Research on Temple 16: An Ongoing Imagery Reconstruction of Temple 16, Copán, Honduras

Conclusions

Work at Temple 16 this season has increased our understanding of the iconographic program displayed on the building and its tentative message. Results of this season (2003) of sculpture analysis have reached my expectations. However, there is still more to be done for which funding will be sought in the near future.

According to the past decade of studies in the Copán urban center and its immediate and farther surroundings, the Copán polity began to face difficulties at the end of the Late Classic. Explanations considering possible causes and rulers’ strategies seeking the continuation of the kingdom have been offered in several volumes (see W. Fash 2001). Yax Pasah, the 16^th ruler, among his several architectural endeavors, commissioned the construction of Temple 16 at the very center of the acropolis around A.D. 776, in the same place where the founder’s remains were buried approximately three and a half centuries before. Preliminary analysis of the Temple 16 reconstructed mosaics reveals overt imagery of the founder Kinich Yax K’uk’ Mo’ and Teotihuacán symbols (Tlaloc, god of rain and possibly the plumed serpent).

I suggest that the location and prominence of Temple 16, along with the imagery depicted, convey a strong statement of legitimization. The founder and his ancestral origin from the once most powerful Mesoamerican center were likely intended political symbols used by Yax Pasah in his efforts to maintain not only his position, but also to assure the dynastic succession in the traditional form of Maya kinship.

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