PIEDRAS NEGRAS DIARY an Archaeological Field Journal,Guatemala, 1931
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PIEDRAS NEGRAS DIARY An Archaeological Field Journal,Guatemala, 1931 Version in page spreads available at www.mesoweb.com/publications/Satterthwaite PIEDRAS NEGRAS DIARY An Archaeological Field Journal,Guatemala, 1931 Margaret Conway Satterthwaite Edited and with introduction by John M. Weeks PrecolumbiaMesowebPress SanFrancisco © 2018 Precolumbia Mesoweb Press All rights reserved Produced and designed by Joel Skidmore and Chip Breitwieser Library of Congress Control Number 2018948404 ISBN 978-0-9859317-5-9 Printed in the United States of America Contents 7 Introduction 25 Field Diary, 1934 125 Appendix 1: Persons Mentioned in the Diary 128 Appendix 2: Structures Excavated at Piedras Negras Between 1931 and 1937 130 References 9 Introduction The study of Maya archaeology, as it is known today, developed as a scientific endeavor during the first decades of the twentieth century. The discipline was previously dominated by summary descriptions of single archaeological sites made by explorers. This gradually gave way to multi-year investigations of single sites, such as Uaxactún and Piedras Negras in Guatemala, Chichén Itzá in Yucatán, and later at Tikal in Guatemala, and at Copán in Honduras. Fieldwork, romantic thoughts aside, was a logistical concern quite different at the beginning of the twentieth century and considerably more complex than it is today. Biographical field accounts (Brunhouse 1971, 1975, 1976; Desmond and Messenger 1988; Givens 1992; Graham 2002, 2010; E. Lothrop 1948; S. Lothrop 1961; Shook 1990, 1998; Solomon 2002; J.E.S. Thompson 1963; Wauchope 1963; Willey 1989; Woodbury 1973) routinely describe the difficulties in planning, as well as implementing, major field programs. Transportation in Central America was difficult at the beginning of the twentieth century. A few railroads existed in some parts of Guatemala and Mexico and were associated with the plantation economy, and although there were trails used by oxcarts for short distances outside of larger towns, these tended to be very local in range. Field travel was usually by mule train or by human bearers. There was a lack of reliable, or for that matter, even unreliable maps. When archaeologist Oliver G. Ricketson and the Carnegie Institution of Washington began archaeological work at Uaxactún, northern Guatemala in 1926, there was not even a supply of water (Black 1990; Ricketson 1929; Ricketson and Ricketson 1937). Everything, including workers, equipment, and provisions, had to be transported up the Belize River in small boats to El Cayo, the chicle and mahogany center on the river, and the starting point for pack mule expeditions wishing to penetrate the immense tropical forests of the Petén region of Guatemala. Upon arrival at the camp after several days on muleback, buildings needed to be constructed using available materials and crops planted for both men and livestock. A large water-reservoir had to be dug in a local waterhole, which usually dried up in the month of May. In addition, construction of a dam across a nearby ravine was begun to provide a future water supply. As soon as a camp was established and trails had been cut to the different groups of buildings, a plane table and alidade survey of the ruins was begun. Shipments of supplies from New Orleans had to be planned months in advance, anticipating the needs of the camp on the scheduled date of arrival, and packaged so that they could be loaded on mules. Perhaps one of the most significant changes since the beginning of the twentieth century has been the improvement in living and health conditions. Before World War II almost all travelers in the tropical lowlands experienced 10 multiple infections of malaria and recurrent episodes of dysentery. Cures that took months can now be accomplished in days by modern medicine. Some of these diseases were actually deadly. John Owens, field director of the Second Expedition of the Peabody Museum, died of fever in 1891 and is buried in the Great Plaza at the site of Copán in Honduras. Other Mayanists, including Sylvanus G. Morley and Oliver G. Ricketson, probably shortened their lives as a result of illnesses contracted in the field. Early archaeological programs in Central America were fielded by institutions such as the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology at Harvard University, the School of American Research in Santa Fe, and the British Museum in London, attracting considerable scientific attention to the study of the ancient Maya ruins. Along with all of this field activity in the Maya region, J. Alden Mason, curator of the American Section of the University Museum at the University of Pennsylvania, and Horace Jayne, director of the museum, collaborated in the 1920s to develop a plan for an expedition to the Maya area with the goal of bringing stone monuments back to Philadelphia for public display. Sylvanus G. Morley, then head of the extensive Carnegie Institution of Washington’s Maya program in Central America, and Frans Blom, director of the Middle American Research Institute at Tulane University, convinced Jayne and Mason that the site of Piedras Negras had especially fine monuments and the logistics of transporting them down the Usumacinta River might prove less difficult than transporting them via the Belize River to the coast of British Honduras (Belize) (Mason 1933a). The University Museum began its first Mesoamerican archaeological field program at Piedras Negras. J. Alden Mason directed the initial 1931 season, after which Linton Satterthwaite, Jr., took over as director of the project in 1932 and continued in that capacity through its conclusion in 1939. After the first field season at Piedras Negras, a set of instructions on how to prepare and sustain an archaeological project in the Maya lowlands was prepared by Oliver G. Ricketson, then directing the Carnegie Institution’s Uaxactún Project, with the assistance of archaeologists Edith Bayles Ricketson and A. Ledyard Smith. This document summarizes the preparations and foresight required to get an archaeological project into the field. The Archaeological Site of Piedras Negras Ancient Maya civilization was established in the southern Mexican states of Campeche, Chiapas, Quintana Roo, Tabasco, and Yucatán, as well as Belize, Guatemala, and western Honduras and El Salvador. The Maya are noted for having the only known writing system in the Precolumbian Americas, as well as for their art, architecture, and mathematical and astronomical systems. The Maya were not builders of empires; rather, they formed independent polities, each ruled by its own dynastic nobility. Alliances were formed between polities, although a unified empire under one ruler was never established. The peak of Maya civilization occurred during the Classic Maya period (250– 900 CE), where a number of cities flourished in the Petén region of Guatemala, including Piedras Negras. Piedras Negras is located on the banks of the Río Usumacinta in the remote northwest area of the Department of Petén, Guatemala, and was the focus of 11 a Maya kingdom that stretched along the river between the fourth century BCE and the ninth century CE. In ancient times settlements were situated along the Usumacinta from Piedras Negras in modern-day Guatemala to its rival city Yaxchilán, forty kilometers south in the Mexican state of Chiapas. Both of these settlements competed for hegemony in the region during the Late Classic Period (600–900 CE), and dominance was determined by control of the river, an important commercial route that carried cocoa, salt, cotton, obsidian, jade, feathers, and shells north toward the Gulf of Mexico. The site is formed from several groups of elaborate administrative and religious structures, most of which were constructed during the eighth century CE when Piedras Negras was at its most prominent. Piedras Negras is remarkable for its magnificent temple-pyramids, ball courts, sculptures, Map of northern Piedras Negras (Piedras Negras Archives unnumbered). 12 Map of southern Piedras Negras (Piedras Negras Archives unnumbered). and sweat baths, but most especially for its many fine limestone sculptures, reliefs, and stelae. The numerous monuments aligned in front of the buildings date to a time both before and during the reigns of the first two rulers identified by the Russian-born epigrapher Tatiana Proskouriakoff (1960, 1961). The square- shaped courtyard at the center of the South Group is open on its northern corner, allowing access into the broad East Group Plaza and up to the West Group Plaza, below the acropolis. The West Group includes the imposing Structures J-3 and J-4, which rise up above monuments belonging to the reigns of Rulers 3 and 4, respectively. The intermediate East Group, with Structures O-12 and O-13, is the setting for most of the later stelae dating to the reigns of Rulers 5, 6, and 7. Aside from the pyramids and acropolis, Piedras Negras has two ball courts, one in the West Group Plaza before Structure K-5 and 13 another, probably Early Classic in date, just to the north of the South Group. Large sweat baths are unusually numerous at Piedras Negras, but evidently none were associated with any hieroglyphic inscriptions. The stelae are distributed in fairly well defined groups that correspond to the reigns of individual rulers. Thus the eight stelae placed before Structure J-4 all date to the reign of the third known ruler, and those before Structure J-2 to the time of his successor, Ruler 4. Rather than being erected directly in plazas, stelae at Piedras Negras were generally placed on terraces or platforms in front of pyramids. A few important monuments also appear to have been erected near the summits of pyramids such as Structures R-5 and O-13. Piedras Negras was an independent city-state for most of the Classic Period, although sometimes in alliance with other states of the region and perhaps paying tribute to others at times. Pottery and other material culture indicate that the site was occupied from the mid-seventh century BCE to 850 CE.