The Temple 22 Façade Reconstruction Project, Copán, Honduras

Motif Analysis and Drawings

Until this project began, just five different motifs had been published as belonging to 10L-22. Two were made famous by Maudslay: the maize god, which has become the icon for the Peabody Museum, and smaller ’witz monsters’ (Maudslay 1947 (1903)). Others include the serpent-mouth doorway, corner masks that name the building a ’stone mountain’, first reconstructed by the Carnegie Institution of Washington, and an over-life-size figure that was published in an exhibition at The Metropolitan Museum and in article by Barbara Fash (Easby and Scott 1970; Fash 1992).

To date, the project has identified 39 motifs: the twenty identified by Barbara Fash and others plus 19 more identified by myself. MNI (Minimum number of individual) counts are being taken of each of the identified motifs and photograph records are being taken of these in the sandbox at CRIA. This is difficult as pieces are scattered in collections throughout the world: for example, at least 20 maize god busts are known to exist, however only 11 are in Copán (Figure 18).

Once the MNI count of a motif is determined, the pieces are then plotted on a grid plan according to the excavation grid of PAAC Operation 39 to determine the fall pattern of the pieces. This was done using Adobe Illustrator and is useful as one can make several layers, assigning different sub-motifs to different layers. This way, for instance, one can view the fall pattern of just the maize-god heads, or all the maize god pieces (busts, heads, arm fragments, hair decorations) at once.

In 2001, we began to make technical drawings of the sculpture motifs. Drawings surpass the utility of photographs in many respects, as biological growth and weather damage make it difficult to recognize the carving on the actual stone. The Honduran artist, Edgar Zelaya executed these drawings using a 1:10 cm scale. Zelaya continues to draw sculpture motifs in 2002 (Figure 19). The catalogue of motif drawings from 10L-22 is not yet complete; therefore Edgar continues to work in my absence. A complete catalogue of these drawings will be published in my dissertation.

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