THE MESSAGES OF MAYA RUINS - Six Years of Research of the Slovak Archaeological Project in Guatemala...

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THE MESSAGES OF MAYA RUINS

For six years already, the Slovak Archaeological and Historical Institute (SAHI) has been organising an independent archaeological investigation of pre-Co-

lombian Maya cities in the forests of the Guatemalan Petén province. This project led by Prof. Milan Kováč focuses on the site of Uaxactun and has expanded to the areas of more remote ruins in the surrounding rainforest. The archaeological research, which includes the excavations in Uaxactun and some other smaller sites, is realized by SAHI and it is financially supported by the Honorary Consul of Guatemala in Slovakia Mr. Zoroslav Kollár. Some important project areas also engage other Slovak scientific institutions. For example, the Faculty of Arts of the Comenius University ensures the field survey of new sites and the restoration of discovered objects; and the Slovak University of Technology provides close collaboration in the field of geodesy and topography. The project requires a huge amount of many other specialised jobs, which – in addition to the mandatory

Six Years of Research of the Slovak Archaeological Project in Guatemala (2009–2014)

Supplement of Historická Revue XXV – 10/2014. ISSN 1335-6550. Published on the occasion of the 19th European Maya Conference in BratislavaNot for sale.

Supplement of Historická Revue XXV – 10/2014

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parity in representation of the Guatemalan side – establishes wider cooperation with experts from all over the world. The project under SAHI leadership has so far directly involved 80 researchers of 11 nationalities, among them 28 Slovaks, 27 Guatemalans, 7 French, 5 Spanish, 5 Mexicans, 2 Germans, 2 US citizens, 1 Russian, 1 Czech and 1 Polish. The team includes also auxiliary staff of over 250 Guatemalans.The excavated materials include various types of artefacts, for example 200,000 ceramic sherds, and the project results can be studied on over 5,000 pages of scientific reports. This is one of the reasons why it was very difficult to highlight “the most important” issues over the past six years. The Maya used a vigesimal numeral system, calling the “twenty” numerical unit winik – man – to emphasise its complexity. Inspired by this concept, we selected twenty discoveries or, rather, project activities which are far from being complete, yet can demonstrate the entire range of our investigations and the main objectives we pursue. This paper is not intended for the specialists; we have chosen a po-pular form of interpretation aimed to present the results of our work that seem to be the most interesting to the public.

THE WORSHIPPED SEAT OF THE ANCIENT KING – THE H NORTH TRIADIC COMPLEX

Triadic groups were created in the Pre-Classic period by erecting three pyramids on an elevated platform into the shape of an isosceles triangle, with the pyramid on the

apex being a larger one and the two pyramids on the wings being smaller ones. This symmetric architectonic body, sometimes complemented with smaller side structures, seems to have imitated the three stars of the Orion constellation, representing the first

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GIGANTIC MASKS

Right during the first year of excavations, in 2009, we managed to capture volutes suggesting stucco decoration on the façade of the triadic complex H North. We

focused on excavations which showed that this object was larger than expected and it will need more attention in the future. Indeed, this discovery required four years of concentrated research work (in 2009–12). We found out that it were masks of a deity on both sides of the façade and they can be dated to the Late Pre-C-lassic period (1st century BC). They were sculpted on the façade of the H North architectonic complex in three stucco layers one above the other, each around 20 meters wide and almost 5 meters tall (however, only 3.5 meters of their height have been preserved ). With their original dimensions and area (almost 100 m2 each), these stucco “faces of a deity” are among the biggest pieces of art ever created by

focal point from which the Maya universe is told to be created. The triadic groups were seats of ancient Maya kings; they constituted the centres of political power, and their reference to the creation of the world related to the fixed mythological connection of de-miurgic powers and sacred royal power, so deeply rooted in the Maya tradition. Group H North was discovered and documented during the first decades of the 20th century, although the researchers from the Carnegie Institution, without excavations and only on the basis of the contours of the mounds, failed to identify the place as a triadic group, and documented it incorrectly. It was our excavations that corrected the old maps, and we have gradually excavated a unique centre of royal power that dominated Uaxactun somewhere between 50 BC and 150 AD. The residential seat of the king – the central H I building of this triadic group - was defined during three years of intensive excavations by Slovak archaeologist Martin Hanuš. Besides the complex shape of the building, he also discovered its stucco decorations, the remains of colourful paints, and partly pre-served masks on the front façade. The chronology of the construction of the building was completed by an extensive up to 28m long tunnel, excavated underneath the building by another Slovak archaeologist Pavol Spišák. The same archaeologist investigated and defined one of the two side pyramids. He discovered that just 100–200 years after the definite abandonment of the triadic group, apparently the descendants of the original inhabitants built an oratory there – a round stucco platform for ceremonies or for bringing sacrifices to ancestors who had originally lived in these buildings. The Maya, however, did not return to this sacred centre of power of ancient kings only in this time, shortly after leaving it. Right at the beginning of the research, Martin Hanuš discovered two beautifully worked flint blades of spears lying at the foot of the main pyramid in shallow humus layers. They date back to the Late Classic period, which means that they were placed in the ruins of the buildings some 600–700 years after their abandonment. This is how long the Maya memory and reverence for the ancient rulers, whom they knew for sure by their names, persisted. We can only imagine that these two massive spears with handles, decorated apparently with jaguar skin, were originally laying crossed on a pile of ruins that remained preserved from the royal seat with the message: No entry, this is a sacred soil of our ancestors!


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the Maya. They are oriented westwards, and according to the recent surveys they represent either the sun in the underworld, or an early dynastic deity. The discovery of these gigantic masks made our project famous around the world, and we are currently preparing their replicas that will commemorate this exceptional expre-ssion of ancient Maya spirituality directly at the place of its discovery, while the conserved originals stay hidden under the ground to preserve them at least for the next 2,000 years.

STELA 28 – PERHAPS THE OLDEST MAYA STONE INSCRIPTION

In 2013, the archaeological team excavating the front part of the H North triadic complex under the leadership of the Slovak archaeologist Daniel Kendrala was

fortunate again. This archaeologist, who was in charge of the excavations of four smaller buildings standing on the same platform in front of and behind the triadic group, discovered, while backfilling the excavations at the end of the season, a wor-ked stone which turned out to be a fragment of a stela. The discovery of a stone inscription is rare at Maya archaeological sites, yet not unusual. This one, however, was peculiar from the beginning. Our epigraphers, who managed to read Maya inscriptions of all kinds, were unable to read this one. This inscription seemed to contain too archaic and unknown signs. Further exploration of the archaeological context and the detailed analyses of the inscription showed that it was probably an

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RADIAL PYRAMID H XV AND THE CREATION OF THE WORLD

The pyramid designated as H XV was excavated under the leadership of Milan Kováč, head of the project, during six seasons from 2009 to 2014. The gradu-

al excavations showed that it is a radial pyramid from the 1st century AD which did not serve for the purposes of representation or as a common place of resi-dence. Similar structures served exclusively as ritual premises, predominantly with an astronomic significance. This structure showed obvious resemblance to the central pyramid of the “Lost World” complex in Tikal, which suggests possi-ble contemporary interconnections between the two cities. And as the pyramid in Uaxactun is smaller, it appears be a copy of the more majestic model in Tikal. Given certain links between the political power and architectonic dimensions in the Maya social and political environment, this could suggest Uaxactun´s depen-dence on Tikal back in the 1st century BC, at a much earlier period of the Maya history (450 years earlier) than originally assumed. The orientation of the perfect copy of the main pyramid of Tikal from this period is even more surprising than its shape. It is clearly oriented on the triadic group H North. The Slovak archa-eoastronomer Vladimír Karlovský found out that the connecting line between its

inscription created around the year 100 BC or even earlier. It is one of the most ancient preserved demonstrations of early Maya writing and one of the ol-dest or perhaps the oldest record of Maya writing in stone. Some of its ele-ments can be compared to inscriptions in mural paintings in the nearby site of San Bartolo, other ones, however, have no counterparts. What raises attention is the fine carving and the red colour of the signs preserved until today. Stela 28 must have been a witness of vio-lence between 100 and 50 BC when the royal inscription, normally sacred among the Maya, was destroyed and desecrated by being used as a com-mon stone block in a building con-structed around 50 BC. Unfortunately, it is rather improbable that we could learn more about its turbulent fate in the near future, although, thanks to our excavations, we are getting more in--depth knowledge about the Late Pre--Classic period, when this happened.


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top and the centre of the central, tallest pyramid of the triadic group H North defines precisely the line along which the heliacal risings and settings of the Orion can be observed. It was a very important constellation for the Maya – they as-sumed that the world was created within this constellation, as a result of which we do not consider this orientation accidental -specially if we take into account the fact that the triadic group as such is the te-rrestrial imitation of that place of the world creation within the Orion. This was apparently the way of creating a link between the heavenly image and its terrestrial representation through architecture. According to the results of our investigation, the radial pyramid H XV had a distinc-tive function in the Maya world – it probably served for observing the cosmic theatre and remembering the creation of the world.

PYRAMID H XVI AND ITS MEGALITHIC SHRINE

From the beginning, the structure H XVI has been one of the most mysterious objects of the entire Gruop H North. It stood outside of the urban system, and an

unusually large amount of Early Classic ceramics was encountered during the ex-cavations of this structure, while the older Pre-Classic period dominated elsewhere. This was one of the reasons why the excavations were preceded by a geophysical survey conducted by the Slovak specialist Peter Milo using special devices. The excavations were initiated by the German archaeologist Eva Goetting and conti-nued under the leadership of the Slovak archaeologist Eva Jobbová from the second year of the research. Step-by-step, it turned out that the building had at least three construction phases. The first one, confirmed by a tunnel dug in 2014, is extremely old and seemingly refers to the transition between the Middle and Late Pre-Classic period, i.e. the period between 400 and 300 BC. This age explains the “isolation” of the building, as the Group H North within which it is located did not exist in that period. The pyramid from these ancient times has been completely preserved, as it was backfilled around the year 150 BC and overbuilt by another pyramid which corresponded to the new building development within Group H North. Around 150

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THE “SHARK” COMPLEX

When we found some shark teeth during our excavations at the foot of a hill within the Group F North, we made jokes about terrestrial sharks having lived there

during the Maya period. In reality, we knew well that the shark teeth were part of im-ported offerings brought to the top of the hill, where several large buildings can be found, and that they had probably been washed down to the valley by the rain. What we did not know is that the hill was a monolithic, hardly imaginable complex covered with earth deposits and vegetation, and that the buildings on the top of it constituted its integral part. None of us was prepared for such a megalomaniacal perspective, as the hill was densely overgrown by forest, and the view from either side gave us not even a partial idea about such a massive complex. The patient measurements of the geodesist Tibor Lieskovský from the Slovak University of Technology and his

BC, the building was abandoned and decayed for another 100–150 years. In the beginning of the Early Classic period, around 300 AD, it was rebuilt – this time not as a residential building, but as a purely ritual place. The Maya built a “niche” at its front with a stone “pavement” linedwith monumental “megalithic” stone blocks, having erected a stone stela above them. They thus created a unique shrine, apparently de-dicated to ancestor worship. We also found many sacrificial items and ceramic ve-ssels inside this structure, including, in particular, almost fifty peculiar stone disks, probably used for ritual purposes, though we are still unsure about their specific meaning.


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team, which included Jakub Špoták and Jakub Mižičko from the Faculty of Arts of the Comenius University (CU), Robert Pe-schl from the Faculty of Natural Sciences of the Comenius University, and Jakub Straka from the Slovak University of Technology, and his 3D model based on the final mea-surements made us literally astonished. We immediately started verifying the ex-cavations, as the model and the presumed terrain breaklines could be misleading. We assumed that if it was a complex of buil-dings, it would have to be layered artifici-ally and would have to have a façade and a big staircase above it. A profound test pit checking the artificial bedrock was pre-viously made by the Spanish archaeologist Maite Carbonell. The preliminary verifying excavations on the assumed façade were carried out by the Mexican archaeologist Carlos Pallán and the definitive ones by the Slovak archaeologist Drahoslav Hulínek and Guatemalan archaeologist Damaris Menéndez in 2014. The results fully corre-sponded to the digital predictions of Tibor Lieskovský. In front of us, we did not have only the tallest building in Uaxactun , para-doxically discovered after almost 100 years of excavations of this site, but also the ta-

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llest building of the Pre-Classic period of the entire central Petén. Yes, that can mean that our Uaxactun was the ruling town for the extensive Maya territories during a cer-tain period of time. We named the complex El Tiburon (Shark) for various reasons: both because the first discovered items were shark teeth, and because the complex has a T shape when viewed from above, used by the Maya to depict a shark tooth, and also for its dominant nature among the buildings in the surroundings. This name also reflects some humour we made during our field research. The first person to fu-lly capture and predict this complex was Tibor Lieskovský, called Tiburon (Shark) by Guatemalans, which resembled his name, so incomprehensible to them. According to our measurements, the El Tiburon complex consists of two platforms standing one above the other with a double triadic group. It is 32 meters tall, the size of its base is 165x115 meters, and its construction required the use of 355,796 m3 of materials. In terms of volume, this complex was larger than the Pyramid of Djoser in Egypt, and more-or-less half of the Pyramid of the Sun in Teotihuacán. Though we have already started with the excavation of this architectonic giant, the crucial part of the work is still ahead of us.

DISSIMILAR TWINS – THE MASKS OF H SOUTH

Back in the 1980s, the Guatemalan archaeologist Juan António Valdés and his team excavated the triadic group H South, having discovered unprecedented stucco

decorations, representing the most comprehensive and from the point of view of aesthetics the most perfect Pre-Classic piece of art known by that time. The digging was performed in mud and in tunnels regardless of the weather, which is extremely unfavourable for excavations in Petén most of the year. It was probably, among other things, the haste that caused these extraordinarily valuable objects to be backfilled without ensuring their sufficiently detailed documentation. Moreover, Valdés did not have the capacity to restore the findings of such big size. What were left to us were a few dra-wings from a cer-tain angle, without a scale and in bad quality. Unfortuna-tely, also the photos got lost during the on-going civil war in Guatemala, as well as all excavated ce-ramics that we have not managed to find to this day. The only clue for us was a fa-


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ded amateur film by Luis Greñas, on the basis of which we tried to localise and sci-entifically define these valuable objects. In the end, in 2013 and 2014, we excavated the south mask of the façade of the complex explored by Valdés and found out that it was partly destroyed by tree roots. We restored it and elaborated its first detailed documentation, including a 3D model. At the same time, we realised that Valdés had never excavated its counterpart on the northern side, and that virtually nobody knew how it looked in spite of the fact that it always appeared in the pictorial reconstructi-on, though only as a “complemented mask”. This was one of the reasons why we concentrated on the excavation and documentation of this northern mask in 2014. We managed to do that, and, to our surprise, we found out that it was not identical with the southern mask, though it represented the same deity. For example, its eyes are closed, while the eyes of the southern mask are open. These small details can represent a significant message and important information for understanding the religious meaning of these objects. We restored the northern mask and preserved it for future generations.

EL RESPIRADERO, THE CAVE OF DEATH

The cave El Respiradero is situated near the centre of Group A, which suggests that its surrounding flourished for at least 600 years. In spite of that, nobody ente-

red the cave throughout those hundreds of years. It is as if there was an entrance to a secret room at the corner of the Main Square in Bratislava, never entered by anyo-ne. And this is precisely what happened in El Respiradero. There were royal palaces next to the cave, as well as beautiful houses of the nobility, but not a single ceramic fragment from the Classic period, when all this beauty surrounding it existed, has been found inside. Yet, the cave was not closed and it must have been known to every child. The only ex-planation is its dark content that we ma-naged to dig out between 2010 and 2014. Virtually, El Respiradero con-tains nothing but scorched human bones and, appa-rently, lot of ash from burned human bodies. The assu-med purpose of the

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cave was to serve as a burial place, yet during times much older than the Classic city that was built at Group A. The oldest date obtained using the radiocarbon dating method goes back to the 7th–6th century BC (the oldest verified sett-lement in Uaxactun) and the latest date back to 150 AD. Hen-ce, El Respiradero is believed to have served as a sacred final resting place in the Middle and Late Pre-Classic peri-od, with cremation as the prevailing funeral rite. Thanks to the Mexican speleoarchaeologist Fátima Tec Pool, we found items that used to accompany the Maya on their last journey; besides accessories of the elite it was mainly ceramic produ-cts. Moreover, we also managed to trace special treatment of such ceramics, which is an important element of the burial rite of this early period. The cave El Respiradero seems to have represented a taboo for the Maya thanks to the tradition of the sacred burial place of ancestors, which was preserved for centuries. It is interesting that almost a century long mo-dern research in Uaxactun left this cave unexplored. Finally, the thousand-year taboo was overcome by our project, and it was worth doing it. Our – so far not very successful – efforts to understand the Maya ideas of death in the oldest period of their history have thus acquired a new, important impulse.

LIFE AFTER THE COLLAPSE – LATE SETTLEMENT OF GROUP G

Between 2009 and 2011, the team led by the Slovak archaeologist Brani-slav Kovár focused on the identification of one of the marginal architectonic

groups designated by the letter G. We gradually discovered three sub-groups of this most remote part of the town, and found out that it had been constructed and inhabited mainly during the most problematic period of the Maya history, during the so-called Terminal Classic period. Together with other similar groups, we de-fined this period in Uaxactun as absolute abandonment of the centre of the city, and the creation of “satellites” in the form of independent groups similar to Group G. This happened after the assumed loss of central power and political authority, when local elites lived in relative political and economic independence. Similar micro-centres were apparently surrounded by dependent farmers, and instead of a sacral kingdom the town was full of isolated palaces with local “nobility”, each of them considering themselves to be autonomous or semi-autonomous rulers. The discovery of two burials with rich content and of a depot in a chultun (under-ground storage chamber) related to one of these graves provided us with a lot of excellent materials from this little understood period. We found here fragments of green obsidian from Central Mexico, which indicates the existence of very close links to this area, so unusual for the previous Classic period, as well as ceramics with motives typical for the cultures of the Veracruz area. These findings con-


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firm the penetration of foreigners to Uaxactun, which could be observed in other sites as well. One of the most surprising discoveries was the dating of both burials. The items found in the graves, with the exception of the few imported ones, were still an expression of the developed Maya Classic art, without any signs of decline in art or production. In spite of that, both bu-rials date back to the period of around 980 AD. Hence, this dating extends the survival of one of the longest existing Maya cities – Uaxactun – by almost a century, and helps us complete the image of the so-called Maya collapse.

THE SECRETS OF INSCRIPTIONS – A NEW CATALOGUE OF STELAE

Twenty-eight stelae with hie- roglyphic inscriptions are

known in Uaxactun, most of them discovered in the 1920s. In addition to that, there are se-veral altars and other fragments which are more difficult to iden-tify, with traces of inscriptions or pictures. One of the negati-ve properties of the Uaxactun stone is its porosity and poor resistance to weather conditi-ons. This is one of the reasons why the majority of the stelae is eroded and, in general, difficult to read. The ravages of time took their toll in particular, as if on purpose, in the case of the key inscriptions on the stelae, such as the names of kings, the name of the city as such in its oldest period, etc. Though one of the most productive figures of Mayology Ian Graham pub-lished a high-quality catalogue of Uaxactun steale in the 1980s,

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it did not contribute much to the knowledge of the Uaxactun history because of the afore mentioned state of conservation. This is one of the reasons why our pro-ject aims to make a complex revision of these inscriptions. We decided to com-bine traditional and modern methods for the documentation of the engravings in order to be able to get more information from the inscriptions than Graham´s pictures and drawings allow us. This project has already been implemented for six years, and has engaged many experts. Tatiana Podolinská produced rub-bings of all stelae using the traditional method, and the French epigrapher Ram-zy Barrois documented some of the stelae from different angles in high quality by means of night photography. The US epigrapher Bruce Love used the same method to shoot all the stelae, and also produced their preliminary drawings. This work was complemented by the Mexican epigrapher Carlos Pallán using advanced technology. He documented all the stelae using photogrammetry to produce their 3D models, as well as the Reflactance Transformation Imaging (RTI) method used for interactively displaying objects under varying conditions. Together with the German epigrapher Nikolai Grube, he made the respective analyses. The final analysis is carried out by the Russian epigraphers Dmitri Be-liaev and Alexander Safronov. The project results comprise a huge database of thousands of details of inscriptions which, thanks to the combination of methods and the use of the newest technology, enable to analyse, among other things, those points on the stelae which had previously appeared as eroded or unclear. It is expected that the clear-up rate of inscriptions will increase by 20-30 per cent, which would allow us to get a complete picture of the history of Uaxactun through its own written records.

THE ANCIENT ORIGINS OF THE DYNASTY

The thesis about the ancient origin of Uaxactun went through several phases in the past. Initially, due to Morley´s error upon the identification of Stela No. 9,

Uaxactun was considered the oldest Maya city in general. Thanks to the astronomic complex of Group E, it was considered to form the beginnings of Maya astronomy; due to the monumental painting in Group B, it was believed to represent the begin-ning of mural painting; and thanks to the supposedly first use of corbeled arches it was considered to constitute the beginning of Classic Maya architecture. Even after the correction of dates on Stela No. 9, the legend of the “origins” lived its own life, and Uaxactun became an archaeological model or matrix for the classification of ce-ramics, architecture, etc. Everything related to the “archetype” – Uaxactun – though it was becoming clearer that this fame was rather due to its pioneer position in the history of Maya archaeology than to Maya history as such. Archaeologists gradually found older Maya astronomic complexes, older Maya inscriptions, older paintings, older architecture, older ceramics, and Uaxactun´s fame faded into oblivion. It is one of the reasons why once perhaps the most famous Maya town stopped being interesting for research projects, and has started to be overgrown by the jungle since 1980s. The project of the Slovak Archaeological and Historical Institute seeks


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to revive the archaeological investigations, and by focusing on the most ancient history of the city, it seeks to verify this label of antiquity, first attributed to Uaxactun with great glory of which it was later silently deprived. On the basis of the results of the radiocarbon dating method, the oldest burials of the town date back to the 7th century BC, which suggests that the town was one of the most ancient settlements. By discovering the royal residences within Group H North and, in particular, the enormous residence within Group F, called El Tiburon, we proved the clear domi-nance of this city over the wide surroundings in the Pre-Classic period. The recent, seemingly modest discovery of the until now undeciphered inscription on Stela No. 3 gave a completely new dimension to our endeavours. The Russian epigrapher Dmitri Beliaev in cooperation with Alexander Safronov, to whom we sent our docu-mentation material, identified on Stela No. 3 in 2014 that the king who had it erected was proclaimed to be the 33rd successor of the founder of Uaxactun, called Wak KabÁjaw (?) Maya kings took particular care to ensure that their position in the line of succession and, hence, legitimacy were proclaimed. The number 33 in the order of the rulers, proclaimed in 507 AD (as the stela dates back to this year), is surpris-ing because of its length. The king of the neighbouring Tikal declared to be the 18th ruler in line of succession in the same period. Thus, the kingdom of Uaxactun must have been one of the most ancient ones in the Maya world. When we calculate the average duration of the rulership of Maya kings, according to this order, we come to the conclusion that the kingdom of Uaxactun was founded around the year 350 BC, i.e. at the very beginnings of the Late Pre-Classic period. There were only a few dynasties in the Maya world with so ancient roots, and Uaxactun is believed to have had the founding position within the wide surroundings. These facts re-established Uaxactun´s reputation as the cradle or one of the cradles of the Maya civilisation, and though it was previously based on assumptions and a lot of misunderstandings, today it is surprisingly returning back to the game.

PRE-CLASSIC BALLCOURTS

Besides Uaxactun, where the French archaeologist Ramzy Barrois conducted new excavations of a ballcourt within Group B, we discovered a new Classic

ballcourt in Chánal in northern Petén. Other ones were discovered by our survey team led by Tomáš Drápela at new sites, for example, in the towns of Ramonal and El Muñeco in 2014. One of them was not only discovered, but also excavated and defined by Verónica Vázquez in Tzíbatnah.. What is important is the fact that during our research we discovered and excavated two pre-Classic ballcourts,which are, in general, rather rare in the Maya world, and the discovery of each one of them is very important not only for knowing the origin of the ballgame, but also for under-standing its central place in the Maya society. The fact that Uaxactun did not have any pre-Classic ballcourt confirmed, in spite of the enormous size of its pre-Classic occupation, was strange to us from the beginning. After the project led by Juan António Valdés focusing exclusively on the Pre-Classic period in the 1980s did not find any such ballcourt either, we did not have much hope in its existence. But still,

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we found it in 2011 at a square, just a few metres from Valdés´s former excavations. His trench missed it within a hair´s breadth. The excavations led by Ramzy Barrois and the Guatemalan archaeologist Miguel Medina showed that it was a relatively well preserved ballcourt with another building enclosing the area from the south. In the middle of the ballcourt , we even discovered a “sign” in the floor as a prede-cessor of what became to be known as “ballcourt markers”. Their function was to designate the scoring zones in the game. We discovered the second ballcourt from the Pre-Classic period in Dos Torres, a site located about 4km from Uaxactun. On the basis of excavations, this ballcourt was dated and identified by the archaeologist Pavol Spišák. Both Pre-Classic ballcourts found in this area can contribute to the early typology and understanding of the ball game which was more a ritual than a sport for the Maya.

NEW MAYA CITIES ON THE HORIZON

Already during the first year of research, the Slovak project realized an extensive expedition up to the Mexican border to the very-hard-to-reach ruins of the Maya

city called “Monumento 104” and the discovered the site, now called Tz´ibatnah, on the way back. This showed that it has the capacity to conduct research at several places of the region at the same time. Our project was re-qualified as regional, and extensive field survey became one of the project‘s priorities. Analysis of regional links and relationships between political units should allow us to place Uaxactun in


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a wider cultural and historic context of the cent-ral and north-eastern Petén. At present, the area investigated by our project stretches from the northern border of the Tikal National Park up to the Guatemalan-Mexican border; our neighbours in the east are the areas of the San Bartolo and Rio Azul projects, and in the west the Naachtun and El Mirador projects. The subject of our re-search and excavations is the space between these areas, covering approximately 2,000 km2. It may seem a lot, yet the entire space is opera-ted by our logistics circulating between the base camps in Uaxactun, El Cedro and Dos Lagunas/Manantial. The excavations are never conducted at more three sites at the same time, and Ua-xactun is always our core base camp. We chose this method because of the complete absence of any data in the Uaxactun´s surroundings, as if the town was in a vacuum. The field survey is led by Tomáš Drápela, PhD student from the Fa-culty of Arts of the Comenius University, and the processing of data in the form of geographical information systems (GIS) is ensured by Tibor Lieskovský from the Slovak University of Techno-logy. It was a surprise to us that we discovered, just 4km away from Uaxactun, a town with stelae

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and a ballcourt that nobody had known about – we named it Dos Torres. This disco-very encouraged us a lot. We could see that Uaxacún had not only the large city of Tikal nearby, but that it had its satellite towns, neighbours, friends and enemies in the different periods of its long history, and we decided to reveal this world of different relationships. Large towns, unknown until recently, are step-by-step seeing the light of day, such as Tz´ibatnah, Ramonal, La Palma Real, El Muñeco or Cambrayal. In addition to that, there are many previously unknown smaller towns, such as Kisin, Sunsal, Petnal, etc. It can be said that virtually every week of our survey deep in the forest brings to daylight a new Maya town. The seemingly abandoned forest was almost compact developed area in the Classic and Pre-Classic period with small fields and a few park forests to which the nobility went hunting. When viewed from above, it must have been an enormous urban unit inhabited much more densely than Slovakia today. According to some authors, it was the most densely inhabited area of the world during that time. This is why we approach the survey and the ma-pping of these vast territories with full responsibility. The discoveries in the forest are not only about sensations and new cities. For us, these are sites where generations of hundreds of thousands of people lived their lives, and their silent message can still be found there together with their bones. We are entering these places with utmost protection and respect.

PETNAL – A LITTLE BIG CITY

In 2012, the research team of Tomáš Drápela came upon a previously unk-

nown town which differed from the other groups of buildings in the forests of the north-eastern Petén – not only becau-se of the massive central pyramid, but also because of the size and perfection of the other buildings, the presence of E-Group, and other peculiarities. During the next year, we organised an expe-dition of a big survey team to this site, led by Milan Kováč and involving Len-ka Horáková from the Faculty of Arts of the Comenius University, who focuses on Maya ceramics. She dedicated all her time to the search for and dating of samples of ceramics that got to the sur-face thanks to omnipresent grave rob-bers. Among other things, she found an unnoticed complete Pre-Classic bowl which suggested, together with many other ceramic pieces and the results of


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subsequent surveys in underground corridors, the ancient origin and big significan-ce of this town in the Pre-Classic period. In the Classic period, the town apparently lived the old glory, as it did not grow too much anymore. However, it could have been the home to several important dynasties, since its central massive pyramid, hiding inside older buildings from the past, has a 150 m long front façade, which is impressive even in the giant Maya architecture. The grandiosity of the buildings was in stark contrast with the smaller overall area of the town. We counted only 24 buildings in the town itself and no stelae. This implies that Petnal´s role was slightly different from most Maya towns. There are buildings that correspond to the centre of a city state, but its area is similar to that of a small town in the periphery. We could deduce that Petnal was a very important and, apparently, a recognised town in ter-ms of culture and history, though its later political importance declined. The findings suggest that the glory of this town dates back to the Pre-Classic period when it could have competed with the nearby San Bartolo. Unlike San Bartolo, Petnal survived the unrest that affected Petén around 150 AD, and it continued to be settled. However, the growth of the new powerful city of Xultun threw shadow on its ancient glory and buried its political ambitions for good. Yet, its former honour remained preserved, and the local rulers enjoyed special esteem. We documented several reconstructi-ons of the central building from the Classic period, including parts of preserved decorations on the plaster. Luckily, the grave robbers failed to do a perfect job. We came across the omnipresent ceramics, but also various tools, human skeletons and even remains of ancient rituals.

STELAE FROM THE PLACE OF DROPS

We were not the first ones to discover the city of Chánal. Some researchers vi-sited and briefly described this city, previously known as Corozal or Manantial.

However, because of its distance, these few visits were too short to comprehend it in its complexity and to discover in the proper extent its biggest wealth: the stone monuments – stelae. In the framework of our project, we built a camp directly in the city and focused on comprehensive measurement and mapping of this extensive settlement and on the excavations that we conducted during three years (2012–14). During this period, we discovered 37 stone monuments: 25 stelae and 12 stone altars. The excavations of these monuments led by the head of the project Milan Kováč showed that many of them bear traces of inscriptions and pictures. Stelae No. 1, 6 and 15 and Altar No. 11 appeared to be the most complex ones, and we do-cumented them in detail, using photogrammetry and RTI methods. We did not have to wait for the results too long. We managed to gradually return this city its original name engraved in the monuments. The town was most likely called Chánal, which means the “Place of Drops”, and we also know its supposedly most powerful king, judging from the fact that he erected massive, high-quality stelae in remote parts of the town. He was called Aj Káhk´ Chapaht Kínich and ruled somewhere between 790 and 810, i.e. in the Terminal Classic period when the Maya world was slowly collapsing. This can be observed in Chánal perhaps only in the artistic style of the stelae, which was not original, but returned to the most distant periods to draw stren-

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TZÍBATNAH – THE MAYA FORTRESS

Back in 2009, the S l o v a k - F re n c h -

Gua tema lan rese -arch team discovered a previously unknown Maya city in the north of the Petén provin-ce, the architecture of which impressed us so much that we launched systema-tic excavation works in the following field season. Thanks to the work, among others, of the geodesist Matúš

gth from the times of vitality of ancient sacred kings. Yet, the kings of Chánal, the more arrogant and authoritative face they have in pictures, the more they reveal the weak-ness of their rule in the period when the power of kings was not what it had used to be. Stela No. 6 depicts the portrait of king Aj Káhk´ Chapaht Kínich of extraordi-nary quality, and can be considered as one of the jewels of the Maya Classic art. It was excavated in 2012 and 2013 by Milan Kováč together with Guido Krem-pel who made its definitive drawing. All the drawings, as well as the excellent photos by Carlos Pallán were evalua-ted at the University of Bonn under the leadership of Nikolai Grube. With the partial decipherment of the stelae, the previously anonymous city, completely absorbed by the jungle, came back to life. The perfect 3D model of the town produced by Tibor Lieskovský is being filled with kings and rituals, and the pre-viously empty space of the remote jun-gle is step-by-step acquiring not only its political, but also personal identity.


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Riečan and his team, we managed to gra-dually drag the city of Tzíbatnah out of the arms of the jun-gle, and we mea-sured and mapped 160 stone buildings located in its cent-re. It is an extreme-ly compact place that we considered a Maya fortress from the beginning. The low, oblong buildings were erected in the circumference of the

town above cliffs to also fulfil a defensive function. There is a massive acropolis in the middle, in which the ruler had his seat. Since we know that the neighbouring Rio Azul was part of the political and military alliance of Tikal, we assume that the city west from it must have represented the border of the Tikal power against the enemy territory of the Calakmul alliance. This is probably the source of its defensive nature – it was probably the border of the empire. The Finnish researcher Harri Kettunen and the Guatemalan archaeologist Ernesto Arredondo also significantly contributed to the excavations of the defence area. The fortification system, however, was not sufficient; in the last phase of the existence of the city, the population built stone ba-rricades to fight for every yard. This did not help, though. The erection of barricades seems to have been the last activity in the town, as suggested by the excavations of the SAHI director Drahoslav Hulínek, who, among other things, excavated a burial with notable content. Tzíbatnah put in front of us many challenges that need to be faced yet. One of the biggest ones is to define the military destruction of the city as part of the Classic Maya collapse.

SCRAWLED WALLS AND EVERYDAY LIFE OF THE MAYA

The newly discovered city of Tzíbatnah brought to daylight an extremely per-spective building in terms of our research, which we called the “House of Pain-

tings”. Thanks to being intentionally filled with stones and later rebuilt, its rooms have been fully preserved, as well as the ceiling and even the wall plaster with geometric painting. The head of the project Milan Kováč discovered on the plas-tered walls up to 160 engraved pictures representing “Maya graffiti”. The pictures date back to the end of the 7th and the beginning of the 8th century AD, i.e. the most developed period of the Classic Maya history. By means of systematic re-search, we managed to put together groups of gods, people, animals, abstract

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THE TWO TOWERS

We discovered the town now called Two Towers or Dos Torres in Spanish, in the mountains at a distance of only 4km from our base camp in Uaxactun in 2010.

This town was named after its architecture, as it seemed to us during our research that its two opposite sides are lined with high pyramids overreaching the surroun-dings. They resembled the two towers from Tolkien´s stories which inspired us. The town awaited us with one more architectonic surprise. Its border inclines towards an extensive gully with a wild torrent flowing in the bottom of it during the rain periods. In the channel of this wild stream we found, during the dry season when it was accessi-ble, remains of dams, by means of which the original Maya inhabitants created water

symbols and even inscriptions. One of them revealed to us the political affiliation of Tzíbatnah. The discreet engraved inscription in one of the buried rooms of the an-cient inhabitants of the “House of Paintings” is therefore extremely important. It can even be a signature, as it reads: “The Lord of Uxhaabte (province)”. This is how Rio Azul or the city state or related dynasty was formerly called. The rulers of Tzíbat-nah are therefore likely to have belonged to this dynasty, but were supposedly su-bordinate to the city of Rio Azul. This is evidenced by the absence of stone stelae, as well as the smaller size and monumentality of the city. The single graffiti and its context thus help us complete the previously unknown political map of the northern Petén. The other graffiti guide us, for example, through the fascinating world of Maya gods, though not the ones appearing on official ceramics or in the stelae. Other graffiti present to us the Maya games and puzzles. In general, these graffiti represent a unique collection of “domestic” art which did not serve for ideological purposes, and is therefore much closer to the everyday life, still hidden from us be-cause of the elitist nature of Maya art. Although there are other Maya testi-monies captured through graffiti, this large number within a small space, the richness and the novelty of topics explored in Tzíbat-nah represent an entirely exceptional source of important data to obtain more knowledge on the life of the Maya so-ciety.


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reservoirs. The deep gully virtually divi-des the town into two halves; we called the second one Bolontun (Nine Stones), and it appears to be the residential part of Dos Torres. We found numerous stelae and their remains at its small squares. Unfortunately, most of them were sawed up by robbers, and parts with the inscrip-tions or pictures were taken to traders. The sad picture of the robbed town was improved by a single saved stela, which was also sawed up, but for some reason not stolen. This stela preserved written information according to which it was erected on 11 August 527 AD, which is

a very early date, moreover indicating a very turbulent period of this region. Bolon-tun could have been a shelter for the elites from large cities, as the town as such is limited by the top of hill, and therefore is relatively small. Towns of this size usually did not produce any stelae. The second part of the town – Dos Torres – seems to have been a ceremonial site and includes a ballcourt, a large square for public gatherings or rituals, and two tall pyramids. We launched excavations in both parts of the town. The ones in Dos Torres were led by the archaeologist Pavol Spišák, and the others in Bolontun by the archaeologist Guido Krempel. The excavations showed very ancient nature of this conurbation. The oldest ceramics date back to the Mid-dle Pre-Classic period (Mamon), and the site was settled predominantly in the Late Pre-Classic period (Chicanel). The ballcourt and many other notable buildings also come from this period. It is surprising that some of them have the shape of clay terraces or buildings, which reveals the archaic nature of the local settlement, which was also confirmed by the finding of a rock engraving on the back side of one of the stelae. It turned out that the engraving was made in the rock far before it became a stela, and it is likely that the Maya chose it to become their future stela because of this engraving and holiness conferred to this rock. The stela was covered by stucco, modelled and painted, though this decoration did not survive the hundreds of years of rains and winds. What is left is a plain stela with the remarkable engraving from archaic times on its back side. It has a geometrising nature and, on the basis of ana-logy, it is assumed to have been produced 2,700 years ago, during the beginning of the Middle Pre-Classic period. It represents a figure standing on a corrugated body resembling a snake (this is how the Maya often depicted heaven), holding a round disk in his hand – probably a sun disk. We can thus carefully assume that it was maybe one of the oldest Maya depictions of the god of sun. We also discovered that the central building of Bolontun stands on an underground cave, which evokes the myths about the origin and the scheme of recalling the creation of humankind, as known from Teotihuacan. All this testifies not only the antiquity, but also the special sacred significance of this town which may be associated with the origin of the local dynasties. The excavations of the ancient town Two Towers are far from being clo-sed, and further surprises are yet to come for sure.

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RESTORATION OF THE TREASURES OF MAYA ARCHITECTURE

It is generally known that archaeology is a destructive discipline. We pay a heavy toll for what it reveals to

us for the purposes of scientific documentation by destroying the object or at least by sacrificing its original context. Perhaps restoration should not be part of our twenty most important discoveries, if it weren‘t for our intensively felt need not to let the excavated Maya pieces of art be destroyed and to take care of them, using the new methods and tech-niques that we developed. All started with the disco-very of giant stucco masks within Group H North. After being excavated, they tended to crumble and break, and we had to fix them back in 2009, using tools recommended by our restorers. In the next year it turned out that these tools and techniques were not suitable for the rainforest weather conditions. Though the material was per-fectly protected and fixed, at microscopic level they did not allow for the circulation of salts which could cause serious damage to the entire object after some time. We performed further preservation works with the knowledge that we had to find agents

able to eliminate these substances. We had this opportunity after the arri-val of the renowned French restorer Alice Desprat in 2011. On the basis of her specific requirements, Italian specialised laboratories developed such an agent for us, and we were able to protect and fix 120 m2 of over 2,000 years old stucco decorations while exposed to manipulation each year, and to eliminate these agents from the material before its final con-servation, which was a small techno-logical miracle. The agent used for fi-nal conservation was purely natural, just like those used by the ancient Maya, which enabled these pieces of art survive thousands of year until present days. The team of Alice De-sprat restored also smaller masks in the buildings within Group H and F using similar methods based on tra-


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ditional ones, as well as on the newly excavated, even older large masks within Group H South. We successfully used a different form of new methods, this time based on nanotechnology, in the restoration of Maya mural paintings that we disco-vered inside of one of the residential houses in Tz´ibatnah. Step-by-step, the project developed its own methods and acquired the reputation of an excellent restoration workshop. We were therefore honoured to be entrusted with the restoration of one of the most important buildings of the Maya world, the astronomic observatory E7 Sub in Uaxactun, discovered in the 1920s and previous-ly restored by concrete, yet almost completely destroyed over time, getting back to the same condition as before. In 2014, we success-fully restored the first four masks of this famous object. We expect two more years of work, after which the spirit of this speci-al place would get back to its original place and attract not only crowds of tourists, but abo-ve all preserve the treasures of Maya architectu-re for the next ge-neration.

THE PEOPLE OF UAXACTUN TODAY – THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN THE MAYA PAST AND PRESENT

It is perhaps ina-ppropriate when

an archaeological project considers work with the pre-sent-day natives as one of its biggest achievements. It is usually the task of anthropological or ethnological pro-jects. It should be noted, however, that the Uaxactun

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project is implemented in the most re-mote village of Guatemala, deep in the rainforest, isolated from help or contact with the surroundings. Moreover, all our work is dependent on the mercy of the villagers because of high crime and virtually 100% unemployment rate in Uaxactun, where archaeological monu-ments that we are excavating and that need to be protected are the last thing that people struggling to survive are inte-rested in. We have among them our best workers and friends, but also well-known murderers and robbers. It is a sad reality that organised robbing of historic monu-ments forms part of the subsistence of the notable part of the local population. With the aim to protect the restored mo-numents against local vandalism and to reduce the robbing of monuments and ancient Maya graves, we started to sys-tematically work with the local commu-nity in the framework of our project. This work has two levels: a scientific one and an educational one. As for the scientific level, the research is led by Tatiana Po-


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dolinská from the Institute of Ethnology of the Slovak Academy of Sciences who records the habits, superstitions, myths and other narrations among the local po-pulation, including those related to the ruins of the Maya archaeological sites. The expected output of this project is information about the processes of transformation of ancient Maya traditions, as confronted with the modernisation of the Guatemalan society. As for the educational level, the Guatemalan specialist Hector Xol Choc, a scholar from the Quek‘chi Maya nation, works with the community. Most members of the local population are Quek‘chi. He has long been giving lectures to local chil-dren, youth and also adults about the Maya past, teaching them to re-discover the beauty of their own language and develop pride in the heritage of their ancestors next to which they live. Previously, they felt to be isolated from these monuments, they often let them decay or constructed their own farm buildings on the top of them. Thanks to our project, through which many of them learnt to read the hieroglyphs on the stelae located near their fields and houses. The present-day Maya learn to understand the Maya from the Classic period. Our excavations are visited by the youth and adults, they learn about the life of the ancient inhabitants of the city, and about the construction and purpose of Maya buildings. We are thus systematically building links between the present-day Uaxactun and its distant past. We encounter more and more enthusiastic people each year who seek to help us. Many of them discover pride in their culture and the magic of their own identity. The result is a ma-jor and more reliable protection of cultural heritage which belongs not only to the present-day descendants of ancient builders, but to the whole world.

Milan Kováč

This work was supported by the Slovak Research and Development Agency under the contract No. APVV-0864-12.


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THE MESSAGES OF MAYA RUINS - Six Years of Research of the Slovak Archaeological Project in Guatemala...

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