The Temple 22 Façade Reconstruction Project, Copán, Honduras

Sculpture Conservation

In 2000, the smaller, more transportable pieces from Pile 10 (Figure 13, shown above)–left by the Carnegie Institution in 1939–were brought down from the East Court to a more protected location near Pile 5 where they were placed inside a tall fence, and were re-identified and retagged (Figure 14, shown below). In early 2001, Barbara Fash oversaw the relocation and storage of these pieces to new shelving in Bodega V in CRIA. In summer 2001, I was able to match many of these pieces to known motifs form 10L-22 sculpture excavated by PAAC in the 1980s. I reorganized these pieces into motif groups on the shelves, and recorded the new shelf location of the sculpture.

However there are many large pieces from Pile 10 that still remain up at the East Court, exposed to weather and park visitors (Figure 15, shown above). Moreover, Pile 5 also contains hundreds of pieces of sculpture, at least 100 of which belong to Structure 10L-22 and many of which are quite high quality pieces such as the maize-god head in the middle left (Figure 16, shown below).

In addition, many pieces remain scattered about the building (Figure 17, shown below). Most all of these sculptures have not yet been catalogued. Funding is currently needed to catalog and move these sculptures to a more environmentally protected location from which we may analyze and reintegrate them into the reconstruction project.

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