The Piedras Negras Project: Preliminary Report of the 2000 Field Season

In the Land of the Turtle Lords:
Archaeological Investigations at Piedras Negras, Guatemala
Stephen Houston, Héctor Escobedo, Mark Child, Charles Golden, Richard Terry, and David Webster

Acropolis and West Group Court Sector

Work in the Acropolis continued systematically, by focusing on a wide variety of locations: (1) areas under and around the West Group Court; (2) several buildings in the presumed "servant’s/courtier’s sector" of the Acropolis; (3) the front terraces of the Acropolis (J-1); (4) Courts 1, 2, and (5) an area of dense construction on the northern slope of the Acropolis (Structures J-24 through J-27). The overall objective was to extract as much information as possible about all aspects of this hub of royal and urban life and Piedras Negras. Excavations in several buildings around the West Group court enhanced considerably our understanding of its history. In Yaxche times - i.e., the seventh century A.D. - a formal entrance stairway ca. 60 m. in length was raised to greet visitors passing up and down the K-2 stairway. This stairway corresponds to a time we call the Great Shift at Piedras Negras, when large portions of the epicenter were encased within immense volumes of fill and masonry walls. There are suggestions that these may have something to do with a widespread phenomenon in the western Maya Lowlands. At 9.13.0.0.0 or A.D. 692, the Cross Group was constructed at Palenque, the panel complexes at Pomoná, and Altar 1 erected in the West Group Court (David Stuart, personal communication, 2000). It is difficult to believe that these actions were coordinated among the sites, but there may nonetheless have been a powerful religious, calendrical, or astronomical motivation to the near-simultaneous construction of these massive platforms and temples (Lounsbury, 1989). If some of the West Group Court has the same date, ca. A.D. 692, then its elevation accords both with the Yaxche ceramics from these contexts and the early reign of Yo’nalahk the Second. The Group would then represent a striking assertion of royal puissance just after Ruler 2’s death, and the momentous alliances and coming-of-age rituals taking place at the beginning of Ruler 3’s reign.

An opportunity to enlarge this formal entrance to the West Group Court and, evidently, to memorialize a member of the royal family came when a crypted burial was constructed within a new building, K-3.  The positioning of this structure to the right of the K-2 stairway necessitated, for reasons of symmetry, another building of comparable size, K-1.  K-3 and K-1 both have the appearance of being guardhouses, with vaulted, heavily stuccoed roofs and ceilings, 2-m walls, and commanding views of the East Group plaza below.  K-3 was modified several times, initially because the crypt had collapsed, during which time a dish with incised base fell sideways into the crypt from a shattered niche. Later, masons made additions to diminish access to the two rooms defined by a central wall within the building. The burial, Burial 82, is among the richest ever found at Piedras Negras: it contained a young adult male, 38 perforated jade beads or disks, most of high quality, a jade imitation of a stingray spine, a Cha:k, or Rain God scepter, and a stingray spine incised with hieroglyphs (Figure 2). The scepter and spine were highly revealing: such scepters, made of the Jaguar ulna, are restricted thus far only to royal tombs at the site (Burial 5 and Burial 13), and the spine explicitly states that the owner was a youth named "Night-time Turtle" (?-ya a-ku, cf. a spelling on a vessel from Tikal Burial 196), and also someone who used a title, K’in Ajaw, frequently employed by members of the royal family of Piedras Negras. The glyphs strongly hint that this was the final resting place of a prince (ch’o-ko/K’IN-ni-AJAW) of the royal house, and that it was thought necessary to memorialize him with a more exalted and carefully monitored entrance to the general precinct of the royal palace. However, the bones appear equivocal in this regard: the individual was between 15 and 18 years of age, and this, together with a number of other features, make it impossible at present to sex the skeleton with any great assurance (Andrew Scherer, personal communication, 2000). Nonetheless, the age is consistent with the ch’ok, "youth," statement.

Other buildings investigated nearby confirmed the Yaxche date of most structures around the West Group Plaza. A colonnaded building, O-18, was found to contain an eroded panel, once richly replete with hieroglyphs but now reduced to little more than an eroded glyph band around what may have been a palace scene. This and an earlier building underneath were, like K-1 through K-3, Yaxche in date. A wall beneath its front stairway seemed to have restricted traffic by delimiting an enclosed area measuring approximately 50 x 50 meters; the wall stops abruptly as it reaches the arroyo that passes eventually to the river bank. A U-shaped building, K-7, shown incorrectly on the Pennsylvania map as a rectangular mound, proved to be Yaxche, as did a building under O-17.  This last proved to be surprising, as it is one of the few unfinished buildings known at the site. Chacalhaaz masons incorporated what appear to be altar fragments but failed to finish the facade. Stripping excavations in the so-called "servants’"  "courtiers’," or "N-O" sector (Fitzsimmons, 1999; Fitzsimmons and Muñoz, 1999), a barrio physically contiguous with the Acropolis sector and perhaps linked to it functionally, yielded more remains of the Yaxche period, along with burials under each room of its superstructure. The question remains whether some of the functions of this sector were absorbed by the J-24 sector on a northern terrace of the Acropolis; clearly, the area around J-24 was already discharging such duties (see below).

As in previous seasons, slot trenches and pits under the southwestern portion of the West Group Court exposed an elaborate series of platforms, patios, water drains, and revetment walls of Early Classic date (Garrido, 1998; 1999). At least two phases were securely attested, the earliest on bedrock. The sequence of destruction is relatively clear: buildings of wattle-and-daub (bajareque) were burnt and crushed, often pushed into patios but, on the southwestern edge of this Early complex, left as compressed mass on well-plastered platforms. Later - the amount of elapsed time is uncertain - the tops of the higher platforms were truncated and their fill shoveled into the patios to create and level the West Group Court. To judge from the rubble, the platforms were at least 50 cm to 1 m. above their current ruined height. The bajareque buildings would have added at least another 3 meters to that level.

Historically, the bajareque raises many issues, since burnt layers of this date occur under J-1, Court 1, and Court 3 (Houston and Arredondo Leiva, 1999:250). The question before us is determining what might have led to these destructive episodes. Are they merely attempts to flatten buildings so that floors can be made above them? Or is the destruction the result of conflict, followed by clean up and, indeed, obliterations of those buildings by later architectural designs? In Court 3, the burning has a slightly different quality, in that other layers were superimposed as the deposits burned; moreover, these deposits contain an unusually high number of exotics, including pieces of pottery, figurines, and jade flung with some violence over the deposit (Golden, 1998:35-36). A similar deposit of slightly later date occurs in the Northwest Group Plaza (Wells, 1998a): it yielded a high proportion of exotics, including a glyphically incised bone. Both differed from other bajareque deposits in J-1, Court 1, and the West Group Plaza, which produced relatively small quantities of pottery and few exotics (i.e., jade or other infrequent finds).

The timing of the late Naba deposits (ca. A.D. 500-550) raises a possible correlation with events recorded retroactively on Stela 12, one of the latest sculptures – if not the latest monument – at Piedras Negras (Figure 3). The sides of the stela are eroded to such an extent that pivotal information is missing. However, enough remains to determine that the principal antagonists of Piedras Negras were the rulers and warriors of Pomoná.  Pomoná is not well published (although see López Varela [n.d.]), but it appears to have had a dispersed settlement pattern, with several hill-top centers in the Tabasco plain that were under the control of the same dynasty. Pomoná was a natural enemy of Piedras Negras: it controlled a different ecological zone to the north and formed a bottleneck through which Piedras Negras would naturally choke as it pushed into lands to the north. In addition, a stelae at Panhale, a site that also uses the Pomoná emblem, lies on a hilly zone near the Boca del Cerro, where the Usumacinta flows out of karstic topography into the plains of Tabasco. Most of these sites are intervisible, being placed on low prominences. Pomoná itself looks easily to the canyon of the Boca.

A closer look at the right side of Piedras Negras Stela 12 shows that some 11 katuns and 17 (?) tuns before the date of war against Pomoná something was "offered at Pomoná" (t’ab’ay pak’b’u), a pattern similar to tributary events documented at Naranjo and shown iconographically on a panel at Palenque (Stuart, 1998a:fig. 31, 412-413). Although the Stela 12 is fragmentary, it seems clear that a ruler of Piedras Negras submitted to Pomoná. The ruler is otherwise unattested, and comes from the "lost years" of history at Piedras Negras, when no known stela are being erected. As for the ruler who presides over these events (as shown by a yichnal statement), his name seems to have been Kuch? K’in Bahlam, "the Jaguar who Supports the Sun": this name often involves a glyph meaning "support" (if still uncertain in precise reading) but in this instance shows the jaguar literally holding the sun sign aloft (Simon Martin, personal communication, 2000). The name is documented at Pomoná, although for the Late Classic period. Nonetheless, it would not be strange to find it in use at an earlier time, as happens frequently at Piedras Negras and other sites. Historical texts from Pomoná tell us explicitly of notations referring to this general period, in katun records of 9.0.0.0.0,  9.4.0.0.0, and 9.6.0.0.0.  Interestingly, the locations connected with these calendrical events shifts from place to place, including a placename, Pipha’, that may refer to this portion of the Usumacinta. This is consistent with what may be a diffuse pattern of royal settlement in the plains below the Boca del Cerro.

In such light the burnt bajareque at Piedras Negras takes on new meaning. A common trope in Mesoamerican art connects conquest with burnt temples and other buildings. We speculate that some of the deposits at Piedras Negras, with the possible exception of enigmatic ritual levels in Court 3, coincide well with a defeat and subsequent tribute-giving just after 9.6.0.0.0, or A.D. 554.  This would thus become the terminus post quem for the Balche period, which lasted only a generation or two. Piedras Negras was attacked and parts of its royal palace destroyed, to be tidied up at a later date, probably not fully until Yaxche times, when Ruler 3 left his hand on the Acropolis zone. Stela 12 can thus be seen as a monument of vengeance, in which an earlier humiliation or embarrassment was remembered with tenacity and chagrin, and later rectified near the end of the kingly line at Piedras Negras. The implications for studies of Maya warfare are potentially important. As Freidel and his colleagues have noted at Yaxuná, Yucatán, warfare of a penetrating destruction may not only have played a role in the Late Classic or Terminal Classic periods. Rather, such destructive events may have taken place throughout the Classic and Preclassic periods (Freidel, et al., 1998). The difference is largely that, in earlier phases, destructive episodes were cleaned up by survivors. Such was not true at places like Dos Pilas (Houston, 1987; Demarest et al., 1997) or Aguateca (Inomata and Stiver, 1998).

Until now, the Acropolis has not supplied much evidence of food or craft production. Holley reported a great concentration of burnt vessels and other artifacts on the floor of J-12, but these had been cleared out in the 1930s (1983:204). This season, J-24, on the northern side of the Acropolis hill, was found to have begun as an Early Classic level and a Balche rubbish dump, presumably connected with a building in the center of the patio. By Yaxche times the first version of J-24 came into existence. Its construction was of high-quality, with thick plaster and cleanly cut masonry, a pattern continued in its second major stage. This building seemed to have faced away from a courtyard that served as the probable landing stage for a monumental staircase leading up to Structure J-23, the highest point on the Acropolis summit, and down below to J-27, and thence by another stairway to the Northwest Group Court and the river.  J-27 served as a stopping point on this passage, with a few burials that may have belonged to residents of the group above. (It may even be possible that J-27 was the summit of an unfinished period, since unusual finds, including an obsidian eccentric, were found on its summit.) A dramatic change took place, however, as Yaxche gave way to Chacalhaaz, and the J-24 sector had its courtyard filled in with a 4+-roomed building of poor quality and higher quantities of debris. At this juncture the J-24 sector may have tended to the needs of the royal inhabitants of the Acropolis, perhaps in succession to cooking or servant’s facilities in the N/O sector to the west of the West Group Plaza.  J-24 itself may have proved untenable as a residence: built close to a sheer edge of the Acropolis, this building began to crumble after it had been modified with additional rooms, benches, and the interment of an axial burial. The cruder buildings to the other side may have been reassuringly far from the precipice.

Other excavations in the Acropolis underlined its full development in Yaxche times, with some earlier finds that buttress interpretations from past seasons. In J-23, a narrow trench exposed a sub-structure that seemed to have a single-room’ s width, a feature evidently present under J-11 as well. Quantities of modeled stucco with volutes, beads, and cross-hatched areas occurred on the southern, inner floor of J-23, the facade having fallen backwards, spilling the stuccoed decorations on the floor. The northwestern, interior room of J-21, had a bench with inverted, trapezoidal backrest; a nearly identical feature, transformed by the Maya from a cantilevered "presentation" throne to a solid sleeping bench, was found and restored in J-11 during the 1999 field season. A probe in its northeastern corner showed the proximity of bedrock along with Yaxche ceramics. An unusually thick wall visible in the University Museum plan of the Acropolis attracted our attention. Rather than a massive partition, this proved to be a collapsed room of narrow width, clearly added at a late date. A silled "window" one meter from the well-plastered floor allowed ingress, and a stone projection on the other side ready exit. A human mandible was recovered on the floor, in the southeastern corner of the chamber. Another pit in J-22, on the same terrace as J-21, did not pierce to bedrock, because of heavy fill, but it did reveal a well-plastered floor with Yaxche ceramics. Investigations in Court 2 displayed similar superimpositions. In its eastern room, J-13 contained an earlier version of the same, with a doorway on the same orientation and with equivalent dimensions. Here as in J-23 the Maya appear to have enlarged a one-corridor building, or an extremely cramped two-corridored structure, into a more spacious one with two parallel chambers.  J-12, too, had secure evidence of earlier floors, more restricted floor space, all atop what may be an Early Classic revetment wall, perhaps in support of a yet-earlier version of J-12.

Of these excavations the deepest and most revealing by far were those under J-11, the scene of restoration efforts by masons in 1999. Cramped by University Museum fill and standing walls, the Project focused on the northern middle room, the one space within the structure of sufficient size to permit deep excavations. At a depth of over 3 m. was an Early Classic terrace, just above bedrock. This may have been the earliest version of a structure under J-11, indicating, with the sloping wall under J-12, that the form and orientation of Court 2 was essentially of Early Classic design. Indeed, most of the finer masonry in the visible buildings of the Acropolis is probably robbed from preexisting structures. Several Early Classic levels followed, all sealed by a Late Classic floor without, however, any intervening Balche deposits. On this were built two layers of supporting wall for a narrower antecedent of J-11.  These were evidently sealed in early Chacalhaaz times (ca. A.D. 750), and the final version of J-11 configured. Even to the end, this building was adjusted in layout by sealing off doorways and erecting flimsy, masonry partitions. The fact that the Acropolis followed prior forms and layouts was also attested in excavations within Platform J-5.  Portions of a stairway had been uncovered in 1999, but this season demonstrated that J-8 had a well-plastered precursor. Burial 5, with Burial 13 the richest tomb discovered at Piedras Negras, was built to the side of this stairway. Clearance of its interior revealed a number of objects missed by the University Museum (a hematite disk, parts of a hematite mosaic mirror, and fragments of shell) and, under the tomb floor, Early Classic ceramics crowded against bedrock.

The front of the Acropolis, especially Platform J-1, witnessed deeper and more extensive pits than in the previous season. Pyramid J-4 rested atop an Early Classic revetment that curved inwards on its northeastern edge. This platform was extended outwards in the Yaxche period and its front line extended to near its current corner. When J-4 was built, its adjacent floor reached out to the edge of this platform. When the second floor was laid down, it appeared to coincide with stone cists that received Stelae 6 through 7.  All of these developments can be assigned confidently to the reign of Ruler 3, who may well have the mastermind or guiding force behind much of the elaborate construction in the Acropolis and the West Group Court.

The most momentous epigraphic find of the season and, indeed, from the four-year span of our project was the discovery of Panel 15 at the front base of J-4 (Figure 4). The panel lay face and top down, at an 25 degree angle to the stairway. At first, its size (144 cm x 128 cm x 30 cm) and great weight (ca. 3,000 lbs.) suggested that the piece was a fragment from the celebrated series of stelae in front of J-4.  But the beveled edges of the sculpture soon pointed to another interpretation: that the project had found, for the first time in 65 years, a well-preserved example of sculptural and glyphic art at Piedras Negras. A winch, pulley, and rope arrangement - along with the force of 25 laborers and archaeologists - allowed the panel to be turned. Later the panel was maneuvered into a sturdy box, which in mid-June was inched, with enormous effort, to the area of the N-1 sweatbath, where a United States Army Chinook helicopter lifted the box to the former guerrilla milpa in the Northwest Group court. The panel was then hoisted into the craft, flown to Guatemala City (a two-hour flight), and formally transferred to the care of the National Museum.

The panel had clearly slipped to its find spot from a point somewhere above, on the upper reaches of the J-4 stairway. The ruined condition of the stairway makes the original context of the panel almost impossible to determine, but it is likely to have been near the top, perhaps on axis and mortared into the front base of the summit temple. The erosion on the panel indicates that the sculpture had been exposed for more than a century, with more pronounced damage to the upper right corner. A plausible scenario is that the panel was in position up to the time of the Collapse. At this time someone appears to have deliberately hacked at the face of the principal figure - a common occurrence in Classic art - and flaked selected glyphs in the unprotected part of the panel. (The lower left area, now the most legible, may have been protected by being covered by debris.) The sculpture then flipped over - or was pushed - and its weight carried it with some force to the base of the stairway. The impact crushed and splintered the upper right corner. It is interesting that the ritual of throwing captives down stairways was well-attested among the Classic Maya (Miller and Houston, 1987), and one wonders if the act of dislodging the panel symbolically replicated this treatment of human sacrifices.

Excavations around the panel revealed that the J-4 pyramid consisted of at least two phases. The initial phase had a narrow staircase and may have corresponded to a hypothetical earlier period of the pyramid, much like the two lower levels of Pyramid R-16, as noted this season by Escobedo and Zamora. The poorly consolidated fill of the J-4 summit made it impossible to dig more deeply, but a retention wall in fill implied the existence of another structure some meters down (Escobedo, 1997). Minimally, then, the bulk of J-4 had two phases, probably correlating with each of its two stairways. The two plaster floors in front of the J-4 stairway exactly match these two constructions. Both in turn lie atop an earlier terrace with finely plastered floor that passes under the bulk of the pyramid. At least the terminus post quem of the outer skin of J-4 is clear. Probings of the J-7 platform in Court 1 of the Acropolis showed that Yaxche floors passed under the latest surface of J-4, indicating that there were buildings and platforms of this date under the pyramid (PN 34A-6; Houston and Urquizú, 1998:247-248). Because of safety concerns, the tunnel that revealed this information could not be extended more than a meter into J-4.  Nonetheless, the ceramics from the tunnel indicated a secure Yaxche date for the fill of J-4, including sherds of Saxche Polychrome and Santa Rosa Polychrome.

The panel contains a central image of eight figures and a text with approximately 150 glyph blocks. The incised glyphs below the scene and principal inscription are insufficiently preserved to make a precise accounting, but the number of blocks accords with a general upward trajectory of glyph blocks at panels at Piedras Negras: Panel 12 (April 19, 518): 67 blocks; Panel 4 (Oct. 8, 658): 96 blocks; Panel 2 (July 25, 667): 129 blocks; Panel 15 (Dec. 31, 706); Panel 3 (March 24, 782): 175 blocks. The Julian-equivalent dates of Panel 15 are as follows. Note the formulaic use of a temporal phrase, u-ti-ya/’i-PAS, ut-i:y i-pas, probably something like "it happened, then (or now) the dawn or new day."

The majority of the text concerns the conflicts of Ruler 2, Itsamk’anahk the Second, although it begins with a statement of his date of birth, illustrious parentage (Yo’nalahk the First and his queen), and accession at the tender age of twelve. As is the usual practice at Piedras Negras, his personal epithet occurs first, the regnal name second. The principal element is Cha:k, the storm god, prefixed by (and sometimes conflated with) what appears to be a beaked creature, perhaps a turtle. This same name occurs later with the main lieutenant of Ruler 7 (Throne 1:D1). A two k’atun ajaw notation at D2 shows for the first time that his father died before he turned 40, leaving a son in the care of regents. This is seldom a happy or stable condition for a kingdom. At the age of 21, Itsamk’anahk embarked on what may have been his first conflict, which resulted in the capture of a lord from an unknown site (C13). This event does not seem to have been directly performed by him, since the statement of agency is a general one (YEHT?-te, "his companion"?). The same holds true for other capture or chuhkaj events on the panel. Most show Itsamk’anahk’s participation, but of an indirect sort, since they employ the u-KAB-ji-ya expressions that denote broad supervision. (Most likely, a capture event followed by an u-B’A:K, "his captive," statement points to direct involvement in the capture.)

After this first conflict, the panel turns to much later battles that are more closely spaced in time. The obvious peak of this stream of events is the second Initial Series, in itself a rare occurrence in Maya inscriptions, although known from a few other sites such as Uxul. In a sense, the temporal connections in such notations are two-fold, being linked to the event-line and to the so-called "creation" millennia before. This double-emphasis probably served as a kind of "exclamation point" or "underlining," in which all chronological particulars of the date were examined and noted. The event appears to be the well-known mediopassive verb connected with "Venus war."  A number of decipherments have been proposed for this verb, although Houston believes this simply be a logographic variant of the jub’uy, "fall," expression. The next event, after a long, heavily eroded section of the text, is another "capture," which cross-ties with a chuhkaj recorded on Stela 37:C6-D6.

The remainder of the text is exceedingly difficult to decipher. A long Distance Number at R8-S8 involves 1 katun, but the other notations are opaque, and may be rendered here with greater certainty than is warranted by the carving. Another approach to this problematic passage is to work backwards from the final date, which appears, though in ruined stated, to be the Period Ending 9.13.15.0.0.  A brief Distance Number of under one tun counts back to the final, non-Period Ending event on the monument. The brevity of this Distance Number and the length of the Distance Number at R8-S8 indicate that the event must postdate the death of Ruler 2 at 9.12.14.10.14,  Nov. 16, 686.  More to the point, it must have been close a katun after his death, suggesting a mortuary ritual on his anniversary. Such a ritual is recorded on the sides of Stela 1 on the 1 katun anniversary of his burial, 9.13.14.11.1,  Aug. 10, 706 (Fitzsimmons, 1998). The form of the verb, suspiciously similar in outline to that of the el-na:h, or incensario expression, was used in the area of Piedras Negras to record episodes of tomb reentry. Very likely this is what is being recorded near the end of the Panel 15 text. Moreover, enough remains of this inscription to see that the event was supervised by his son, Ruler 3.  Evidently, the pattern of stelae in front of Pyramid J-4 is much like the series in front of R-5.  The stelae pertain not to the person buried within these buildings, but to their offspring, who commemorate their own successes and dynastic records in close proximity to an ancestral shrine of immediate, genealogical relevance to them. As for the size of the panel, it probably reflects the height of the J-4 pyramid and the need to project the image as far as possible to the assembled multitude in the plaza below. Here, indeed, was a Pre-Columbian billboard of ambitious scale.

Regrettably, very little can be extracted of who Itsamk’anahk’s enemies might have been - the text is eroded in all the wrong places. The indirect nature of his involvement in the captures suggests that we are dealing with proxies, warriors engaged in skirmishes on behalf of the king, perhaps in border zones around the kingdom. A similar pattern is recorded on the much later Stela 12.  Coincidentally, the iconography on that monument, thought by many to be unusually innovative, clearly finds its origin in scenes such that on Panel 15.  In essence, the disposition of figures differs little from Stela 12: the central personage of the king grasps a feathered spear and is flanked by two standing lieutenants, the one to the right grasping a plain staff. Captives appear below in various attitudes of despair and entreaty. From an art historical perspective the emotive and highly individualized presentation of limbs and faces is intriguing, for it suggests that it is in depictions of captives that the Maya began to experiment with more plastic expressions of the human body.

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