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Monumental Architecture at Piedras Negras, Guatemala: Time, History, and Meaning

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Monumental Architecture at Piedras Negras, Guatemala: Time, History, and Meaning Monumental Architecture at Piedras Negras, Guatemala: Time, History, and Meaning STEPHEN HOUSTON Brigham Young University HÉCTOR ESCOBEDO Universidad del Valle MARCK CHILD Yale University CHARLES GOLDEN University of Pennsylvania RENÉ MUÑOZ University of Arizona MÓNICA URQUIZÚ Universidad de San Carlos INTRODUCTION of Maya architecture and urbanism. The research of the University Museum begins this account. Current Piedras Negras, Guatemala, is one of the principal investigations by the Proyecto Piedras Negras (PPN), ornaments of Classic Maya civilization, rich in hie- sponsored by Brigham Young University and the Uni- roglyphic texts and equally endowed with deep and versidad del Valle, form its middle. Field seasons to extensive remains of monumental architecture. Along come, projected through 2001, will complete the pro- with Uaxactun, this was the city where Mayanists first cess of archaeological reflection, as two perspectives applied themselves systematically to understanding separated by sixty years converge on ancient reali- how Classic buildings functioned, developed, and fell ties. Here we focus on three themes: time (elapsed into disuse. Earlier visitors had dug at Piedras Negras. sequences deduced from stratigraphy, artifacts, and Oliver Ricketson, member of the Carnegie Expedition dated monuments), history (agents and activities iden- of 1921, pitted in the K-6 ball courts (Satterthwaite tified by Proskouriakoff [1960] and others [Houston 1944a: 30). Twenty-seven years before, loggers had 1983; Stuart 1985]), and meaning (ancient intention hauled objects, including a flat slab with patolli-like and use inferred by various means, including guar- design, back to their camp near the beach of Piedras ded speculation and clues from glyphic evidence). An Negras1. But it was the University Museum of the Uni- historical introduction explains the University Mu- versity of Pennsylvania that excavated with the grea- seum’s overall approach. Interest in time, history, and test energy, sophistication, and tenacity, in field sea- meaning also informs current investigations by the sons taking place throughout the 1930s (1931-1937, Proyecto Piedras Negras, especially within two buil- 1939). dings of the ancient city: the P-7 sweatbath and the This essay tells a story about scholarly techniques Acropolis (Fig. 1). A comparison between the two pro- and interests -how they changed, how they stayed the jects will express in microcosm the history of Maya ar- same, how, through refinement, they sharpened views chaeology2. 1 The loggers had their camp in and around T-3 and U-2, not far from the beach of Piedras Negras. An L-shaped formation of loose rocks doubtless served as a protective shield for the base of a large champa (thatch hut). In Op. 37, near the patolli slab, excavators found a Mexican peso coin from 1890 that had probably been dropped by a logger. 2 In the 1980s there were two other attempts to start projects at Piedras Negras. One was to be directed by Michael Coe (Yale), with help from Jeffrey Wilkerson and Mary Miller. It met resistance in Guatemala, and, with the advice of Miller, its considerable private funding went instead to STEPHEN HOUSTON, HÉCTOR ESCOBEDO, MARK CHILD, Y OTROS 41 Figure 1. Partial reconstruction of Acropolis (drawing: Heather Hurst). THE UNIVERSITY MUSEUM AND MONUMENTAL put this another way, the Museum gradually shifted ARCHITECTURE AT PIEDRAS NEGRAS from an almost unseemly interest in transportable ob- jects to a concern with context and chronology. J. Al- For most of the 1930s, the University Museum of den Mason, the first director of the project, listed his the University of Pennsylvania undertook dry-season initial reasons for digging at Piedras Negras: the site excavations at Piedras Negras. Its work evolved from a was relatively accessible; it had water; its monuments primary focus on sculpture (and extraction of such covered a long span of Long Count dates; and most pieces to Philadelphia and Guatemala City) to a keen important, it contained monuments of surpassing qua- interest in how buildings changed through time. To lity that could be removed for museum display (Ma- start the Caracol Project in Belize, with which Miller and Houston had an affiliation. The Yale expedition was intended to concentrate on royal tombs. The second project, conceived by the late Miguel Valencia of the Instituto de Antropología e Historia, foundered as security deteriorated in the Usumacinta. It was apparently intended to be a «national», government-funded rescue project along the lines of the Proyecto Nacional Tikal. 42 MAYAB son 1933a: 3). By a slightly later date, after some sea- To Satterthwaite goes credit for thinking compre- sons of excavation, Mason could discuss something hensively about building function at Piedras Negras. more concrete: «a dated history of the evolution of Yet his insights were seldom original. Sylvanus Morley buildings and ceramics» and the identification of wat- was the first to identify sweatbaths at the site (Satterth- tle-clay «house sites» that had covered most of the waite 1952: 5); ball courts came to Satterthwaite’s noti- city (Mason 1933b: 93-94). (Apparently, the Museum ce, and to Mason’s, through information supplied by expedition felt that these «sites» were occupied only Blom and Morley (Satterthwaite 1944a: 9). What Sat- by «priests and nobility» - that is, in contrast to Old terthwaite contributed was a diligent and systematic World cities, Piedras Negras held a permanent popu- approach. It seemed logical to him that most buildings lation of roughly uniform role and social status [Sat- would eventually conform to a functional classification. terthwaite 1933: 126]). Mason did not guide the project «Temples» housed the «public practice of religious rites after the conclusion, in 1933, of its first phase of ope- and ceremonies» (Satterthwaite 1944b: 3, emphases in rations. It was left to Linton Satterthwaite, a young original). Pyramids usually, but not always, supported man who had abandoned law for archaeology, to fi- temples (ibid.: 3). Structures with thrones served as the nish the Pennsylvania work. seats of priests who were «civil or religious administra- An appealing aspect of Satterthwaite was his abso- tor(s)» (Satterthwaite 1937: 22). Within these «palaces» lute candor about personal and project failings. He be- were «audience chambers for a considerable number of lieved that his inexperience led to an «unnecessary lack dignitaries», who perhaps came to hear judgments at of desired information» (Satterthwaite 1944a: 9); his such «courthouses» of the Classic period (ibid.: 20). workmen «grubbed around» for artifacts (Satterthwaite Double galleries were the norm, single galleries became 1954: 33); and some operations received «little super- necessary when abutted against steep slopes (Satterth- vision», for which he admitted principal responsibility waite 1935: 4). But Satterthwaite doubted that such buil- (Satterthwaite 1954: 85)3. These remarks, although unu- dings served as residences, for they failed to contain the sual in archaeological reporting, establish the relative expected «cooking fires» (Satterthwaite 1937: 20). Later, reliability of his publications and, in consequence, as- he grew even more tentative about «palaces», stating sist later investigators. They also reveal his emotional simply that they were «supposed public buildings other distance from a project that had ended years before, than temples and sweat-houses» (Satterthwaite 1943: when he was still an archaeological apprentice. An in- 17). Everything else at the site was «unclassified», a creasingly aimless program of research led in part to default category that included virtually all of the small the demise of the Museum project. By the final sea- house-mounds at the site. son the drive to excavate in certain kinds of buildings In one respect the Museum project was well in ad- had evaporated: the Museum worked in relatively few vance of its time. By mapping such small buildings, locations, rarely with a clear plan of attack. After 1939, which Satterthwaite thought crucial to understanding with the advent of World War II, responsibility for the fi- Maya cities (1943: 20), the project set a cartographic nal reports fell solely on Satterthwaite’s shoulders. The standard that influenced all subsequent mapping in goal of complete publication eluded him at Piedras Ne- the Maya Lowlands. Excavation reports, too, reflec- gras, as it did at Caracol (Beetz and Satterthwaite 1981) ted Satterthwaite’s eye for detail. Isometrics rather and Tikal (Jones and Satterthwaite 1982), where other than profiles conveyed the substance of excavation scholars concluded what Satterthwaite began. Later re- results, and terms and labels were defined with the search by William Coe, Robert Rands, Anne Schlosser, exactness of legal codicils. Unfortunately, Satterth- and George Holley drew on Satterthwaite’s stratigrap- waite’s fondness for complex, prosy description and hic knowledge, but only indirectly, through project me- highly schematic graphics often prevents a clear un- mos and informal communications (Coe 1959: 8; Holley derstanding of what the Museum found. 1983: 117; Schlosser 1978). To modern readers, the In matters of time and sequence, Satterthwaite had Museum field notes can be incomprehensible. It is of- to rely on the poor comparative chronology of the ten easier to re-excavate buildings than to decipher 1930s and 1940s. This made it difficult to date cons- Mason’s scribbles or Satterthwaite’s
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