Unprovenanced Maya Painted Capstones in Campeche

Zeitschrift für MesoamerikaforschungJournal of Mesoamerican Studies – Revista sobre Estudios Mesoamericanos

Vol. XXXVI August 2014 Nr. 4

www.mexicon.de B 11348 F

This issue is dedicated to the memory of Dr. George Stuart

mexicon Vol. XXXVI August 2014

98

Contentsmexicon XXXVI (4)

Cover Karl Herbert Mayer

Unprovenanced Maya Painted Capstones in Campeche 98–101

Obituary: Dr. George Stuart (1935-2014) 102–103

News 103–105

Research NotesVictor Castillo and Ulrich Wölfel

Primera temporada del Proyecto Arqueológico de la Regíon de Chaculá (PARCHA) 105–107

Mario Giron-ÁbregoAn Early AKAN Head-Variant Glyph? 107–110

Jaime J. Awe and Christophe HelmkeRediscovery of a Missing Fragment of Caracol Stela 8 110-113

ContributionBrent Woodfill

Three Previously Unrecorded Cave Features in the Western Highlands of Guatemala 114–120

Recent Publications Books 121Periodicals 122-123

Impressum 123

Cover

Unprovenanced Maya Painted Capstones in Campeche

Ancient Maya artists often decorated the centrally placed capstones of vaulted masonry buildings in the Northern Low-lands with painted and carved imagery. John Stephens (1963) first reported four painted capstones; Teobert Maler (1895, 1902, 1997) discovered during his surveys in the Chenes Zone of Campeche from 1887 to 1891 six sites with capstone paint-ings, and four in the Puuc Zone (Maler 1895, Mayer 1990:33). Maler determined them as “Widmungs Steine” (dedication stones), a functional description which has proven to be cor-rect. Christopher Jones (1975) published the first study of this art form and registered 34 examples. In later years I cata-logued 97 objects (Mayer 1983a, 1983b), followed by a count of 122 decorated capstones (Mayer 1995:10). Subsequent investigations have enlarged the known corpus continuously and essentially. José Miguel García-Campillo (1998:300) counted 130 objects and Leticia Staines Cicero (2001, 2002, 2008) finally mentioned a corpus of more than 160 capstones with paintings. Staines, the only expert on Maya paintings on capstones has published a comprehensive monograph on this class of paintings and in a list she registered 150 examples from 37 archaeological sites in the Northern Maya Lowlands, as well as eight unprovenanced capstones in museum collec-tions in Mexico, Germany, and the United States. In her rele-

vant contribution (Staines 2001: Plates 2a, 2b) she published a total of 32 capstones in color, five of them of unknown prov-enance. Additional objects have been reported and published in recent times from known and unknown places of origin.

In 2006, in the course of a documentation of archaeolog-ical sculptures and paintings in the Bodega de Guadalupe, a depository of the Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Histo-ria (INAH) in Campeche City, I photographed and measured a surprising number of unpublished painted vault capstones, all assumed as of unknown provenance. Only one example of the more of 15 capstones could be identified as stemming from the Chenes site of Dzibilnocac in Campeche (Mayer 2009). I revisited the two rooms of the Guadalupe bodega in 2010 and 2014 and documented the painted capstones described here as “Campeche” Capstones 3 to 15 (see back cover). Two small obviously fragments of capstones were not numbered, because their stucco surfaces lack any paint. In 2014 I photographed the previously published (Mayer 1983b, Staines 2001) “Campeche” Capstones 1 and 2 in the bodega of the headquarter of the Centro INAH Campeche, Casa del Teniente del Rey.

Concerning their nomenclature the objects were arbitrari-ly numbered. The present location of the capstones is given as

“Campeche”; the quotation marks indicate that the location is San Francisco de Campeche, the capital of the Mexican state of Campeche and that the original provenance is hitherto unknown. This convention was first applied to decorated capstones in private and public collections (Mayer 1983b). The term capstone is abbreviated as Cst., proposed previ-ously for this peculiar architectural element (Mayer 1983b), and later applied by other authors (see Graham 1975, 1992; Von Euw 1977; Graham and Von Euw 1992; Staines 2001; Graña-Behrens 2002).

The following very brief descriptions correpond to the in-dividual object, its size, its condition and colors, notes on the image, the illustration, any relevant remarks, and published references. All painted stones are here illustrated in color; a detail of Cst. 4 is on the front cover of this publication, the remainder on the back cover, identified by the respective capstone and figure numbers. Figure number 16 on the back cover of the publication shows the provenanced Dzibilnocac Capstone 3 (DBN:Cst.3) for an iconographic comparison. For the three previously published capstones their bibliographical data are provided. All capstones are of limestone. Except for

“Campeche” Cst. 2, the objects have a stucco cover, on which the paint has been applied. The shape of the capstones is roughly rectangular, the stucco layer is between 1 to 20 mm on an average. The stated size is in cm, with length, width, and thickness.

The objective of this report is to present this series of mural paintings in color, even in a small scale, to give an im-pression of this group of murals. The concise overview offers a definite nomenclature and should provide a preliminary resource for further studies concerning these rare manifes-tations of ancient Maya mural paintings of the Late Classic/Terminal Classic period.

“Campeche” Cst. 1Measurements: 51 x 29 x 15 cm. The monochrome painting is applied on stucco. Rendered is a fragmentary standing an-


99

thropomorphic figure in side-view, facing the observers left.The figure, obviously a deity of the Maya pantheon, holds in his hands a vessel with falling seeds; maize kernels, or cacao beans. The left foot of the figure, terminating in the head of a serpent with open maw, leads to the identification of this deity as God K, a.k.a. K’awiil (see e.g. Taube 1992). There is a photograph by Edwin Shook in the Peabody Museum of the Carnegie Institution of Washington, catalogued under 51-9-173, indicating that it was taken in 1951, and with a note: “Campeche Museum. Campeche, Mexico. Painted cap-stone. Provenience unknown (Purplish red paint on creamy white plaster)”. Eric Von Euw of the Corpus of Maya Hiero-glyphic Inscriptions (CMHI) project recorded the monument before 1980 in the INAH bodega of the Baluarte San Pedro in Campeche City. Merideth Paxton (1987:544, Plate 1) doc-umented it in 1981. I photographed it in 1982 in the same bodega (Mayer 1983b: 49, 50, Fig. 52), denominating it as capstone “Campeche” 1. Staines (2001, Pl.2b, No. 17) pub-lished the first color photograph of the object, designating it as a “Campeche” capstone.

“Campeche” Cst. 2This capstone measures 66 cm in height and 48 cm in width (pers. comm. Leticia Staines, 2014). Half of the red image on stucco is missing. A figure is depicted, possibly K’awiil, whose hand is touching an elongated bundle with a glyph compound. Staines (2001, Pl. 2b, No.21) published a color photograph of it, called it the “Bodega Campeche” capstone, preserved in the Bodega Centro INAH, Campeche. I photo-graphed the object in 2014 in the Casa del Teniente del Rey bodega (back cover, No. 2). The two glyphs can be read as ka-wa ka(ka)w “cacao” (or alternatively kaw(a) “seeds, ker-nels”), and pi-3 ux/ox pi, a count of 3 x 8.000, thus 24.000 units, referring to the amount of kernels contained within the here depicted bundle (pers. comm. Guido Krempel, 2014). The composition and painting style of this example reminds at comparable ones from Santa Rosa Xtampak, where sever-al capstones likewise depict the bundle with accompanying glyphic captions in the lower left corner.

“Campeche” Cst. 4The stone is 66 cm long and 36 cm wide. This is the best conserved capstones of the examples in the Campeche bodegas and portrays in red color an enframed standing Kàwiil, facing left, with a large bundle in front of him. In the upper left corner, in front of the flames that emerge from the forehead of the deity, are written two glyph compounds in vertical order. The two glyph compounds are visually separated by another element which can be identified as attachment to the depicted bundle, thus forming part of the imagery rather than being a readable glyph (com-pare e.g. a similar example on a capstone in the Museo Amparo, Puebla, México, No. 52 22 MA FA 57PJ 1465, in Dreiss and Greenhill 2008: 78, Fig. 3.1). The glyph painted on top consists of the num-ber 11 (two bars and a dot), followed by a badly faded calendar sign ma/MAHK-ka, resulting in a possible reading buluk mahk,

“Campeche” Cst. 3The size of the stone is 65 x 45 x 18 cm. A red design is painted directly on the limestone block and mostly gone. Rocha Segura (2003) has published this capstone first and illustrated it with a photograph and a drawing. He interprets the image as the seated God K, currently named Kàwiil (see Taube 1992). As provenance he surmises the site of Tohcok, near the town of Hopelchen, Campeche, but provides no firm evidence for this suggestion. The stone is in the Bodega de Guadalupe, where I photographed it in 2006, 2011, and 2014 (back cover, No. 3).

“11 Mahk (Turtle)”. The second glyph compound is even more damaged and barely visible, however, some traces remain visible that allow a tentative reconstrucion of this compound as the Tzolk’in day notation 11-?, buluk ...?, “11 Etz’nab?”. The representation of the deity is reminiscent of the figures on Dzibilnocac capstones (back cover, No. 16, Dzibilnocac Cst. 3), the bundle is similar to the one on Dzibilnocac Cst. 6 (Mayer 2009). Interesting is the fact, that the stone shows two painted layers of stucco; such superimposed images are known from Santa Rosa Xtampak (Mayer 1983b:38-39). On the stone is marked a recent number, painted obviously by INAH personnel: 207. This object I photographed in 2006, 2011, and 2014 (front cover-detail, back cover, No. 4).

“Campeche” Cst. 5The stone measures 62 cm in length, 34 cm in width and has a thickness of 16 cm. Portions of the stucco background are flaked off from the upper and lower left corners. There are two layers of stucco, both carrying paintings in red line on the white background. The pictorial image portrays the usu-al Kàwiil figure of which the “flaming” element is clearly visible on the upper left part. The figure is difficult to discern, but some ornaments with many curved bunches of plumes are recognizable. On the bottom of the image appears the head of a zoomporphic creature with serpentine characteristics; like-ly yet another manifestation of the deity K’awiil. The object bears the INAH number 208. I measured and photographed the artefact in 2006 and 2014 (back cover, No. 5).

“Campeche” Cst. 6The stone has a size of 56 x 31 x 19 cm. The stucco surface is relatively well preserved, only the edges are damaged. Within a frame element there is a red-painted portrayal of a standing K’awiil, whose head in profile, facing left, is clearly recogniz-able. One slightly bent leg with reptilian pattern again leads to identify the deity K’awiil. To the left of the individual is the common bundle or bag with its offerings. In front of the

Fig. 1. Painted Glyphs on “Campeche” Cst. 2

Fig. 2. Paint-ed Glyphs on

“Campeche“ Cst. 4


100

1-OK-ki CHAN-na K’AWIL?-la?/wi? K’UH?-NAL? jun ok chan k’awiil k’uh(ul?)nal “One-Foot-Snake-K’awiil, devine maize/sprout/place (?)”. The name of this prominet deity, Jun Ok Chan K’awiil, appears in similar renderings on capstones from Santa Rosa Xtampak and Dzibilnocac (pers. comm. Guido Krempel, 2014), as well as in a deity imper-sonification statement (u baahila’n “this is the godly/devine image of...”) on a recently discovered sculptured doorway from the site of H`Wasil (pers. comm. Carlos Pallán Gayol, 2014, Pallán Gayol and Benavides Castillo 2014). This here presented capstone was recorded in 2006, 2012, and 2014 (back cover, No. 6).

“Campeche” Cst. 7The capstone measures 53 cm in length, 27 cm in width, and 20 cm in thickness. The stucco layer is 1.5 cm thick. The im-age is painted in red and shows greenish-blue traces. There are horizontal, ornamented bands framing the scene on top and bottom. I suspect a kneeling or seated figure as the sub-ject matter, but a third of the painting is destroyed. Curved long feathers are visible and on the right side may be depicted offerings and a bag and also a little basket with small, round elements. I took photographs of the object in 2006 and 2014 (back cover, No. 7).

“Campeche” Cst. 8The size of this capstone is 63 x 30 x 22 cm. The red painted image is in a rather good condition. The image is unusually placed, as there is a blank field to the right of the painting, which seems to be incomplete at the left side. There are two vertical ornamented frame elements on top and bottom and a vertical band is placed on the right side. I cannot interpret the scene, which may portray a seated figure, embellished with long, elaborate, swaying feathers; possibly also a representa-tion of K’awiil. Stylistically it is a match to the capstone listed before and shows similarly ornamented frames. The capstone has been recorded in 2006, 2011, and 2014 (back cover, No. 8).

“Campeche” Cst. 9The object has a size of 62 x 28 x 18 cm. Several portions have flaked off the stucco cover and the probably mono-chrome image is faded and cannot be recognized. The remain-ing traces are in a red color and show a horizontal upper line as a frame element and a vertical thick line on the left hand side. I photographed the object in 2006 and took measure-ments in 2011; I could not find it during my documentation in 2014 (back cover, No. 9).

“Campeche” Cst. 10The stone measures 62 x 28 x 18 cm. Several pieces of the stucco layer are flaked off. The polychrome image cannot be recognized and has a red and yellowish color. The horizon-tal bottom frame is painted green-blue. On the right side is a vertical ornamented frame element, similar to the frames occurring on “Campeche” Cst. 7 and 8. The object was pho-tographed in 2006, measured in 2011 and not found in 2014 (back cover, No. 10).

“Campeche” Cst. 11The capstone has a size of 68 x 31 x 18 cm. The stucco cover is 2 cm thick. The subject matter of the polychrome painting could not be identified. On the lower right side a large portion of the stucco surface is missing. On top and bottom of the im-age are horizontal bands in green-blue, enframing the center part which is mainly in a yellow color, possibly with red el-ements. The original orientation is uncertain. The object was documented in 2006, 2011, and 2014 (back cover, No. 11).

“Campeche” Cst. 12This stone is 62 cm in length and 27 cm in width. Its thickness was not recorded. The polychrome painting is similar to the capstone listed before and shows also horizontal green-blue bands on top and bottom of a scene that cannot be described and shows mainly yellow and red colors. The image is also barely discernably, as there are evidently two layers of paint. The stone was recorded in 2006 and 2014 (back cover, No. 12).

“Campeche” Cst. 13The stone measures 52 x 28 cm. The thickness was not noted. The stucco surface is very fragmentary and the image hardly recognizable. What remains are traces of a throne with jag-uar-pelt cover, as well as the toes of one foot, possibly belong-ing to a represantation of a seated K’awiil. The color used is

head of the god is a hieroglyphic text, consisting of several irregularily placed glyph blocks, which, according to Guido Krempel (pers. comm., 2014) furthermore confirm and spec-ify the here depicted manifestation of the “serpent-footed K’awiil”, as it is written:

Fig. 3. Painted Glyphs on “Campeche” Cst. 6


101

a dark red, and possibly there are black traces. I documented the capstone in 2006 and 2014 (backcover, No. 13).

“Campeche” Cst. 14The surviving fragment is 32 cm long, 41 cm wide, and 15 cm thick. The limestone has at least two layers of painted stucco. The image is not recognizable and seems to be painted only in red; there are greenish and blue spots, probably no paint, but microflora. The orientation of the image is doubtful. There remains a frame element consisting of a double line and small elements, perhaps of a feathered headgear. The fragment was documented in 2006, 2011, and 2014 (back cover, No. 14)

“Campeche” Cst. 15This is a very small fragment of a painted capstone, measur-ing 35 x 33 cm. The remaining painting is in red and shows a double straight line, obviously representing a frame element. The pictorial elements above the parallel lines indicate rests of an oval shaped jaguar-pelt covered seat, however, no traces of the figure seated on top of it remain. This capstone frag-ment bears the INAH number 209. The object was recorded in 2006, 2011, and 2014 (back cover, No. 15).

Text: Karl Herbert MayerPhotos: Karl Herbert Mayer. Photo No. 16 on back cover by Ramón Carrasco VargasAll images enhanced and drawings (Figures 1-3) by Guido Krempel, 2014.

ReferencesArellano Hernández, Alfonso1996 El dios K en algunas tapas de bóveda en la península de Yucatán.

Cuadernos de Arquitectura Mesoamericana 31: 33-41.Carrasco Vargas, Ramón1993 Nuevas tapas de bóveda decoradas, en la region Central de Yucatán.

Mexicon IX (1): 16-20. Dreiss, Meredith L. and Sharon Edgar Greenhill 2008 Chocolate: Pathway to the Gods. The University of Arizona Press,

Tucson.García-Campillo, José Miguel1998 Textos augurales en las tapas de bóveda clásicas de Yucatán. Anatomía

de una civilización, Andrés Ciudad Ruiz, et al. (Editors), pp. 297-322. Publicaciones de la S.E.E.M., Núm. 4. Sociedad Española de Estudios Mayas, Madrid.

Graham, Ian1975 Corpus of Maya Hieroglyphic Inscriptions, Vol. 1: Introduction to the

Corpus.Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, Harvard University, Cambridge.

1992 Corpus of Maya Hieroglyphic Inscriptions, Vol. 4, Part 2: Uxmal. Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, Harvard University, Cambridge.

Graham, Ian, and Eric Von Euw1992 Corpus of Maya Hieroglyphic Inscriptions, Vol. 4, Part 3: Uxmal,

Xcalumkin. Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, Harvard University, Cambridge.

Jones, Christopher1975 A Painted Capstone from the Maya Area. Studies in Ancient Meso-

america II, John A. Graham, Editor, Contributions of the University of California Archaeological Research Facility, No. 27, pp. 83-110.

Maler, Teobert1895 Yukatekische Forschungen. Globus Vol. 68, No. 18, pp. 277-292.1902 Yukatekische Forschungen. Globus Vol. 82, Nos. 13-14, pp. 197-230.1997 Península Yucatán. Aus dem Nachlass herausgegeben von Hanns J.

Prem. Monumenta Americana, Vol. 5. Gebr. Mann Verlag, Berlin.

Mayer, Karl Herbert1983a Bemalte und skulptierte Gewölbedecksteine der Maya. Mexicon, Vol.

V, No.3, pp.43-44.1983b Gewölbedecksteine mit Dekor der Maya-Kultur. Archiv für Völk-

erkunde, Vol. 37, pp. 1-62.1990 Maya-Wandmalereien in der Puuc-Region (Mexiko). Antike Welt 21.

Jahrgang, Heft 1, pp. 26-44.1995 La nomenclatura de las piedras tapa de bóveda pintadas mayas. Boletín

Informativo La Pintura Mural Prehispánica en México, Year II, No. 3, pp. 10-13.

1998 La terminología de la decoración mural maya. Boletín Informativo La Pintura Mural Prehispánica en México, Year IV, Nos. 8-9, pp. 7-10.

2009 The Capstone 6 from Dzibilnocac, Campeche. Mexicon, Vol. XXXI, No. 4, pp. 77-83.

Pallán Gayol, Carlos and Antonio Benavides Castillo2014 “The Hieroglyphic Doorway and other Monuments from H’Wasil,

Campeche”; paper presented at the Annual Conference of the Society of American Archaeology (SAA), Austin Texas, USA. April 23-27th, 2014.

Paxton, Merideth Daniel1987 Codex Dresden: Stylistic and Iconographic Analysis of a Maya Man-

uscript. University Microfilms International, Ann Arbor, Michigan. Rocha Segura, Fernando2003 Una tapa de bóveda en la bodega de Guadalupe. Boletín Informativo

La Pintura Mural Prehispánico en México, Year IX, No. 18, pp. 47-49.Staines Cicero, Leticia2001 Las imágenes pintadas en las tapas de bóveda. La Pintura Mural Pre-

hispánica en México, Área Maya, Vol. II,Tomo IV, Estudios, Leticia Staines Cicero, Coordinadora, pp. 389-402. Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Instituto de Investigaciones Estéticas, México, D.F.

2008 Las tapas de bóveda pintadas en el área maya. Arqueología Mexicana, Vol. XVI, No. 93, pp. 41-45.

Stephens, John L.1963 Incidents of Travel in Yucatan. Vol. II. Dover Publications, New York.Taube, Karl Andreas1992 The Major Gods of Ancient Yucatan. Studies in Pre-Columbian Art

and Archaeology, No. 32. Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collections, Washington, D.C.

Von Euw, Eric1977 Corpus of Maya Hieroglyphic Inscriptions, Vol. 4, Part 1: Itzimte, Pix-

oy, Tzum. Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, Harvard University, Cambridge.

AcknowledgementsFor generous assistance in the preparation of this article and for providing essential data I thank the staff of the Centro INAH Campeche: Lirio Guadalupe Suárez Améndola, Marco Antonio Carvajal Correa, Antonio Benavides Castillo, Floren-tino García, and Ángel Silva Elizondo, who either permitted to document or to inspect archaeological artifacts preserved in the INAH collections in Campeche in 2006, 2011, and 2014. I wish to express my gratitude to María de los Ánge-les Olay Barrientos, Presidente del Consejo de Arqueología, INAH, Mexico City, for granting the permission to photo-graph in 2014 in the INAH facilities in Campeche City (Ofi-cio, enero 20 de 2014 ; the reproduction of my photographs is authorized by INAH (CONACULTA-INAH-MEX). More-over I thank Guido Krempel for his assistance to enhance my photographs and providing comments, and especially Leticia Staines Cicero for her generous help in the preparation of the text.


102

ObituaryDr. George Stuart, 1935-2014

Dr. George Stuart, Chair of the National Geographic Socie-ty’s Committee for Research and Exploration 1994-1998, and as Staff Archaeologist since 1960 an influential committee member for many years, died at his home in Barnardsville, NC, on June 11th 2014, at the age of 79. Through the NGS, he was a major benefactor of Mesoamerican, and especially Maya, archaeology for several decades, shaping research through his advocacy of projects to support with grants which, though not large by the standards of Federal bodies such as NSF and NEH, were promptly evaluated, swiftly available, and often renewed on the basis of success.

George Edwin Stuart III was born in Glen Ridge, NJ, on April 2nd 1935, but was raised in Camden, SC, did his BS in geology at the University of South Carolina in 1956, and was a quintessential Carolinian all his life. Although he took an MA at George Washington University in Washington DC in 1970 during his tenure at NGS, his PhD was from the Uni-versity of North Carolina in Chapel Hill, with a dissertation on his boyhood interest, the archaeology of central South Carolina.

Despite these Southeastern US interests, which included fieldwork in Georgia between 1952 and 1958, the award of an honorary Doctor of Letters from Belmont Abbey College, NC (1985) and a Distinguished Alumnus Award from UNC (2007), it is for his contributions to Mesoamerican archae-ology that George Stuart will be most widely and fondly remembered.

His Maya career began as surveyor on the NGS-Tulane University Expedition to Dzibilchaltun in Yucatan (1958-1960: his map was not published until 1979)under E. Wyllys Andrews IV, where his drafting and artistic talents first came to notice and landed him a job as a cartographer/draftsman in the Map Division of National Geographic in Washington, DC, (he also co-directed the Cobá Archaeological Mapping Project in Quintana Roo in 1974-75, working with William Folan and his team).

In 1968 he researched, compiled, and drew the NGS “Ar-chaeological Map of Middle America: Land of the Feathered Serpent”, which appeared as an insert in the National Geo-graphic Magazine (Vol.134 No.4). Its 24 by 18 inches packed in an amazing amount of data, and the reverse added an index, a detail map of the Valley of Mexico showing the Aztec and later landscape and a time chart illustrated by sculptures. It sold out, was reprinted with minor additions in 1972, and remains a treasured and useful resource to many of us. The subsequent “Land of the Maya” map (NGM Vol.176 No.4, 1989) was similarly useful.

By 1975, George Stuart had become a writer and editor for the Magazine and for NGS books and films, in 1980 was promoted Senior Research Cartographer, and in 1990 Senior Assistant Editor for Archaeology of the magazine itself and a member of the Editorial Planning Council.: his good sense, good advice, and good humor made him an increasingly-val-ued member of the NGS core staff, and this enhanced his influence on the Research and Exploration committee.

When he became its Chair in 1994, he acquired an annual discretionary fund (one year, he noted, a misplaced decimal

point by the accounting division multiplied this tenfold – he utilized it all for pressing archaeology projects). He instituted small (less than $5,000) grants made on his own initiative to get what he saw as important projects off the ground, notably some by graduate students who would not have succeeded at Committee grant level. His acumen was borne out by several of these becoming formal, multi-year Research Commit-tee-funded investigations, as were some that he took to the Committee and argued for on the basis of a hunch that they would repay a modest $25,000 of immediate support. While he and the Committee were wary of engendering open-ended commitments of the kind that had funded the Leakeys’ human origins research in Africa for many years – so that four years was the normal time limit on any project receiving funds – he would also suggest to those who had been successful and looked like continuing that they simply think of another proj-ect and submit it to the Committee. In this way George Stuart became a veritable Maecenas for Mesoamerican archaeology.

At the same time, he was writing popular books for the NGS Special Publications division: “Discovering Man’s Past in the Americas” (1969), “The Mysterious Maya” (1977), and

“Lost Kingdoms of the Maya” (1993) were all co-written with his first wife, Gene S. Stuart (1930-1993) and combined a high level of scholarship with an easy style and superb illus-trations. He also wrote “Archaeology and You” (1996) with Frank McMananamon, published jointly by NGS, the Society for American Archaeology (SAA) and the National Parks Service, “Ancient Pioneers: the First Americans” (2001),and oversaw “Peoples and Places of the Past” for the Historical Atlas Division of NGS (1983).

George Stuart was also a serious Maya scholar: with Da-vid Stuart, the youngest of his four children with Gene and a noted Maya epigrapher and art historian, he wrote “Palenque: Eternal City of the Maya” (2008), a book about the first Maya site to be seriously explored. His interest in the intellectual


103

term inmates in a California State Prison whom Stuart had encouraged in their hieroglyphic studies and supplied with publications. It was a thoughtful, generous, and intellectual-ly-productive act absolutely typical of George Stuart, and the last thing he did before the onset of his final illness. He was honored in diverse ways: in 1992 by election as a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of London, the world’s premier archaeological society; in 1996 by the Society for American Archaeology with a Presidential Recognition Award after he had set up the Gene S. Stuart Award “to honor outstanding efforts to enhance public understanding of archaeology” in

“the most interesting and responsible original story or series about any archaeological topic published in a newspaper or magazine”. In 2000 the SAA added their Award for Excel-lence in Public Education: in addition to his output of books and articles from NGS, George Stuart had given classes in venues ranging from local colleges to grade schools. In 1997 Harvard’s Peabody Museum gave him the Tatiana Prosk-ouriakoff Award for “outstanding achievement in the study of New World archaeology”. He was an honorary citizen of both Guatemala City, where the Universidad Francisco Marroquín also gave him in 2006 the Orden del Pop [‘Order of the Royal Mat’ – a symbol of Maya rulership] and Vallad-olid in Yucatan: he loved the Maya and their land, and was himself a man universally and affectionately respected across the whole profession of Mesoamerican and wider New World Archaeology

Text: Norman Hammond

NewsProyecto de crear un corpus paralelo

de nahuatl y españolMéxico D.F. (INAH/www.inah.gob.mx). En el marco del Segundo Encuentro de Humanistas Digitales, que se realiza en la Biblioteca Vasconcelos, expertos en lingüística com-putacional trabajan en la creación de un “corpus paralelo” electrónico, que es la recopilación de 30 libros en náhuatl y en español, que sirva como materia prima para el desarrol-lo de herramientas tecnológicas con fines académicos y de preservación de la lengua. La especialista en computación, María Ximena Gutiérrez Vasques, junto con Elena Vilchis Vargas y Rocío Cerbón Ynclán, de la carrera de Lengua y Literatura Hispánicas de la Facultad de Filosofía y Letras y becarias del Grupo de Ingeniería Lingüística (GIL), del Instituto de Ingeniería de la UNAM, expusieron el trabajo que desarrollan actualmente enfocado a la lengua náhuatl. El

proyecto que surgió el año pasado en el GIL, bajo la tutoría de Gerardo Sierra, jefe de este departamento, y Alfonso Medina Urrea de El Colegio de México. Los 30 obras con todas las variantes del náhuatl y sobre diversos temas – como tradi-ciones, didácticos, recetarios, científicos, musicales, literarios, etc. – basan el corpus.

Una vez reunidas, las escanearon y las pasaron a un pro-grama de reconocimiento de caracteres, proceso que significó una ardua labor, ya que dicho programa “confundía” algunas palabras en náhuatl y no hacía la traducción correcta. La escritura de esta lengua no está normalizada, se basa en la fonética, por lo que tiene correcciones de manera manual y se crearon un alfabeto con los caracteres más comunes en los libros escritos en náhuatl para evitar futuros errores. María Ximena Gutiérrez señaló que el trabajo tiene muchas aplica-ciones potenciales que se podrían dividir en dos áreas: Por

history of Maya studies yielded an examination (2003) of the contribution made by Constantine S. Rafinesque (1784-1840), the superb “Quest for Decipherment: An Historical and Bib-liographical Essay on the Study of Maya Hieroglyphic Writ-ing” (1992). He was an ardent bibliophile, on one occasion mortgaging his house to buy a set of Lord Kingsborough’s (1829-1833) “Antiquities of Mexico”. He kept the dozen el-ephant-folio volumes in his office in a tall stack on the floor, and enjoyed the incredulity of visiting colleagues. He built a library extension when he moved to Barnardsville, which became the focus for his research and for occasional small conferences; his 15,000 books were donated to the University of North Carolina’s Wilson Library in 2007, but he remained active in Maya scholarship.

In 1985, realizing that advances in Maya hieroglyphic decipherment were outrunning the capacity of general Me-soamerican journals to accommodate the resulting studies, and also that many needed to be short monographs rather than articles, Stuart started the series Research Reports on Ancient Maya Writing, published from the Center for Maya Research which he established as a non-profit corporation in Washington, and available by subscription. The first two Reports were in fact very short – on the Yaxha Emblem Glyph as yax-ha and on a new child-father relationship glyph noted on Tikal Stela 31, both by David Stuart. The third, on prob-lematic Emblem Glyphs, was by Stephen Houston in 1986; in 1987 a further eleven Reports appeared. The last of these, RR14, was at 52 pages by far the longest to date, and was David Stuart’s classic “Ten Phonetic Syllables”. As the series became established, George Stuart recruited Jeff Splitstoser, a fellow-member of the Pre-Columbian Society of Washington, DC, as managing editor. This proved useful when, after an hiatus in 2002-2004, publication resumed from the Boundary End Archaeology Research Center (www.precolumbia.org/BEARC/), a second nonprofit which Stuart had established in Barnardsville after his retirement from NGS and move away from Washington with his second wife, Melinda Young Frye, whom he had married in 1994; it continues to operate, and its research output, in future online, will be among his legacies. The print series of Research Reports ended with #60 in September 2013, “The Rise of Chak Ek’ “, on an aspect of the Dresden Codex Venus table, written by a group of long-


104

un lado, los especialistas que estudian la lengua, en particular las lenguas indígenas como el náhuatl, podrán hacer muchos estudios con lo que hemos recopilado sobre el tipo de vari-ación dialectal, o diacrónicos (comparar cómo ha cambiado la lengua del siglo XVI a la fecha). También se podrán hacer estudios de temas culturales porque hay recetarios, materiales didácticos, libros de tradiciones, literatura, etcétera.

Desde el punto de vista computacional, se podrán desar-rollar sistemas de traducción automática. Este tipo de corpus paralelo podría ser el inicio para crear herramientas y llegar un día a tener un traductor automático. Por ejemplo, que en Google apareciera la opción de traducir al náhuatl. Ximena Gutiérrez indicó que su labor dentro de este proyecto está enfocada a conformar un diccionario automático bilingüe.

El corpus paralelo, aún en construcción, será una materia prima para el desarrollo de tecnologías lingüísticas, como traductores automáticos, un normalizador ortográfico e in-vestigaciones de carácter cultural o académico que faciliten su aprendizaje, estudio y conservación”. La intención de los que participan en el proyecto es la puesta en línea de este corpus paralelo, para que pueda estar al alcance de cualquier persona interesada en el tema. (http://www.inah.gob.mx/boletines/251-tecnologias-para-di-fusion/7194-crean-proyecto-digital-sobre-la-lengua-nahuatl; accesado 15 de Julio 2014)

Descubren escultura teotihuacana sobre la Cascada los Huenchos, Aguascalientes

México D.F.(noticiasmvs.com;AFP). El monolito que data del periodo clásico - del año 200 al 900 - se encuentra gra-bado en una piedra de cantera roja de 1,50 metros de ancho por 1,55 metros de altura y 2,10 metros de profundidad, que pesa cerca de 10 toneladas, explicó la experta. El monolito fue hallada sobre la caída de la Cascada los Huenchos, en el municipio de Calvillo, por un turista que se dio cuenta de que saqueadores ya habían empezado a realizar cortes con un equipo especial para retirar el monolito que tiene un grabado pétreo. Según la arqueóloga Ana Pelz Marín (INAH) la escul-tura muestra un masculino que presenta ornamentos relacii-onados con la época de Teotihuacán. El turista, que hace dos semanas se cayó de una rama mientras se divertía y se topó con la piedra tapada con maleza, dio aviso a las autoridades que ya han dispuesto un complejo operativo para extraer la piedra completa con un helicóptero especial.

(http://noticiasmvs.com/#!/noticias/descubren-monolito-te-otihuacano-en-aguascalientes-gracias-a-saqueadores-771.html; accesado 11 de Julio, 2014)

Deslave causa daños en el Edificio 14 de Moral Reforma, Tabasco

VillaherMosa (Tabasco Hoy//www.tabascohoy.com; Paulina Maldonado, Jesús Buendía). El fin de semana pasado se regis-tró el deslave del Edifico 14 de la zona arqueológica de Moral Reforma, ubicado a 57 km de Balancán Los daños llegaron al 10 por ciento de la zona norte del montículo según el en-cargado de las investigaciones en la Zona de Moral Reforma, el arqueólogo Francisco Cuevas. Las lluvias desde diciem-bre del 2013 hasta ahora, han ocasionado afectaciones en el parte que no fue explorada. Lo que sucede es que la lluvia en estas grandes cantidades penetró entre la colcha o cubierta de tierra, que se acumuló por muchos años y los muros del edificio. La razón por la que esa parte del montíulo no había sido destapado era porque servío como pared de apoyo. Que se ve en el imágen (Fig. 1) no es un deslave de la edificación propiamente, sino se desprendió esa cubierta que con los años se fue creando, afirmó Cuevas. Todas las zonas de Patrimonio Cultural cuentan con un seguro por lo que el encargado del Departamento de Resguardo de Bienes Culturales, José Gua-dalupe Domey López, asegura que se pagarán por el daño del deslave, un aproximado de 1.500.000 pesos. Finalmente el equipo del Instituto Nacional de Arqueología e Historia dice que esperan tener los recursos económicos en un mes para trabajar en la restauración. De continuar las lluvias fuertes en la región, el Edifico 14 de la Zona Arqueológica de Mor-al Reforma podría sufrir más afectaciones si no se atiende a corto plazo evaluó Alberto Baños Vela, Ingeniero Civil, preocupado por la situación que atraviesan la construcción prehispánica de esta municipalidad. Los daños son fuertes debido que se trata de la base de la estructura la que se de-slavó y el mismo pesor de la construcción en la parte de arriba impactar・para que el material siga desmoronándose. Eso pone en riesgo a toda la construcción que es relativamente nueva ya que se hizo en el 2012.(http://www.tabascohoy.com/2/notas/index.php?ID=202226; accesado 15 de Julio 2014)

Hallazgos en Pavencul, Chiapas, MexicoTuxTla guTierrez (El Heraldo de Chiapas; Mariana Morales). Seis objetos prehispánicos fueron hallados en el ejido Paven-cul, ubicado aproximadamente a dos horas del municipio de Tapachula. Los restos encontrados, entre los que también se rescataron vasijas de cerámica, fueron desenterrados de una propiedad privada cuando un hombre inició la construcción de una vivienda. De acuerdo con imágenes obtenidas por El Heraldo de Chiapas, una de las figuras halladas es un hom-bre con un traje colgante, que con sus piernas cerradas y sus manos sostiene una vasija de la que sale algún objeto. Otra de las figuras es también de menor tamaño y tiene alguna im-agen, pero por su antigüedad poco se distingue, aunque sí se marcan unas formas ondulatorias. Ese ejido forma parte de la zona fronteriza con Guatemala, cuya ruta fue paso de la cul-tura maya, considerada la más prestigiosa de Centroamérica. De acuerdo con datos obtenidos a través del Acceso a la In-formación Pública, los territorios con potencial arqueológico son Pijjiapan, Mapastepec, Escuintla y Tapachula, en la zona

Fig. 1. Deslave en el lado del Edifico 14 de de Moral Reforma (Foto: Jesús Buendía/Tabasco Hoy)


105

Costa; Acacoyagua, Acapetahua, Chicomuselo y Cintalapa en la Sierra Madre de Chiapas; sin embargo, aún no han sido explorado por el Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Histo-ria Chiapas. Asimismo, según el atlas arqueológico, la enti-dad posee más de mil 400 sitios prehispánicos donde habría estructuras, cerámica, lítica, cuevas y gráficos rupestres de civilizaciones mayas o zoques, por mencionar algunas. De igual manera, a pesar de ser sitios arqueológicos que no han sido explorados y sólo registrados en el atlas, también están protegidos por la Ley Federal sobre Monumentos y Zonas Ar-queológicas. (http://www.oem.com.mx/elheraldodechiapas/notas/n3430724.htm; accesado 18 de Junio 2014)

Descubren tres entierros en Nueva Esperanza, El Salvador

san salVaDor (Zocalo Saltillo//AFP). Tres osamentas hu-manas de más de 1,600 años, conservadas por estar cubiertas de ceniza durante una erupción volcánica en El Salvador fueron presentadas como uno de los más importantes hal-lazgos arqueológicos en la historia del país. Casi completas y en buen estado de conservación, las osamentas podrían corresponder a un niño de entre 7 y 9 años de edad con dos cuentas de barro alrededor del cuello, y a dos adultos de 25 a 35 años, explicó el arqueólogo Óscar Camacho basándose en los estudios preliminares realizados por investigadores salvadoreños y japoneses.

El descubrimiento, producto de investigaciones iniciadas en 2007 por dos estudiantes de la Universidad Tecnológica, se produjo en abril pasado en el sitio arqueológico Nueva Esperanza, próximo a la costa del Pacífico, en una zona con-ocida como El Bajo Lempa, unos 90 km al sureste de San Salvador. Nueva Esperanza fue cubierto por la ceniza de las gigantescas erupciones del volcán de Ilopango entre los siglos V y VI, bajo la cual se ha conservado evidencia arqueológica de un pueblo costeño prehispánico, posiblemente dedicado a la producción de sal y a la pesca. El investigador japonés y

director del proyecto, Akira Ichikawa, coordinó la excavación en un pozo de 4 por 2 metros. Las osamentas corresponden a una comunidad que pudo haber subsistido con la produc-ción de sal y lo trascendente es que abre una nueva puerta de investigaciones para la arqueología salvadoreña, que se había enfocado únicamente en los centros ceremoniales”, declaró Ichikawa. Para el investigador, debajo de la capa de ceniza volcánica de unos dos metros “hay una riqueza arque-ológica para conocer la vida cotidiana y la subsistencia de los antiguos pobladores costeños. Los tres entierros estaban acompañados con ofrendas. Los investigadores destacaron que dos de las osamentas se encontraban en posición sentada, con las piernas cruzadas, aspecto registrado en otros sitios ar-queológicos como Kaminaljuyú en Guatemala y Teotihuacán en México, que constituyeron centros de poder en la época precolombina.

Este es el primer hallazgo de esta naturaleza que hemos realizado en los últimos años y permitirá al país conocer más sobre los primeros pobladores de esta región”, comentó por su parte el antropólogo y secretario de Cultura de la Presi-dencia, Ramón Rivas.

En la excavación se descubrieron, entre otros objetos, seis posibles ofrendas (vasijas, cántaros y ollas de barro) de color café oscuro y franjas rojas asociadas a los restos óseos, que estaban

colocadas con las aberturas hacia abajo sobre la tierra. Las osamentas casi completas (en 85%) se encuentran en proceso de limpieza y estudio por parte de la Dirección de Arque-ología, ubicada en el Museo Nacional de Antropología de San Salvador. El análisis químico de cada una se realizará a partir de la extracción de una pieza dental y una parte de la costilla para determinar aspectos tales como tipo de alimentación, sexo, edad, enfermedades que padecieron y forma de vida.(http://www.zocalo.com.mx/seccion/articulo/encuentran-3-osamentas-de-mas-de-mil-anos-en-el-salvador-1404525850; accesado 11 de Julio 2014)

Research Notes

Primera temporada del Proyecto Arqueológico de la Región de Chaculá (PARCHA)

guaTeMala (Victor Castillo) y Bonn (Ulrich Wölfel). El Proyecto Arqueológico de la Región de Chaculá (PARCHA) llevó a cabo su primera temporada en el mes de julio del año 2013. La región de Chaculá, ubicada en el norte del municipio de Nentón, Departamento de Huehuetenango, Guatemala (Fig. 1), cobró notoriedad en los estudios mesoamericanos desde que el investigador alemán Eduard Seler realizara reconoci-mientos y excavaciones en este lugar en el año de 1896. Du-rante algunos meses, Seler hizo una documentación de varios sitios arqueológicos, entre los que destacan Chaculá, Uaxac Canal y Quen Santo. Producto de sus investigaciones Seler publicó en 1901 el libro Die alten Ansiedlungen von Chaculá im Distrikte Nenton des Departements Huehuetenango der Republik Guatemala. Debido a la publicación de Seler, los sitios arqueológicos de la región de Chaculá son conocidos en la literatura arqueológica, e incluso hoy en día los inves-tigadores mayistas aún hacen referencia a los resultados del trabajo de Seler (por ejemplo, Brady 2009; de Montmollin Fig. 1. Mapa de Guatemala indicando la Región de Chaculá.


106

1995; Kowalski 1989). Las investigaciones arqueológicas cesaron en la región luego de que Seler visitara el área. En 1979 Carlos Navarrete publicó bajo auspicios de la UNAM un catálogo del corpus escultórico de los monumentos de piedra que aún quedaban de las ruinas del antiguo casco de la finca. Debido a que hasta la fecha no se han realizado excavaciones estratigráficas en el área, la secuencia de ocupación perman-ece desconocida, aunque Navarrete (1979) reporta para Quen Santo y Chaculá ejemplares de cerámica Plomiza en superfi-cie y se inclina a creer que al menos la última ocupación de estos sitios data alrededor del año 1000 DC. El hallazgo por Seler de las famosas estelas en Sacchaná, muy cerca de Quen Santo, pero en territorio mexicano, con sus fechas en cuenta larga correspondientes al 874 y 879 DC, también sugiere al menos una ocupación para el Clásico Terminal. Reciente-mente, James Brady (2009) publicó un nuevo estudio sobre las cuevas de Quen Santo, en dónde ofrece aproximaciones etnográficas y nuevos hallazgos arqueológicos.

En base al reporte de Seler, PARCHA realizó una prim-era temporada de investigaciones de campo con fines de (a) producir un mapa de los Grupos A y B del sitio arqueológico Chaculá, (b) localizar otros sitios arqueológicos mencionados por Seler, (c) generar información puntual para elaborar una base de datos para un sistema de información geográfica (GIS) de la región que ofrezca un soporte documental para

futuras investigaciones más extensas y (d) promover el reg-istro y la protección de los sitios arqueológicos de la región de Chaculá.

Los trabajos de mapeo de la temporada 2013 se concen-traron en el mapeo de los Grupos A y B de Chaculá, traba-jo que se logró con éxito. Sin embargo, los recorridos de reconocimiento en el área montañosa entre ambos grupos mayores revelaron concentraciones menores de estructuras y terrazas que no fueron mapeadas debido a la intensidad de la vegetación, las limitaciones impuestas por el tiempo y lo escabroso del terreno. Se espera que estos grupos menores puedan ser mapeados en futuras temporadas de campo para tener una comprensión integral del asentamiento de Chaculá.

El conjunto que llamamos Grupo A presenta más de se-senta estructuras individuales, localizadas en las pendientes de un cono de denudación. En base a nuestro conocimiento y a informes de los habitantes de Chaculá, concluimos que este grupo es el que tiene la mayor densidad de estructuras en el sitio. La presencia de una estela lisa, así como algunos edificios con una cierta monumentalidad (en comparación con las plataformas bajas que son la forma más común en todo el sitio) indica que este pudo haber sido algún lugar de importancia en el antiguo asentamiento. Sin embargo, la mayor parte de los edificios tiene un carácter habitacional, con grupos de entre 2 y 4 estructuras sobre una plataforma al lado del pendiente de los cerros circundando el cono. La diversidad arquitectónica de los edificios parece prometedora para futuras investigaciones.

El Grupo B presenta una cantidad menor de edificios. Como se mencionó anteriormente, existe un mapa de este conjunto elaborado por Eduard Seler, quien acuñó el nombre de “Templo del Oeste” a la estructura principal. Esta estructu-ra destaca por su tamaño, ya que es la más grande identificada hasta ahora en todo el sitio. Hoy en día es visitado por guías espirituales quienes practican ceremonias en ese lugar sagra-do. Puesto que uno de los objetivos del proyecto consiste en estudiar ruinas exploradas por Eduard Seler, era importante para nosotros incluir el Grupo B en nuestro mapeo.

El mapeo de Chaculá reveló que éste es un sitio mucho más grande y complejo de lo que se pensaba. Seler solamente muestra tres grupos, aunque el número total de grupos de Chaculá todavía no es conocido.

Durante el reconocimiento en el área de la aldea La Trin-idad entre Chaculá y Quen Santo pudimos localizar 11 sitios arqueológicos; entre estos se encuentran dos grupos del sitio Tres Lagunas, mencionado por Seler, y un sitio de arte rupes-tre llamado Yal Ib’ach (Chuj, “el agua del armadillo”). En el sitio Pueblo Viejo Quen Santo logramos reubicar las excava-ciones que Eduard Seler realizara durante sus investigaciones en las Estructuras 27, 37, 41, 44. Además, localizamos 8 nuevos monumentos de piedra dispersos en los diferentes grupos del mencionado sitio (Fig. 2).

Uno de los primeros frutos de la aproximación regional al área fue la detección y definición de un patrón arquitectónico que llamamos “Patrón de Integración Cancha-Plataforma Principal”, presente en dos sitios arqueológicos hallados du-rante el reconocimiento (Fig. 3) y en dos grupos de Pueblo Viejo Quen Santo. En este patrón, la cancha para el juego de pelota tiene una orientación norte-sur y el edificio que delim-ita su lado oriental está integrado con la plataforma principal del grupo, la cual contiene varias superestructuras.

Fig. 2. Escultura de piedra encontrada en Pueblo Viejo Quen Santo.

Fig. 3. Sitio arqueológico “Rancho Viejo” en el área de la aldea La Trinidad, vista hacia el oriente de la estructura para el juego de pelota integrada con la plataforma principal.


107

An Early AKAN Head-Variant Glyph?Boston (Mario Giron-Ábrego). This brief study will focus on glyph pA9 from the San Bartolo stone block hieroglyphic text conservatively dated to ca. 300 BCE (Saturno et al. 2006), and propose that this anthropomorphic profile might repre-sent an archaic variant of the Classic Period AKAN logogram [200-900 CE] (Figure 1 and 2). The glyphic collocation in question is part of a longer text of at least ten glyph blocks in length. This text, the earliest Lowland Maya hieroglyphic inscription so far uncovered and which currently eludes a definite decipherment, was found by archaeologist Boris Bel-trán in 2005 at the Preclassic site of San Bartolo, Guatemala (Saturno et al. 2006).

The enigmatic and multifaceted supernatural Ahkan, or god A’ as it was originally called by Zimmermann (1956:162-163), prior to the phonetic decipherment of his name by Grube and Nahm (1994:714-715), is the Dionysian Maya deity of intoxication, excessive pleasure and irrational nature (Grube 2001, 2004; Stone and Zender 2011:38-39; Taube 1992:14-17). Ahkan is a god of many aspects and Maya art reflects a multitude of his diverse manifestations (Fig-ure 3 and 4). The Ahkan complex ranges from a connection to alcoholic substances such as chih, a fermented beverage made from the maguey plant (Grube 2004; Grube and Nahm 1994:714-715; Stone and Zender 2011:39), to a transforma-tion into Jatz’oon Ahkan “Striking Ahkan,” a patron god of Mesoamerican gladiatorial blood-sports (Taube and Zender 2011:202-204; Zender 2004:5-8). In the past, Ahkan has

been associated with the gods of death, due to his occasion-al scenes of self-decapitation, a skeletal lower jaw and an AK’AB “darkness” glyph that sometimes covers the upper half of his face (Grube and Nahm 1994:714-116; Schellhas 1904:10-15; Taube 1991:14-17). Although Ahkan’s associa-tion with death remains somewhat nebulous, it is interesting to note that his name is a word for “wasp” in a number Maya languages (Stone and Zender 2011:39). Stone and Zender (2011:39) further observe that such relationship could explain both the death imagery (1) and the blackened eyes as reminis-cent of the wasp, perhaps the Vespula alascensis (Figure 4).

The earliest known instances of Ahkan in Maya art come from a Late Preclassic fragmentary mural portion from San Bartolo, Guatemala, and from two Early Classic examples: one found as part of glyph A9 on Copan Stela 63, and a sec-ond from a cache carved vessel (see Taube 2011:50-57, Fig. 5). These three early examples of Ahkan portray a gruesome aspect of this deity, showing skeletal lower jaws and human femurs on their heads (Figure 5). Both of the Early Classic images bear the so-called “percent sign” on their cheeks, but only the carved cache vessel and the San Bartolo examples show the disembodied eyeballs on their foreheads, and the latter appears to spurt blood in a dramatic fashion. Both the

“percentage sign” and the disembodied eyeball on the fore-head are diagnostic features of this deity. A fourth possible instance of an early Ahkan glyphic profile might be glyph A5 on the Late Preclassic Fidel Tristán Jade Museum’s jadeite plaque INS 2007 (Mora-Marín 2001:Fig. 18). This pro-file, engulfed by a striated U-shaped element (2), shows an

Fig. 2. a) The San Bartolo stone block text in the context where it was found in 2005. Photo by Boris Beltrán, courtesy of William Sat-urno; b) Text on the San Bartolo stone block, ca. 300 BCE. Drawing by David Stuart (from Saturno et al. 2006:Fig. 4).

a b

Las investigaciones iniciales de PARCHA - generosa-mente financiada por la Fundación Alemana de América Antigua (Deutsche Altamerikastiftung) - han revelado una complejidad particular en la región de Chaculá en relación a la ubicación de los asentamientos y su relación con el paisaje, han relocalizado varios sitios descritos por Seler hace más de cien años, y han descubierto nuevos sitios desconocidos para la arqueología de la región. Es nuestra intención que éstas y futuras investigaciones ayuden a tener un panorama más amplio sobre el rol que jugaron los antiguos asentamientos de Chaculá en las tierras altas noroccidentales de Guatemala, y en general en el espectro más extenso de la cultura de los antiguos Mayas.

ReferenciasBrady, James E. (ed.)2009 Exploring Highland Maya Ritual Cave Use – Archaeology and Ethnog-

raphy in Huehuetenango, Guatemala, AMCS Bulletin 20. Association for Mexican Cave Studies, Austin.

de Montmollin, Olivier1995 Settlement and Politics in Three Classic Maya Polities. Monographs

in World Archaeology, 24. Prehistory Press, Madison.Kowalski, Jeff Karl1989 Who Am I among the Itza?: Links between Northern Yucatan and the

Western Maya Lowlands and Highlands. En: Richard A. Diehl y Janet C. Berlo (eds.), Mesoamerica after the Decline of Teotihuacan, A.D. 700-900, pp. 173–187. Dumbarton Oaks, Washington D.C.

Navarrete, Carlos1979 Las Esculturas de Chaculá, Huehuetenango, Guatemala. Universidad

Nacional Autónoma de México, México, D.F.Seler, Eduard1901 Die alten Ansiedlungen von Chaculá im Distrikte Nenton des Depar-

tements Huehuetenango der Republik Guatemala. Dietrich Reimer, Berlin.

Fig. 1 a) San Bartolo stone block glyphic text section pA6-pA10. Drawing by David Stuart (from Saturno et al. 2006:Fig.4); b) En-larged pA9 glyph.

a b


108

AK’AB “darkness” marking on its upper half, another Ahkan diagnostic (Figure 6).

Returning to glyph pA9, it should be mentioned that it is the penultimate glyph of the surviving and incomplete San Bartolo stone block text (Figure 2). In another work that ex-pands on the insights and observations by others (see Houston 2006:1249-1250; see Mora-Marín 2008; see Saturno et al. 2006), I (Giron-Ábrego n.d.) argued that the glyphic section pA6-pA10 of this text corresponds to a nominal phrase (Fig-ure 1a). This nominal phrase begins with two glyphs that read PA’:CHAN AJAW pa’ chan ajaw or “lord of the split sky place.” I suspect that the collocations that follow this section, pA8, pA9, and pA10, would correspond to additional epithets of this individual’s personal name (Figure 2b).

As noted by Marc Zender (personal communication 2013), the clues to pA9’s reading remain scant due to the glyph’s abraded condition, unclear and unique epigraphic context, and the almost complete absence of contemporaneous glyph-ic data to which it could be compared. pA9 also lacks any apparent affixation that could clarify its decipherment, save for a lock of hair on the head’s back that may simply be part of the larger sign. The expected aj- or -na phonetic complements that would reinforced the AKAN reading are not evidently present (Grube and Nahm 1994:714-715). An-other of Ahkan’s features, notable for its absence on pA9, is the “percentage sign” which can be seen on the cheeks of some of the profiles and glyphic head-variants in Figures 7

and 5 (Grube 2004; Grube and Nahm 1994:714-715; Taube 1992:14; Schellhas 1904:10-15). On the other hand, however, it is important to note that within the spectrum and variations of the known AKAN head-variants the “percentage sign” is not always present. This is the case for the disembodied eye as well (see Taube 1992), which as was mentioned above, is another recurrent feature of this deity (Figures 5 and 6). At the same time, Houston (2000:144) observes that in Preclas-sic writing “[h]ieroglyphs tend to fill an entire glyph block, with relatively little suffixation,” and that “signs representing heads, occur in great diversity. Possibly the heads represent lists of gods, brought together as patrons of a particular site” and thus it is not implausible to suggest that logographic profiles such as pA9, may represent early variants of deities widely featured in later Classic Period Maya writing and art.

The evidence to propose an AKAN reading for pA9 is based on two morphological features of this glyph (see Fig-ures 1b and 7). Inevitably, the still poorly understood nature of Preclassic Maya hieroglyphic writing makes these features to some extent conditional, but in light of the above men-tioned traits that define the glyphic AKAN, these are none-theless intriguing and worthy of consideration. I suggest that if the partially erased upper area of this surely logographic portrait was once a section that darkened the eyes and the forehead, then it would conform with Karl Taube’s observa-tion that “[t]he most striking characteristic of this death god is the black horizontal band across the eyes, which contrasts sharply with the blanched whiteness of the rest of his face” (Taube 1992:17). It is reminiscent of the head-variant on the glyphic caption that belongs to the floating Jatz’oon Ahkan from the Altar de Sacrificios vase (see Figure 3b and 7g), as well as to the face of the “self-decapitating” Ahkan that sits cross-legged (Figure 3a). Moreover, it is tempting to consider, that if the detail on pA9’s forehead represents a disembodied eye, we would then have at least two of diagnostic features of the logographic AKAN represented on this Preclassic glyph from San Bartolo: the pervasive blackened upper half of his face and the intermittently present gouged eyeball on the forehead.

Fig. 4. a) Common Yellow Jacket Wasp (Vespula alascensis) (adapt-ed from a photograph by Fir0002/Flagstaffotos under GNU Free Documentation License); b) Mok Chih “pulque sickeness” Ahkan holding a jar with AK’AB “darkness” markings swarmed by bees or Yellow Jacket wasps (after Stone and Zender 2011:145 and vase K2284).

Fig. 3. a) Ahkan from the Altar de Sacrificios vase in the act of self-decapitation (after Grube 2004:Fig. 8a and Taube 1992:Fig. 3b); b) Jatz’oon Ahkan “Striking-Ahkan” from the Altar de Sacrificios vase (after Zender 2004:Fig. 8b).

a b

a b


109

Bibliography Giron-Ábrego, Marion.d. A Preclassic Long-Lipped Glyphic Profile: A Preliminary Reading of

the San Bartolo Stone Block Text. Manuscript submitted for publica-tion.

Fig. 5. a) A Late Preclassic Ahkan portrait based on a fragmentary mural section from the site of San Bartolo, Guatemala (after Taube 2011:Fig. 5; b) Ahkan profile emerging from the jaws of a serpent and smoking a cigar. From the lid of an Early Classic incised cache vessel (after Stone and Zender 2011:38 and Taube 1992:Fig.2h); c) Early Classic glyphic Ahkan profile from Copan Stela 63 (after Taube 2011:54).

a b c

Fig. 6 a) Late Preclassic Fidel Tristán Jade Museum’s jadeite plaque INS 2007, with enlarged A5 glyphic profile. Notice the AK’AB

“darkness” markings on the upper half of the face and compare it to the AKAN head-variant glyphs on Figure 7a and e. Drawing by David Mora-Marín (from Mora-Marín 2001:Fig. 18); b) Glyph A12 from the Hauberg stela showing a similar U-shaped striated element. Drawing by Linda Schele.

Fig. 7 Various glyphic head-variants of the AKAN logogram, in-cluding the proposed Ahkan on pA9 from the San Bartolo stone block text for comparison. Notice how some head-variants lack the “percent sign” on the cheek such as (a) and (f), while others such as (g) lack the disembodied eyeball on the forehead. a) AKAN head-variant logogram with phonetic complements aj- and -na (after Grube 2004:Fig.3e and vase K791). Notice the AK’AB “darkness” markings covering the upper half of his face; b) Glyph pA9 from the San Bartolo stone block text (after Saturno et al. 2006:Fig. 4); c-f) AKAN head-variants with alternating “percent signs”, disembod-ied eyeballs on the foreheads, and -na syllabic complements (after Grube 2004:Fig.3a-d); g) AKAN head-variant from the glyphic cap-tion of Jatz’on Ahkan “Striking Ahkan” on the Altar de Sacrificios vase (after Zender 2004:Fig. 8b).

a

b

Grube, Nikolai2001 Intoxication and Ecstasy. In: Nikolai Grube, Eva Eggebrecht, and

Matthias Seidel (eds.), Maya: Divine Kings of the Rain Forest, pp. 294-295. Könemann, Köln.

2004 Akan: The God of Drinking, Disease and Death. In: Daniel Graña Behrens, Nikolai Grube, Christian M. Prager, Frauke Sachse, Stefanie Teufel, and Elisabeth Wagner (eds.), Continuity and Change: Maya Religious Practices in Temporal Perspective, pp. 59-76. Verlag Anton Saurwein, Markt Schwaben.

Grube, Nikolai, and Werner Nahm1994 “A Census of Xibalba: A Complete Inventory of ‘Way’ Characters on

Maya Ceramics.” In: Barbara Kerr, and Justin Kerr (eds.), The Maya Vase Book Volume 4, pp. 686-715. Kerr Associates, New York.


110

Houston, Stephen D.2000 Into the Minds of Ancients: Advances in Maya Glyph Studies. Journal

of World Prehistory 14(2), pp. 121-201. 2006 An Example of Preclassic Mayan Writing? Science 311, pp. 1249-1250.Houston, Stephen D., John Robertson, and David Stuart 2000 The Language of Classic Maya Inscriptions. Current Anthropology

41:321-356.Kettunen, Harri, and Christophe Helmke2011 Introduction to Maya Hieroglyphs. XVI European Maya Conference,

Copenhagen. Department of American Indian Languages and Cultures, Institute of Cross-cultural and Regional Studies, University of Copen-hagen, Copenhagen.

Macri, Martha J., and Matthew G. Looper 2003 The New Catalog of Maya Hieroglyphs. Volume 1: The Classic Period Inscriptions. The Civilization of the American Indian Series, Vol. 247.

University of Oklahoma Press, Norman.Mora-Marín, David2001 Late Preclassic Inscription Documentation Project. Available at: http://www.famsi.org/reports/99049/index.html.2008 Two Parallel Passages from the Late Preclassic Period: Connections

Between San Bartolo and an Unprovenanced Jade Pendant. WAYEB Notes 29: 1-6 pp. Available at: http://www.wayeb.org/.

Saturno, William A., David Stuart, and Boris Beltrán2006 Early Maya Writing at San Bartolo, Guatemala. Science 311, pp. 1281-

1283.Schele, Linda, and Mary Ellen Miller1986 The Blood of Kings: Dynasty and Ritual in Maya Art. Kimbell Art

Museum, Fort Worth.Schellhas, Paul1904 Representation of Deities of the Maya Manuscripts. Papers of the

Peabody Museum of American Archaeology and Ethnology 4(1). Pea-body Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, Harvard University, Cambridge.

Stone, Andrea, and Marc Zender2011 Reading Maya Art: A Hieroglyphic Guide to Ancient Maya Painting

and Sculpture. Thames & Hudson, London.Taube, Karl A.1992 The Major Gods of Ancient Yucatan. Studies in Pre-Columbian Art &

Archaeology 32. Dumbarton Oaks, Washington, D.C.2011 Iconographie du monde maya ancien. In: Maya, de l’aube au crépus-

cule: Collections nationales du Guatemala, pp. 50-57. Musée du quai Branly, Paris.

Taube Karl, and Marc Zender2011 American Gladiators: Ritual Boxing in Ancient Mesoamerica. In:

Heather Orr and Rex Koontz (eds.), Blood and Beauty:Organized Violence in the Art and Archaeology of Mesoamerica and Central America, pp. 161-220. Cotsen Institute of Archaeology Press, Los Angeles

Zender, Marc2004 Glyphs for ‘Handspan’ and ‘Strike’ in Classic Maya Ballgame Text.

The PARI Journal 4(4):1-9. Zimmermann, Günter1956 Die Hieroglyphen der Maya-Handschriften. Cram, de Gruyter, Ham-

burg.

AcknowledgementsI would like to thank Marc Zender for informing me about the earliest instances of ahkan in Maya art, as well as Nikolai Grube, James Brady, Jeremy Coltman and the anonymous reviewers for commenting on an earlier draft of this research note. I am indebted to David Mora-Marín for so kindly pro-viding me with the high resolution line drawing of the Late Preclassic Fidel Tristán Jade Museum’s jadeite plaque INS 2007 seen on Figure 6. Gratitude is also due to The Paul & Daisy Soros Fellowships for New Americans for their gen-

erous support. Unless noted otherwise, the opinions and any errors or misapprehensions expressed here are my sole responsibility.

End Notes (1) Maya gods and supernaturals associated with death tend show insect-like

qualities such as limbs and wings. (2) To my knowledge, the only other instance of this U-shape striated ele-

ment is that on glyph A12 from the Hauberg stela (see Figure 6b). Linda Schele identified Hauberg stela’s glyph A12 as a possible “emblem glyph” but no reading was proposed (Schele and Miller 1986:191). In either of these two cases it is difficult to say if this U-shaped element is part of the logogram, or if it functions as a phonetic complement to the main sign.

Rediscovery of a Missing Fragment of Caracol Stela 8

FlagsTaFF (Jaime J. Awe) and copenhagen (Christophe Helm-ke). In March of 2014, Mr. Ubaldimir Alfaro of San José Succotz, Cayo District, Belize (Figure 1) informed the senior author that he had found a “stone with carvings” in a corner of his yard. Two weeks later, archaeologists from the Be-lize Institute of Archaeology visited Mr. Alfaro’s home and found that the stone was still mostly buried in the ground. A subsequent excavation unearthed the rest of the stone and confirmed that it was both carved and inscribed. The form and thickness of the stone also indicated that it was likely a fragment of a stela or an altar, although no additional frag-ments of the monument were found (Figure 3a).

During our interview with Alfaro, he reported that the stone had been exposed by erosion following weeks of heavy rainfall in the village. He also informed us that the stone was lying in an area where his grandfather, Ascención Alfaro, had built a bodega many years ago. Following Don Ascención’s death, the bodega had collapsed and, with time, soil had washed down from an adjacent slope, covering its foundation. This explained why the monument fragment had been buried below ground surface in the property of Mr. Alfaro.

Origin of the MonumentIn an effort to determine the origin of the monument frag-ment, we asked Ubaldimir Alfaro if he had any idea how it may have arrived in the location of the now destroyed bode-ga. He responded that his grandfather used to work with ar-chaeologists in the 1950s, and that he commonly stored field equipment and excavated materials for them in his bodega. He also suspected that the fragment may have come from Xunantunich, where, among other places, his grandfather and father (Elias Alfaro) had worked with archaeologists in the 1950s. A close inspection of the monument, however, in-dicated that the limestone was not local, thus providing little support for Xunantunich as its place of origin. In addition, the fragment was reminiscent of a previously reported monument from the area, and a rapid search of the literature confirmed that the fragment matched a missing section of Caracol Stela 8. The latter was originally published in a volume by Carl P. Beetz and Linton Satterthwaite Jr. (1981: 37-39), in which they described most of the monuments that were discovered at Caracol prior to the 1970s. They also noted that Stela 8 had been discovered in Plaza A at Caracol, and that the frag-


111

Table 1) checklist of Caracol monuments makes it clear that Stela 8 had been left at the site in 1953. Furthermore Beetz and Satterthwaite (1981: 37) also report that “following ex-cavation and photography in 1953, the stela was left at the site”. Nevertheless, it seems that Anderson transported the fragment of Stela 8 sometime after 1956, when he left and headed back to town, leaving it in storage at Ascención Al-faro’s bodega.

In the 1950s, the main access to Caracol was via the Camp Six road that originated near Succotz and the town of Benque Viejo. At that time, the Department of Archaeology had its headquarters in Belize City so it is possible that on his way back to the city, Anderson stopped in Succotz to drop off his workers. We believe that it was at this time that he also left the fragment of the monument in the bodega of Ascención Alfaro.

This scenario was in fact corroborated a short time after we initially submitted this note, during a casual conversation with Eddie Camal, a gentlemen from Succotz, who related that his great-grandfather had also worked at Caracol with Anderson in the 1950s. Subsequent to our conversation, he actually showed us a photo of the Caracol crew, taken by Anderson (Figure 2). The photo is dated to April, 1958, well within the dry season when access and work at the site was most feasible. In addition to the truck driver and his helper, the crew consisted of Eddie Camal’s great-grandfather, Isidro Camal as well as Valentin Cu who for many years served as foreman to Awe. Most relevant to the case at hand, the photo also shows Ascención Alfaro and his son Elias Alfaro. This photo thus demonstrates that all the individuals were indeed working with Anderson during a field season in 1958. As a result we surmise that it as part of these excavations that the

fragment of Stela 8 was transported to Succotz and stored in the Alfaro’s bodega.

Not too long after, Anderson became very ill and had to depart for England for medical attention. Anderson never returned to Belize and passed away some time thereafter. The fragment of Stela 8 was therefore forgotten, leaving time and the elements to bury it in the yard of the Alfaro’s in Succotz. It is thanks to the heavy rainfall in 2014 that the monument fragment has once again seen the light of day.

Fig. 2. The field crew of Caracol on the 22nd of April, 1958 (pho-tograph by A.H. Anderson). From left to right: Francisco Trujil-lo (truck helper), Sidney Humes (truck driver), Ascención Alfaro, Valentin Cu, José Valencia, Isidro Camal; Front: Elias Alfaro.

Fig. 1 Map of central Belize showing the location of modern settlements and ar-chaeological sites mentioned in the text (map by Christophe Helmke).

mented pieces of the monument were still located at the site. But how could a frag-ment of Caracol Stela 8, discovered in the 1950s, end up in the yard of Mr. Ubaldimir Alfaro?

The Anderson ConnectionArchival research at the Belize Institute of Archaeology, and interviews with Elias Alfaro Sr., revealed that Alexander Ham-ilton Anderson, the first Commissioner of Archaeology for Belize, worked in the A Group and the South Acropolis of Cara-col in 1956 and 1958. His work in Plaza A was focused in particular to the west base of Structure A6, where he uncovered a set of superimposed tombs plus several mon-uments, including Stela 21 (a slate monu-ment) and Stela 8. We know that Anderson reburied Stela 21 for, using the notes left behind by Anderson, Awe relocated this monument in 1978 and transported it back to Belmopan, via helicopter. Although Ste-la 8 was first identified in 1951, we believe that Anderson found the remainder of the monument when he excavated along the primary east-west axis of Plaza A, to the west of Altar 14 (see Beetz and Satterth-waite 1981: 37). Satterthwaite’s (1954:


112

Description of the Stela FragmentIn comparing the fragment to the drawing of Stela 8 published by Beetz and Satterthwaite (1981: Fig. 9) we can see that the fragment recovered is the upper left portion of the stela and that this is the best preserved portion of the monument. As in-itially recorded, Stela 8 measured at least 2,55 m high, 1,18 m wide and 0,52 cm thick (Beetz and Satterthwaite 1981: 37). The recently recovered fragment is only a small portion of the monument since it measures 78 cm long by 34 cm wide and 25 cm thick. Another smaller fragment once adjoined above that recovered, but it has not been relocated. The rediscovery of the monument has provided us with a special opportunity to produce a new drawing (Figure 3b), which we can compare to the earlier drawing that had been made of the monument (Figure 4), as found at Caracol. Close examination reveals that its carving is somewhat affected by erosion, but it is even over the entirety of the surface and the fragment does not appear to have suffered weathering or spalling during its storage in Succotz. This can be corroborated by a photograph of a plaster cast of the same fragment published by Satterth-waite (1954: Fig. 18).

The carving is otherwise well preserved and reveals part of a glyphic caption and the uppermost extreme of a bice-phalic ceremonial bar that was once borne by a ruler, di-agonally across the chest. The ceremonial bar terminated

in the heads of two serpentine creatures, since parts of the maw are preserved on the fragment. The underside of the mandible also exhibits ventral scales and a pointed beard as is typical of the monuments at Caracol. Within the maw is a bird’s head and from its beak emerges a manifestation of the so-called Jaguar God of the Underworld (see Schele and Miller 1986: 50-51), as can be identified by the distinctive scroll-eye, deeply scalloped eyebrow, pointed incisor and shell beard. Interestingly, the deity is not depicted with the characteristic cruller over the nose, but has an elaborate nasal ornament and seems to wear his hair in a forward swooping quiff, a trait shared by the solar deity K’inich Ajaw (Taube 1992: 50-56). The glyphic caption represents the start of the monument’s text, with the Initial Series Introductory Glyph (wA1) occurring on a missing fragment, but sketched on the drawing by Beetz. The following two glyph blocks, recording the bak’tun and k’atun of the Long Count, are preserved on the fragment. This first (wA2) is clearly written 9-pi-ki for baluun pik or ‘9 bak’tun’ and thereby clarifies the spelling of the glyphs that was so indistinct in the original drawing. The second (wA3) records 19-WINAK?-HAB for balunlajuun winakhaab or ‘19 k’atun’. Although the remainder of the Long Count is missing, one can expect that the text would have gone on to record the complete and “even” Period-End-ing of 9.19.0.0.0 – 9 Ajaw 18 Mol, corresponding to the 28th

Fig. 3. The re-discovered fragment of Caracol Stela 8. a) photograph (by Jaime Awe) and b) drawing (by Christophe Helmke).


113

of June A.D. 810, using the standard GMT correlation (see Beetz and Satterthwaite 1981: 37-39). This date makes Stela 8 contemporaneous with Altar 22, as well as Stelae 9 and 18, which all commemorate this important Period-Ending, and as such these may have been erected during the reign of K’inich Joy K’awil, although it is possible that these monuments were already the works of his successor K’inich Tobil Yopat (Houston 1987: 92; Chase et al. 1991; Grube 1994: 83-86; Martin and Grube 2000: 96-99; Helmke et al. 2006). In any case, Stela 8 is stylistically similar to Stela 11, from a decade earlier (the latter bears a dedicatory date of 9.18.10.0.0), a monument that was clearly erected by K’inich Joy K’awil (Houston 1987: 95, Fig. 71a; Grube 1994: 109).

Final RemarksDespite the many uncertainties that still surround Stela 8, we are pleased that the better preserved portion of the monument has been relocated and is now safely in the custody of the In-stitute of Archaeology. The rediscovery has also allowed us to clarify certain points of the iconography and epigraphy of the monument, although the question of attribution remains problematic on account of the partial epigraphic record. Nev-ertheless, Stela 8 can be dated to the Terminal Classic, a peri-od of great regional sociopolitical upheaval and restructuring, which at Caracol was a vibrant period of renewal, attesting to the perseverance of its population in the face of adversity.

AcknowledgementsMany heartfelt thanks to Ubaldimir Alfaro for contacting the Belize Institute of Archaeology and being so helpful in our efforts to recover and document the monument. We are grate-ful to Eddie Camal and for informing us of the photo by A.H. Anderson. Our thanks also to Jorge Can and Merle Alfaro who undertook the excavations of the monument fragment.

ReferencesBeetz, Carl P. and Linton Satterthwaite Jr.1981 The Monuments and Inscriptions of Caracol, Belize. University Muse-

um Monographs 45. University Museum, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia.

Chase, Arlen F., Nikolai Grube and Diane Z. Chase 1991 Three Terminal Classic Monuments from Caracol, Belize. Research

Reports on Ancient Maya Writing 36. Center for Maya Research, Washington D.C.

Grube, Nikolai1994 Epigraphic Research at Caracol, Belize. In: Diane Z. Chase and Arlen

F. Chase (eds.) Studies in the Archaeology of Caracol, Belize, pp. 83-122. PARI Monograph 7. Pre-Columbian Art Research Institute, San Francisco.

Helmke, Christophe, Harri Kettunen and Stanley Guenter2006 Comments on the Hieroglyphic Texts of the B-Group Ballcourt Mark-

ers at Caracol, Belize. Wayeb Notes 23:1-27.Houston, Stephen D.1987 Appendix II: Notes on Caracol Epigraphy and Its Significance. In:

Arlen F. Chase and Diane Z. Chase (eds.) Investigations at the Classic Maya City of Caracol, Belize: 1985-1987, pp. 85-100. PARI Mono-graph 3. Pre-Columbian Art Research Institute, San Francisco.

Martin, Simon and Nikolai Grube 2000 Chronicle of the Maya Kings and Queens: Deciphering the Dynasties

of the Ancient Maya. Thames & Hudson, London

Satterthwaite, Linton Jr.1954 Sculptured Monuments from Caracol, British Honduras. University

Museum Bulletin 18 (1-2): 2-45.Schele, Linda and Mary E. Miller1986 The Blood of Kings: Dynasty and Ritual in Maya Art. Kimbell Art

Museum, Fort Worth.Taube, Karl A.1992 The Major Gods of Ancient Yucatan. Studies in Pre-Columbian Art and

Archaeology 32. Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection, Washington, D.C.

Fig. 4. The original drawing of Caracol Stela 8 (after Beetz and Satterthwaite 1981: Fig. 9).


114

In 1978, James Fox mentioned the presence of an artificial cave underneath the Postclassic city of Q’umarkaj in the Gua-temalan highlands. James Brady visited the site to document it over a decade later with geologist George Veni (Brady and Veni 1992), and in subsequent years, Brady has continued to expand the corpus of known artificial caves in the Guatema-lan highlands, which currently numbers 22 (Figure 1, Brady 1990, 1991, 2003, 2004; Brady and Veni 1992). In the present article, the author presents two newly-discovered artificial caves and one small natural fault in the western highlands of Guatemala and discusses their importance in ritual, ideology, and archaeological methodology.

Sacred Geography in the Maya WorldThe Maya worldview is typically understood as based in binary oppositions (Vogt 1976, Stone 1995)--high/low, light/dark, civilization/nature, etc. The most sacred supernatural beings for the Q’eqchi’, with whom the author works,are the tzuultaq’a, literally “hill-valley,” who control parts of the natural landscape and must give permission for any activities or constructions realized on his/her land. Temple-pyramids are representations of the binary opposition of hills and caves (Vogt 1964, Coe 1988, Stone 1995). They are even referred to as witz (“hill”) in Classic Maya texts (Stuart 1997). These temple-pyramids were repositories for the bodies of impor-tant elite ancestors and the temples atop them were analogous to caves—important ritual locales from which the spirits of the ancestors and other important supernatural beings could be accessed.

In addition to the artificial representations of caves in temple-pyramids, actual caves were often incorporated into settlements throughout the Maya region (Seler 2003; Thomp-son 1938; A.L. Smith 1955; Brady et al. 1997, Brady and Veni 1992; Brady 2003, Prufer and Kindon 2005). At Dos Pilas (Brady et al. 1997), for example, Brady and his team identi-fied several important ritual caves in the bedrock underlying the site that actually determined the city’s layout, with many of the principal pyramids, palaces, and even several non-elite house groups associated with caves. Residents of Raxruha Viejo (O’Mansky 2003; Woodfill 2010), for example, osten-tatiously incorporated natural witzob’ (hills) into their urban design. Each of the palaces is built upon a hill, and upon the front of the largest hill at the site they built a large stepped platform lined with several stelae and altars.

While the Maya lowlands and parts of the northern high-lands are karstic and contain large amounts of caves, the central and western highlands are instead overlain by basalt, ash, and other non-cave-forming bedrock. If Maya from these regions wish to use caves in similar ways to their karstic peers, they needed to create them themselves. Artificial caves, many of which are Precolumbian, are relatively common in the

Guatemalan (Brady 1990, 1991, 2003, 2004; Brady and Veni 1992) highlands and have also been found in central Mexico (Aguilar et al. 2005, Heyden 1974). While it is possible that one or more of these features was not Precolumbian in ori-gin, they are extensions of a complex that did begin before the Spanish conquest. During the initial visit to Cave 4 at Q’umarkaj, a Precolumbian artifact was noted on the cave floor, a broken ceramic pipe depicting a bird.

A Fourth Artificial Cave at Q’umarkajThe archaeological site of Q’umarkaj (formerly referred to by its non-Maya name, Utatlan), is located in the highlands of the department of El Quiche in western Guatemala. It is one of the most important sites in the Maya highlands, serving as the center of the K’iche’ Empire during the Late Postclassic period and one of the most famous battles of the conquest of Guatemala by the Spaniards in 1524. Before its capital city of Q’umarkaj was destroyed by the Spaniards, the K’iche’ controlled the largest and most powerful empire in the Maya highlands (Fox 1978). The city is best known today through the Popol Vuh, the Maya creation story told from the K’iche’ perspective that tracks the history of the world from its cre-ation through efforts to make it safe for humans, to the crea-tion of humanity and our dispersal through the world, before describing the founding and evolution of their dynasty at

Contribution

Three Previously Unrecorded Cave Features in the Western Highlands of Guatemala

Brent Woodfill

Figure 1: Map of Guatemala showing the location of known artifi-cial caves (drawn by Carlos Tox)


115

Q’umarkaj (Tedlock 1996). Caves play an important role in the text both as the home of the ancestors and deities and the origin for the human race, so it is not surprising that there are multiple artificial caves present underneath the city where its authors lived.

Three artificial caves were previously identified at Q’umarkaj (Brady and Veni 1992), all of which were found in the top third of the mesa upon which the site is situated. Caves 1 and 2 were located on the northern slope of the mesa, while Cave 3 is on the eastern slope. While all three are known to be important ritual locales, the entrance to Cave 3 collapsed during the 1976 earthquake and was never reopened.

While both Cave 1 and 2 are currently used for a variety of ritual activities, Cave 1 is currently the more important. A variety of niches have been dug into the walls, all of which are covered with soot and wax from the candles regularly left to burn in them. Unlike most artificial caves in the Maya world, which tend to consist of a single narrow tunnel, this cave splits off into a total of seven passages. The most complicated of the passages actually drops 8 m into a small chamber that is only accessible with rope.

Cave 4On February 18, 2006, archaeologist Raquel Macario con-tacted the author about the discovery of a fourth artificial cave below Q’umarkaj, located below the modern parking lot, approximately 500 m from the three previously reported caves and near the bottom of the mesa.(1) A reconnaissance was undertaken and the team took notes, photos, and made a preliminary map. Woodfill returned on January 22, 2012 with recent graduates of the University of Louisiana to make a comprehensive map (Figure 2) and document any changes that had occurred over the six years between visits.

Cave 4, like the three previously identified caves, was dug out of the “poorly cemented, fine-grained, Quaternary vol-canic ash” (Brady and Veni 1992) that underlays the archae-ological site. Unlike the others, however, it is a through-cave with two entrances, although only only one has a path lead-ing to it. This primary entrance consists of a large artificial foyer and a smaller, corbelled-vault-shaped entrance (Figure 3) leading to the cave interior. The cave itself is winding, curving, and fundamentally disorienting. A total of 13 small niches are dug into the wall throughout the cave, all of which are covered with soot on their upper sections. Two crosses (see Figure 7) were also carved into the bedrock, one inside the cave and the other adjacent to the secondary entrance.

Cave Features in QuetzaltenangoIn May, 2013, Woodfill was informed of the presence of a small cave on the outskirts of Quetzaltenango by archaeol-ogist Judith Valle. He visited Quetzaletenango in August of the same year accompanied by José Fransico Castañeda, and during a meeting there with municipal historian Francisco Cajas was told about a second cave. Woodfill and Castañeda visited both sites, which were located approximately 2 km away from each other (Figure 4). Quemadero Candelaria was a small, artificial rock shelter while El Encanto turned out to be a small, naturally-occuring shaft in a fault with a modified entrance.

Figure 2: Cave 4, Q’umarkaj, showing the location of the 13 carved niches (I-XIII) (drawn by the author)

Table 1: Modern cultural material recovered at Entrance 1 of Cave 4

1. Soda bottles

2. Folded up newspapers for wrapping ritual paraphernalia (dated July 29, 2001)

3. Small trash bags

4. Clear plastic bags ranging in size from small to medium

5. Several empty tubes of tire repair glue

6. Small firecrackers

7. Loose leaf paper with writing

8. Chocolate wrappers

9. Paper cups

10. Empty bottles of lotion/oil from Mexico:

1. “Para tapar bocas” (to seal mouths)

2. “Contra daño” (against harm)

3. “Contra daño” (against harm)

4. “Del retiro” (retreat)

11. Blue ribbon

12. Siete Machos-brand cologne bottles

13. Condom wrappers, condoms

14. Cigarettes

15. Small plastic bag with cigar inside


116

Quemadero CandelariaQuemadero Candelaria is approximately 3 m deep, 3 m wide, and 3 m tall and was found approximately half-way up a steep slope to the southeast of Quetzaltenago’s central park. It is fronted by a large wooden cross and is covered in soot and dust. The landowner has prohibited people from visiting the cave in recent years, and we were told almost immediately upon arriving that we were trespassing and had to vacate the premises. Although we were not able to properly document it, we still were able to draw a sketch map (Figure 5). GPS coordinates were taken but are not being published in order to prevent future problems with the landowner.

El Encanto (91°32’17.246” W, 14° 48’ 27.372” N)Unlike Candelaria, El Encanto is still an active ritual site with large amounts of ritual paraphernalia still present. It is not technically an artificial cave—it appears to be a tight passage formed by a fault at the base of a small hill (Figure 6). The entrance was heavily modified, however (Figure 7, see Figure 8d), with five carved faces, three figures, and two crosses carved into the bedrock on either side of the tunnel. Steps have been dug into the hill that lead to a large wooden cross located above the cave feature. In recent years, a cor-rugated tin roof has been erected over the cross and a small ledge was built into the hill face behind it.

Figure 3: The entrance to Cave 4 (photo by the author)

The Ritual and Ideological Importance of the Newly Documented Caves

While there is some evidence of a more secular use for these caves than is often reported in the literature (much of the floor of Cave 4 is littered with used condoms and wrappers and there are multiple works of graffiti around its entrance), each is (or, in the case of Candelaria, was until recently) an im-portant ritual site that has been heavily scorched and stained. The offerings present in each stand in contrast to the others in Q’umarkaj. Whereas Caves 1 and 2 contain a large quantity of money and sacrificed chickens in addition to copal and candles, evidence of ceremonies related to wealth, resolving life crises, and the agricultural cycle, at least some of the paraphernalia uncovered in Cave 4 (Table 1) and El Encanto (Table 2) is evidence that at least some of the ceremonies involved the practice of black magic. This includes, most notably, cans of jalapeño chiles in El Encanto, which among at least among the Q’eqchi’, with whom the author primarily works, are burned in ceremonies meant to starve people and harm unborn babies (Carlos Tox, personal communication 2013). A variety of lotions in both locations were left behind that serve such diverse functions as “tapando bocas” (shutting mouths), “del retiro” (withdrawal of someone unwanted from one’s life), and “contra daños” (against danger).

The difference in use could be attributed to their location. These caves, unlike Caves 1 and 2, which are found within the archaeological park at Q’umarkaj, are located in out-of-the-way way places. This makes them better sites for private rituals and easier to come and go unnoticed and more easily accessible at night. In the case of Cave 4, few people know about the cave, making it less likely that a ceremony be inter-rupted, and El Encanto is far off the main road, hidden behind a quarry and several milpas.

Unlike Quemadero Candelaria—a wide, shallow rock shelter—and the other caves in Q’umarkaj—which are pri-marily straight shafts—the Maya who dug Cave 4 created a series of undulations in the cave passage near each entrance. This pattern was originally noted by Alan Cobb at several

Table 2: Modern ritual evidence recovered from El Encanto, Quetzaltenango

1. Burnt cigarttes

2. Incense bundles

3. White, yellow, black, and red candles

4. Sesame seeds

5. Unidentified herb

6. Empty bottles of aguardiente

7. Empty perfume bottles

8. Halved limes

9. Glass candle holders

10. Empty bottles of lotions for rituals:

1. “Attract Money for You” (in English)

2. Contra daño (against harm)

3. Del retiro (retreat)

11. Empty sugar bags

12. Paint cans

13. Empty cans of jalapeño chiles

14. Empty food wrappers and juice containers


117

Figure 4: The location of Quemadero Candelaria and El Encanto (modified from the original topographic map created by the Instituto Na-cional de Geografía by José Francisco Castañeda)

Figure 5: Sketch map of Quemadero Candelaria, Quetzaltenango (drawn by the author)

caves in the Guatemalan highlands (Brady 2004), and would have served to maximize the dark zone, which tends to be preferred space for performing private rituals (e.g., Brady 1989, Stone 1995, Wood-fill 2010).

Interestingly, each of these three cave features are associated with crosses (Figure 8). This has been reported in other contexts (e.g., Adams and Brady 2005, Astor Aguilera 2012, Carot 1976, Vogt 1976, Woodfill Under Review), most notably at Cueva de las Minas #1 in Esquipulas (Brady and Veni 1992), which actually consists of two intersecting tunnels that transform the cave itself into a giant cross. This form has been a central symbol in the Maya cosmos since well before the conquest, when it acquired additional meanings associated with Christianity. Crosses serve as boundary markers and portals to sa-cred space (Adams and Brady 2005, Vogt 1976) and as microcosms of the universe itself (Astor Aguilera 2012, Woodfill Under Review), so it is logical that they would be present in these charged ceremonial sites. Finally, the discovery and documentation of Cave 4 has important implications regarding the potential connection between the city layout and the local version of the Maya creation myth. As pointed out by James Brady (pers. comm. 2006), the pres-ence of four caves raises the intriguing possibility that there were seven artificial caves underneath


118

Figure 6 (top): Map of El Encanto, Quetzaltenango, showing location of faces (F1-F5), figures (Fi1-Fi3), and crosses (X1-X2) (drawn by the author) Figure 7 (bottom): Faces carved at the entrance to El Encanto (photo by the author)


119

Q’umarkaj, associating the site with the pan-Mesoamerican mythological place of origin for human beings—the place of seven caves called Chicomoztoc (Townsend 2000) by the Aztecs or Tulan Suyua (Tedlock 1996) in the Popol Vuh. It would make sense that they would have built seven caves to give the seat of their empire more ideological weight, associ-ating it not only with the might of the most powerful highland Maya group in the Late Postclassic, but with the birthplace of humanity itself according to the sacred text produced by residents of the same city. Without a comprehensive survey, however, this will be impossible to prove, and since at least one of the caves collapsed during the 1976 earthquake, it is possible that others have similarly vanished.

ConclusionsLike the two caves Brady (2004) documented on the outskirts of Guatemala City in Llano Largo, none of these caves were associated with contemporaneous architecture that would have allowed archaeologists to more easily locate them—Cave 4 was found in a ravine in an out-of-the-way sector of Q’umarkaj, and the latter two were found on the outskirts of a large modern city. Their discovery shows the need for ar-chaeologists to create ties with local spiritual leaders around their sites.

Both archaeological sites and caves are sacred to the modern Maya and are regularly used as locations to perform ritual activities. Because archaeological research can modify or destroy these ritual sites, it is an ethical necessity that we con-sult those who would be affected by our research. Once trust has been established between the two parties, however, this relationship can be highly beneficial, since ritual practitioners often know of additional places of interest to archaeologists that would be otherwise difficult to find.

Endnote(1) In order to respect the wishes of the daykeepers who use the cave and

showed it to us, we are not publishing its exact location.

AcknowledgmentsThe cave maps and tables published here were made with the assistance of recent graduates of the University of Louisiana (Cave 4) and José Francisco Castañeda (El Encanto), who also provided the GPS coordinates of the two caves in Quet-zaltenango. Cave 4, El Encanto, and Quemadero Candelaria were brought to the attention of the author by Raquel Macario, Judith Valle, and Francisco Cajas, respectively.

Figure 8: Crosses in the cave features. a) Interior cross in Cave 4. b) Exterior cross near entrance 2, Cave 4. c) Wooden cross above the El Encanto cave. d) Carved crosses in the entrance to El Encanto cave (photos by the author)


120

BibliographyAdams, Abigail and James Brady2005 Ethnographic notes on Maya Q’eqchi’ cave rites: Implications

for archaeological interpretation. In: James Brady and Keith Prufer (eds.), In the Maw of the Earth Monster: Mesoamerican Ritual Cave Use, pp. 301-27. University of Texas Press, Austin.

Aguilar, Manual; Miguel Medina Jaen; Tim Tucker; and James Brady2005 Constructing mythic space: The significance of a Chicomoztoc

complex at Acatzingo Viejo. In: James Brady and Keith Prufer (eds.), In the maw of the Earth Monster: Mesoamerican ritual cave use, pp. 69-88. University of Texas Press, Austin.

Astor Aguilera, Miguel2012 The Maya world of communicating objects: Quadripartite

crosses, trees, and stones. University of New Mexico Press, Albuquerque.

Brady, James1989 An investigation of Maya ritual cave use with special reference

to Naj Tunich, Petén, Guatemala. PhD dissertation, Department of Anthropology, University of California, Los Angeles.

1990 Cuevas no naturales: una forma de aqruitectura no reconocida en el Altiplano maya. In: Héctor Escobedo and Sandra Val-lagrán de Brady (eds.), Tercer Simposio de Investigaciones Arqueológicas, pp. 253-65. Ministerio de Cultura y Deportes, Guatemala City.

1991 Caves and cosmovision at Utatlan. California Anthropologist XVIII.1:1-10.

2003 La importancia de las cuevas artificiales para el entendimiento de los espacios sagrados en Mesoamérica. In: Alain Breton, Aurore Monod Becquelin, and Mario Humberto Ruiz (eds), Espacios Mayas: Usos, Representaciones, Creencias, pp. 143-160. Centre D’Étudies Mexicaines et Centraméricaines, Mexi-co City.

2004 Constructed landscapes: exploring the meaning and signifi-cance of recent discoveries of artificial caves. In: Ketzalcalli 1:2-17.

Brady, James; Ann Scott; Alan Cobb; Irma Rodas; John Fogarty; and Monica Urquizú Sánchez

1997 Glimpses of the dark side of the Petexbatun Project: the Pe-texbatun Regional Cave Survey. In: Ancient Mesoamerica 8(2):353-64.

Brady, James and George Veni1992 Man-made and pesudo-karst caves: the implications of sub-

surface features within Maya centers. In: Geoarchaeology 7(2):149-67.

Carot, Patricia1976 Étude comparée des grottes de Candelaria, Julik et Bombil Pec.

Spelunca 3 (suplemento): 25-31.Coe, Michael1988 Ideology of the Maya tomb. In: Elizabeth Benson and Gillett

Griffon (eds), Maya Iconography, pp. 222-35. Princeton Uni-versity Press, Princeton.

Fox, John1978 Quiche conquest: Centralism and regionalism in highland Gua-

temalan state development. University of New Mexico Press, Albuquerque.

Heyden, Doris1975 An interpretation of the cave underneath the Pyramid of the

Sun in Teotihuacan, Mexico. In: American Anthropologist 40(2):131-47.

O’Mansky, Matt2003 Cancuen Regional Archaeological Project: highland-lowland

influence and exchange along a geographical boundary. Elec-tronic document, http://www.famsi.org/reports/99089/index.html, accessed February 10, 2007.

Prufer, Keith and Andrew Kindon2005 Replicating the sacred landscape: The chen at Muklebal Tzuul.

In: Keith Prufer and James Brady (eds), Stone Houses and Earth Lords: Maya Religion in the Cave Context, pp. 25-46. University of Colorado Press, Boulder.

Seler, Eduard2003 The ancient settlements of Chaculá in the Nentón District of the

Department of Huehuetenango, Republic of Guatemala. John Weeks (ed). Labyrinthos, Lancaster, CA.

Smith, A. Ledyard1955 Archaeological reconnaissance in central Guatemala. Carnegie

Institution of Washington Publication No. 608. Carnegie Insti-tution of Washington, Washington, D.C.

Stone, Andrea1995 Images from the underworld: Naj Tunich and the tradition of

Maya cave painting. University of Texas Press, Austin.Stuart, David1997 The hills are alive: Sacred mountains in the Maya cosmos. In:

Symbols, Spring 1997.Tedlock, Dennis1996 Popol Vuh: The definitive edition of the Mayan book of the

dawn of life and the glory of gods and kings. Touchstone, New York.

Thompson, Edward1938 The High Priest’s Grave, Chichen Itza, Yucatan, Mexico. Field

Museum of Natural History, Anthropology Series 27, No. 1, prepared for publication, with notes and introduction by J. Eric Thompson. Field Museum of Natural History, Chicago.

Townsend, Richard2000 The Aztecs. Revised Edition. Thames and Hudson, New York.Vogt, Evon1964 Ancient Maya and contemporary Tzotzil cosmology: A com-

ment on some methodological problems. In: American Antiq-uity 30(2):191-5.

1976 Tortillas for the gods: A symbolic analysis of Zinacantan ritual. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass.

Woodfill, Brent2010 Ritual and trade in the Pasión-Verapaz region, Guatemala. Van-

derbilt Institute of Mesoamerican Archaeology, vol. 6. Vander-bilt University Press, Nashville, Tenn.

Under Review. Interpreting an Early Classic pecked cross in the Candelaria Caves, Guatemala: Archaeological and Indigenous perspectives. Submitted to Ethnoarchaeology.

Abstract: This article describes three recently-discovered cave features in the western highlands of Guatemala―two artificial caves and a small, natural fault located underneath Q’umarkaj and on the outskirts of Quetzaltenango. These three features continue to be important ritual foci for the modern Maya of the area, and due to their relatively unknown status and hidden locations, they are the focus of a wider range of ritual activities than the better known highland “caves.”

Resumen: Este artículo describe tres “cuevas” recien descubiertas en el Al-tiplano occidental de Guatemala―una cuarta cueva artificial en Q’umarkaj y una cueva artificial y una falla natural en el periférico de Quetzaltenango. Estos tres rasgos continuan ser enfoques rituales importantes para los mayas contemporáneos del área. No son bien conocidos y se encuentran en lugares escondidos, por lo cual hay evidencia de una gama más amplia de ceremonias que las cuevas ya registras en el Altiplano.

Zusammenfassung: Der Beitrag beschreibt drei neu entdeckte „Höhlen“ im westlichen Hochland von Guatemala, darunter eine vierte künstliche Höhle in Q’umarkaj und eine künstliche Höhle sowie eine natürliche Schlucht in der Peripherie von Quetzaltenango. Diese drei Landschaftsmerkmale sind bis heute wichtige Orte, in denen lokale Maya Rituale durchführen. Sie sind wenig bekannt und befinden sich an versteckten Orten, so dass sie deutlich mehr Merkmale ritueller Aktivitäten aufweisen als andere besser bekannte Höhen im Hochland von Guatemala.


121

Recent PublicationsBooks

mexicon is intent on providing the most up-to-date information on publications relating to Mesoamerica. We are most grateful for any data you can provide us at [email protected]

icanos: Mexico City, Mexico. 413 pp., bibl., bibl. notes, b/w and col. illus, index, maps, col. photos. ISBN: 978-6070249167.

Jackson, Robert H.2013 Conflict and conversion in sixteenth century central Mex-

ico: the Augustinian war on and beyond the Chichimeca frontier. Brill: Leiden; Boston. 253 pp., bibl., illus., maps. (European expansion and indigenous response, 12.) ISBN: 978 9004232457.

Mora Ledesma, María Isabel (ed.)2013 Los caminos de la trashumancia: territorio, persistencia y

representaciones de la ganadería pastoril en el altiplano potosino. El Colegio de San Luis: San Luis Potosí, Mexico. 205 pp., bibl., bibl. notes, charts, graphs, maps, photos, ta-bles. (Investigaciones.) ISBN: 978-6077601982.

Neurath, Johannes2013 La vida de las imágenes: arte huichol. Artes de México y del

Mundo; Consejo Nacional para la Cultura y las Artes: Mex-ico City, Mexico. 150 pp., bibl., bibl. notes, glossary, b/w and col. illus., b/w and col. photos. ISBN: 978-6074611441 (Artes de México); 978-6075163307 (Consejo Nacional para la Cultura y las Artes).

Uriarte, María Teresa2012 Arte y arqueología en el altiplano central de México: una

vision a través del arte. Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Siglo Veintiuno Editores, Mexico City, Mexico. 252 pp., bibl., illus., maps. ISBN: 9786070240010.

Vega Sosa, Constanza2012 Códice Azoyú 2: El señorío de Tlapa.Tlachinollan. (Facsim-

ile included.) Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia; Fondo de Cultura Económica, México, D.F.,México.233 pp., b/wand col. fold-out illus., fold-out maps, tables. (Sección de Obras de Antropología.) ISBN: 978-6071610423.

Vargas Pacheco, Ernesto (ed.)2013 Itzamkanac, El Tigre, Campeche: exploración, consol-

idación y análisis de los materiales de la Estructura 1. Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Instituto de Investigaciones Antropológicas: Mexico City; Gobierno del Estado de Campeche, San Francisco de Campapeche, Campeche, Mexico. 414 pp., bibl., illus., maps, plans. ISBN: 978-6070243080.

(Contents: Vargas Pacheco, Ernesto: La provincia de Acalan-Tixchel e Itzamkanac su capital; Vargas Pacheco, Ernesto: Recon-ocimiento de superficie en la provincia de Acalan-Tixchel; Vargas Pacheco, Ernesto: El Tigre o Itzamkanac; Vargas Pacheco, Ernesto and Angélica Delgad: Excavación y con-solidación de la Estructura 1; Vargas Pacheco, Ernesto and Blanca Zoila González: Excavación y análisis del materi-al osteológico; Vargas Ramos, Mónica: Los mascarones. Conservación y restauración de estucos; Delgado Salgado, Angélica: Cronología cerámica de la Estructura 1; Vargas Pacheco, Ernesto and Angélica Delgado Salgado: Ofrendas líticas; Valadez, Raúl, Bernardo Rodríguez and Mónica Gó-mez: Paleozoología.)

Cabezas Carcache, Horacio (ed.)2012 Ciudades Mesoamericanas. Publicaciones Mesoamericanas

4. Universidad Mesoamericana, Guatemala, C.A.. 316 pp.; ISBN: 978-9929-8092-1-5.

(Contenido: Serrano Ursúa, Félix Javier: Prólogo, pp. 9-10; Cabezas Carcache, Horacio: Introducción, pp. 11-16; Schieber de Lavarreda, Christa: Tak’alik Ab’aj. Ciudad Luz de La Costa Sur de Guatemala, pp. 17-38; Chinchilla Mazariegos, Oswaldo: La Ciudad Clásica de Cotzumalguapa, pp. 39-58; Carpio Rezzio, Edgard: Teotihuacan. Urbanismo y Esplendor, pp. 59-86; Alva-rado Galindo, Carlos: Desarrollo urbano de Kaminaljuyú, pp. 87-112; Sheets, Payson: Joya de Cerén, pp. 113-134; Grazioso Sierra, Liwy: Río Azul. Belleza enclavada en el trifinio Guate-mala-México-Belice, pp. 135-152; Cabezas Carcache, Hora-cio: Copán. Atenas del Nuevo Mundo, pp. 153-184; Barrientos, Tomás y Arthur Demarest: Geografía sagrada y poder político en las ciudades mayas del Río Pasión. Dos Pilas, Aguateca y Cancuén, pp.185-204; Ivic de Monterroso, Matilde: Principa-les Ciudades Mayas Postclásicas del altiplano de Guatemala, pp. 205-256; Cabezas Carcache, Horacio: Zapatera. Santuario Chorotega, pp. 257-269)

2013 Códice de Madrid. ISBN: 978-9929-8092-2-2 Publicaciones Mesoamericanas 5. Universidad Mesoamericana, Guatema-la, C.A.. 289 pp., Imágenes del Códice de Madrid proporcio-nadas por el Museo de América. ISBN: 978-9929-8092-1-5

(Contenido: Serrano Ursúa, Félix Javier: Prólogo, pp. 7-8; Ca-bezas Carcache, Horacio: Introducción, pp. 9-12; Vail, Gabrielle: Códice de Madrid: estudio introductorio, pp. 13-20; Vail, Gab-rielle: Códice de Madrid: descripción de los folios, pp. 21-274)

Carranza Vera, Claudia (ed.)2013 La ascensión y la caída: diablos, brujas y posesas en México

y Europa. El Colegio de San Luis: San Luis Potosí, Mexico. 176 pp., bibl., bibl. notes, illus., index. (Investigaciones.) ISBN: 978-6077601944.

Cruz Domínguez, Elisa2012 Nobleza y gobierno indígena en Xilotepec (siglos XV-XVIII).

Fondo Editorial Estado de México (FOEM): Toluca de Le-rdo, Mexico State, Mexico. 205 pp., bibl., illus. ISBN: 978-6074952032.

Cunill, Caroline2012 Los defensores de indios de Yucatán y acceso de los mayas

a la justicia conial, 1540-1600. Centro Peninsular en Hu-manidades y Ciencias Sociales: Mérida; Universidad Na-cional Autónoma de México, Mexico. 391 pp., bibl. ISBN: 9786070237072.

Enríquez Andrade, Héctor Manuel2013 La jerarquía de los dioses totonacos. (Transl. by Epifanio

Haernández). Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia: Mexico City, Mexico. 139 pp., bibl., bibl. notes. (Lingüísti-ca; Logos.) ISBN: 978-6074843842.

Hers, Marie-Areti (ed.)2013 Miradas renovadas al Occidente indígena de México. Uni-

versidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Instituto de In-vestigaciones Estéticas; Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia; Centro de Estudios Mexicanos y Centroamer-


122

placeres del paladar, pp. 48-53; Cobos, Rafael: Intercambio de mercado en el área maya, pp. 54-61; Berdan, Francés: Los medios de intercambio en la época prehispánica y la Colonia, pp. 62-67; Quiroz, Enriqueta: Los mercados en la Colonia, pp. 68-73; Villela Flores, Samuel: Mercados indígenas en México, pp. 74-79; Covarrubias Reyna, Miguel and Rafael Burgos Villanueva: Investigaciones arqueológicas en Dzilam Gonzáles, Yucatán, pp. 82-87; Matos Moctezuma, Eduardo: ?La Leyenda de la Llorona es de origen prehispánico? pp. 88-89

Vol. 21, No. 123, Septiembre-Octubre 2013Noguez, Xavier: Códice Vaticano a Latino Ríos 3738, pp.16-17; León-Portilla, Miguel: Ángel María Garibay K., pp. 18-21; Martínez del Campo Lanz, Sofía: Los rostros de piedra de estilo teotihuacano, pp. 22-28; Cárdenas García, Efraín: Mesoamérica y la tradición cultural del Occidente mexicano: una introducción a la arqueología regional, pp. 29-36; Oliveros Morales, Arturo: El Opeño: Jacona, Michoacán, pp. 37-42; Melchor Cruz Hernández, Lauriel and Olga Lidia Landa Alarcón: Tingambato: un sitio del Occidente de México y una tumba real, pp. 43-46; Roskamp, Hans: El Lienzo de Jucutacato: la historia sagrada de los nahuas de Jicalán, Michoacán, pp. 47-54; Pereira, Grégory, Dominique Michelet and GéraldMigeon: La migración de los purépecha hacia el norte y su regreso a los lagos, pp. 55-60; Cárdenas García, Efraín and Eugenia Fernández V: Zonas arqueológicas de Michoacán, pp. 61-68; Espejel Carbajal, Claudia: La “Relación de Michoacán“: narraciones históricas de los purépecha, pp. 69-75; Salas Cuesta, Marcela and María Elena Salas Cuesta: Cayetano Cabrera Quintero, “El Escudo de Armas de México” y el matlazáhuatl, pp. 78-83; Velásquez García , Erik and Octavio Q. Esparza Olguín: “El sacudidor de ciudades“: un jeroglífico maya para mover, temblar o terremoto, pp. 84-87; Matos Moctezuma, Eduardo: ?Quién mató a Moctezuma II, los mexicas o los españoles?, pp. 88-89

BOLETÍN AMERICANISTA, Universidad de Barcelona, Fac-uldad de Geografía e Historia,c. Adolf Florensa s/n. Barcelona 08028, ISSN 0520-4100Núm. 66, 2013España, Rafael:La conquista de México en el cine: el caso de la Virgen de Guadalupe, pp. 29-49; Battcock, Clementina, Rossend Rovira Mor-gado:Consideraciones en torno a la territorialidad del espacio vivido en las parcialidades de Cuerpopan Tlaquechiuhca y Teopan de Méxi-co-Tenochtitlan, pp.143-160

Núm. 67, 2013Sánchez del Olmo, Sara:Cuerpos en lucha, lucha de cuerpos: discurso moral, propaganda e identidad religiosa en el Michoacán, pp. 33-46; Quiñones Flores, Georgina: El clero y el delito de proposiciones en Zacatecas: los errores manifestados en los sermones, siglos XVI y XVII, pp. 47-69; Vega y Ortega, Rodrigo, José Serrano: Medicina, farmacia y química en el centenario de la República Mexicana, 1911, pp. 183-203

ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT AND CULTURAL CHANGE, University of Chicago Press, 1427 East 60th Street, Chicago, IL 60637, ISSN: 00130079, eISSN: 15392988

Vol. 62, No. 1, October 2013Atkinson, Jesse, Alain de Janvry, Craig McIntosh, ElisabethSadoulet: Prompting Microfinance Borrowers to Save: A Field Experiment from Guatemala, pp. 21-64

aMerican anThropologisT, American Anthropological Association, 2200 Wilson Blvd., Suite 600, Arlington, VA 22201, USA. ISSN 0002-7294, eISSN 1548-1433Vol. 116, No. 1, March 2014Halperin, Christina T.: Circulation as Placemaking: Late Classic Maya Polities and Portable Objects, pp. 110-121

ancienT MesoaMerica, Cambridge University Press. The Edinburgh Building, Shaftesbury Road, Cambridge CB2 2RU, U.K. / 40 West 20th Street, New York, NY 10011, USA. ISSN: 0956-5361

Vol.24, No. 2, 2013Hill Boone, Elizabeth, Rochelle Collins:The Petroglyphic Prayers on the Sun Stone of MotecuhzomaIlhuicamina, pp. 225-241; Jordan, Keith: Serpents, Skeletons, and Ancestors?: The Tula Coatepantli Revisited, pp. 243-274; Russell, Bradley W.: Fortress Mayapan: Defensive Fea-tures and Secondary Functions of a Postclassic Maya Fortification, pp. 275 – 294; Harrison-Buck, Eleanor, Patricia A. McAnany: Terminal Classic Circular Architecture in the Sibun Valley, Belize, pp. 295-306; Callaghan, Michael G.: Politics Through Pottery: A View of the Preclas-sic-Classic Transition from Building B, Group II, Holmul, Guatemala, pp. 307-341; SPECIAL SECTION: Noble Farmers and Weak Kings in the Classic Maya Lowlands: The Río Bec Archaeological Project, 2002-2010. Fowler, William R.,M. Charlotte Arnauld: Introduction, pp. 343-351; Taladoire, Eric, Sara Dzul, Philippe Nondédéo, Méla-nieForné: Chronology of the Río Bec Settlement and Architecture, pp. 353-372;Nondédéo, Philippe, M. Charlotte Arnauld, Dominique Mi-chelet: Río Bec Settlement Patterns and Local Sociopolitical Organiza-tion, pp. 373-396; Lemonnier, Eva, Boris Vannière: Agrarian Features, Farmsteads, and Homesteads in the Río Bec Nuclear Zone, Mexico, pp. 397-413; Michelet, Dominique, Philippe Nondédéo, Julie Patrois, Céline Gillot, Emyly González Gómez: Structure 5N2 (“Group A”): A Río Bec Paradigmatic Palace?, pp. 415-431; Patrois, Julie: Río Bec Graffiti: A Private Form of Art, pp. 433-447; Pereira, Grégory: Ash, Dirt, and Rock: Burial Practices at Río Bec, pp. 449-468; Arnauld, M. Charlotte, Dominique Michelet, Philippe Nondédéo: Living Together in Río Bec Houses: Coresidence, Rank, and Alliance, pp. 469-493

anThropos, St.Augustin, Anthropos-Redaktion, Arnold-Jans-sen-Str. 20, DE-53754 Sankt Augustin, Germany, ISSN 0257

– 9774

Vol. 109, No. 1, 2014MacKenzie, C. James: An Interstitial Maya. The Life, Legacy, and Heresies of Padre Tomas Garcia, pp. 119-134

arQueologia Mexicana, Editorial Raíces, S.A. de C.V., Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia, Rodolfo Gaona 86, Col. Lomas de Sotelo, Del. Miguel Hidalgo, C.P. 11200, México, D.F., México. ISSN: 0188-8218

Vol. 21, No. 122, Julio-Agosto 2013 Noguez, Xavier: Libro de los Guardianes y Gobernadores de Cuauhtin-chan (1519-1640), pp. 16-17; Baudez, Claude-François: La conversión de los ídolos, pp. 18-29; Hirth, Kenneth G.: Los mercados prehispánicos: la economía y el comercio, pp. 30-35; Hassig, Ross: El comercio a larga distancia en Mesoamérica y los “pochtecas“, pp. 36-41; León-Portilla, Miguel: Los dioses de los “pochtecas“, pp. 42-47; Attolini Lecón, Ama-lia: Los caminos de las mercaderías entre los mayas prehispánicos: los

Periodicals


123

IMPRESSUM mexicon ISSN 0720–5988www.mexicon.de

General Editor: Gordon Whittaker (Seminar für Romanische Philolo gie, Universität Göttingen, Göttingen, Germany; email: [email protected]).

Editors: Peggy Goede Montalván, Nikolai Grube, Thomas H. Guderjan, Stephan Günther, Guido Krempel, Karl Herbert Mayer, Stephan Merk, Iken Paap, Christian Prager, Anton Saurwein, Vera Tiesler Blos, Elisa-beth Wagner.

Publisher: Verlag Anton Saurwein, Gatterburgstrasse 15, 80689, München, Ger many; email: [email protected].

Editorial Offices:News Elisabeth Wagner (Abteilung für Altamerikanistik, Universität Bonn,

Bonn, Germany; email: [email protected]); Gordon Whittaker.Contributions Nikolai Grube (Abteilung für Altamerikanistik, Universität

Bonn, Bonn, Germany; email: [email protected]).

mexicon is a peer-reviewed journal. Unsolicited manuscripts and mate-rials cannot be returned. Responsibility for accepted materials and their contents lies with the author(s) alone. By submitting your contribution you are certifying that you have permission to publish all material therein. Copyright for all published materials (printed and electronic) is held by mexicon.

Bibliography Christian Prager (Abteilung für Altamerikanistik, Universität Bonn, Bonn, Germany; email: [email protected]); Antje Grothe, Gail Hammond, Catherine Letcher Lazo, Roswitha Koenitz, Guido Krempel, Iken Paap, Catherine Whittaker.

Austrian Office Karl Herbert Mayer (Raffaltweg 11, 8047 Graz, Austria; email: [email protected]).

Mexican Office Vera Tiesler Blos (Universi dad Autónoma de Yucatán, Mérida, Mexico; email: [email protected]).

US Office Thomas H. Guderjan (University of Texas at Tyler, Tyler, USA; email: [email protected]).

Online Editor Iken Paap (Ibero-Amerikanisches Institut, Berlin, Germany; email: [email protected]).

Annual Subscription:Germany EUR 25,00 / Studenten EUR 20,00 (inkl. MwSt. und Zustellung); Europe EUR 28.00; Overseas US $50.00 (incl. airmail delivery).Der Vertrieb erfolgt nur im Jahresabonnement geschlossener Volumen; zurückliegende Jahrgänge sind erhältlich.Abonnenten betreuung und Versand durch den Verlag.mexicon is available only by annual volume subscription (six issues); back issues are available. To subscribe, change an address, or order back issues, please write to the publisher.Satz: Guido Krempel Druck: Karle GmbH, Möckmühl

Vol. 43, Issue 6, June 2014Solomon, Char: Re-connecting the pieces: a journey through the life of Tatiana Proskouriakoff, pp. 3,6

Journal De la sociéTé De aMéricanisTes, Société des Américanistes, Musée du quai Branly, 222 rue de l’Univer-sité, 75343 Paris cedex 07, France, ISSN: 1957-7842

Vol. 99, No. 2, 2013Bazy, Damien: Une frontière en mouvement: espace public, espace privé dans les cités mayas (Basses Terres centrales et méridionales), pp. 7-40

LATIN AMERICAN RESEARCH REVIEW, Latin American Studies Association, 416 Bellefield Hall, University of Pitts-burgh, Pittsburgh, PA 15260, USA, ISSN: 0023-8791

Vol. 48, No. 3, Spring 2013Kramer, Wendy, W. George Lovell, Christopher H. Lutz: Pillage in the Archives: The Whereabouts of Guatemalan Documentary Treasures, pp. 153-167

esTuDios De culTura MaYa, Centro de Estudios Ma-yas Instituto de Investigaciones Filológicas, UNAM. Circuito Mario de la Cueva s/nCiudad Universitaria, Coyoacán, 04510, México, D. F., ISSN: 0185-2574

Vol. XLII, Otoño-Invierno 2013Bachand, Bruce R.: Las fases formativas de Chiapa de Corzo: nueva evidencia e interpretaciones, pp. 11-52; Márquez Morfín, Lourdes, Patri-cia Hernández Espinoza: Los mayas del Clásico Tardío y Terminal. Una propuesta acerca de la dinámica demográfica de algunos grupos mayas prehispánicos: Jaina, Palenque y Copán, pp. 53-86; Santos-Fita, Dídac, Eduardo J. Naranjo Piñera, Eduardo Bello Baltazar, Erin I. J. Estrada Lugo, Ramón Mariaca Méndez, Pedro A. Macario Mendoza: La milpa comedero-trampa como una estrategia de cacería tradicional maya, pp. 87-118; Cortés Campos, Inés: De la selva y las salinas. Historia social de dos pueblos-empresa en el oriente de Yucatán (1930-1970), pp. 119-144; Ortega Arango, Óscar: El laberinto literario de las poetas mayas yucatecas contemporáneas, pp. 145-170

esTuDios De culTura nahuaTl, Publicación anual del Instituto de Investigaciones Históricas de la Universidad Nacio-nal Autónoma de México, Instituto de Investigaciones Históricas, Ciudad de Investigación en Humanidades. Circuito Maestro Mario de la Cueva s/n, Ciudad Universitaria, 04510 México, D.F., México. ISSN: 0071-1675

Vol. 46, Julio-Diciembre 2013Herrera Meza, María del Carmen, Alfredo López Austin, Rodrigo Martí-nez Baracs: El nombre náhuatl de la Triple Alianza, pp. 7-36, Hernández Triviño, Ascensión:Chocolate: historia de un nahuatlismo, pp. 37-88; Alcántara Rojas, Berenice: Evangelización y traducción. La Vida de san Franciscode San Buenaventura vuelta al náhuatl por fray Alonso de Molina, pp. 89-158; Díaz Álvarez, Ana:Tlapohualli, la cuenta de las cosas. Reflexiones en torno a la reconstrucción de los calendarios nahuas, pp. 159-198; Díaz Barriga Cuevas, Alejandro:Ritos de paso de la niñez nahua durante la veintena de Izcalli, pp. 199-222; Castañeda de la Paz, María:Dos parcialidades étnicas en Azcapotzalco: Mexicapan y Tepanecapan, pp. 223-248; Santa Cruz, Alonso de:[La conquista de México y la Tenochtitlan novohispana], pp. 249-262; León-Portilla, Miguel: Paleografía y traducción del náhuatl al español del Códice florentino. Capítulos cuarto y quinto del libroVI, pp. 263-276

eThnohisTorY, American Society for Ethnohistory, Duke University Press, P.O. Box 6697 College Station, Durham, NC 27708, USA, ISSN: 0014-1801Vol. 61, No. 1, Winter 2014Olko, Justyna: Body Language in the Preconquest and Colonial Nahua World, pp. 149-179

iMs explorer, A Monthly Newsletter published by the Insti-tute of Maya Studies. 3280 South Miami Avenue, Miami, Florida, USA. ISSN 1524-9387

Vol. 43, Issue 2, February 2014Fery, George: Palenque and its tombs, p. 6; Rodríguez III, Joaquín J.: Book review of “The first Maya civilization” by Francisco Estrada-Belli, p. 2

Vol. 43, Issue 5, May 2014n.a.: Studies reveal ancient sites and canoe-making techniques of sea-faring California islanders, 3; Spoolmann, John: Iconic masks and stone Xs: exploring possible lunar and venus cycles evident in the Codz Po’op, pp. 4-6; n.a.: Remembrance of Brian M. Stross, p. 6; n.a.: In remembrance of Barbara Kerr, p. 2

1 2 3 4

5 6 7 8

9 10 11 12

13 14 15 16

Date post:	14-Nov-2023
Category:	Documents
Upload:	independent
View:	0 times
Download:	0 times

Unprovenanced Maya Painted Capstones in Campeche

Documents