Dieseldorff Collection: Ceramic Corpus of the Terminal Classic Originating from Molds

Introduction

There are certain people in the history of Guatemalan archaeology who have been valuable for being pioneers in the investigation of the Maya culture, in spite of not having any formal education in the field. This is the case of the German coffee grower Erwin Paul Dieseldorff, who, with an adventurer’s spirit, settled in the Verapaces region, which makes up the Departments of Alta Verapaz and Baja Verapaz, Guatemala (Figure 1). During the XIX and part of the XX centuries, he compiled an extensive collection of archaeological pieces, perhaps the most important in the region.

Various investigations have been carried out in the Verapaces zone (Appendix 1), which have provided a general panorama of its cultural interaction with the Maya Lowlands and the Guatemalan Highlands, which must have influenced in its social organization, religion, and artistic manifestations in general (Castellanos et al., 2002). Judging from the known ceramic evidence spanning a period of continuous occupation from the Pre-Classic period until the moment of the conquest (Smith, 1952), these interactions must have taken place since very early times.

During the coffee growing explosion in Guatemala, some of the German landholders had the opportunity to create archaeological collections due to the disturbances of the land that the plantations caused (Nañez, 1962). This was the case of Mr. Erwin Paul Dieseldorff, whose enthusiasm regarding his finds dabbled in the practice of compiling these goods, forming his collection with pieces that he himself excavated, as well as others that he acquired over the years (Nañez, 2000). His collection was divided into at least two parts, since in 1890 Erwin P. Dieseldorff donated a portion to the Museum für Völkerkunde (Museum of Ethnology) in Berlin, and after his death in 1944, his son Willi turned over another lot to the Guatemalan Archeological Museum – currently known as the Museo Nacional de Arqueología y Etnología de Guatemala (MUNAE) (Nañez, 1970).

This collection is characterized as having a large variety of ceramic styles, in their majority representative of the Classic and Postclassic periods. Nonetheless, due to the size and complexity of the collection, it was decided for this study to concentrate on Cabinet 96.  Cabinet 96 is important because it contains pieces which I denominated "Thrones", with at least 12 designs which were classified in 4 categories, depending on the theme represented by their iconography.

The preliminary results reinforce, without a doubt, the relationship that existed between the Verapaces region and the Lowland Maya area during the Terminal Classic period, and also indicate aspects relative to the mass production of non-utilitarian ceramic objects. By the description of the context in which some of the artifacts were found and the deterioration that they present, their function can be inferred; however, it is something that is still subject to future studies and discussion.

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