Revisiting the Xunantunich Palace: The 2003 Excavations

Excavations in the Xunantunich Palace

The Xunantunich palace consists of four structures focused around Plaza A-III, as well as an ancillary complex immediately to the east (Figure 3 and Figure 4). Excavations in Plaza A-III began with the expedition by Thomas Gann (1925) in 1924.  Later more focused investigations were led by Euan MacKie (1961, 1985) in 1959-1960 and, later, by investigators from the Belize Department of Archaeology through 1980s.  XAP instituted a systematic program to understand the complex in 1994 (Harrison 1996; Jamison and Wolff 1994; Yaeger 1997), focusing on Strs. A-11 and A-12.  Finally, in 2002 and 2003, the Belize government’s Tourism Development Project, directed by Jaime Awe and Allan Moore, undertook the excavation and consolidation of the south face of the massive Plaza A-III substructure and the southern stairway leading up to Str. A-13.  This previous work set the stage for the 2003 Xunantunich Palace Excavations.

Objectives
In 2003, Yaeger proposed to return to the Xunantunich palace to complete the excavation of the lower building of Str. A-11 and to excavate a test trench in Str. A-13 (shown in grey on Figure 4). This research was a fundamentally collaborative enterprise with Belize’s Tourism Development Project, one that integrated research questions with site conservation and tourism development. In the excavations in Str. A-11, we sought in situ artifacts and features that would allow us to better understand the activities that occurred in the lower rooms of the building. By clearing the lower building, we also expected to more precisely reconstruct the ways in which the palace’s built environment channeled people’s movements and shaped their interactions with the polity’s ruler and other members of the ruling court. Finally, we hoped to add more detail to our knowledge of the structure’s stratigraphic sequence and evaluate our initial interpretations of the nature and timing of the structure’s abandonment and dismantlement. We also proposed to clear Str. A-11’s frontal terrace and the plaza floor in front of the structure and to excavate the only room of Str. A-11’s upper building that MacKie left untouched, Room 4.

A secondary focus of our excavations in the palace was Str. A-13, a building that has a more complex construction history than the rest of the complex. Given that architectural modifications to other structures increasingly closed off visual and physical access to Plaza A-III and that Str. A-13 was the main point of communication between Plaza A-II and Plaza A-III, more detailed better knowledge of the changes in this building’s morphology would allow us to reconstruct the decisions about how to structure interactions and access between the ruling court and its subjects. To this end, we excavated a 6 m × 1 m trench into the northern gallery of Str. A-13 in a room that had already been cleared to the floor of Str. A-13-1st.

Methodology
To accomplish our goal, we began by establishing a 4-m grid on Str. A-11, which served to demarcate our excavation sub-operations. A tunnel excavated by XAP in 1997 into the central room of the lower building had provided us with a solid understanding of the building’s stratigraphy, making the 2003 excavations easier to plan. Our excavations respected the natural and cultural breaks in the stratigraphy, generally dividing thicker strata into multiple lots. When we approached architectural surfaces or found any primary deposits, we divided the sub-operation into smaller collection units that averaged 1 m on a side.

In five weeks of excavations, a crew that numbered seven supervisors and 31 laborers at its maximum accomplished the following tasks: (1) excavation of the entire lower building and frontal terrace of Str. A-11, as well as most of the adjacent plaza surface; (2) excavation of the easternmost room of Str. A-11’s upper building; (3) excavation of a trench in Str. A-13; and (4) processing the resulting artifacts. The Government of Belize’s Tourism Development Project subsequently consolidated Str. A-11, which is today exposed for the appreciation of visitors to the site.

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