Archaeological Investigations at Holmul, Petén, Guatemala
Preliminary Results of the Third Season, 2002

Group III, Court B

Court B is a palatial complex on a platform rising 6 m from the main plaza and surrounded by steep ravines on all other sides. A rectangular structure (Str. 43) is located roughly in the center of the complex and at one end of a small court surrounded by vaulted structures on all sides. Excavations within Structure 43 in 2001 uncovered a series of benches of which five were formally built masonry thrones, with stucco and painted surface finish in well-preserved conditions (Figure 18). A burial of a child was also found in one of the rooms. The evidence suggested that this structure functioned as a ’throne room’ during the 7^th and 8^th centuries A.D., that it had been built and re-used by a series of Holmul rulers (at least three) sometime prior to its retirement as an official building towards the end of the Late Classic period, and finally used as a midden.

In 2002, in order to further clarify the architecture of the building and its relationship with the rest of the courtyard, two trenches (TP 21, 22) were opened by Chris Hewitson in the front (east) of Structure 43, on the slope connecting the doorway to the courtyard floor.

The excavators removed the superficial backfill of Merwin’s initial clearing of the structure in 1911–during which he uncovered the benches in the eastern room–and reached the threshold of the doorway and a well-preserved stairway leading to the courtyard. This formal stairway was composed of six steps made of stucco-lined rectangular limestone blocks. The lowest two steps appeared to have been re-built with cobbles in lieu of the original blocks at a later stage (Figure 19, shown below).

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Within the fill, a number of carved stones were recovered. Among them was a tenoned depiction of a mat motif surmounted by a tied bundle of feathers or hair, and fragments with sets of parallel grooves, possibly indicating the feathers of a headdress. All the fragments recovered in this excavation (as well as similar elements recovered in 2001 on the north side) likely pertain to a veneer low-relief sculpture decorating the upper half of the building (Figure 20, shown below).

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The second trench clarified that the stairway occupied only the central portion of the front of the building and that a previous stage of the building lay underneath. Finally, the iconography (mat motif) of this frieze supports the hypothesis that the function of this building was that of Holmul’s royal "throne room" in the early part of the Late Classic period.

Further excavations below the stairway’s first step and the courtyard floor detected a 50 cm-thick construction fill made of well laid-out cut-stone foundation braces. Below this fill was a well-preserved plaster floor which appears to have been covered by the fill under the latest floor of the courtyard and by the steps leading to the Str. 43 ’throne room". It was therefore concluded that this floor may correspond to an earlier phase of the courtyard and it is hypothesized that it may also connect with an earlier phase of Str. 43 (Figure 21, shown below).

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A new trench was opened (TP23, by Joseph Mella) from the courtyard floor extending towards the southern building (Str. 60). This excavation uncovered a broad stairway that ran the whole length of the building and rested on the same patio floor as Str. 43’s stairway. Thus, it appeared to be coeval with the last phase of construction of Structure 43 and its stairway. The function of this stairway may have been that of a monumental access to a yet to be excavated important building to the south of the "throne room" and/or perhaps as reviewing stands (Figure 22, shown below).

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The investigation of the corner between Structure 43 and Structure 60 indicated that the stairway was a later addition and that it covered a well-built cut-stone block wall and plinth on which Structure 60 originally rested. Also, it appeared that in the corner between the two structures, the stairway of Str. 60 did not directly abut Str. 43, but in fact left access open to a vaulted corridor built below the southern room of Str. 43 and connecting the eastern and western courts of the complex (Figure 22, shown above).

The space in this corner was later filled with dark clay and abundant ceramic and lithic materials suggesting that in the last phase of occupation of the complex both Structures 60 and 43 and the tunnel between them were in disuse, at least from a formal point of view, and that the corner between them was used as a midden. The artifacts date this last episode to the Terminal Classic period.

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