Early Copán Acropolis Program 2000 Field Season

Analysis of Human Remains

The ongoing study of human remains from the Copán Acropolis burials is being conducted by Dr. Jane Buikstra (University of New Mexico) and a series of colleagues (Buikstra et al., 2000). While none of this research has been directly supported by FAMSI Grant 99102, the results are of interest here since they add another dimension to the interpretation of both the Margarita and Hunal Tombs, especially regarding the external connections seen from the neutron activation analyses of the pottery vessels from these two tombs.

The most favored current hypothesis is that the Margarita Tomb is the burial place of the royal wife of K’inich Yax K’uk’ Mo’, a woman of local Copán origins, who most likely represented the original established royal lineage (Sharer et al., 1999). While neutron activation analyses show that about half the vessels in the Margarita upper chamber are non-local in origin (see Table 1), the strontium isotope analyses from samples of the burial itself indicate that this woman was born and raised in the Copán region, perhaps just to the north of the Copán Valley (Buikstra et al., 2000), consistent with the hypothesis.

As for the Hunal Tomb, the currently favored hypothesis is that it contains the burial of Copán’s dynastic Founder, K’inich Yax K’uk’ Mo’ (Sharer et al., 1999). There are a number of indications that during his lifetime this man had strong connections to both the Central Petén (Tikal) and Central México (Stuart, 1999). As we have seen, the neutron activation analyses show that a number of vessels in the Hunal Tomb derive from both of these same regions (see Table 1). The clues gleaned from the bones in the Hunal Tomb provide especially important support for the hypothesis that these are the remains of Yax K’uk’ Mo’, and reinforce a strong Tikal connection. The strontium isotope analyses of the Hunal bones indicates this man was not native to Copán but spent his early childhood and young adult years in the Tikal region, and was a resident of Copán in his final years before death. This matches historical accounts saying Yax K’uk’ Mo’ came to Copán in A.D. 426/27 from elsewhere to become its founding king, and a text referring to a K’uk’ Mo’ at Tikal that dates to A.D. 406.  Interestingly, the age of the Hunal occupant at death, between 55 and 70 years, is in line with the expected age of Yax K’uk’ Mo’ if he was already an established leader at Tikal at least 20 years before his arrival at Copán. In addition, if the Founder was a warrior (as many later references imply), the Hunal bones certainly have the kind of serious fractures and dislocations resulting from combat, all of which healed before death (Buikstra et al., 2000).

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