Pusilhá Archaeological Project

Current Research at Pusilhá (May–July 2001)

PUSAP began in May 2001 with the research goals of: (1) testing Marcus’ interpretation of the political history of Pusilhá through a comprehensive analysis of the hieroglyphic corpus of the site; and (2) testing both centralist and decentralist models of the integration of elite and "peasant" economies. In addition to these scientific goals, we also plan to: (1) develop a regional ceramic chronology for Toledo District; and (2) document, consolidate, and preserve both architecture and sculpture still at the site.

During our first season of research, we documented previously known and new monuments, and began systematic "full-coverage" mapping of the site using total station and GPS equipment. The first is allowing us to flesh out a more-detailed political history of Pusilhá, against which we will compare material culture data related to economic integration. The second will enable us to plan a systematic test-pitting program designed to recover artifacts from the houses of both commoners and elites living in the site center and surrounding residential and agricultural zones. In later seasons, we plan to return to Pusilhá to conduct test excavations designed to recover ceramics and other artifacts. Analyses of these materials will help us study economic connections with other sites and regions, and also will allow us to construct the first multiphase ceramic chronology for a site in Toledo district.

The Stela Plaza.

Before the beginning of the season, Project Epigrapher Christian Prager (Universität Bonn) visited the British Museum and redrew both the texts and pictorial contents of all the monuments brought to London in 1930 and 1931. Although Morley (1938) long ago illustrated many of the hieroglyphic inscriptions of Pusilhá, his figures are not of sufficient quality to conduct detailed epigraphic research. Moreover, the iconographic content of only two of the Pusilhá monuments has been published (Joyce et al. 1928:Plate XXVI and Plate XXXII, Figure 3). Finally, neither Morley nor members of the British Museum Expedition illustrated all of the texts found at Pusilhá, and many were left at the site. Prager’s initial assessment was that at least 20 fragments carrying inscriptions were missing. Since the stelae were found in situ, these fragments presumably were left in the Stela Plaza.

Our work in the Stela Plaza began with brush clearing for detailed mapping of structures and remaining monument fragments. We established the site datum, a concrete marker, just north of Structure 1. The coordinates of this point are arbitrarily set as 0 m North, 0 m East, and 200 m above sea level. According to the 1:50,000 scale topographic map produced by the Military Survey, Ministry of Defense, United Kingdom, this arbitrary altitude is 50 m too high, but repeated GPS measurements suggest that it is approximately accurate. In a future season, the precise location of the datum and all permanent bench marks will be determined from high-accuracy, sub-centimeter GPS measurements.

In the course of our three weeks of investigation in the Stela Plaza, we located 88 monument fragments and plotted the position of each using CAD and Surfer software (Figure 2 and Figure 3). Currently, we are analyzing their depositional pattern in order to determine to which of the previously known 21 stelae, three zoomorphic altars, and an unknown quantity of round altars the fragments belong. Each fragment has been illustrated and photographed in both natural and oblique-angle artificial light. Prager now is completing the painstaking work of comparing these illustrations with his drawings and photographs of incomplete monuments in the British Museum, using a method similar to that developed by Barbara Fash for the Copán Mosaics Project.

Although Prager’s work is still underway and epigraphic analysis is continuing, several important discoveries are worthy of note. First, we found a fourth zoomorphic altar and a previously unknown stela (making a total of 22 for the group) on Structure V. The altar is different from the three "frogs" located just north of the stela row, and seems to portray an anthropomorphized turtle. Second, all of the stelae and round altar fragments have texts or iconographic content. Another important observation made by Prager is that Stela F, left whole in the Plaza and not illustrated by Morley because of its eroded condition, contains many glyph blocks that still are legible. The text opens with the date of 9.16.0.0.0 (A.D. 751), making it the latest monument at Pusilhá that is dated with certainty (see below). A ruler is mentioned in the text, and his name is similar to that of a Late Classic king of Naranjo.

The position of the monuments, including the now-dated Stela F, strongly suggests that they were reset in the stela row at about 9.16.0.0.0. Stelae F and G, the latest in the series, occupy the two central positions in the row of 12 monuments. Caches were found under many of the monuments (and others probably remain to be excavated), but the richest deposit of all was found by the British Museum Expedition under Stela F. The centrality of these late monuments as well as the richness of the Stela F cache both suggest that the other stelae were moved to the row around the time of the dedication of Stelae F and G. It is possible, too, that these other stela were moved and rededicated later than 9.16.0.0.0, in order to celebrate major period endings at a time after carved monuments were produced at the site. Excavations in the group should help clarify its chronology, but we now hypothesize that its construction dates to the middle of the 8^th century.

Prager’s analyses of the texts in the British Museum also are bearing fruit, and are worth summarizing briefly here. To date, he has identified approximately 38 individuals, several battle events where captives were taken, and a number of interesting titles. To the list of Pusilhá rulers compiled by Reents (n.d.) and Martin (personal communication to Lorington Weller, 1993), we now can add a queen in her own right (ix k’uhul ajaw of Pusilhá), a dynastic founder, and several other rulers. According to Stelae P and K, the Pusilhá dynasty was founded in 8.6.0.0.0 (A.D. 159) by an individual whose eroded name ends with K’awil, a god name adopted by several Late Classic rulers of the site. Most interestingly, the founding of the Pusilhá dynasty is linked to an individual named "Leaf Ajaw" who is thought to have been a predynastic ruler of Copán. Stela I at that site contains a retrospective reference to "Leaf Ajaw" and an event that also dates to 8.6.0.0.0. It is not known if "Leaf Ajaw" was a mythical or actual ruler of Copán, but the reference at Pusilhá provides another link to that site. A separate text describes a king of Pusilhá as an och’k’in kalomte’ (’lord of the west’), a title used by only a few rulers of the largest sites, and one that has been linked to Teotihuacán "influence" at Tikal and other sites. Similarly, Stela C depicts a ruler holding a bicephalic serpent bar with emerging images of the central Mexican storm god ("Tlaloc"). A direct connection with Teotihuacán is unlikely given the Late Classic date of these monuments, but the use of the och’k’in kalomte’ title and "Tlaloc" imagery suggest that Pusilhá was, for part of its history, a rather cosmopolitan center.

Curiously, the full emblem glyph of no other archaeologically-known site appears in the Pusilhá corpus. Toponyms of unknown places where captives were taken are noted, as is the place name of the home of the husband of a queen of Pusilhá. One toponym (the "Water Group" site) may refer to Altun Ha, but equally could be a smaller site in the vicinity of Najtunich or near the Petexbatún region. To date, Prager has identified no unambiguous reference to Copán, Quiriguá, Nimlipunit, or other sites thought to have been intimately involved in the political history of Pusilhá. Thus, despite general ceramic and artistic affiliations, as well as a pattern of shared king names, Pusilhá may always have been an independent polity.

During sketch mapping of the Big Tree Group (located 400 m east southeast of the Stela Plaza), we discovered a fragment of a second previously unknown stela. A third new stelae (making a total of 25 for the site) and altar fragment were discovered in a small residential group 400 m northwest of the Stela Group. It contains a text identifying a depicted captive. Analysis of the hieroglyphic content of these monuments, as well as continued study of the 88 new fragments and the monuments in the British Museum, will shed further light on the dynastic and political history of Pusilhá. These data will provide an important chronological tool against which models of economic integration will be tested.

The Moho Plaza.

Another focus of both mapping and monument documentation was the Moho Plaza, located some 950 m west and 1350 m south of the Stela Plaza. With the exception of the Gateway Hill Acropolis, this is the largest single group yet found at the site, measuring some 120 m to a side. Weller (in Walters and Weller n.d.) reported 10 structures in the group, and we have found three additional platforms. The largest ballcourt known in southern Belize (called Pusilhá Ballcourt 3) is located at the north end of the Moho Plaza, and the south end is delimited by a large range structure containing a hieroglyphic stair (Str. VI). Strs. X and XI may form a fourth ballcourt. Unfortunately, they are so badly looted that it is not clear if they are two parallel structures or once formed a single rectangular mound. Simple salvage excavations would clarify this issue.

Prager has produced the first illustrations of the three ballcourt markers from Ballcourt 3, and also has drawn and re-photographed the blocks in the hieroglyphic stair. The latter contains a Calendar Round date of 4 Ak’b’al 2 Sotz’, but it cannot yet be tied securely to any absolute date. Nevertheless, for a variety of reasons described below, we currently favor the date of 9.18.7.10.3, or A.D. 798.

As for the Stela Group, we have generated a detailed plan, a Malerized map, and a topographic map (Figure 4). Because of the remote location of Moho Plaza, we were unable to back-shoot to the site datum in the Stela Plaza. For this reason, the coordinates appearing in Figure 4 are not tied into the master grid. Nevertheless, GPS readings suggest that the Moho Plaza bench mark is located some 1350 m south and 950 m west of the Stela Plaza datum. As we begin systematic mapping of the western portion of the site, a priority will be to extend the site grid as far as the Moho Plaza.

For several reasons we suspect that the Moho Plaza dates to a time quite late in the occupation of Pusilhá. First, the architecture is different from that of other groups. Several structures are fronted by large, monolithic stairs similar to those of Lubaantun and Nimlipunit, sites which apparently reached their apogee after dated monuments were erected at Pusilhá. Second, the ballcourt is anomalous in two ways: (1) it is oriented east-west, a pattern typical of Terminal Classic and Postclassic ballcourts; and (2) it is not built in a walled enclosure like the other two ballcourts at Pusilhá and those of Lubaantun and Nimlipunit (see Leventhal 1990). Third, the glyph blocks of the hieroglyphic stair are particularly strange, and are rendered in a style reminiscent of that of Terminal Classic and Postclassic Yucatán. Finally, the group is constructed on a low, flat plain: an occupational pattern not seen elsewhere at the site. In the 2002 season, we hope to return to the Moho Plaza to conduct test-pit operations. Our working hypothesis is that this elite group was occupied at the end of the history of Pusilhá, probably at a time after the dynastic collapse in the late 8^th century.

Gateway Hill Acropolis.

One of our most important tasks of the 2001 season was to begin survey of the Gateway Hill acropolis, the dynastic center and palace group of Pusilhá. The simplified rendering of the acropolis is perhaps the least satisfying aspect of the earlier pace-and-compass map. The acropolis and associated groups are much larger in size than indicated in Leventhal’s map, and completely fill a large oxbow in the Pusilhá River (i.e., the apparently blank region beneath the "Gateway Hill" label in Figure 1). We produced detailed, scaled sketch maps for use in total station mapping of the entire complex, but completed only the northeastern portion of the acropolis (Figure 5).

The portion of Gateway Hill that we were able to complete rises some 55 m. Overall, the top of the highest pyramid in the group stands some 80 m or more above Ballcourt 2 and the Pusilhá River. As has been noted by previous researchers, much of this rise is natural; ancient architects skillfully blended topographic features with artificial building façades. Nevertheless, several of the structures at the top, including the southernmost in the row of pyramids, appear to be artificial, and likely were the burying place for the kings of Pusilhá. We were told by several villagers that looters located a rich tomb containing a jade mask in the northernmost pyramid (located at 530 m south, 715 m east of datum). Another looted tomb, apparently vaulted, was found in the platform located at 500 m south, 650 m east. Although looting in the group is extensive, this portion of the site is quite beautiful and impressive. In our opinion, it would be well worth the effort to consolidate several of the structures on Gateway Hill.

Systematic settlement survey.

An important facet of the 2001 season is the beginning of a systematic mapping program. As discussed above, Leventhal’s (1990) useful pace-and-compass map is incomplete because it was generated from transect rather than full-coverage survey. Moreover, his western transect extended only 1.5 km west of the site center, and we already have relocated many groups 500-1500 meters further west. The last of these groups is Gibson’s Ik Bolay Complex, consisting of a massive elevated platform supporting several groups linked by a sacbe. This fortification, located in a mountain pass on the Guatemalan border, seems to delimit the northwestern boundary of Pusilhá. The area to the southwest has not yet been explored in any detail, with the exception of the Moho Plaza.

During 2001, we conducted full-coverage mapping (including detailed topographic mapping) in the northeastern quadrant of the site. This region, measuring 33 hectares in area, was completely cleared in April when a plantation (milpa) fire burned out of control. Leventhal’s east-west transect passed through this area, but the fire exposed many more groups and structures that do not appear in his settlement map. The old pace-and-compass map shows 25 structures. In contrast, we mapped 84 platforms and seven terrace features (Figure 6).

Leventhal (n.d.b) concluded that the apparent low structure density of this portion of the site indicates that it is outside of the urban center. But we have determined that the structure density of this portion of the site is 255 platforms per km². Standard demographic calculations used in the Maya lowlands suggest a population density of 850-1400 individuals per km², well within the range posited for the centers of large cities like Tikal and Calakmul. In other words, the urban zone of Pusilhá extends at least as far as this area. Exploration of the region northeast of the Poité River supports this notion.

The purpose of our systematic settlement survey is to understand the spatial distribution of elites and commoners in Pusilhá, and to determine how the site grew over time. We will use the results of this year’s survey to plan test-pitting operations for the 2002 and 2003 seasons, with the goal of sampling residential and special-function groups occupied by different segments of the population throughout the history of the site.

Ceramics and obsidian.

Although we did not collect artifacts during the 2001 season, we recorded in-the-field observations of both ceramics and lithics. Such artifacts are readily seen in recently burned areas, and are even more abundant in the looters’ pits that we have documented in nearly all mounds. Obsidian artifacts, quite surprisingly, are extremely abundant at Pusilhá, and appear in surface densities greater than I have seen at any lowland Maya site other than Copán. As at Copán, obsidian is much more abundant than chert. Visual inspection of obsidian artifacts from Pusilhá suggests that the majority came from the El Chayal, Guatemala source. Nonetheless, significant surface deposits of Ixtepeque obsidian (used heavily at Copán and Quiriguá, but not exploited to a great degree by Classic centers of the Petén or inland Belize) also have been found. It is not yet clear if these represent a chronological shift in procurement patterns, and if such a shift should be associated with economic incorporation with Copán or Quiriguá. Test-pitting of the features where Ixtepeque obsidian is found should help us answer these questions. Finally, green obsidian from the Pachuca, Hidalgo source also is surprisingly common in certain portions of the site. For example, numerous green prismatic blades and biface fragments have been observed eroding out of a 50 cm high platform in the village of Poité. Morphological traits of these artifacts suggest that they date to the Early Classic, and not to a later period.

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