Isidro, Chiapas. In The Olmec and Their Neighbors: Essays in Memory of Matthew W. Stirling, edited by Elizabeth P. Benson, pp. 231–255. Dumbarton Oaks, Washington, D.C. 1998 Los olmecas de San Isidro en Malpaso, Chiapas. Serie Arqueología. Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia and Centro de Investigaciones Humanísticas de Mésoamerica y el Estado de Chiapas–UNAM, Mexico City. Marcus, Joyce 1989 Zapotec Chiefdoms and the Nature of Formative Religion. In Regional Perspectives on the Olmec, edited by Robert J. Sharer and David C. Grove, pp. 148–197. School of American Research. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. Navarrete, Carlos 1960 Archaeological Explorations in the Region of Frailesca, Chiapas, Mexico. Papers No. 7. New World Archaeological Foundation, Orinda, California. 1974 The Olmec Rock Carvings at Pijijiapan, Chiapas, Mexico, and Other Olmec Pieces from Chiapas and Guatemala. Papers No. 35. New World Archaeological Foundation, Provo, Utah. Ochoa, Lorenzo 1984 Hachas olmecas y otras piezas arqueológicas del Medio Usumacinta. Revista Mexicana de Estudios Antropológicos, tomo 28 (1982):109–122. Sociedad Mexicana de Antropología, Mexico City. Pearsall, Deborah M., and Dolores R. Piperno 1990 Antiquity of Maize Cultivation in Ecuador: Summary and Reevaluation of the Evidence. American Antiquity 55:324–337. Piña Chan, Román, and Luis Covarrubias 1964 El pueblo del jaguar: los olmecas arqueológicos. Museo Nacional de Antropología, Secretaría de Educación Pública, Mexico City. Piperno, Dolores R., K. H. Clary, R. G. Cooke, Anthony J. Ranere, and D. Weiland 1985 Preceramic Maize in Central Panama: Phytolith and Pollen Evidence. American Anthropologist 87:871–878. Pope, Kevin O., Mary E. D. Pohl, John G. Jones, David L. Lentz, Christopher L. von Nagy, Francisco J. Vega, and Irvy R. Quitmyer 2001 Origin and Environmental Setting of Ancient Agriculture in the Lowlands of Mesoamerica. Science 292:1370–1373.

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Reilly, F. Kent, III 1991 Olmec Iconographic Influences on the Symbols of Maya Rulership: An Examination of Possible Sources. In Sixth Palenque Round Table, 1986, edited by Merle Greene Robertson and Virginia M. Fields, pp. 151–166. University of Oklahoma Press, Norman. 1995 Art, Ritual, and Rulership in the Olmec World. In The Olmec World: Ritual and Rulership, by Michael D. Coe et al., pp. 27–45. The Art Museum, Princeton University, Princeton, New Jersey. Rowe, John Howland 1962 Chavin Art: An Inquiry into its Form and Meaning. The Museum of Primitive Art, New York. 1967 Form and Meaning in Chavin Art. In Peruvian Archaeology: Selected Readings, edited by John Howland Rowe and Dorothy Menzel, pp. 72–103. Peek Publications, Palo Alto, California. Schele, Linda 1985 The Hauberg Stela: Bloodletting and the Mythos of Maya Rulership. In Fifth Palenque Round Table, 1983, edited by Merle Greene Robertson and Virginia M. Fields, pp. 135–149. Pre-Columbian Art Research Institute, San Francisco. 1992 Sprouts and the Early Symbolism of Rulers in Mesoamerica. Paper delivered at Die Welt den Maya symposium, Hildesheim, Germany. 1995 The Olmec Mountain and Tree of Creation in Mesoamerican Cosmology. In The Olmec World: Ritual and Rulership, by Michael D. Coe et al., pp. 105–117. The Art Museum, Princeton University, Princeton, New Jersey. Schele, Linda, and Mary Ellen Miller 1986 The Blood of Kings: Dynasty and Ritual in Maya Art. Kimbell Art Museum, Fort Worth. Stirling, Matthew W. 1955 Stone Monuments of the Río Chiquito, Veracruz, Mexico. Anthropological Papers No. 43. Bulletin 157, pp. 1–23. Bureau of American Ethnology, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C. Tolstoy, Paul 1989 Coapexco and Tlatilco: Sites with Olmec Materials in the Basin of Mexico. In Regional Perspectives on the Olmec, edited by Robert J. Sharer and David C. Grove, pp. 85–121. School of American Research. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. Tozzer, Alfred M. (editor) 1941 Landa's Relación de las cosas de Yucatán: A Translation. Papers Vol. 18. Peabody Museum of American Archaeology and Ethnology, Harvard University, Cambridge. Vokes, Harold E., and Emily H. Vokes 1983 Distribution of Shallow-Water Marine Mollusca, Yucatan Peninsula, Mexico. Mesoamerican Ecology Institute Monograph 1. Publication No. 54. Middle American Research Institute, Tulane University, New Orleans. Willey, Gordon R. 1962 The Early Great Styles and the Rise of Pre-Columbian Civilizations. American Anthropologist 64:1–14. 1978 Excavations at Seibal, Department of Peten, Guatemala: Artifacts. Memoirs of the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology Vol. 14, No. 1. Harvard University, Cambridge. Yadeún Angulo, Juan 1983 Arqueología del tiempo y el espacio de las notaciones en piedra. In Antropología e historia de los mixe-zoques y mayas (Homenaje a Frans Blom), edited by Lorenzo Ochoa and Thomas A. Lee, Jr., pp. 131–146. Centro de Estudios Mayas, Instituto de Investigaciones Filológicas, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Mexico City, and Brigham Young University, Provo, Utah.

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10 Housework in Postclassic El Salvador Karen Olsen Bruhns

Introduction

patterning of materials within them to determine activities associated with the household. These patterns are then used to recreate domestic activities and their relationships with various social groups within that society or, less legitimately, to interpret

When I wrote the first version of this chapter many years ago, household archaeology was essentially in its infancy and feminist archaeology was but a faint hope in the hearts of some of us. Happily both fields have expanded substantially in the ensuing decades. The chapter must be understood in its historical context, as having been written when the first of the fields was just beginning to flourish and the second did not really exist in any formal or public way. Following the end of the civil conflict that shut it down, the Cihuatán project has reopened under the auspices of the Fundación Nacional de Arqueología de El Salvador. The foundation is a private organization concerned with the preservation and protection of the Salvadoran archaeological heritage, as part of the plan to incorporate El Salvador into the Ruta Maya international tourism development. Cihuatán now has its own web page (www.cihuatan.org, with the URL linked on most major search engines), a technology that did not exist when the fieldwork described below took place. I expect that Hal Ball would have found this new electronic world, and the new interests in archaeology, amazing and fascinating. A current trend in American archaeology is the examination of remains of households, either simple house floors or entire complexes of related structures, looking to the

Figure 10.1 Lower Mesoamerica. Drawing: E. Morales. Drawings and photographs are by the author except as indicated.

119

sexual divisions of labor. Whatever criticisms can be made of the latter undertaking, it is evident that studies of households as households, rather than as collections of artifacts to be analyzed separately according to material (e.g., ceramics, lithics, etc.), can contribute greatly to our understanding of the daily functioning of past societies. The following is a presentation of such patterns as noted within excavated structures in a single Early Postclassic site on the southwestern frontier of Mesoamerica.

“direct ethnocentric approach” (Bruhns 1991:420); this is certainly the case in Mesoamerica. Many tools, even those such as metates that are assumed to be associated with food preparation and hence with women, have multiple uses that are not sex-linked. The close association among tasks such as food preparation, cloth-making, obsidian working, and ritual effort does not permit separation of the activities except on the basis of ethnographic comparisons with much later, and ethnically different, cultures. I cannot be certain that women ground corn, cooked, and wove while men worked obsidian, drank beer, and farmed, and I am therefore ignoring the question until we have additional relevant evidence, such as grave goods associations, on the point.

In producing this report I have not attempted for a number of reasons to engender the activities recoverable in the archaeological record. First, I have found that most engendering of activity areas and tasks is done on the basis of what I have referred to as the

The Site The site of Cihuatán is located in the republic of El Salvador, 37.5 km north of San Salvador, the national capital, along the Carretera Troncal del Norte, some 4 km past the modern market town of Aguilares and l5 km before the ancient ford (and modern bridge) of the Lempa River at the Cerro Colima (Figure 10.1). Named for the form of the Volcán de Guazapa as seen from the site (which approximates the silhouette of a woman sleeping on her back, identified as the Cihuateo or local earth goddess), Cihuatán is an immense, sprawling site whose two major ceremonial centers are located on a low ridge in the middle of the valley of the Acelhuate River (Figure 10.2).

Figure 10.2 Map of the lower Acelhuate-Chalchigüe Valley, showing the location of Cihuatán. Drawing: A. Woods.

120

The residential portion of the site continues for some three to four km north and south from the centers, with an unknown extension to the east and west where remains on the valley floor have been largely obliterated by deep plowing for sugar

cane. We located six subsidiary centers in the late 1970s, all but one with the aid of Hal Ball and his Piper Apache, El Quetzal.

The material discussed below comes from the activities of one of these efforts, the Cihuatán Settlement Archaeology Project, directed by the author. Because the form of Cihuatán is so different from those of earlier (and later) settlements on the southeast frontier of Mesoamerica, and also owing to the site's definitely Early Postclassic date, a program of mapping and excavation in the non-ceremonial part of the city was begun in 1975 (Cecil 1982). The excavations showed that Cihuatán had been abandoned very rapidly and that subsequently there was little or no reoccupation until the middle of this century.

Despite its size, Cihuatán was not occupied for very long, perhaps for as little as a century and certainly not for more than two. All non-ceremonial structures excavated were built upon the shallow, sterile soils of the ridge and only two showed any signs of remodeling or rebuilding. Investigations in the Western Ceremonial Center undertaken by William Fowler show that there were but two areas of rebuilding in the center of the town: a small sector adjacent to the main pyramid, which may have been elite housing or administrative buildings, and the West Ball Court. The remodeling of the latter had not been completed at the time Cihuatán was burned by persons unknown and abandoned, probably ca A.D. 1000– 1200 (Bruhns 1980; Fowler 1981).

It has been known since the 1920s that the ceremonial buildings had been destroyed by fire. The smashing of the huge portal incensarios (censers) on the western steps of these structures indicates that something more than a serious conflagration took place, as does a similar pattern of destruction at Santa María, the single subsidiary site investigated in the Lempa Valley proper (Fowler and Solís Angulo 1977). Investigations in the domestic structures showed that the fire had consumed, at the very least, all the central district of Cihuatán; the lack of reoccupation of the site is indicative of major social or political changes associated with that burning. Whatever the reasons for the destruction of Cihuatán, it has provided an excellent opportunity for the investigation of domestic activity areas, because artifacts were left on the floors of buildings and patios, to lie undisturbed until discovered by archaeologists some 600 years later.

After this traumatic event Cihuatán remained essentially untouched until the 1950s, although there may have been some sporadic small-scale occupation within the town zone in the ensuing centuries (Kelley 1985). The area was under deep forest when Pedro de Alvarado, the local conquistador, passed through in 1524 and was still in forest when Simeon Habel, the German-American traveller whose accounts form one of our earlier modern sources for the region, arrived in the area in 1878. Habel (1879) reports only that the local inhabitants told him that had he delved into the forest instead of keeping to the road he would have found the remains of many walls among the trees. The fact that the site had a local name, the same that it bears today, presumably indicates that the natives knew something about it. Cihuatán is too early for metal and its pottery is not particularly handsome, two facts that have kept it safe from all but the most opportunistic or casual looting.

The civil conflict that brought the original Cihuatán project to a close has caused this study to remain preliminary. We could not complete analysis of ceramics and other artifacts because it was impossible to return to the site. When we were able to return in 1993 and 1996 to 1998 we found that the collections had been totally destroyed by Salvadoran soldiers who occupied the site for some months and tossed all of the artifacts stored in the site house outside. As a result this paper is based on field notes and inventories, photographs and drawings, and the preliminary artifact analysis that I carried out between 1977 and 1979. The lack of distinction among olla types, for example, stems from postponement of reconstruction drawings to the later season that we expected to be forthcoming. Now that continuation of work at Cihuatán, largely aimed at conservation and restoration, is under way, we hope to be able to extend our household excavation and analysis.

Excavation History Modern studies of Cihuatán began with the Salvadoran archaeologist Antonio Sol, who conducted excavations in the Western Ceremonial Center in 1925 (Sol 1929). In that same year Samuel Lothrop visited the site and briefly described it (Lothrop 1926). John Longyear published a more detailed description and a composite map of the Western Ceremonial Center (Longyear 1944), and in 1954 the Salvadoran government began investigations at Cihuatán under the direction of Stanley Boggs (Boggs 1972). With various interruptions these investigations continued until an escalation of civil hostilities in 1979 forced suspension of the several archaeological projects centered on Cihuatán.

The Excavated Structures During 1977 and 1978 more than ten structures were

121

Structure SS-118. This was the first structure to be uncovered. Because it had been repeatedly plowed and there was one looters' pit in the east side it was in a relatively poor state of preservation, and accordingly was not excavated in its entirety.

Figure 10.3 Structure SS-118. Note to plans: No differentiation is made between olla and jar variants. All vessels marked "bowl" are flat-bottomed, flaring bowls slipped red or tan; a small percentage have high tripod legs and/or pinched appliqué bands around the border. See Bruhns (1980) for detailed discussion of Cihuatán ceramics and Fowler et al. (1987) for discussion of the prismatic blade industry. Bedded foundation stones are in solid black, cobble subflooring is in outline, and pieces of fired ceramic floor are stippled. Areas of foundation in NW-1 probed but not excavated are in dotted outline.

A considerable amount of the cobble subflooring was still in place, as was enough of the bedded boulder foundation to show that there were at least two rooms to the structure (Figure 10.3). The major activity indicated by the archaeological remains was obsidian working; most of the northern end of the structure contained debitage, bladelets, core fragments, and other tools. These, though disturbed, were very abundant and indicated that the work had taken place within the structure. The exterior was not excavated, save for a small trench and test pit to the south.

Ceramic and other remains were more disturbed than was the obsidian. A metate was found near the center of the north room with a mano fragment northwest of it, more or less in the corner and in the heaviest area of obsidian debris. A number of redware flaring cajetes (bowls) clustered along the walls, with a jar and a bowl in the south accompanied by several other cajetes, a white bowl, a very large olla (globular jar) and a spindle whorl. Several pieces of plumbate, including one with a red and white exterior and plumbate interior, were found scattered in this area as well. The south room contained several more flaring bowls, a figurine fragment, and a cluster of large sherds, apparently from a storage/water jar, in the corner.

cleared; of these, two on the south side of the Western Ceremonial Center (SS-118 and SS-50), one on the West Terrace (P-16), and a household cluster (NW-1 to NW-3) on the northwest side of the Western Ceremonial Center were in a good enough state of preservation that it was possible to observe distinctive clustering of artifacts on their floors. All structures of course contained abundant remains of household (and other) refuse; for the purposes of this study this was discounted, and only clustered materials representing substantial portions of ceramic vessels and artifacts or large clusters of stone chipping debris were utilized for interpretation.

Western Ceremonial Center Structures 122

Figure 10.4 Structure SS-50.

Structure SS-50. This structure formed part of a small plazuela group to the south of the Western Ceremonial Center (see Cecil 1982 for structure locations, and Bruhns 1982 for discussion of another structure in the group). Unfortunately discussion of Structure SS-50 is limited by the inaccessibility of notes on artifact analysis.

Structure P-16. Located on the edge of what may

well have been the marketplace of Cihuatán, P-16 is a very large structure (10.6 x 5.3m) in an irregular line of low and high platforms bordering the terrace (Figure 10.5). Although the structure had been disturbed by trash burning and by a small tree growing in its southern end, excavation of the entire building as well as units on its east and west sides revealed considerable evidence of associated activities.

Located on a platform in the height range of 30 to 50cm that marked all Cihuatán house platforms, the two-roomed building had been little disturbed. In it were preserved considerable areas of fired clay flooring, on top of which the low cobble walls, apparently plastered with fine clay, had fallen. Dense clusters of artifacts were located on the center west limit of the structure on a side of the building that was probably open, and an area of dense obsidian-working debris was located along what may have been a covered porch. A storage pit covered with a flat stone was surrounded by a dense cluster of ceramics, mainly the remains of large jars and ollas, and a mano still lay on a piece of undisturbed floor in the center of the house (Figure 10.4). A figurine was found near the mano.

The southeast quarter of the structure contained abundant remains of an obsidian workshop marked by extremely heavy chipping debris that extended outside the building onto the West Terrace. This workshop was considerably larger than others encountered at Cihuatán, and it contained a high proportion of tools such as adzes, scrapers, and spokeshaves that were not formed from the common polyhedral ("bullet') core, as well as cores, bladelets, and other objects. A large white incised jar was found along the south interior wall. Along the east wall, beginning in unit 2, were more remains of vessels, with several flaring bowls of the common red ware coming from upper unit 2, two small ollas, several more jars and bowls,

The West Terrace

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olla, then jars, ollas, and bowls. Outside unit 4 were three molcajetes (vessels used for grinding of chiles and other sauce ingredients, as well as for serving) and an adze, then more jars and cajetes and a fancy red and white Marihua Red on Buff-related bowl. Finally, on the exterior of unit 6, at the north end, probably an entrance to the structure, were the remains of an hourglass spiked incensario with modeled decoration, accompanied by pieces of other modeled ceramics, the remains of a deity image or other ritual vessel.

The NW1– NW3 Group. In

1978, exploration west of the West Terrace revealed the remains of numbers of slumped terraces overlooking the Rio Izcanal and the western Acelhuate Valley. Some platform structures were visible, and one of these, NW-3, was selected for excavation. The structures were assigned provisional numbers until they could be integrated into the site map when the sector was surveyed, an event that had not taken place at the time this chapter was written.

Figure 10.5 Structure P-16. and a figurine fragment from unit 3A. Also from this unit were several adzes and net weights. In the northernmost unit were another net weight and a large coarse olla, with a mano fragment on the floor just to the west, associated with a large obsidian blade. These were found next to a large jar and an olla with evidence of burning on its base. Numbers of red sherds, mainly from flaring bowls, and a few bits of Tohil Plumbate were found in 4B; in 3 and 2B there were at least two jars and four flaring bowls.

In the process of excavation we cleared the NW-1 terrace below NW-3 and discovered that there were significant remains of architecture not visible on the surface. Accordingly, the entire terrace, more than 32 m long, was excavated in combination with tests in the area between its structures and those above. It would appear that this area forms a single household cluster, or perhaps a neighborhood (Figure 10.6). The area had never been plowed, and artifacts remained undisturbed on the floors where they had been left (Figure 10.7). Their presence clearly demonstrates the rapidity of the destruction (and, one hopes, evacuation) of Cihuatán.

Trenching and opening of units outside P-16 proved interesting. To the east, along a terrace top that showed evidence of cobble paving, was the extension of the obsidian workshop, accompanied by a large jar and several bowls. These were clustered at the south, whereas the northern part of the trench revealed only scattered debris. Along the west side of the structure, however, where there would have been protection from summer rainstorms, was an immense amount of material that indicated an important use of the area. From south to north the objects consisted of a large tan cooking vessel, at least three flaring bowls, another tan

The only structure with a platform excavated in the group was NW-3. In this instance the platform levelled the floor out from the slope. Approximately 6 x 7.50 m, the house had a single interior wall that bisected its upper quarter (Figure 10.8). The wattle and daub walls, their clay coating fired to a crumbly ceramic, had fallen inward and covered the southern

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Figure 10.6 NW-1/NW-3 group.

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Figure 10.7 NW-1, showing flaring bowl and small olla smashed on the floor of the burnt building group.

half of the building. Within the building were abundant remains of vessels smashed by the collapsing walls; the majority were flaring-walled bowls, ollas, and jars. The ollas were clustered along the north wall and in a group at the house center that was associated with a small cluster of obsidian blades. Similar clusters of obsidian tools, one of 12 blades and one of four large blades struck from non-polyhedral cores (Figure 10.9), were found at the center south wall and in the northeast corner, respectively.

posthole was found in excavation. The identification of the exterior surfaces as shaded working areas is strengthened by the presence of the remains of a sewing/spinning kit (a whorl and two obsidian blades for cutting the thread, apparently originally in a basket or gourd) on the floor at 3SB. One does not carry on sedentary activities such as spinning and sewing in the full sun. Most of the vessels found in NW-1 were domestic: red and tan flaring bowls, tan to orange ollas, and jars of various sorts. A number of these bore heavy carbon deposits and one, an olla in 11SC, contained the remains of a burnt meal (possibly the sweetened maize dish atole) on the interior. Many of the vessels were lined up along the edge of a low foundation that separated Structures 1 and 2 from Structures 3 and 4. In the foundation area, in three separate clusters as if it had fallen and bounced, was a rare Nicoya-related polychrome tripod bowl (Figure 10.13). The same area also yielded four more spindle whorls and a ceramic ear plug.

Two large open vessels similar to ones used historically for the brewing of maize beer had been left in the northwest corner on the same wall. A mano and a core remained along the center wall, and a large slab of soft volcanic tuff (talpuja, an important construction material in the ceremonial center) lay on the floor near them. Non-domestic items were limited to a fair number of spiked incensario fragments and a wheel from a wheeled figurine. Test excavations in the 11 m-wide area between NW-3 and the NW-1 group showed that much of the area had been paved and that there was an intermediate terrace, perhaps with further structures on it. The NW-1 terrace was found to support four structures with paved unwalled areas between them (Figures 10.10–12). Most artifacts were found outside the structures; given El Salvador's climate, these areas almost certainly were roofed, although only one

Grinding stones were limited to a plain metate in 2SB and an unusual carved bird-head metate of Honduran type in 10SB (Figure 10.14). Non-domestic activities are represented by several incensarios and the remains of a clay box near the Nicoya-like bowl, and perhaps also by two similar but not identical unslipped clay earspools (Bruhns 1980:Figure 36d).

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Along the slopes of the ridge, however, the platform was replaced by a terrace, and household groups exhibit a more linear arrangement. Because buildings in such arrangements sometimes lack platforms it is a bit difficult to assess the number of construction units without excavation. As a result, it is very likely that estimates of the number of houses, and hence of the Cihuatán population, are seriously low. Houses were built of adobe and wattle and daub, or cobbles in mud mortar, with clay floors. Collapse debris from walls shows that wall heights were only about one meter. Structures probably had huge overhanging roofs to protect the interior from the gusty downpours of the rainy season, as do modern houses built in the traditional manner. We did not locate any hearths in the ancient Cihuatán houses, perhaps because, as was true until the civil conflict, they were made of clay rather than stone and therefore would leave no particular traces in a burnt house. We also excavated considerable areas outside the main structures only on NW1-3, so may have missed any special kitchen structures of the sort that are the rule historically and ethnographically in this region. On NW-1 we did find what seems to be the foundation for a storehouse of some sort (Structure 4), most likely a corn crib. Most of the artifacts encountered can be identified as related to domestic activities such as food preparation and consumption. The flaring bowls may have been used both for preparation and for serving, to judge from the range of care with which they were decorated, from coarse wiping to double slipping and polishing. Many ollas show signs of use in the fire, and we even have one burnt meal in an olla that was left outside away from the house until it could be cleaned.

Figure 10.8 Structure NW-3. Obsidian bladelets and other small tools were frequent and fairly evenly distributed around the group of structures, but there were few indications of any stone-working within the excavated areas.

Interpretation

Preliminary analysis of the ceramics shows that the Cihuatecos made a considerable range of different ollas and jars, which were presumably for somewhat different purposes. One of these purposes, water hauling and/or storage, can be discovered by a comparison with modern vessels. The modern five-gallon

The excavations have yielded a wealth of information concerning non-ceremonial architecture, settlement planning, and domestic activities.

House Construction and Form Cihuatán domestic architecture appears to have been quite diverse. The norm seems to have been construction on a low platform in groups more or less regularly arranged around a small patio or plaza.

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Figure 10.9 Characteristic obsidian blade of non- prismatic type.

Presumably corn was consumed as drinks such as atole, as tamales (both filled and unfilled), as bolillos de maíz (maize dumplings) in stews, and even just as hominy. Metates are, of course, used to grind other things such as herbs, seeds for the drink horchata (morro [Crescentia alata] are commonly used today), colorings such as achiote (anato), and possibly even clay for pottery making. The fact that metates regularly occur in association with flaring bowls and ollas reinforces the interpretation that food preparation was going on in and around the ancient Cihuatán houses. Storage of foodstuffs, either temporary or long-term, was almost certainly practiced in the structures. Structure SS-50 contained the remains of numerous large jars in its north room (Figure 10.4). The jars, placed out

Figure 10.10 NW-1, details of structures and their contents. (20-liter) water jar has changed not at all in size, form, disposition of handles, or even color since ancient times. Twenty liters is the maximum amount that an average woman can carry for any distance, and most of the houses at Cihuatán are located at a considerable distance from year round water sources.

Most structures had grinding tools associated with them; these as well as botanical evidence from the 1979 season (Harlan et al. 1979) indicate that corn was being consumed. Presumably some of the larger ollas were used for soaking the corn in lime to produce nixtamal (hominy). Tortillas do not seem, however, to have been important in the Figure 10.11 NW-1, details of structures and their contents. ancient Cihuatecan diet, judging by the fact that fewer than a dozen sherds of comales (clay griddles) of the main traffic corridor that presumably ran from were found in all excavations. Because the griddles are the open west side to the center where grinding tools, extremely fragile, they are, if anything, very likely to storage pits, and a cluster of ollas and flaring bowls be over-represented in the middens of tortilla-eating were found, appear to define a storage area. peoples. It has been noted that tortillas did not form an important part of the Maya diet until the early The pattern of use of manioc (Manihot esculenta Colonial period, when they were introduced by Krantz) in the Cihuatecan diet in recent times has Mexican mercenaries who accompanied the Spanish. involved the harvesting of quantities sufficient for Cihuatán's very early Postclassic date suggests that the several days, and piling of unpeeled tubers at the back importance of tortillas did not increase until later in of the house or kitchen until they are needed. A the period. similar pattern of activity might be expected to have

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Figure 10.12 NW-1, details of structures and their contents. existed in ancient times, but analysis of soil from atop the floor surface at the rear (east) side of the house provided no evidence to support such an expectation.

dangerous not only to the workers but also to the people around them, and therefore not an expectable element of house-interior activity.

Textile manufacture or repair seems to have been another important household activity, to judge from the presence of spindle whorls in all structures and the sewing kit in NW-1. Cotton remains have been found in archaeological contexts, but agave fibers may have been spun as well. The quantities of whorls found do not suggest spinning above the domestic scale. In the NW-1 complex, which yielded the largest number of whorls, most were found outside the buildings, which indicates that spinning was done, as would be reasonable, where there was not only the shelter presumably provided by a roof or ramada but also sufficient light for the task.

Obsidian debris on the floor of a house would have been a serious hazard to the skin of every resident and visitor. Even the wearing of sandals would not have removed the danger; obsidian flakes are extremely sharp and, as experiment has verified, will cut easily through leather or basketry, and even through running shoes. Moreover, since people presumably sat on the ground, other parts of their bodies would have been exposed to razor-sharp chips. It is possible that such debris was regularly swept up; lenses of debitage have been found in midden. Nonetheless, the location of obsidian workshops in areas that would have had to be traversed by everyone using the structure is curious.

Three structures (SS-118, SS-50, and P-16) yielded evidence of obsidian working from house interiors. SS-118 and SS-50 produced mainly blades and bladelets from polyhedral cores, as well as debitage. It is surprising that obsidian working would have been done indoors although, as with spinning, if the houses had an open side or an open porch on one side there would have been both shelter and the light required for the work. Obsidian working is, however, fairly

Religious activities in domestic context are attested by the occurrence of incensarios in both spiked hourglass and ladle forms, and figurines, and perhaps also by remains of wheeled figurines and musical instruments found in a number of structures, although not in close association with a floor. The incensarios are small, perhaps 20 to 40 cm high. The only figurine clearly associated with a housefloor, an unidentifiable creature with a netted face, is from the

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northwest part of SS-50. It may be significant that the object lay close to this food preparation area. Other figurines represent standing and seated humans, as well as Tlaloc and several unidentified supernaturals. Wheeled figurines are mainly representations of dogs and other animals (Boggs 1972).

production for the family unit. The building's location, its moderately large size, and its contents probably indicate that its occupants were engaged in several commercial activities, which are quite likely to have included restaurant service, tool making, and perhaps woodworking. The general character of other refuse in and around the structure shows that it also served as a residence.

Activities that may have been somewhat more than

Ethnographic Parallels From the distribution of artifacts observed in the archaeological structures it appears that household activities have not changed greatly from the Early Postclassic to the present. Ethnographic observations made in 1978 on four related families living in the vicinity of Cihuatán, plus more sporadic observation of other households in the area and on the coast at Figure 10.13 Nicoya polychrome related bowl (red, yellow, Caluco and Jaltepeque show a disposition of and black on white slip), from W-1. materials quite similar to that of ancient times. None of the families had electricity or running water; although there was a well at Cihuatán it was purely domestic can be identified only for Structure dry more often than not, or the hand pump was P-16. This building fronts on what was probably the broken so that water had to be fetched from the rivers. main market (Bruhns 1980:38–39). The west side, or All families had traditional houses and kitchens. A rear, of the structure, which was partly paved, had a list of observed domestic activities and their spatial great many bowls and ollas, as well as three molcajetes distribution around the household plot appears in arranged along it. The east, or market, side also had a Table 10.1. cluster of bowls and a large jar on a paved area that might have served as a porch. The size and number of It is worth noting that in the house proper the only the vessels, the number of molcajetes, and the location of the artifacts seem to indicate food preparation and distribution on a fairly large scale. Net weights associated with the house may identify fish as one of the foodstuffs; fish are, or were, common in the two rivers that flank the site center. The south end of the structure contained a very large obsidian workshop in which one of the major tool types produced, and perhaps used, was a slightly trapezoidal "hachita" or adze, a tool that was probably used in woodworking. The quantity of both tools and debris in the workshop suggests Figure 10.14 Bird head metate of Atlantic Honduran type in situ, NW-1. something more than

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activity that would leave material traces would be storage of non-perishable goods, including raw materials for tools and other uses as well as the implements necessary for working such materials. Today tools of high value and those that are used infrequently are kept in the house, together with personal ornaments, clothing, bedclothes, and other items. Such objects are stored safely out of the elements and the reach of small children, hung from the rafters and from wall pegs, placed in boxes or bags, or simply leaned up against the walls.

cooking vessels. Modern practice gives us some indication of the varied uses for the ancient ollas. Large ollas are used for making nixtamal, which in this area is not cooked but rather made by soaking dried corn for about 24 hours in a lime solution. Nixtamal is made every day or so, depending on the size of the family, because it will sour if kept for long. Large ollas are also used for cooking tamales, but are not used for beans because beans must be prepared daily to avoid spoilage. In former times the large ollas or an even larger form closely akin to what we have called a "beer pot" was used for brewing corn beer, now illegal. The smaller ollas, with capacities of one to two liters, are used for cooking beans, other vegetables, atole, and the like. The large jars have changed not at all in size and form, but they are now commonly made of aluminum and, more recently, of plastic. These materials are preferred because they are considerably lighter than clay and are not breakable. Also plastic ones come in many delicious colors not available in clay.

Some houses also contain a small shrine that houses a plaster or plastic statuette or a paper picture and a glass or vase for flowers. In houses with electricity a light is kept on the shrine; the inhabitants of non-electrified houses do not risk fire, although a votive candle in a glass may be lit when someone is actively involved in devotions. Most activity takes place on the porch or in associated ramadas and in the adjacent yard or patio. Here in the shade women sew and prepare food, men make or repair tools, and everyone eats, visits, chats, and carries on other leisure or semi-leisure activities. The distribution of artifacts about the ancient structures indicates much the same sort of daily round. Grinding stones and related objects are located in parts of structures that appear to have been open or lit by an open side, or are in patios. Vessels that were used directly in food preparation are clustered around the grinding stone, which today is close to the fire because masa (wet ground corn) for tortillas is scooped off the metate and immediately formed into cakes and cooked. Today other vessels are placed on tables or shelves, usually along the walls of the kitchen or porch, and foodstuffs are stored in sacks, baskets, cans, or just on the dirt floor along the walls of the kitchen or living structure. Similar habits in the past are indicated by the locations of vessels in the excavated houses.

Although European-style metal and plastic single serving dishes have made some inroads into the household inventory, as have metal tableware and cooking vessels, calabash bowls (mainly from the fruit of the morro tree [Crescentia cujete]) are the common ordinary eating dish. They are used both as cups and as bowls for the traditional soups and stews of the area; other traditional edibles are finger foods, which are eaten from a leaf. In the ancient houses we can observe a notable lack of vessels of single-serving size, and it seems very likely that gourds and calabashes were being utilized for this purpose then as now. Gourds are also used today as canteens, though they are being replaced with plastic imitations. The only small vessels at ancient Cihuatán are fancy imported ones such as plumbate jars, Mixteca-Puebla and "Nicoya" polychrome cups, and similar luxury goods. Most structures contained a few such pieces in their refuse dumps; the quantities suggest that the imported vessels were "best dishes" used only for special purposes, much as many modern households have a few china cups or glasses for company.

The continuity in domestic practice from the Early Postclassic to the present is considerable. For example, the most common vessel forms in ancient Cihuatán are a flat-bottomed, flaring bowl that is occasionally tripod, a series of round bodied ollas that contain one to five liters of liquid, and the 20 liter jar with a long neck and three handles. Today the flaring bowls are made of brightly colored plastic, but they are still used in quantity as the all-purpose preparation, temporary storage, and even serving vessels of the household. My own household boasted 11 such bowls, whereas the people across the yard, who lived in a more traditional manner, had many more. Modern use of closed vessels parallels the open bowls; many of the modern ollas would, as sherds, be indistinguishable in form and decoration from the Early Postclassic

Other activities observable today would not leave many, if any, archaeological traces. The damp, hot climate of El Salvador and the acid soils preclude substantial organic preservation, so that many household goods would be unrepresented in the archaeological record. We can also assume that there has been considerable change in labor investment among activities. The shift from stone to metal means that tool manufacture no longer consumes significant household time and energy. Food preparation may or may not take longer today than in the past. The

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introduction of tortillas, presumably in the later Postclassic, would have instituted longer preparation times, shortened today by the fact that most families own or have access to a hand mill for first grinding of the corn, which is only "finished" on the metate. In other areas of food preparation, modern practices and the time required for them may not differ significantly from those of ancient times. Clothing manufacture, repair, and maintenance are probably all more time-consuming now because modern clothes are more complex than ancient ones. People wear more garments at a time than they would have aboriginally, and many sleep in modern beds with sheets and blankets. All of these factors result in a significant increase in washing and, owing to the number of garments and the more delicate nature of the popular synthetic fabrics, more mending. Detergents are now used, but the basics of scrubbing, hand smoothing, and drying have not changed appreciably in centuries, and the water sources remain the same. Since the excavations at Cihuatán reported here, El Salvador has suffered through a horrendous 12-year civil war. During the strife much of the countryside was virtually abandoned as country people sought the relative safety of towns and cities. The families at Cihuatán were no exception, and they now live in one of the booming suburbs that have already destroyed the outlying ceremonial center of Las Palmas and are encroaching upon Cihuatán itself. Life in these new suburbs is very different: houses are of concrete with metal or composition roofs, and are built with multiple rooms that have walls of standard western height. All have electricity, running water, and either modern toilets or a latrine. Propane burners are replacing the wood or charcoal-burning stoves, although the burners are placed on the same table that once held the traditional stove. "Modern" foods, such as sliced bread, sodas, milk, and even yogurt, have made inroads on the traditional diet, and the general availability of television leaves the newly suburban with no doubts regarding what is modern and desirable and what is old fashioned and hence less desirable. Traditional life continues in the more isolated areas, but for the first time in many centuries major changes in daily life are taking place around Cihuatán. Twenty-eight years ago it was possible to use direct ethnographic analogy to interpret the prehistoric remains; today, for better or for worse, housekeeping in El Salvador has changed forever.

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Table 10.1: Contemporary Household Activities and Their Spatial Distribution Inside House Birth Death Wake for the dead1 Sleeping Storage of clothing, sleeping materials, valuables, materials not in daily use Shelter from storms2 Religious activity (altar use, prayers) Porch, Open House Front, Attached Ramada Preparation of food Preparation of foodstuffs, etc., for storage Eating Sewing, garment repair and construction Repair of tools, etc. Other sedentary tasks Visiting/play/courting/resting Kitchen3 Final preparation of food Preparation and soaking of hominy Grinding of corn and other foodstuffs (also takes place at open front of house, but not usually on porch) Cooking Storage of food, kitchen equipment, dish, sacks, washing materials Outside/Yard Water storage (jars leaned against house/kitchen walls) Washing of self, children, clothes, foodstuffs (also at river, spring, well) Storage of farm equipment (leaned against walls) Play/visiting with passersby/courtship Religious activity (shrine/house cross) Storage of firewood in dry season Feeding of animals Defecation, disposal of garbage (on perimeters of cleared area) Special Structures4 Well Bath enclosure Wash stand (framework to hold wooden scrubbing tray and perhaps tubs) Latrine (uncommon) Animal pens5 Yard shrine Duck pond Corn crib Extra ramadas or roofed porches to side and back of main structures, for tool and equipment storage Notes 1

2

3 4 5

The institution of the wake is, of course, Roman Catholic. The corpse is laid out in the house and many of the visitors stay indoors around the deceased, talking and drinking, while others, mainly adult males and older boys, stand in the yard drinking and setting off rockets at intervals. This is important during the rainy season in this specific area, because the torrential downpours are accompanied by high winds and funnel clouds. Traditional houses, with their huge gabled roofs, provide excellent protection from the weather. During temporales (long rain storms), when the wind is not high, life continues to be lived mainly on the porches. Today kitchens tend to be in a nearby but separate structure. More "modern" houses may have the kitchen as part of an open porch at the front of the house. At Jaltepeque I observed kitchens and washstands in their own separate ramadas, quite a distance from the house proper. These structures are highly variable from household to household and their number and nature depend on the possessions of the family (e.g., do they have an oxcart that needs protection [plows are left out in the rain], do they have their own well, etc.) Turkeys are kept in the kitchen at night and when it is raining, because they are delicate and stupid. Chickens and ducks fend for themselves, although a walkway into an appropriate tree may be built for the chickens. Most people do not pen cattle, sheep, goats, or pigs.

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REFERENCES CITED

Boggs, Stanley H. 1972 Figurillas con Ruedas de Cihuatán y el Oriente de El Salvador. Colección de Antropología 3. Ministerio de Educación, San Salvador. Bruhns, Karen Olsen 1980 Cihuatán: An Early Postclassic Town of El Salvador: The 1977-1978 Excavations. Monographs in Anthropology 5. University of Missouri, Columbia. 1991 Sexual Activities: Some Thoughts on the Sexual Division of Labor and Archaeological Interpretation. In The Archaeology of Gender, edited by Dale Walde and Noreen D. Willows, pp. 420–429. Proceedings of the 22nd Annual Chacmool Conference. Archaeological Association, University of Calgary. Cecil, Charles L. 1982 An Archaeological Map of Cihuatán, El Salvador. Unpublished Master's thesis, Department of Anthropology, San Francisco State University. Fowler, William R., Jr. 1981 The Pipil-Nicarao of Central America. Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Department of Archaeology, University of Calgary. Fowler, William R., Jr., and E. Margarita Solís Angulo 1977 El Mapa de Santa María: Un Sitio Postclásico de la Región Cerrón Grande. Anales del Museo Nacional "Davíd J. Guzmán" 50:13–19. San Salvador. Habel, Simeon 1879 The Sculpture of Santa Lucia Cosumalwhuapa in Guatemala with an Account of Travels in Central America and on the Western Coast of South America. Contributions to Knowledge 269. Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C. Harlan, Annita, Willard Van Asdall, and Charles Miksicek 1979 Final Report, 1979 Field Season at Cihuatán, El Salvador, Botanical Investigations. MS on file, Arizona State Museum, Tucson. Kelley, Jane H. 1985 Cihuatán: A Study in Intrasite Variability. MS on file, Dept. of Archaeology, University of Calgary. Longyear, John M., III 1944 Archaeological Investigations in El Salvador. Memoirs of the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology Vol. 9, No. 2. Harvard University, Cambridge. Lothrop, Samuel K. 1926 Lista de los Sitios Arqueológicos en El Salvador. Revista de Etnología, Arqueología, y Lingüística 1(5): 19–23. San Salvador. Sol, Antonio 1929 Exploraciones Arqueológicas Realizadas por el Departamento de Historia del Ministerio de Instrucción Pública. La Antigua Ciudad de Cihuatán. Revista del Departamento de Historia, Año 1:57–59. San Salvador.

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11 Comments on Bálsamo and Other Little-known Sculptures of Western El Salvador Stanley H. Boggs

Introduction

between about 500 B. C. and the Spanish Conquest. In most cases there are so few examples of a given class of carving available for study that it is both difficult and risky to attempt definition of styles. When similarities do appear to exist between Salvadoran carvings and those of neighboring countries, they are usually of a generic rather than a specific nature. Finally, because the majority of local sculptures are purchased specimens in private collections or are in the Museo Nacional's uncatalogued pre-1940s collection, proveniences are often questionable and cultural contexts of the finds unknown.

Stone sculptures, particularly of monumental size, are far from common anywhere in El Salvador. Even those of less bulk, with weights of between 30 and 90 kg, are not abundant. Nearly all known were cut from igneous rock with a variety of techniques that included sawing, occasional drilling, superficial pecking, and sometimes buffing or very fine pecking, but never polishing. The scarcity of acceptable and easily obtainable material in some areas might have contributed to relative local sculptural poverty, but this is doubtful; if the desire existed, very hard stone could be cut and hauled considerable distances.

In this chapter I discuss utilitarian sculptures of Bálsamo style, the only numerous class, together with tenoned heads, plano-relief decorated slabs, and several carvings that currently appear unique. Almost all are from the southwestern quadrant of the country, westward from San Salvador and southward from Santa Ana (Figure 11.1).

The most logical explanation for the variation in numbers of large sculptures in different areas may be local cultural differences over time. This reasoning can also be applied to the disparity in numbers between the sculptures found at the principal Salvadoran sites and those at centers fairly nearby, such as Copán and the Kaminaljuyú and Cotzumalhuapa zones. By way of illustration, compare the dozens of large stone figures found in the centers mentioned with totals from El Salvador: 28 “monuments” for the extensively explored Chalchuapa complex of sites, which date from Middle Preclassic through the Postclassic (Anderson 1978); three or four certain and two or three doubtful specimens from Cara Sucia (Boggs 1975); 10 from Campana - San Andrés (Boggs 1943); possibly eight at Quelepa (Andrews 1976); and none at Cihuatán. Altogether, approximately 120 of monumental and sub-monumental size have been reported from the western sector of the republic. The total of about 200 such sculptures known thus far from the country as a whole contrasts sharply with the hundreds of examples found in Copán alone.

The Bálsamo Sculptural Style In 1941 and early 1942, while photographing and annotating several private collections of Salvadoran antiquities, I became aware of some 20 sculptures of a distinctive, remarkably cohesive style entirely new to me, which in a moment of weakness I called “death sculptures” (see Longyear 1944:10 and Footnote 4). Toward the end of 1942, while again visiting local collections, I photographed 80 to 90 more of the same style. Since that time, however, only ten more have come to my notice, the most recent (Figure 11.8b) in 1985, from near Teotepeque in the Costa del Bálsamo area. The modern scarcity of such carvings may be the result of reduced soil tillage in their area of origin as perennial coffee trees gradually supplant annuals such as cereals, yuca and the like. It is conceivable, however, that not many more than a hundred works of the sort were carved.

In addition, the comparatively few Salvadoran specimens represent various cultures that are assignable to several distinct temporal horizons

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Figure 11.1 Map of El Salvador with positions of sites and cities. Dotted line encloses Costa del Balsamo; dot-and-dash indicates suggested eastward extension of Cotzumalhuapa sphere.

I here re-define these sculptures as representative of the Bálsamo Style, within which an average form can be recognized as the Bálsamo Type. These terms are preferable to my tentative title of “death sculptures,” which reflected the fact that they depicted a position that was thought to be characteristic of most Classicperiod burials in western El Salvador. The contracted position of the figures might, of course, equally well signify human birth, but the strongly distinguished vertebral columns of many examples seemed more characteristic of adult skeletons than of the recently born.

The zone was apparently sparsely populated, with few widely scattered small settlements whose inhabitants were dedicated to small scale horticulture and, for trade, to the extraction of sap from the balsam tree (Myroxylon pereirae), native only to this area. The extract was reduced to a concentrated form and traded during pre-Conquest times throughout the region, mainly as a palliative for skin afflictions common in the humid tropics. Spanish colonists continued the production and expanded trade to Europe via transshipment through Peru — whence its present misnomer “Balsam of Peru.”

Unfortunately all recorded specimens were encountered during surface in open areas or were revealed by road cuts or coffee planting at shallow depths, never associated with a mound, cache, or grave. Only one was found with a possible ceramic association.

The Nature of the Sample

The discussion that follows is based on investigation of 87 specimens of Bálsamo sculptural style, 61 in the El Salvador National Museum and 26 in private collections. Notations regarding origin of 56 of the sculptures indicate sources in “the Costa del Bálsamo,” “near Jayaque” or in “the Cumbre,” that is, from the cordilleran ridge zone of the coast or Bálsamo Range. Twenty-seven are reportedly from specific localities within the B area, one is from a peripheral locale (Finca El Espine) and only two are attributed by their owners to sources points well to the east, Santa Elena and San Rafael Oriente in the Department of Usulután. If the proveniences reported are accurate, over 97% of the Bálsamo sculptures originated in the area noted in Figure 1, but a normal scepticism must be maintained regarding the reports. Nevertheless, inasmuch as careful excavations in areas bordering the Costa del Bálsamo zone have not

The B Zone

The so-called Costa del Bálsamo of south-central El Salvador is a mountainous section of the Cordillera de Bálsamo which here reaches the edge of the Pacific, interrupting the coastal plain which merchants and invaders of the Salvadoran region, such as the Pipil and Alvarado, traversed in ancient times from Mexico and Guatemala southward; the mountains forced them to detour inland to central intermontane valleys. The region is poorly known archaeologically and ethnographically but may have constituted something of a cultural refuge area before the Spanish Conquest.

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view are 1) nearly circular, disc-like, compact; 2) oval with compact limbs; 3) elongated oval to rectangular. The lateral section is almost always flattened oval, but in a few instances it approaches rectangular and in a few others is nearly cylindrical. In general, the smaller the sculpture, the more likely the body is to be either disc-like with a very flat oval transverse profile or compact oval with circular transverse outline.

yielded any examples of the style, only two are reported by their owners as from Usulután, and the most recent find of an example of the style was at Teotepeque, I am inclined to accept, provisionally, the Bálsamo region as the source area.

A type specimen of the style is elongated oval in side view and flattened oval in section, with a deeply channelled neck and slightly projecting oval head, and nearly flat to strongly convex face (Figures 11.2a, b, g, m, n; 11.4a, b; 11.8a; b; 11.10; 11.11c). A height of 15.4– 71.5 cm, breadth of 7.3–29.4 cm, and thickness of 5.2 –30.5 cm produce averages of 26.7 cm, 16.3 cm, and 11.9 cm, respectively. Orientation of height and breadth measurement for the Bálsamo sculptures is diagrammed in Figure 2a, b.

Figure depiction. The typical depiction is of a tightly-flexed anthropomorphic (probably human) body with upturned head and prominent vertebral column (Figure 11.4a), most often with upwards of nine vertebrae clearly defined or, less frequently, simply with a smooth ridge. The typical face is oval with a slightly open mouth, a fairly wide nose, and either sunken eye sockets or bulging eyeballs. The necks are almost invariably very sharply defined, typically by a broad, deep channel.

Figure 11.2 Bálsamo style, outlines. a,b,k,m,n: typical oval, round base, solid or perforated; d,f: nearly circular discs; c,d,g,h-j: elongate-oval simple or unfinished; e: nearly rectangular; l: pear-shaped atypical; o: nearly cylindrical.

Material and Production Techniques

The stone is of igneous origin, and ranges from fairly fine andesite or basalt (73 specimens) through vesicular basalt and scoria (13) to relatively soft talpetate, a very light gray consolidated tephra (1). Color was clearly not a determinant in choice of material; colors vary from the predominant shades of gray to red, purplish, and light brown, with one specimen that is fairly whitish. The apparent preference for hard gray rock is probably the result of the fact that boulders and chunks of this material abound in the Bálsamo Coast zone. Many of the smaller, flattened sculptures, especially those with the fewest carved details (e.g., Figure 11. 2c, d, h–j; 11.3a, b, f; 11.6a–c), appear sculpted from water-worn boulders, sources and perhaps workshops might be sought along streams such as the Sunzacuapa, Taquille, Tamanique or Comasagua Rivers and their tributaries.

Figure 11.3 Bálsamo style, outlines. a,b,d,e: bowed body-head, a,b cylindrical d,e laterally flattened; c: elongate-oval body; g: rectangular; h,i: compact-oval or elongate, short tenon; j: compact-oval, medium cylindrical tenon; k: long cylindrical tenon, nearly disc-shaped body.

Variants of the “typical” form usually involve only minor details. A few in shape category 3 are roughly quadrangular (Figure 11.6d); other variations include

Characteristics of the Bálsamo Style Shape Categories. Body shape categories in side 137

flat bases (Figures 11.2b, k, m, n; 11.4b; 11.5b; 11.8; 11.10; 11.11a, b) and short cylindrical tenons (Figures 11.3h, i; 11,4c; 11,5a; 11,7a–d; 11,9b). The tenons may indicate that the figures were set vertically in the ground, with the head up, but positioning is highly debatable for all forms. In all three shape categories, striking differences exist between the simplest and the most fully elaborated examples. The simplest exhibit only a head, or head and arms, surmounting a plain body (Figures 11.2c, h, i; 11.3a, b, f, g; 11.6a–c) These variants are included

Figure 11.4 Balsamo style. a: typical class, perforated body, ht 31 cm; b: typical but seated and without vertebrae, ht 20.3 cm; c: unfinished(?), nearly straight body, convex base, ht 18 cm.

Figure 11.6 Bálsamo style. a-c: flat sides, few features below neck, hts 34.3 cm, 26.9cm, 39.4 cm; d: side, typical elongate-rectangular body, ht 15.7 cm.; e: front & side, typical figure with skullcap.

in the B Style on the basis of body outlines, posture and position of the head. At the opposite extreme of elaboration are several otherwise typical examples with a head-covering that resembles a skull-cap (Figures 11.6e; 11.9b, d) or is marked by a central ridge (Figure 11.9a, c). Atypical eye forms also occur; they include raised circular ridges around sunken sockets (2 specimens), horizontal slits centered in bulging eyes (1) , and an incised line encircling a sunken socket (1). Figure 11.5 Bálsamo style. a: typical notched-base figure with“wrap-around” arms and pug nose; b: front view, typical hand and leg positions; c: elongate-oval body, short tenon; d: compact-oval body, smooth spine.

Only one specimen exhibits low relief sculpted decoration on an atypical seated, flat-based, otherwise plain body (Figure 11.10); here, a rather broad and flat

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ridge in two planes replaces the usual vertebral column and on it appears an omega-like symbol with unclear elements above. In addition to this unusual specimen, four other statuettes can be included in the Bálsamo

biconically from side to side at a point below the spine, between the upper arms and thighs (Figures 11,2a, k, o; 11.4a, b). The remaining three, are cut through between the neck or chest and the forearms, and two are also cut through between the arms. When they are depicted, the legs are in virtually the same position on all specimens, but the hand and forearm positions vary. Usually the arms are doubled laterally to the body with hands high on the figure's chest, but a few examples show the arms loosely contracted with the hands resting at the sides of the abdomen (Figure 11.6e) and in one or two instances simple ridges encircle the body just below the neck as substitutes for the arms (Figure 11.2e).

The Symbolism and Function of the Bálsamo Style

Symbolism. What was the idea which the sculptors

intended to convey through representation of figures in flexed position with upturned head? Such positions are common to foetal humans and to many if not most known Prehispanic Salvadoran human interments following the Preclassic. If the intention was to symbolize the foetal human, why are vertebrae emphasized on so many of the carvings? Furthermore,

Figure 11.7 Bálsamo tenons. a: short vertical, ht 28.4 cm; b: short oblique, ht 51 cm.; c: medium vertical, ht 33.6 cm.; d: long vertical, ht 37. 5 cm. Note typical straight arms and collar of c.

Style, mainly on the basis of their provenance. These comprise three flat-based, squatting anthropomorphic figures with very low spinal ridge, elbows above knees and hands raised to the chin of an upturned face (Figure 11.8a, b), one with the apparently unique feature of four minuscule supports, and a fourth that has only one hand raised to the chin, with the other resting on a knee. The style of carving, the positions of the legs and head, and the portrayal of facial features are all within the Bálsamo tradition, but the full relief presentation of the forearms and the positions of the hands, which normally rest on the shoulders or chest, are atypical. The squatting figures seem more likely to be tangential developments of the Bálsamo Style than to be representations of a parallel type from the same area and culture. Support for this view is provided by the fact that the seated posture may also be portrayed in several typical Bálsamo carvings (Figures 11.1o, 11.2d, 11.6e, 11.9b and d, and 11.11a and b). All but nine seated figures of the Bálsamo Style have solid bodies. Six of the exceptions are perforated

Figure 11.8 Bálsamo (?) seated figures with hand to chin. b: Teotepeque, ht 23.3 cm; note elongated neck.

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Function. Owing in large part to the uncontrolled circumstances of discovery, the function of the sculptures remains conjectural. A suggestion in this regard by Ing. Tomás Vilanova (personal communication 1985), who was witness to several finds of the sculptures in the vicinity of Comasagua (Figure 11.1), is that they may have been placed on the ground, face up, as representations of guardian spirits to protect crops or concentrations of the balsam tree.

There can be little question that the flat-based, tenoned and “footed” specimens were set vertically, head up, whatever the resting surface may have been. Those of other forms could, however, have been placed in almost any position. An upright placement seems most likely for all, because any other position would have hidden essential symbolic details. As shown in Figures 11.2 and 11.3, when the statuettes are placed in a seated position the faces confront the sky directly or at a slightly oblique angle. Because the only known sites for these sculptures are not near structures or other evidence of settlement, placement in fields seems a reasonable possibility. Uncertainty both about what

Figure 11.9 Bálsamo style. a-c: short tenons, a bulging-ring eyes b bulging encircled eyes; d: simple bulging eyes, protruding lips. Hts: 51 cm, 46.5 cm, 34.4 cm, & 27.1 cm. Note a, b, d head coverings.

Figure 11.10 Seated figure, Bálsamo style (?), Teotepeque. Note carved motif on back.

the features of the clearest portrayals of faces (for example, Figures 4a–c, 5b, 6e, 8a, b, 9b, d, and 11a) are of adult rather than infantile character. If the aim was to indicate death, it was adult death. In either case, the idea would seem to have been to personify an otherworldly entity or spirit that may have been related to the concept of an afterlife, rather than to depict human cadavers. Two specimens (Figures 11.9a and 11.11c bottom right) with non-human faces, although their bodies are more or less typical of the style, must represent deities unrelated to the human world.

Figure 11.11 Bálsamo style. a,b: flat-based, seated, hair at sides of head, disc- shaped skullcap, ht 37.9 cm; c: face types: top - simplest, sunken eyes; second - sunken eyes; third - bulging eyes; fourth, left - headdress, center - typical or average, right - frog/toad.

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they represent and about how they were used underscores the need for the noncommittal style designation that I have applied here.

Tenoned Classic Stone Heads Only nine examples of this class of Mesoamerican stone sculpture are known in El Salvador, two possibly from the Cara Sucia site or its environs and seven unearthed at Campana-San Andrés. The specimens exhibit the form characteristic of the sculptural class, namely a deity, human, or animal head in low or plano relief or in the round with a fairly long cylindrical to oblong horizontal tenon that projects from the rear of the head.

The Cara Sucia Specimens

The two heads possibly from Cara Sucia (Figures 11.12a–d), both representations of jaguars, were obtained in the early 1940s or earlier through uncontrolled excavation. The first (Figure 11.12a, b) is a full round head with cylindrical tenon, carved from medium-gray basaltic stone. Except in the mouth area the carving is quite shallow and in its present condition it is hard to follow. Nonetheless, it is clear that the carving is a naturalistic representation of a jaguar, with its eyes encircled by large low-relief rings. The finish is roughly pecked, much cruder than that of the San Andrés heads. The tenon is incomplete. The head is of unknown provenience, but thought to be from the vicinity of Cara Sucia or from the site itself, apparently based upon fancied resemblance to the specimen described below.

Figure 11.12 Tenoned heads. a,b: jaguar, from Cara Sucia area(?), len 61.8 cm; c,d: jaguar, Cara Sucia, len 70 cm; e: parrot, Campana-San Andrés, len 45 cm; f: “stela” with serpent head and tenon, ht ca 1.5 m.

The second head (Figure 11.12c, d) is known to be from Cara Sucia. The stone is similar to that of the other specimen in texture, but is darker gray in color, and the pecked finish is more carefully executed. The tenon, unique among all of the tenoned sculptures discussed here, is a tapered undershot extension from the lower half of the head.

Dating

The Bálsamo Style cannot be firmly dated on the basis of currently available evidence. First, no site in the Costa del Bálsamo has yet been carefully explored. Second, only one sculpture was accompanied by a sherd, which is of an elongated conical vessel support with a very small appliqué effigy face, a form that resembles types thought to be of Late Postclassic date in the Chalchuapa zone. The problem is further magnified by the fact that there is no close resemblance between the Bálsamo Style and other sculptures for which dates have been established. Based solely on negative evidence, which consists of the fact that nothing resembling the style is known in earlier contexts and virtually nothing is known of late Salvadoran sculpture, one might assign the Bálsamo Style provisionally to the Postclassic Period.

The sides of the head are flattened, with a nearly plano-relief portrayal of the eyes, nose, and ears above the deeply recessed muzzle. The eyes are represented by rings similar to those of the first specimen, but the ears are shown in plano-relief in a position lateral to the head, directly behind the eyes and muzzle. The position suggests human rather than jaguar ears, which are clearly above and lateral to the eyes in the previous sculpture. Finally, this example shows a strongly pronounced “moustache,” which is absent or virtually imperceptible in the first specimen, whereas the prominent cheekbone bulge of the first is lacking. All in all, this head is considerably more composite and symbolic than its companion.

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as internally cohesive as that of the B figures and about as varied in individual features, that a developmental sequence for the style has yet to be defined, and that the style may be Late Preclassic or Protoclassic. If the Cara Sucia tenoned heads eventually prove to be later developments from Richardson's un-tenoned jaguar heads, then the examples pictured here may be of Early to Middle Classic date. I see little similarity, however, between the two groups of sculptures.

The San Andrés Specimens

Aside from the fact that both groups consist of heads with posterior tenons, there is little resemblance between the San Andrés heads and those from Cara Sucia. The differences encompass carving style, subjects represented, form of the heads, and types of stone used. The San Andrés specimens have rectangular heads and tenons, and are never sculpted in the round; the carved features of the heads are in plano-relief and are generally schematic or symbolic representations rather than realistic depictions. The San Andrés specimens are also generally somewhat smaller in size and weight than those from the Cara Sucia area, and are shaped from a light gray igneous rock.

Figure 11.13 Tenoned heads. a: parrot, len 47.5 cm; b: parrot, len 65.5 cm; c: serpent, len 67 cm. Campana-San Andrés.

No jaguar head effigy has yet been found at San Andrés, but only about one-fifth of the site has been partially excavated. Thus far four serpent and three parrot heads have appeared. One parrot head (Figure 11.12e) lay atop Altar A, and two more were encountered in construction debris of Structure 1. One serpent head (Figure 11.14c; Boggs 1943:10–11, Figure 2) was recovered from Grave 1, two (Figure 11.14a, b) formed part of Cache 1, and a fourth was found in debris at the northwest corner of Structure 2.

Parrot Heads. The three specimens in this category

The only hint of a prototype for the Salvadoran tenoned jaguar heads may be a head found on the surface of the unexcavated site of Santa Teresa near Santa Ana, which is carved in the tradition of those discussed by Richardson (1940:399–402, Figures 33, 34). The specimen differs, however, from those illustrated in that it depicts a very small human face in the animal's maw, and possesses a rather fat tenon of rectangular cross-section. Richardson notes that this kind of stylized jaguar head was known in the late 1930s to be represented by at least three of the type from Cara Sucia or the surrounding coast of the Department of Ahuachapán. Subsequent finds elsewhere in El Salvador indicate that the style is restricted to southwestern El Salvador.

differ so markedly in their features that each may be a portrayal of a different variety of parrot. None of the three resembles Copán examples, which Morley thought represented macaws. The most simplified and stylized of the heads (Figure 11.12e) was found standing upright on its tenon on Altar A against the north base of Structure 1, Phase 1, the latest phase of adobe construction. Traces of red and white fugitive paint adhere to its surface. Its tenon is rectangular in cross-section with rounded corners. The specimen is quite similar in side view to one from Kaminaljuyú (Parsons 1969:Figure 56a), though the Guatemalan example is much thicker transversely to permit portrayal of a human head inside the parrot's open beak. The tenon is also at a lower position than that of the San Andrés specimen.

Because this type of sculpture has been briefly described by others (Anderson 1978; Demarest 1981; Richardson 1940), I will mention only that the style is

The eyes and beak of the second specimen (Figure

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11.13a) suggest a parrot, but the mandible with its perforated buccal area more closely resembles those of serpent heads. The head is only minimally thicker than the unique ovoid tenon. The eyes, which are small in proportion to the head and have a circle around them and “wrinkles” above, lend the sculpture a certain resemblance to the Copán macaws (Stromsvik 1952:Figure 19b). This specimen has the shallowest carved details about the eyes of all of the San Andrés tenoned heads.

partially open jaws, with a mandible that is a plain, straight shaft with no decoration. The carving of facial features on these two heads incorporates more open space than is present in the other specimens. The heads have flat bottoms and rounded tops; the vertically rectangular outline of both heads differs from the horizontally rectangular form characteristic of the other two specimens. The tenons are oval in cross-section, and not centered on the heads as is usual at San Andrés but rather set well below center. Both exhibit the double fangs characteristic of the San Andrés heads.

The third specimen (Figure 11.13b) has eyes large in proportion to the head, quite distinct from the second. The closed beak is different from all others I have seen, with the lower element longer than the upper and overlapping it. The buccal area is perforated. Two fang-like elements extend downward laterally from the base of the upper beak, features seemingly out of character for a parrot. The head is unusual in having a shallow, rectangular channel or basin cut in the top, whereas all other San Andrés heads are either flat or rounded on the top. The overall form, depth of carving, and finish are very similar to those of the San Andrés serpent heads and generally to those of several from Kaminaljuyú.

Serpent Heads. Two of the four are carved in plano-relief, have rectangular tenons, and heads that are from 3 to 9 cm. higher than the vertical thickness of their tenons. The other two are detailed in plano-relief only around the eyes, nose and upper jaw whereas the double or bifurcated fangs and partially open maw are in high relief. The tenons of these two are oval in cross-section and the heads are some 15 cm. greater in height than the tenons. All four are perforated through the buccal portion and have heads that are only slightly thicker than the tenons.

The longest head (Figure 11.14c) shows the bifurcated fangs typical of the site and two small scrolls or volutes above the eyes, a feature that occurs on some examples of serpent heads from Kaminaljuyú, El Baúl, and Cotzumalhuapa (Parsons 1969:Plate 56d; Thompson 1948:Figure 14a, d, e, f, i, m). The specimen also exhibits general similarities with these examples in style of symbolic representation, depth of carving, and plano-relief execution.

Figure 11.14 Tenoned serpent heads. a-c: Campana-San Andrés, len 58.5 cm, 38.5 cm, –; d: Copán, len 52.4 cm.

A further sculpture from San Andrés (Figure 11.12f) is pertinent to the serpent representations in that the decoration, which covers one flat side of a slab, is in the same style as the serpent heads. The decoration depicts a serpent head in left profile looking upward. Conventionalized feathers lie at the lower end of the design. The eye is shown with scrolls above and below in a block-like representation, and the nearly closed maw of the beast exhibits double fangs as well as three upper teeth. The nose element is much more

The second specimen (Figure 11.13c; Boggs 1943: Figure 2a) is rectangular in cross-section with rounded edges, and has a pair of volutes bracketing the usual rectangle above the eyes. This is the only head with single rather than bifurcated fangs, and eyes that are large in proportion to other facial features. The third and fourth (Figure 11.14a, b), although carved in the same style as the others, are rather more ornate, with more flowing relief lines above the

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elaborate than on the tenoned serpent heads. Although the shape of the slab resembles that of many stelae, the position of the decoration suggests that the stone was set horizontally rather than vertically.

techniques. In any event, the similarities between the sculptural style of the Cara Sucia heads and that of certain jaguar heads from the Cotzumalhuapa sphere as delimited by Parsons are far from close.

San Andrés.

The resemblance between the San Andrés specimens and some heads from Kaminaljuyú is similarly limited. The similarities in some instances refer to details, whereas in others they are purely generic. It seems odd that the parrot and serpent heads from Asunción Mita, Guatemala (Stromsvik 1950), are so different from the Salvadoran examples despite the fact that Asunción Mita is contemporaneous with and relatively near San Andrés. Although there are very considerable differences between the San Andrés serpent heads and those from Copán illustrated by Stromsvik (1952), one specimen in the Copán Museum (Figure 11.14d) is so much like those described above that it could well have been found in San Andrés. Unfortunately the context of the specimen is not known.

Figure 11.15 “Stela” with diving god, El Guayabo area, diam max 40 cm.

The Function of Tenoned Stone Heads

Because no ball courts have been discovered in the vicinity of Campana-San Andrés, the possibility that of any of the heads served as markers for the ranges of playing courts, as they did elsewhere, seems eliminated. At San Andrés the use of the heads must have been restricted to masonry building decoration, as in at least one instance at Copán, where a horizontally tenoned parrot head was found positioned above a doorway of Structure 10 of the Ball Court (Stromsvik 1952:189, Figure 19b).

Comparative Data Cara Sucia. Although tenons with tapering, round or oval cross-section are often set in a posterior position (for example, Parsons 1969:Plate 53f, 55a, 57a, d; Smith and Kidder 1943:Figure 60d–j), only a Xipe head from Aguna (Parsons 1969:Plate 55f; Thompson 1948:Figure 11a, b) may have a tenon similar to the Cara Sucia specimen. On the whole, tenons with round to oval cross-sections seem to occur most typically with heads found along the Pacific Coast of Guatemala and western El Salvador.

Dating

The temporal placement of this sculptural style depends on establishing the age of examples found in Cache 1 at San Andrés (Figure 11.14a, b). The cache was earlier than construction Phase IIa, apparently dedicatory to Phase IIIb of the north side, center, of Structure 1. Adobes from both phases contained sherds of Late Classic polychromes. Cache objects in addition to the serpent heads include a large jadeite pendant carved in Early Classic fashion and three thin

The Cara Sucia jaguar heads appear to resemble most closely sculptures in the Cotzumalhuapa area rather than those from such zones as Kaminaljuyú. As Parsons (1969:139) suggests, however, the idea may have originated in Teotihuacan and subsequently have been modified in various ways in Central America, particularly as regards depiction style and carving

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plaques of the same material cut in later Classic-period techniques. All evidence suggests a Late Classic date for the cache.

slab, a medium-gray andesite, indicate that this was a water-worn stone that was worked only where necessary to attain the form and decoration desired. Decoration is largely the product of fine, skilful pecking combined with a little judicious sawing. No part is polished, but portions may have been buffed with a coarse-grained stone.

The context of the parrot head from Altar A at San Andrés (Figure 11.12e) may be later than the Classic, perhaps the Early Postclassic, when the site was temporarily reoccupied.

The design is a local version of the Cotzumalhuapa stela style, which is apparently that of a god peering from the sky, sometimes termed a Diving God or “sky diver.” The representation is akin to those on the topmost portions of Stelae 3 and 4 at Bilbao in the Santa Lucía Cotzumalhuapa area of Guatemala (see

Archaeomagnetic dates for the burned final floor of Structure 1a and for the north boundary wall of the South Plaza suggest that abandonment of San Andrés occurred in the late eighth century. Grave 1 was intrusive into the final construction of Structure 1 and must therefore equate approximately with, or be slightly later than, the date of the abandonment. The remaining three specimens come from structural debris and hence may date from well after the eighth century, at a time when the buildings were falling apart. Although the contexts that have yielded tenoned heads point to Late Classic and later dates, the fact that their tenons could not have served any useful purpose in the places in which the sculptures were discovered argues strongly that the objects were re-used. As a result, a production date some time prior to the time of their final deposition is indicated.

Low-relief Slab Sculptures I know of only two examples of this class of Salvadoran Precolumbian stone carving, both from the extreme southwestern coastal area of the Department of Ahuachapán and both chance discoveries during plowing Figure 11.16 Cotzumalhuapa style disc slab, El Guisnay area, diam max 45 operations about 25 years ago. Although cm. potsherds are said to have been found Parsons 1969:Plates 32, 33). In these portrayals, nearby, none was saved and hence neither cultural human arms bent at the elbows extend downward from context nor chronological position is known. The the shoulders of a figure whose body is either not absence of directly comparable sculptures from other shown, as in the present specimen, or is depicted in a Salvadoran sites suggests that the stylistic ties of the frontal diving attitude. two sculptures lie elsewhere, probably in Pacific coastal Guatemala. The supposed source of the slab is situated along the lower Río de Paz in the Department of Ahuachapán, The first specimen (Figure 11.15), reputedly from the and hence on the Guatemala-El Salvador border. The Hacienda El Guayabo, may be a remnant of the upper locale lies about 12 km. east of the La Nueva site, part of a stela or monumental panel. Only the upper included by Parsons (1969) as the easternmost left and topmost edges are intact, and the design Guatemalan Cotzumalhuapan settlement known. The originally continued beyond the limits of the fragment. Guayabo area, as well as those of nearby El Guisnay Both the decorated obverse and the plain reverse and Cara Sucia, have all been tentatively subsumed surface are smooth, slightly uneven, and gently within the Classic-period Cotzumalhuapa sphere, convex. Characteristics of the plain surfaces of the

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enclosed by a dot-and dash line in Figure 11.1. The specimen differs from the Bilbao sculptures in that the head is in low instead of high relief, and is not of human type but rather a grotesque (mask?) symbolic motif, perhaps akin to a left profile bird's head or an unusual feathered serpent head. Unfortunately the lower quarter of the head was scraped off by the plow so thoroughly that features crucial to identification are missing. These include the muzzle or beak that intervened between the middle part of the head and a sinuous, dart-tipped possible tongue at bottom center. I see a striking similarity between the carving of the arms and that on the “pot belly” figures on Bilbao Monuments 3, 4, 6 and 8 (Parsons 1969:Plates 32, 33) as well on Monuments 1-3 at Santa Leticia (Demarest 1981:Figures 4 - 6). Both the arm carving and the Xshaped motifs between the arms that bracket the god’s head are reminiscent of features of some Middle to Late Preclassic sculptures. In El Salvador the X motif appears also on a small mask from Ahuachapán (Boggs 1971:357, figure above, right, element d), as well as in the staff of a standing figure of the Las Victorias petroglyphs, unpublished to date. The similarities may indicate that the Salvadoran carving is intermediate between several small and monumental sized Olmec works found in western El Salvador and the Bilbao “sky divers,” which are possibly of the Protoclassic or Early Classic.

Figure 11.17 a: slab with serpent profile, Los Lagartos, len ca 2.8 m.; b: human figure, Joya de Cerén (?), ht 83 cm.; c: geometric design on block, Las Pampas, len 41 cm.

The second sculpture (Figure 11.16) is a virtually intact disc that was unearthed in the Hacienda El Guisnay, several hundred meters northeast of an apparently Late Postclassic site. Like its counterpart it appears to be a water-shaped form with only one nearly flat face altered by carving. The basaltic or andesitic stone is similar in texture and color to that of the Guayabo specimen.

may be an altar, ball court marker, or architectural embellishment. Most irritatingly, no specific cultural context can be established for either specimen. In addition to the generic similarity of the Guayabo figure to certain Bilbao carvings, the Guisnay example is executed along the lines of Bilbao Monument 74, thought to be a “round drum-shaped altar or possibly a ball court marker” (Parsons 1969:114, Plate 40d). Sculpture 1 from Aguna (Thompson 1948:Figure 9b) is similar in size and decorative presentation, though it deals with a different theme. A plain round ball court marker at El Baúl (Parsons 1969:114) is almost identical in size.

The plano-relief decorated area is pecked shallowly within a generally circular field that has a broad, plain border. The carving depicts a quadrupedal short-tailed animal with long ears and a long, blunt snout standing in right profile on a smooth oval feature. The kind of animal shown, possibly a tapir, peccary, agouti, dog, or deer, is hard to specify owing to the carving's economy of detail.

Dating

Comparative Data

With reference to the Cotzumalhuapa area sculptures, Parsons (1969:141) notes that “all framed or bordered monuments belong to the early Narrative division....Unframed monuments also are present, though these are more characteristic of the late division.” If Parsons's criteria for dating apparently related sculptures can be applied to the two slab carvings from extreme southwestern El Salvador, the Guisnay disc might be of Middle Classic (A.D.

The El Guisnay and Guayabo sculptures have features in common, and both may relate to the same culture and temporal phase, but their differences in theme, style, and execution probably indicate that they were produced by different sculptors. The differences may also be indicative of dissimilar functions; the Guayabo specimen may have been part of a mythical scene on a commemorative shaft, whereas the Guisnay sculpture

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400–700) date, and the incomplete Guayabo figure from the same time or the Late Classic.

plowing near a Late Classic mound site (Longyear 1944:23, Figure 17). The sides have been damaged to such an extent that it is impossible to determine the original outlines of the object.

Miscellaneous Sculptures

At one end of the stone, a flat vertical surface, now extensively damaged, depicts in very low relief a leftprofile serpent head with a large bifurcated fang. The fang and the type of pecked carving of the same motif call to mind the serpent heads of the San Andrés tenoned sculptures and “stela” (Figures 11.12f; 11.13c, 11.14a–c). Some details of the depiction, such as the shallower carving, rectangular eye, and cruder rendition, contrast with those of San Andrés, but its style and especially the double fang seem to point to ties with that site during the Middle to Late Classic. The sculpture may have been used as an altar, with a depression in the top playing a part in rituals.

This category includes six carvings which, to date, are unique in Salvadoran archaeology and have little or no apparent connection with well-defined sculptural types or styles. Like most of the objects treated above, their exact proveniences are vague, their cultural contexts largely unknown, and their temporal positions subject to conjecture. The first (Figure 11.17a) is an incomplete monumental stone slab of fine-grained, light gray hard stone, probably andesite. It was discovered at Hacienda Los Lagartos in the Department of Sonsonate during

The second sculpture is a full-round representation of a standing nude humanoid with vertical slab tenon (Figure 11.17b) that has very little in common with any other carving now known in El Salvador. The statue was unearthed by plowing, probably on the Hacienda Joya de Cerén near Opice, Department of La Libertad, an area about 8 km. east of the Campana-San Andrés site. The gray stone appears to be either what is locally termed talpetate duro, a hard, compacted tephra, or a granular breccia harder than but similar to the material of Altars 1 and 2 of Quelepa (see Andrews 1976:176–178).

Figure 11.18 a: basin with face, El Guisnay; b: same, excavated. Len. 75 cm., ht 44 cm.; c: drawing of face; d: human face on block, Izalco vicinity, ht ca 18 cm; e,f: boulder with seated figure, El Guisnay; ht 18 cm.

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The figure is carefully carved, particularly around the head, by drilling, sawing, gouging, excising and pecking. The legs are short relative to the upper body; the arms, bent at the elbows, are angular; and the legs have a forward twist at the lower ends that is not in accord with normal human anatomy. The large oval head is bald, and the ear lobes are drilled to form large loops. The eyes are large, oval, and convex with carefully excised outlines under slightly overhanging naturalistic brows. The tip of the nose, damaged by the plow, was probably very prominent. The lips are slightly protruding and strongly defined, and the mouth appears to have been gouged or chiselled. All head and facial features are more naturally represented than the rest of the

Specimen four is a large oval stone pila or basin with an animal face carved in very low relief at one end (Figure 11.18a–c) from the Hacienda El Guisnay. The stone was almost at ground level (Figure 11.18a) in a large plaza partially bordered by long, low mounds. The carving, pecked on the curve of one narrow end near the top, seems to represent a stylized frog face with thick parallel lips and spiral eyes. A farmer living at one edge of the mound group told me that he had seen another of these basins larger than the one illustrated, and that it, too, had a “demon” face chiselled on it. Basins of this class probably played a ceremonial role, but the seeming residential nature of the structure group raises questions in this regard.

body, except for the back, where the shoulder blades and buttocks are explicitly and prominently depicted. The only distantly comparable Salvadoran figure may be a stiffly portrayed “standard bearer” of about the same size from Santa Cruz Michapa, about 25 km. east of Opico in the Department of Cuscatlán (see Richardson 1940:401, Plate XIXb). The similarities extend only to the stiff posture and the likelihood that the Opico figure may have been carrying something in its hands. The stiffly standing so-called “standard bearers” found on the steps of the temple of Huizilopochtli atop the Templo Mayor at Tenochtitlan (Matos Moctezuma 1984:136, 138, Figure 4) may also be cousins, but their carving style is not at all similar.

The very few sherds collected at the site include bichromes associated in Chalchuapa with Late Postclassic house platforms. The date may be supported by ceramics collected by Paul Amaroli at the adjoining Santa Rita site. It appears possible that Guisnay-Santa Rita was one of the inhabited towns encountered by Pedro de Alvarado in his conquest of El Salvador.

The Cerén statue, like many Salvadoran sculptures, floats in time and has no definable cultural connections. I would guess that it will eventually prove to be a late Precolumbian work, possibly a product of Nahuat speakers. The third specimen is a fragment of a much larger plano-relief carving (Figure 11.17c) discovered by pot hunters in debris at the foot of a modest mound at the Las Pampas site, Department of San Salvador in central El Salvador. It almost certainly formed part of the decoration of a building façade similar to some of those discovered at the nearby large Postclassic center of Cihuatán. The presence of Tohil Plumbate and Nicoya Polychrome vessels in several structures documents Early Postclassic occupation at Las Pampas, which is very likely to have been something of a suburb of Cihuatán.

The fifth sculpture (Figure 11.18e, f) is on an oval dark gray vesicular basalt boulder at El Guisnay. The pecked anthropomorphic seated figure is rather distantly similar in posture to that of the Balsamo figures but is more crudely executed. The sunken eyes, gouged mouth, and broad nose suggest a figure more monkey than human, but no tail appears on the smooth back. The last of the group is a human face sketchily depicted on one corner of a nearly triangular gray volcanic stone (Figure 11.18d) found near the historic town of Izalco, Department of Sonsonate, one of the main Pipil towns of western El Salvador, but without specific site association. The design consists of a rather crudely executed human face in front view with some dress details above and below, none similar to those of other Precolumbian portrayals of the human face and its embellishments. Under the chin appears a multi-stringed necklace, and on and above the brow are other motifs not known in other ancient indigenous decoration. The standard ear loops or plugs are not represented. The absence of several details common to nearly all Precolumbian stone and ceramic representations of human figures in El Salvador, may indicate that the carving is of early Spanish colonial date, perhaps the handiwork of some Pipil resident of the Izalco area attempting to picture a member of the Pipil or European elite of that time.

The stone is a very light gray, rather soft tuff, shaped as a rectangular block with the sculpted side flat and other surfaces left rough. At the left side of the decoration the block was sawed transversely, probably to fit against another block (not found) that continued the design. The finely excised geometric decoration consists of two circles separated by two parallel vertical lines above two horizontal lines underlying a “fringe” of very short vertical linear scratches. Below the upper decoration the flat surface of the stone is inset. At first glance the motif suggests a geometric representation of a face, but that may not have been the sculptor's aim. Simple circles and straight lines occur on at least two Late Classic structures as modelled elements of plastic surfaces. At nearby Cihuatán, a very fragmentary carved design occurs on the basal portion of the balustrade of Structure 13B, a small building faced with thin veneer slabs of talpuja, a stone much softer than that of this specimen.

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Summary

Acknowledgments.

The kindness of many individuals made it possible for me to examine the specimens that I have described and discussed here. I am greatly indebted to Julia de Alfaro, Felix Bymel, the late Dr. José Cepeda Magaña, Arne B. Drewsen, Manuel Gallardo, Mauricio Gallardo, Federico Rosenberg, Jose Sabater, Walter Soundy, Ernesto Telles, Tomás Vilanova, and Vicrer Zanetti for their hospitality and assistance.

As I trust this paper shows, despite the comparatively small quantity of stone sculpture recorded in El Salvador it is possible to discern some patterning in the sample and to establish the existence of one definable style as well as clues to others. Unhappily the circumstances of recovery of virtually all of the material make temporal placement impossible to establish with anything approaching certainty, just as they restrict a study of this sort to those zones of the country where agricultural and other development has revealed the existence of specimens. Knowledge of El Salvador’s ancient past is growing, however, as intensive excavation of some sites proceeds. That growth gives me hope that in the future archaeologists will be able to build significantly on the base that I have attempted to establish here.

REFERENCES CITED

Anderson, Dana 1978 Monuments. In The Prehistory of Chalchuapa, El Salvador, edited by Robert J. Sharer, Vol. 1, pp. 156– 180. The University Museum, Philadelphia. Andrews, E. Wyllys, V 1976 The Archaeology of Quelepa, El Salvador. Publication No. 42. Middle American Research Institute, Tulane University, New Orleans. Boggs, Stanley H. 1943 Notas sobre las excavaciones en la Hacienda “San Andrés”, Departamento de La Libertad. Tzunpame 3(1):104–126. Museo Nacional de El Salvador, San Salvador. 1971 An Olmec Mask-pendant from Ahuachapan, El Salvador. Archaeology 24(4):356–358. 1975 Las esculturas espigadas y otros datos sobre las ruinas de Cara Sucia, Departamento de Ahuachapan. Anales del Museo “David J. Guzmán” 42-48:37–55. San Salvador. Demarest, Arthur A. 1981 Santa Lucia and the Development of Complex Society in Southeastern Mesoamerica. Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Department of Anthropology, Harvard University, Cambridge. Longyear, John M., III 1944 Archaeological Investigations in El Salvador. Peabody Museum Memoirs Vol. 9, No. 2. Harvard University, Cambridge. Matos Moctezuma, Eduardo 1984 The Templo Mayor of Tenochtitlan: Economics and Ideology. In Ritual Human Sacrifice in Mesoamerica, edited by Elizabeth H. Boone, pp. 133-164. Dumbarton Oaks, Washington, D. C. Parsons, Lee A. 1969 Bilbao, Guatemala, Volume 2. Publications in Anthropology 12. Milwaukee Public Museum, Milwaukee. Richardson, Francis B. 1940 Non-Maya Monumental Sculpture of Central America. In The Maya and Their Neighbors, edited by Clarence L. Hay, Ralph L. Linton, Samuel K. Lothrop, Harry L. Shapiro, and George C. Vaillant, pp. 395–416. D. Appleton–Century, New York. Smith, A. Ledyard, and Alfred V. Kidder 1943 Explorations in the Motagua Valley, Guatemala. Contributions to American Anthropology and History VIII, No. 41. Publication 546. Carnegie Institution of Washington, Washington, D. C.

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Stromsvik, Gustav 1950 Las ruinas de Asunción Mita, informe de reconocimiento. Antropología e Historia de Guatemala II(1):21–29. Guatemala. 1952 The Ball Courts at Copan, with Notes on Courts at La Union, Quirigua, San Pedro Pinula and Asunción Mita. Contributions to American Anthropology and History XI, No. 55. Publication 596. Carnegie Institution of Washington, Washington, D. C. Thompson, J. Eric S. 1948 An Archaeological Reconnaissance in the Cotzumalhuapa Region, Escuintla, Guatemala. Contributions to American Anthropology and History IX, No. 44. Publication 574. Carnegie Institution of Washington, Washington, D. C.

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12 Due South: Learning from the Tropical Experience Elizabeth Graham

Preface

of a television show2 that became popular in North America in the nineties, about a Canadian Mountie who teamed up with a Chicago detective to fight crime. "Due South" also refers to my direction of travel in the early 1980s, when my husband David Pendergast and I would head south every January to Florida, where we would spend several days with Hal and Alberta Ball before traveling to Belize for a long excavation season. Sometime about mid-season, Hal and Alberta would fly in Hal's twin-engine Apache to Belize to check out what the archaeologists were up to. Hal would land the plane at Hillbank, at the south end of the New River Lagoon, and we would pick him and Alberta up in one of our boats and bring them back to Lamanai, provided that the boat actually made the trip without breaking down.

In following the theme of "reconstructing the past, " I put forward in this chapter ideas for a sustainable environment that are based on reconstruction of a past in which the consequences of the Maya urban experience are considered as factors in environmental change. My archaeological research in Belize at sites in the Stann Creek District, along the coast of Belize at Colson Point and on Ambergris Caye, and at the mainland sites of Negroman-Tipu and Lamanai has provided me with a powerful picture of how the Precolumbian Maya interacted in various ways with their environment. We have a great deal to learn from the Maya, and from other people who have built and managed villages, towns, and cities in the humid tropics. What we have to learn is not only about peopling the past, but also about sustaining people in the future.

Hal and Alberta were very much a part of the fabric of those years in Belize. Hal would, I am certain, have been pleased to see my interest in the Maya bear fruit in terms of what Maya prehistory has taught me about how we in the modern world can improve our approaches to safeguarding the environment. Although the field research I planned in the 1990s on long-term environmental change has yet to materialize, as the result of lack of funds, the presentation contained in these pages is evidence of the fact that I have not yet given up my interest in what the Maya have to teach us about environmental management. Hal was always so upbeat that I know he would have told me not to be discouraged.

The title of this chapter has multiple meanings. First and foremost it is meant to indicate that we should give the South1 its due, and should be learning from the humid tropical experience rather than bringing ideologies that developed in temperate climate frameworks to the tropics. It is also a play on the title

“North” and “South” have come to refer to the socio-economic and political division that separates the wealthy developed countries (The North) from the poorer developing nations (The South). Although most nations that make up the North are located in the northern hemisphere, the divide is not exclusively geographic. Australia, for example, is part of the southern hemisphere, but is a “North” country. "The North" in a sense substitutes for the "West" but is more all encompassing because it accounts for the broader spectrum of nations that have increased their wealth via colonialism or imperialism and have exploited resources in poorer nations. The North-South divide therefore refers to the split between the powerful Northern and the powerless Southern hemisphere. Nearly all of the world's wealth and power is held by the northern half of the globe, which is home to four members of the United Nations Security Council and all of the members of the G8. From: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North-South divide. 1

The publication of this volume is in fact timely, because I hope to pick up in the near future where I left off just before Hal's death in 1984. In anticipation, then, of uniting more traditional archaeological research on the mainland and on the coast with environmental studies of land use, vegetation, and sea

2

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http://www.tv.com/due-south/show/

level rise, I present here some of the ideas that drive my interest in environmental research. I dedicate this effort to Hal with gratitude for all the companionship and moral support he and Alberta gave to David and me in our endeavors.

the potential of inadvertent human activity as we have given to the idea that humans can intentionally work to save the planet. In other publications I have focused on trash accumulation, waste deposition, and the decay products of human occupation in terms of their longterm benefits (Graham 1998, 1999b); here I grapple with a more enigmatic issue: Cultural practices that are effective in conserving resources.

Introduction My intention is to outline conclusions I have reached, as the result of my research on Maya settlement and its impact, which may help to resolve issues generated by today's concern with the environment (Turner et al. 1990), sustainability (Bennett and Dahlberg 1990: 80; Mougeot and Welsh 1999), and most recently with global warming (Jäger and Barry 1990; Houghton and Skole 1990). The lessons that can be extracted from the Maya setting are, I believe, applicable to a broad range of situations throughout the world.

Is conservation the only way? A core environmental theme in today's world is conservation — the act or process of preserving the environment from loss, damage, or neglect3 (see, for example, Hendricks 1992; Redford and Padoch 1992). Perhaps rather counter-intuitively, my research has led me to conclude that cultural practices that developed or evolved for reasons completely outside of conservation are those that most effectively conserve resources (Graham 1998, 2006). If we recognize that environmental conservation is best effected by approaches that do not explicitly "conserve," how can we complement the recognition in order to strengthen the efforts made by organizations that seek explicitly to conserve?

Field research has taken me to marine, coastal and lowland forest environments over the past three decades and more. In recent years, I have had the opportunity to extend coastal environmental research to Cuba (e.g., Peros, Graham and Davis 2006). The focus of my interest is the environmental transformation brought about by Precolumbian and colonial-period populations, particularly in the context of urban relationships under humid tropical conditions. By this I mean cities, towns, villages and their hinterlands, the interaction among which is structured by the demands of complex societies and civilizations (Bacus and Lucero 1999; Graham 1999a). Research suggests that many transformative processes in Precolumbian America led inadvertently, rather than purposefully, to increases in the extent of cultivable land over the long term.

When we learn something, we can apply that learning both directly and contextually. A case of direct application would be if we learned that the ancient Maya carried out a given sustainable practice and we then set out to apply the practice under modern conditions. For example, we might choose to reconstruct ridged or drained fields along the New River in northern Belize in the area around Lamanai in an attempt to introduce sustainable agriculture to a region now virtually devoid of forests as the result of the spread of cattle pasture. This approach has, in fact, been attempted in some parts of the northern Yucatan Peninsula.

Even where vegetational succession resulted in greater biodiversity, there is no good evidence that biodiversity was intended. This does not mean that deliberate or intentional attempts to maintain diverse resources were lacking. I have argued elsewhere (Graham 2006) that in an environment in which the enemies of trees (cattle, sheep, Europeans and the grasses they all loved) were not present until Spanish Colonial times (see Melville 1994), diversity of resources was essential to survival. This remains no less true today, but the difficulties of maintaining resource diversity have increased tremendously since the 16th century.

Contextual thinking, on the other hand, is more complicated. Contextual application would mean not only learning from the Maya experience directly but also applying the thinking that has changed as the result of the Maya experience to broader problemsolving. To put this another way, "saving the rainforest" is not simply a matter of learning a new technique or technology to conserve resources more effectively. Efforts to effect a balance between land use and land conservation must be sustained on several levels, not solely on that of technology.

It might seem desirable to emulate the peoples of Precolumbian America in seeking solutions to modern problems, but given that the road to hell is paved with good intentions, a more realistic route to saving the world would be to devote at least as much attention to

3

The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, Third Edition, 1992. Houghton Mifflin, Boston.

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Four levels of thought and action

conservation has an interesting history because it reflects changing notions of the kinds of resources that should be preserved. In England, forests were indeed set aside in the 11th century by Norman kings to preserve deer for the hunt (although much of the forested land had been held and maintained by manor estates before the Normans), but this specialized resource use proved difficult to sustain, and ultimately forests survived because they became an important common or public resource for pasturing and coppicing (Tubbs 2001: 79-80). In the United States, national forests are part of public land, and although they represent Nature as a source of life and landscape that should be preserved to enrich the human experience, there is also the view that timber, minerals, and wildlife for hunting are part of the resources being preserved (Miller 1992: 69; Reiger 1992).

I propose four approaches, all of which have the potential to contribute to sustainable use of resources. The first, conservation or protection, is a single solution that subsumes a wide range of motivations, all connected to perceived rights of resource use. In the United States, "architects of the conservation movement were invariably involved with the national forests" (Steen 1992:3), and forests were one of a number of public spaces that were part of a larger public land system disposed of by Congress (Miller 1992: 69). In England, conservation is also linked to forests, but is rooted in royal appropriation of forests by Norman kings in the 11th century to conserve deer and other animals for hunting, meat, and hides and to protect the woodlands and the natural vegetation on which deer depended (Tubbs 2001: 21-23, 51, 78).

As the English and United States experiences show, there are two common denominators where conservation areas are concerned. The first is that some resource or group of resources is seen as being preserved; the second is that extensive agriculture is excluded. The picture which is emerging historically — contrary to expectations but in keeping with what I have to say below about alternative frameworks — is that where the agriculturalist is a hunter-farmer, trees remain part of the picture, but where extensive agriculture is a priority, forests are cleared (see, for example, Cochrane 1993: 3-9; Reiger 1992).

The second approach, based on studies of the past, involves two kinds of solutions. The first entails the construction of alternative priorities based on systems that have worked in the past, in the recognition that it will be necessary to adapt such systems to prevailing modern conditions. The second requires abandonment of the nature/culture dichotomy and examination of past transformations from a perspective that might more rapidly facilitate applications to modern environmental problems. In other words, if we can identify a past land use as sustainable based on the perspective of history, then we need to learn more about the world view that produced the sustainable result. This is true even if the concept of "conservation" — often seen as protecting Nature from humans — or the concept of "sustainability" was never part of the ancient equation.

Reserves sometimes include cultural resources. The Lamanai Archaeological Reserve in Belize (Fig. 12.1), where I have worked for a number of years, is predominantly focused on ancient Maya structures, but it includes the tracts of forest that surround the ruins and has therefore become a haven for a range of animals and plants whose habitats are being destroyed in areas that border the reserve. In this case the establishment of a reserve seems to be serving as at least one means of halting the advancement of deforestation, although of course the protected area was not envisioned in this way at the time of its creation. Species of animals and plants are able to survive, albeit in greatly reduced numbers, because land clearing for agriculture is not permitted, and the ruins are not subject to looting or to utilization as a source of stone.

A third approach would be to alter the priorities of an economic system that is based on what I term "Scrooge capitalism," and hand economic decision-making over to the Fezziwigs (see below). Whether alteration of this sort can be effected in the face of today’s economic pressures is bound to be the subject of great debate, but this does not mean that the attempt is not worth making. The fourth approach involves commitment to change not only globally but also locally, which means that we have to define our level of personal responsibility in a world of shrinking resources. What follows is a discussion of these four approaches in greater detail.

The situation was made greatly more complicated during the time when the reserve was being created by the presence of a refugee community within the archaeological site. Despite the fact that the community’s existence was not sanctioned by law, issues of human rights versus preservation aims arose and persisted. Eventually the community was moved just outside the reserve, where land was made available by the Belize government. Thus the people problem

Conservation and the creation of reserves Conservation in the North has been played out most forcefully in modern times through the creation of wilderness forests or wildlife reserves. The concept of

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Figure 12.1 The Lamanai Archaeological Reserve, Orange Walk District, Belize, looking southeast over New River Lagoon. was solved, but this was only possible because land was not in short supply. In addition, the construction of a hotel just outside the reserve has expanded employment opportunities. In this case the creation of the reserve was not seen as contributing to land scarcity or to economic hardship, as has been the case in some other circumstances. Now the reserve has become a resource of a different kind; it is exploited for its potential in generating tourism. This seems at present to be a good thing; but only time will tell.

dollars. This may not reflect well on modern priorities, but if it works it should not be discounted as a viable and potentially valuable approach. Another sort of justification for the creation of forest reserves would be the explicit preservation of diverse species of plants as potential sources of healing drugs. This, however, is a resource realized only over the long term. In a society of quick fixes, where snacking is a response to problem-solving and where mechanized billboards change ads every few seconds, most people have the attention span of gnats and cannot sustain interest in a future any farther away than the coming week. This makes public support of government funding for the creation and maintenance of such reserves unlikely. Pharmaceutical companies are the most likely source of funding for reserves of this type, but the interests of drug companies bring with them another set of problems that even the concept of intellectual property rights cannot solve (Bahuchet et al. 2001: 89-90).

Although as an archaeologist I support the protection of Lamanai as an archaeological site, I remain ambivalent about whether the creation of reserves can preserve the environment in the absence of a vision of environment as a resource. English kings, for example, were not trying to preserve wildlife for its own sake; they were using forests as a way to preserve deer for hunting, together with the vegetation on which the deer fed. Commoners saw the forest as a resource as well, and its preservation in one form or another resulted from balancing its value as a resource to the crown and its value to commoners (Tubbs 1992: 78-80).

Alternative frameworks

In a manner similar in some respects to English forest preservation, it may only be the ecotourism potential of some forests elsewhere in the world that saves them. They may not be set aside as wilderness or biodiversity preserves per se, but rather as areas where zones are conserved as resources for the generation of tourist

The second approach has been informed by archaeological and related research. Such work has shown that cities in the humid tropics in the Maya area, and also in West Africa, Southeast Asia, and South Asia, did not rest on a conceptual division between the

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masonry or "stone" environment — which includes imperishables such as mud brick or plaster in addition to stone — and the "green" environment in the way that characterizes cities of the North (Arensberg 1980; Graham 1999a). The managed environment in the humid tropics does not and indeed cannot, owing to rapid growth and decay cycles, separate stone space from greenspace in the radical and assured manner that is found in the North.

recognize deforestation as an unplanned consequence of Maya behavior whereas we hold the view that biodiversity or forest sustainability, where they occurred, must have been the result of management and long-range planning (Graham 2006). Future studies must take into account the importance of the effects of cultural practices that lie outside of any concepts that might exist of either conservation or even forest resource management. Methods of studying this phenomenon must of necessity reject the concept of nature as a force in opposition to culture and clearly separate from it. The chemistry and morphology of the built environment are part of "Nature," just as stands of vegetation or coral reefs should be understood as features to be examined for potential anthropogenic imprint, in which circumstance nature becomes culture (Graham 2006).

Evidence from Maya sites shows that greenspace was managed as intensively as stone space, from the vegetation within cities to forest biomes (see examples in Graham 1999a). The greenspace within ancient Maya cities was managed in a variety of ways that included horticulture, agriculture, and orchard development, as well as water management and retention of runoff, whereas greenspace management in cities of the North tended and still tends to be dominated by the phenomenon of the lawn. We can learn from the Maya and from other tropical urban traditions by considering both "stone" and "green" as built environments, instead of seeing the built environment as a bastion against Nature, or the natural environment as an entity to be subdued in order that cities thrive and expand.

What directions might be taken, then, to increase our understanding of the ways in which natural and cultural resource use can be sustained? First, agencies must begin to consider that resource or wildlife conservation as a policy may not be as effective in actually preserving resource availability over the long term as are cultural practices that produce resource conservation as a side-effect. Second, in terms of research directions, we might seek to identify cultural and economic practices past and present that have served to produce conservation of resources or improvements to the environment not as ends in themselves but as unintended or indirect effects of other priorities.

On the other hand, my research has also led me to conclude that the character of tropical forests, and possibly the persistence of such forests and even forest biodiversity, may be the products not so much of deliberate management as of cultural side effects. In the environment of the past there were other forces at work of which neither the Maya nor any other urbanites may have been aware. A wide range of cultural practices, such as the management of waste, the discard of local industry by-products, construction practices, the re-use of construction debris, and the practice of structure abandonment contributed to soil formation processes in such a way as to improve soil quality and soil drainage over the long term and, by way of this improvement, to affect vegetational succession and thereby inadvertently foster tree growth and biodiversity (Graham 1999b, 2006).

Scrooge v. Fezziwig capitalism In Dickens' famous tale, A Christmas Carol in Prose, it is Fezziwig's business environment and practices that Scrooge at long last admits made a difference: “The happiness he gives, is quite as great as if it cost a fortune” (Dickens 2003:64). Fezziwig balanced the necessity of making a profit with concern not only for his employees but also for the neighborhood in which his business resided (Dickens 2003:62-64). Building on Fezziwig’s character as depicted in the original book, Noel Langley’s screenplay — in the 1951 version directed by Brian Desmond Hurst with Alastair Sim as Scrooge — has Fezziwig not surprisingly being driven out of business by Scrooge, whose views on profit epitomize millenium capitalism. One does not have to look too far today to see that profit and the business model that generates it have, indeed, become everything.

As I trust the foregoing discussion demonstrates, we need seriously to consider the importance of Maya cultural practices that developed or evolved for reasons completely outside of notions of conservation or even of environmental management. We need also to consider that such cultural practices may well have been the ones that most effectively conserved resources. Sustainable forests and increasing biodiversity can be as much an inadvertent consequence of the behaviour of a civilization as can deforestation and soil erosion. For some reason, however, probably rooted in the development experience of Northern nations, we seem to want to

What do Scrooge and Fezziwig have to do with environmental conservation and diversity? They represent the two models that are at work, and

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generally in sharp conflict, in the modern world. In the humid tropics — whether in Belize or in West Africa, Southeast Asia, or South India — hotels with saunas and air conditioning, golf courses, Mediterranean cuisine, and horseback riding in the "jungle" proliferate almost daily. Such things are well within the ambit of Scrooge capitalism, but would at the very least be given serious second thoughts under Fezziwig capitalism. The maintenance of sauna temperatures for hot tubs or of cool air in rooms requires huge amounts of energy; golf courses are simply an extension of the colonial domination-by-lawn with the addition of truckloads of pesticides and massive water consumption; wheat-based cuisines are foreign to the humid tropics, and their spread brings economic as well as environmental problems; and horses are grazing animals which find tropical forest habitats debilitating, and hence require much more care than they do in other climes.

beneficial social practices and wise resource use. In other words, as happy as we may have been when Scrooge paid for Tiny Tim's medical expenses, we must remember that he did so because he realized that Fezziwig had been right. It was not too late for Scrooge in the story, but is it too late for us? On one of Belize’s tropical cayes where we have carried out archaeological work, the quest for profit has resulted not only in destruction of local wooden architecture to make way for generic Miami-style luxury condos, but also, in one circumstance, in the replacement of local Maya-style thatch roofs on cabañas by Polynesian-style roofs because tourists think that the Polynesian style looks "more tropical." In ways such as this the generic tropics are born, and in the ultimate irony tourists now dictate, based on marketing brochures, what they think the appearance of the tropics should be even before they get there (Graham 1999c).

The foregoing points are given sharp focus by an anecdote regarding a friend in the film business in Belize. As production manager, he had to see to it that insecticide was sprayed widely over a section of beach front and adjacent vegetation an hour or so before filming so that the prospective scene of a man and woman making passionate love on the beach could be shot without either of the cast members getting bitten virtually to death by insects. The result of such practices is that cinema-goers feel cheated when, inspired by such romantic films, they visit tropical beaches and discover that sand flies make moonlight love-making on tropical sands the lunacy that it is. The solution for hotel owners, in order to keep profits up, is to use more pesticides in the hope of creating an idealized tropical setting very far removed from the real one.

Commitment to local change and personal responsibility The fourth level of the approaches described above involves defining our level of personal responsibility in a world of shrinking resources and in the context of the research that we undertake. This is a controversial and complex topic which I discuss in detail elsewhere (Graham 1999c). For archaeologists in the Maya area, one level of responsibility could be seen as intensifying the commitment we have to the people with whom we interact and to the places in which we work. Although it is the people in these places who are best positioned to comment on how effective we have been in carrying out these responsibilities, I like to think that Maya archaeologists will be found to stand clearly with the Fezziwigs.

The point that Fezziwig made to Scrooge was that capitalism must be tempered by other concerns, because greed as a motivating force was likely to have destructive consequences. I suggest that capitalism must be tempered by: 1) Thinking through exactly how our comfort is made possible, and whether the comfort we demand sabotages the very environment we are enjoying as tourists; and 2) Making considered choices to buy from people and organizations that temper profit, including profit from tourism, with

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