An Inscribed Block from Pajaral, Guatemala

In the bodega of the Museo Sylvanus Morley in Tikal, Guatemala, are a number of odds-and-ends of Maya sculpture recovered from looters over the last few decades. One piece is the block illustrated here, known to many epigraphers since its publication some years ago by Karl Herbert Meyer. Its place of origin has long been a mystery, so I was happy to learn a few years ago that Ian Graham was the first to ever see the stone, in the course of his initial explorations of the ruins of Pajaral, Petén, Guatemala, in the late 1970s. He included a quick but recognizable sketch of it in his field notebook, now in the archives of the Peabody Museum at Harvard University. So, the block is certainly from Pajaral, and I therefore suggest a new designation for it, following the standards of the Corpus of Maya Hieroglyphic Inscriptions: Pajaral, Miscellaneous 1. I believe one or two other stones in a similar style, also looted, may be from the same inscription.

The glyphs show a partial Long Count date, best reconstructed as [9.16.]10.0.0 1 Ajaw [3 Zip] (March 11, 761).

The Casa Herrera: UT-Austin’s New Research Center in Antigua, Guatemala

I write this new post, the first in many weeks, from the Casa Herrera in Antigua, Guatemala. This newly restored mansion opened June 1, 2009 as the University of Texas at Austin’s new academic research center devoted to Mesoamerica and its interdisciplinary study. With the cooperation and vision of the Fundación Pantaleón, the owners of the facility, UT-Austin inaugurates what we hope will be a long-lasting and important venue for conferences, seminars, residential scholars, and international academic programs. More information will be available soon once the new website for the Casa is up and running later this summer.

We’re happy to be hosting our first formal academic event this coming week: a mini-conference on “The Future of Mayan Linguistic Research.” More gatherings of students and scholars, large and small, are in the works for later this year and next.

Very soon I and others will be getting back to posting more blog entries on epigraphy and archaeology; in the meantime I simply want to share my own excitement about the Casa Herrera’s potential in the coming years as an important place for intellectual exchange and creativity, in the heart of the Maya world.

New Book: To Be Like Gods: Dance in Ancient Maya Civilization

TO BE LIKE GODS: DANCE IN ANCIENT MAYA CIVILIZATION

by Matthew G. Looper

UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS PRESS, 2009

$40.20 with website order discount

Description from the UT Press catalog:

The Maya of Mexico and Central America have performed ritual dances for more than two millennia. Dance is still an essential component of religious experience today, serving as a medium for communication with the supernatural. During the Late Classic period (AD 600-900), dance assumed additional importance in Maya royal courts through an association with feasting and gift exchange. These performances allowed rulers to forge political alliances and demonstrate their control of trade in luxury goods. The aesthetic values embodied in these performances were closely tied to Maya social structure, expressing notions of gender, rank, and status. Dance was thus not simply entertainment, but was fundamental to ancient Maya notions of social, religious, and political identity.

Using an innovative interdisciplinary approach, Matthew Looper examines several types of data relevant to ancient Maya dance, including hieroglyphic texts, pictorial images in diverse media, and architecture. A series of case studies illustrates the application of various analytical methodologies and offers interpretations of the form, meaning, and social significance of dance performance. Although the nuances of movement in Maya dances are impossible to recover, Looper demonstrates that a wealth of other data survives which allows a detailed consideration of many aspects of performance. To Be Like Gods thus provides the first comprehensive interpretation of the role of dance in ancient Maya society and also serves as a model for comparative research in the archaeology of performance.

Order directly from the UT Press website.

Orienting Bonampak

Over the course of several visits to Bonampak, Chiapas, I’ve been intrigued by the unusual design of the site, and the way its buildings and plaza clearly “face” out toward the range of hills to the northeast. A great many Maya buildings exhibit architectural orientations of one sort or another, but few if any whole sites are so clearly oriented toward one particular direction. 

Figure 1. Topographic map of Bonampak, Chiapas, adapted from Paillés (1986).

As one can see in the accompanying map (Figure 1), the principal structures of Bonampak are built on the side of a natural hill, probably once named Usij Witz, “Vulture Hill.” The buildings generally face over the large open plaza that gives the site its clear orientation, about 30 degrees east of north. I find it remarkable that this orientation faces precisely in the direction of the far larger site of Yaxchilan, located on the Río Usumacinta some 24 kms. distant (Figure 2). To my knowledge, this is a unique instance of a entire site’s ceremonial layout reflecting an orientation toward another, distant center.

Figure 2. Google Earth view, showing line of orientation between Bonampak and Yaxchilan. The high ridge between them prevents any direct line of sight.

Inscriptions at Bonampak show very strong historical and political ties to Yaxchilan during the Classic period. According to the main text of Structure 1’s murals, the late ruler Yajaw Chan Muwaan II assumed the throne under the auspices of Yaxchilan’s king Shield Jaguar II.  He was also married to a Yaxchilan woman, depicted on Stela 2 as well as in the murals. Two of Yajaw Chan Muwaan’s monuments, Stela 1 (780 A.D.) and a lintel from Structure 1 (791 A.D.), exhibit carver’s signatures citing artisans from the court of Yaxchilan. Moreover, a much earlier local Bonampak ruler named Yajaw Chan Muwaan was said to have been placed in office by the contemporaneous Yaxchilan king nearly two centuries before, in the year 600 A.D. 

Throughout Bonampak’s history, then, the ties between the two sites were extremely close, with Yaxchilan clearly the more larger and dominant of the two. Given what we know of architectural development of Bonampak, its overall orientation toward Yaxchilan seems to have been established early, perhaps when Yaxchilan’s ruler began exerting their political authority in the region in the sixth century. By the end of eighth century, in the reign of Yajaw Chan Muwaan II, the same linear axis continued to be emphasized, with Yaxchilan’s “presence” strongly indicated in the sculpture as well as in the murals.

(I would like to thank Stephen Houston, Charles Golden and Andrew Scherer for their emailed comments and feedback on the issue of Bonampak’s orientation, placing it in valuable regional context.)

Reference:

Paillés, Maria de la Cruz. 1986. El nuevo mapa topográfico de Bonampak, Chiapas. Primer Coloquio Internacional de Mayistas, Tomo I, pp. 277-302. México: UNAM.

A Sun God Image from Dos Pilas, Guatemala

In 1990, my friend Dr. Oswaldo Chichilla Mazariegos oversaw exploratory excavations at a small elite architectural compound at Dos Pilas known as Group N5-6 (Chinchilla Mazariegos 1990).  In the course of his excavations he discovered several beautifully carved blocks in the interior chamber of Structure N5-21, the largest of the buildings in the group.  These included sculpted masonry “legs” for a bench or throne, each depicting kneeling humans figures with duck-bills with their hand aloft. These were clearly once Wind God supports for the bench. Also found by Chinchilla were four carved stones that must have formed one of the two upper side panels of the same bench-throne, depicting a seated K’inich Ajaw, or Sun God (see figure). Here I present my drawing of the sculpture, based on a field drawing I  made from the original stones in 1990 while working as part of Vanderbilt University’s Proyecto Arqueológico Regional Petexbatun. This drawing has not been published before now.

K’inich Ajaw is shown seated within or in front of a nice example of a solar cartouche, adorned with bony serpent or centipede heads at its corners (only one is visible, at upper left). All in all, it is one of the finest portraits of the Sun God I know from Classic Maya sculpture. He has k’in glyphs on each arm and leg, as well as on his forehead. In his left hand the Sun God holds the head of an animal, probably a deer.  Although missing a few details, this is almost surely an example of a particular deer that appears elsewhere in Maya iconography, showing a footprint design over its eye. The “footprint deer,” as I call it, is nearly always paired with a certain old-looking human god in both iconography and in inscriptions, and I suspect the latter was depicted on the whatever image must have accompanied this Sun God on the N5-21 bench.  Their meanings remain obscure, but there’s good reason to think the two have some sort of opposed or complementary meanings, perhaps associated with solar phenomena.

I hope I will be able to track down my drawings of the two Wind God supports of the throne and post them sometime in the future.

* * *

Reference

Chinchilla Mazariegos, Oswaldo. 1990. Operación DP14: Investigaciones en el Grupo N5-6. In Proyecto Arqueológico Regional Petexbatun, informe preliminar no. 2, segunda temporada, 1990, edited by Arthur A. Demarest and Stephen D. Houston. Nashville: Department of Anthropology, Vanderbilt University.

UPDATE (April 14, 2009): As Oswaldo mentions in his recent comment (see below), photographs of this sun god carving were published in two European exhibit catalogues, and his own drawing appeared in an article he published in 2006. Thanks to Oswaldo for the information (and of course for finding the sculpture!).