Early Copán Acropolis Program 2000 Field Season

Analysis of Construction Materials

With partial support from FAMSI Grant 99102, in 2000 Christine Carrelli completed her collection of data and samples from the full range of construction materials exposed in the ECAP tunnel system, and is now in the final stages of her analysis of Copán Acropolis construction materials which will comprise her Ph.D. dissertation in the Department of Anthropology at Rutgers University. The goals of this study are to determine estimates of ancient labor investment and reconstruct the construction methods and task specializations used by the Maya at Copán (Carrelli, 2000). The working basis of Carrelli’s research is the Copán Architecture Catalog (CAC), a systematic record of architecture, decoration, and methods of construction for all features exposed in the ECAP excavations, documented by black and white photographs and scale drawings of all architecture. By the end of the 2000 field season this record of architectural constructions in the ECAP tunnels was completed.

This detailed record is now being used as the basis for an analysis of the construction sequence and evolution of the Copán Acropolis. This descriptive record reveals the changes in stone carving techniques, plaster use, structural fill content, stone scavenging and reuse, and changing methods and styles of construction through time. These data allow an energetics analysis that estimates the number of workers and number of work days required to complete each specific building episode revealed in the ECAP tunnels.

This descriptive record is augmented by more detailed constituent analyses to identify changes in construction materials over time. Over one hundred samples of construction materials from various architectural contexts within the Copán Acropolis have been brought to the United States for analysis under permits secured from the Instituto Hondureño de Antropología e Historia. These samples are being analyzed to identify their physical, mechanical, and chemical properties, their individual components, proportions, and interrelationships at the Historic Preservation Laboratory of the University of Pennsylvania (Directed by Dr. Frank Matero). To date analyses of 49 samples of floor plasters and 5 building mortar samples have been completed. A third and final batch of building facade plaster samples is currently awaiting analysis.

Carrelli (2000) has conducted preliminary energetics calculations based on data from the earliest stages of Acropolis construction roughly corresponding to the reigns of the first two rulers. These results estimate that the initial royal center required a total of over 150,000 person-days of labor, or over 15,000 person days per year during the reign of its sponsor, the dynastic Founder, Yax K’uk’ Mo’ (ca. A.D. 426-437). According to Carrelli’s estimates and assumptions as to Copán’s total population at this time, this would translate to every adult male devoting more than three work weeks per year to K’inich Yax K’uk’ Mo’s royal construction projects. After his son, Ruler 2, took power in A.D. 437 construction of a major new royal center was begun. Among other things, these new constructions consumed prodigious amounts of lime plaster, the most costly material to produce and the least readily available at Copán. In the first 5 years of his reign, it is estimated that Ruler 2 commanded over 38,000 person days of labor per year. Carrelli calculates that this translates to every adult male in Copán providing more than a month and a half of labor each year to Ruler 2’s royal constructions.

While the actual amounts of labor and time investments may vary depending on the assumptions defined for the study, the actual amounts of materials utilized in the Acropolis constructions can be quantified and their variations in both quantity and quality assessed across time. Carrelli’s research reveals that even the earliest kings of Copán required substantial labor investments from their subjects. The complexity and ornate decoration of the initial royal constructions, the conspicuous consumption of the most costly materials, and the size of the labor investment required, all point to significant levels of task specialization, efficient labor organization, and royal power at Early Classic Copán. Although more detailed results will be presented in Carrelli’s Ph.D. dissertation, it is already clear that the scale of the labor and time investments made during the reigns of Copán’s first two Early Classic kings are far greater than had been assumed by prior investigators. This provides further evidence of the emergence of Copán as a preindustrial state in the Early Classic era (Sharer et al., 1999).

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