Evan Keith Eppich, Griselda Pérez, Ana Lucia Arroyave, Fabiola Quiroa
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Evan Keith Eppich, Griselda Pérez, Ana Lucia Arroyave, Fabiola Quiroa, Juan Carlos Meléndez y Edwin Román 2005 Estudio Cerámico, la secuencia de la Tradición Cerámica de El Perú-Waka’ in Proyecto Arqueológico El Perú-Waka’: Informe No. 2, Temporada 2004, edited by Hector Escobedo and David Freidel, pp. 313-350. Informe Entregado a la Dirección General del Patrimonio Cultural y Natural de Guatemala, Guatemala. Estudio Cerámico, la secuencia de la Tradición Cerámica de El Perú-Waka’ Evan Keith Eppich, Griselda Pérez, Ana Lucia Arroyave, Fabiola Quiroa, Juan Carlos Meléndez y Edwin Román Introduction ceramically, would include both the Sixth and In the course of the 2004 field season, Tenth cycles of the Maya calendar, being archaeologists carried out nine operations, roughly from -500 BC to AD 900+. Continuity totaling 33 separate excavation units in and appears to be a prominent attribute of the site’s around the ancient city of Waka’, now the site of potting tradition with the community apparently El Perú. Combined with the material recovered lacking either a large-scale hiatus or major from the 2003 season, this brings the total discontinuity. Even during the most formative, ceramic count to over 200,000 individual sherds or most disastrous, periods of their history, the with some 25 whole and reconstructable Maya occupied the site. They left an unbroken vessels. The sherds originate from a variety of and deep ceramic column with especially strong contexts, including sheet middens, sealed representations from the transition periods at the architectural deposits, looters’ spoil piles, end of the Late Preclassic and the Late Classic. termination deposits, surface collections, burials, Like other Terminal Classic sites, such as Seibal caches, and tombs, among others. The and Altar de Sacrificios, El Perú-Waka’ seems to excavated contexts were good enough, the have its period of maximal population during the quality of preservation high enough, and the Terminal Classic. After this period, quantity of sherds easily large enough to begin abandonment seems sudden, complete, and the process of assembling the chronology of the final. site’s ceramic tradition. It is the analysis of The ceramic chronology of El Perú- those ceramics that is the focus of this section. Waka’ provides a critical insight to the potting This report derives from and is purposefully traditions of the Maya peoples of lowland meant to supplant that which was issued earlier Guatemala, opening an important new chapter (Eppich 2004). on the history of the Native American It is apparent that El Perú-Waka’ civilizations in Central America. Situated at the originates at some point in the Preclassic and crossroads of the Western Petén, El Perú-Waka’ proceeds to span the entirety of the Classic interacted with all the major powers of its day. period, lasting well into the Terminal Classic (fig. Their history is written, to some extent, in the 1). Initial dates, always difficult to determine ceramics that were left behind. Among the www.mesoweb.com/resources/informes/ElPeru2005.pdf 313 Maya, ceramics are a feminine art and the that being left to a more exacting sorted typology growth and eventual downfall of the Maya to follow. This approach, it needs be noted, civilization was recorded, in pottery, by the possesses certain critical limitations with a direct hands of the women who made it. It falls only to bearing on the interpretation of the material. modern researchers to attempt to read the These limitations will be discussed below. record they left behind. However, it allowed for the rapid and highly The goals of the study of the ceramics accurate assembly of a workable sequential of El Perú-Waka’ are threefold and all, at this ceramic column. Key excavation units were stage, concern themselves with chronology. selected, preferably those containing intact They are as follows: assemblages from sealed architectural deposits, 1) To establish a baseline thus maintaining a direct stratigraphic chronological sequence for the site’s relationship between observed ceramic types. occupational history. Burial assemblages also served a particularly 2) To begin to apply this chronology to useful function, being usually single-event the investigated structures of the deposits and thus taphonomically free from the site, however preliminary, in an “upwelling effect” noted in the architectural attempt to develop the sequence of deposits of Tikal (Culbert 2003: 50). The construction that comprises the material from the units was laid out on laboratory site’s core. tables and the occurrence of specific ceramic 3) To begin a preliminary exploration of types in specific levels noted. Copious notes the site’s relations with the bulk of and illustrations followed, producing impressive the Maya World, as can be amounts of single sherd drawings (140+ pages). determined through the material Structure floors and other architectural features remains of their potting tradition. were noted and the various stratigraphic columns then lined up to produce a single, Methodology extremely large picture of the site’s ceramic To best accomplish these goals, the history. The result of this matching of type-variety system was applied to the typologically related material is presented here recovered materials. Lacking the time and as figure 1. Particularly useful units included resources to undertake a formal typological CK08a-1, ES01b-3, ES01b-4, ES01b-5, ES05b- approach, descriptions of well-known ceramic 17, WK02a-13, WK05e-10, WK05f-1, WK05g-5, types from published reports were utilized. WK05h-10, WK06a-22, WK07b-12, WK07b-15, Researchers examined selected lots and and WK10a-20, among others. Although not all indicated the easily identified, previously units proved to be as stratigraphically ordered as published ceramic types present in those lots. one would prefer, all units contributed to the Except for a few recognizable type-varieties, the formation of the site’s ceramic sequence. Figure analysis was not taken down to the variety level, 1 may be yet only a brief outline of the site’s 314 sequence, but it is felt to be a fairly accurate unslipped ceramics at all. This means that a one. More research will serve to broaden and degree of necessary ambiguity should be deepen the detail present there, but it will attached to all of the ceramic type-names given probably not overturn large portions of it. In the in both this section and in the informe as a near future, it is hoped, real quantitative data will whole. The illustrations attached should serve serve to flesh out this outline. It is felt that many to show interested parties of the veracity of minor types, less recognizable from published some of the type-name assignations. Showing, reports, or perhaps specific to El Perú-Waka’, it was felt, would be better than simply telling. have been overlooked and are not incorporated Secondly, the great reliance on into figure 1 or into this report. previously published ceramic types placed a Significant difficulties emerge in working degree of exaggeration on interregional solely from the published record, rather than a contacts. The ceramic corpus of El Perú-Waka’ typology specific to El Perú-Waka’ and has acquired a cosmopolitan character that it generated from the site’s own ceramic material. may not necessarily possess, or certainly Principally, the ceramics from different sites are possesses to a lesser extent. In using, for not identical and the particular attributes present instance, the ceramic report of Uaxactun (Smith in any given ceramic type vary considerably 1955) to type one’s sherds, one should not be from site to site. Compare, for instance, the too surprised to find one’s own collection eerily description of the fairly well-known Early Classic resembling that of Uaxactun. Compound this by type of Balanza Black from Seibal (Sabloff 1975: the dozen or so ceramic reports used, and it is 107-110) and that from Becan (Ball 1977: 33). easy to see how El Perú-Waka’ may grow to In terms of form and paste, the descriptions resemble an amalgam of all these reports differ considerably, and even in surface instead of an independent tradition in its own decoration, their descriptors are markedly right. In the use of published typologies, dissimilar. Even taking into account the researchers are highlighting similarities and inherently subjective nature of the type-variety obscuring the differences between the ceramic system, variation within a type, from site to site, corpus of El Perú-Waka’ and the remainder of exists as a very real phenomenon. The the Maya world. This does not prevent us from ceramics of El Perú-Waka’ are going to differ making observations about the degree of from those of Uaxactun, Tikal, Seibal or any intersite ceramic similarities, but simply instills other site, in some cases slightly and in others, caution inside those observations. Currently, El much more substantially. In the identification of Perú-Waka’ resembles a ceramic crossroads of ceramic types at this site, a conservative the Western Petén. However, this impression mindset was considered healthy and hence may, in fact, be nothing more than an artifact of produced the significant number of the methodological approach employed. It “undesignated” ceramic types present in figure remains for a solid sorted typology to untangle 1. It was felt best not to attempt to type the these interpretations. The published ceramic 315 typologies used most often in this study include attributes are assembled from the direct Altar de Sacrificios (Adams 1971), Barton Raime observation of recovered potsherds. In terms of (Gifford 1976), Becan (Ball 1977), Calakmul its execution, no approach other than that of (Dominguez Carrasco 1994), El Pozito (Eppich direct, physical and systematic comparative 2000), El Mirador (Forsyth 1983), Edzna sorting of ceramic material is ultimately (Forsyth 1989), La Joyanca (Arnauld and acceptable. “In a region previously unknown Morales 1999; Breuil-Martinez et al.