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

Residential Excavations

Explorations in C-10 and C-12 proclaimed again the singular nature of this group, which in 1999 had been shown to contain the burial of a high-ranking lord from Yaxche times, a veritable cemetery in its patio, which also concealed caches and an Early Classic burial and revetment wall (Guillot Vassaux et al., 1999). In a central pit C-12 yielded Chacalhaaz, Yaxche, and Balche deposits. Stripping on its southern side exposed a formal stairway with wide risers, and, from the outset of excavations, unusual deposits, including an eccentric from what seems to have been a disturbed cache. The cleared, eastern top of the mound contained two rooms, one with a niched bench. In the Chacalhaaz period, this room was filled and incensarios and other vessels placed on the floor of this and an adjacent room, with some pronounced preference for room corners and the cardinal orientations of the bench. The adjacent room included an inverted Hutzijan Polychrome plate, unfortunately disturbed by tree roots. After filling, the room with the bench was fronted with an almost identical niche with inset, rectangular altar. On and near the surface were found an unusual series of molded and modeled animal and bird heads. Their function is entirely certain, as some are too heavy to have been used as lids. Others are relatively thin-walled, and may have formed part of marionette-like figures with perishable bodies.

On the northern side of the mound a back room had a narrow entrance to the front and contained a bench; the central chamber of C-10 appeared to pass directly through the building and a stairway behind. A burial on its front axis lay in front of this back room, and was surfaced with fill and slabs. Here as in C-12, termination deposits resulted in the filling of these rooms with one of the strongest and most varied samples of Chacalhaaz ceramics, particularly another inverted bowl on its axis and, near the central doorway, a carved bone with name-tag (Figure 5; u-?-ku/BA:K-ki, also found at Aguateca and, in its first elements, on the so-called "Squier jade" at the American Museum of Natural History and on an object from Dzibilchaltún). The similarity of this bone to others found recently at Aguateca, a site of comparable date, make it uncertain whether it was produced locally. The overriding impression one gets of the "C-Group" is that it is like none other at Piedras Negras, with an unusual ritual and sub-royal focus. In future work virtually all of this mound group should be stripped and penetrated, particularly the near-symmetrical rooms that appear to either side of the mortuary structure, C-13.

More modest operations included the complete stripping of U-5 and U-6.  The intent was to achieve an understanding over a large continuous area of a single residential cluster, especially one situated near monumental architecture (the South Group Court) and the arroyo that undoubtedly first attracted settlement to Piedras Negras (Wells, 1998b; 1999). In both buildings, the orientation was generally towards the arroyo. Preservation of standing architecture was poor, but, with patience, wall lines and internal divisions appeared, along with an abundance of burials and midden deposits, including two grinding stones on the front terrace of U-5 (others were, as is usual at Piedras Negras, incorporated into building fill when broken). The Chacalhaaz ceramics displayed an unusual variety of types, including well-preserved examples of fine gray or Telchac Composite. The number of burials hint at the total sum of interments in the "U-sector" of settlement. Excavations in previous seasons recovered nine bodies from Structure U-16 and four from Structures U-17 and U-8.  U-5 produced three interments, as well as two cisted chambers that were not touched this season for want of time; U-6 yielded another six. The burials in Structures U-5 and U-6 all had the same orientation, head due north. One remaining group was only test-pitted (Structure U-19, and the patio defined by U-7 and U-18), but a reasonable estimate would calculate, given the complete stripping in this area, a predicted total of at least sixty interments in the U sector. Structure U-5 had at least three phases, the earliest Yaxche (including some of its burials), subsequent ones Chacalhaaz; U-6 had two periods of major construction, the latest consisting of raised benches or even celled and filled rooms. Both buildings exhibited clear evidence of craft production, involving the reduction of chert and obsidian.

The suburban excavations focused on three groups. The first (RS 27) had been excavated in part during the previous field season. Its larger mound was trenched and stripped, showing a burial and an extension to the north. Among the most interesting finds was a probable sweatbath nestled within a deep rock overhang to the east, some 20 m. away from RS 27.  Its floor showed signs of burning, well-preserved and burnished plaster, and the remains of a narrow entrance way. One can imagine that water could have been collected from drips in the overhang; cooling may have been possible in a deep cave fissure a short distance away. A cache of imported shells suspended for use as jewelry was also found outside this building, with some pieces nesting within others. The presence of this sweatbath possibly indicates a special function for RS 27 and hints at the functional complexity of this semi-urban landscape. A small structure in the corozal (area with cohune palm) to the southeast (RS 24) proved to be a single-episode, Chacalhaaz building. Thick accumulations of sherds had built up in trash deposits on the southern part of the platform, and also in clay lenses that collected gradually along its western side. The position of the mound athwart a major trail to the southeast may be relevant to its placement in this poorly drained area. A large group with monumental walls and architecture (RS 28) served as the major focus of the suburban explorations (Figure 6). A large building with ruined bench was cut into bedrock and faced with a 2 m. wall of large blocks and a large stairway similar to those in royal contexts in the core of Piedras Negras. The lack of ceramics in this building suggested a "first settler" effect, in that other structures around the plaza contained ceramics, perhaps scraped from preexisting settlement. The building facing this larger structure was evidently placed later, and its western side filled with large numbers of metates and other kinds of rubble; a crypted burial of Chacalhaaz date lay within. The proximity of this group to a formal arrangement known as "Yax Nit" (Webster et al., 1998), doubtless a southward extension of the epicenter, points to its connection with monumental building programs in the core.

A concerted effort at completing test-pitting within Piedras Negras placed the suburban and residential excavations in greater perspective. Tests ranged from high, terraced groups in the Z-sector, which overlooks the Northwest Group Court, to deep pitting in and around the arroyo that passes through the southern part of Piedras Negras. Past mapping had pinpointed this latter area as the densest focus of modest settlement in the city. The pits revealed high concentrations of burials, including sub-adults and a neonate interred with a stingray spine. The age distribution resembles that at Tikal, where vulnerable children died and were buried reverently. A gap in skeletal distribution (provided the sample size suffices) came afterwards because those hardy enough to survive infancy tended to endure to adulthood (Andrew Scherer, personal communication, 2000). An apparent balance between male and female skeletons suggests the presence of family groupings.  A 5 m.+ pit showed the great depth of silt in this flooded area of the Piedras Negras, although sherds tapered off only a meter from the surface. This would suggest that the current level of the arroyo differs only slightly from that of the Classic period.

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