The President and Fellows of Harvard College Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology Kings of Stone: A Consideration of Stelae in Ancient Maya Ritual and Representation Author(s): David Stuart Source: RES: Anthropology and Aesthetics, No. 29/30, The Pre-Columbian (Spring - Autumn, 1996), pp. 148-171 Published by: The President and Fellows of Harvard College acting through the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20166947 . Accessed: 27/03/2011 17:32 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use. 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Kings of stone A consideration of stelae in ancient Maya ritual and representation DAVID STUART stone Among the varied types of Maya monumental From the outset it should be stressed that Maya a amount sculpture, the stela is perhaps the most well known and monuments display considerable of stylistic a commonplace (fig. 1). During the Classic period and formal variation?anyone who visits few soon (approximately A.D. 250-850), nearly all Maya archaeological sites will become conscious of this. are kingdoms of the southern lowland region displayed Many flat, upright slabs of limestone bearing royal on one or stelae in ceremonial plazas and temple precincts. Most portraits two faces. Where the texture of the stone can assume a more of these upright stone slabs or statues bear portraits of local permits, stelae much or as at royal figures along with hieroglyphic texts rounded statuesque appearance, Copan and commemorating important stations in the Maya Tonina. Curious blank stelae in the form of undecorated or are calendar ("Period Endings," as they are usually called). slabs columns found throughout the region, and some some in According to the inscriptions, calendar rites several prominent sites, including Palenque and involved ritual bloodletting and dancing by the king, the Puuc region, lack stelae altogether. So-called "altar" among other ceremonial acts. However, many newly stones are perhaps more widely found, although this is a deciphered texts also reveal that royal ceremonies somewhat vague term applied to sculpted boulders, or centered on the placement and dedication of the cylinder pedestals, tables; each type should perhaps a stones monuments themselves. Rather than being simply be considered separately. Often these smaller were as medium for the commemoration of royal deeds and placed before stelae, probably pedestals for the other events, stelae played very direct and active roles display of censers, ritual fires, and other offerings. Stelae in ancient Maya ritual life. may have been among the largest and most public of as But what precisely were these roles? What ideas and monuments, but the ensuing discussion will show, use as some meanings underlay the production, placement, and their role ritual objects probably overlapped in of these conspicuous monuments? Despite the obvious degree with altars and other types of stone monuments. importance of such questions to the understanding of never Classic Maya religion and politics, they have been answered with much or clarity precision. Recently, Tuns and time-keeping however, deciphered hieroglyphs in the texts upon Any consideration of the role of stelae and other stelae reveal much new information about portrait stones in Classic Maya ritual practice must begin with stelae and their roles as active "participants" in the an assessment of their function in calendrical reckoning ceremonial landscape. These new decipherments and record-keeping. The significance of stones in the elucidate ancient Maya notions of portraiture and native conception of time has long been known, representation and how these complex notions bear on principally due to use of the Mayan word tun, "stone" the ancient display of political authority. or "precious stone," in reference to the basic calendrical Iwould like to acknowledge Stephen Houston for his important period of 360 days (Justeson and Mathews 1983; Long contributions to of the ideas our many expressed here, especially 1925:579; Thompson 1950:144). Native historical collaborative effort to arrive at a more and nuanced satisfactory chronicles from colonial Yucatan, such as the Books of more understanding of the word bah. A refined presentation of this Chilam Balam, make use of tun in decipherment and its implications for the study of the Maya "self" will routinely temporal a statements such as "in the first tun . or "in the appear in forthcoming issue of RES. Bridget Hodder Stuart read .," me to . a several early drafts and forced clarify many points. Adam twelfth tun .," custom that has led Maya scholars of Yale offered a number of constructive Herring University comments, to ubiquitously translate tun as "year" when found in and our discussions on of the included herein have many topics calendrical contexts (in these documents, tuns enriched of them. Karl Taube and an twenty my understanding anonymous a a me comprise unit of time called k'atun). reviewer also suggested several improvements and pointed toward larger it iswell worth that no important citations. Great thanks are also due to Francesco Pellizzi However, noting early dictionary comments or and Cynthia Elmas for their thoughtful and editing. of Yucatec Maya any other Mayan language cites 150 RES 29/30 SPRING/AUTUMN 1996 "year" as a meaning for tun. Rather, the widely attested with the "seating" sign (probably CHUM) to refer to word for "year" in the purely temporal sense is hab or "stone-seating" at the inception of each k'atun period in some cognate form of this root. Ibelieve, therefore, that the Long Count calendar (fig. 2b). With the passing of the translation of tun as "year" is a modern one having every 360 days, a tun is added to this reckoning, so that or arisen from a scholarly misunderstanding of the the glyphs "13 Tun" "15 Tun" specify specific stations esoteric terminology that surrounded native Maya within a k'atun period (fig. 2c). Justeson and Mathews timekeeping. Maya record-keepers, when composing suggest that tun in such cases is to be understood as such temporal statements in their texts, referred to "year," but there is no reason to dismiss the notion that specific numbered "stones" that in some way actual stones were in some way used to reckon the represented periods of 360 days. passing time periods, much as inYucatan several The ethnohistories of Yucatan support this literal centuries later. In fact, their overall argument that tun interpretation by discussing the ritual use of stones in means "year" in the Classic texts rests on incorrect connection with calendar ceremonies. The Books of readings of two hieroglyphic contexts whose values are Chilam Balam, for example, often mention the now well established.1 As in the later histories of no establishment of "stones" in certain towns at the end of Yucatan, there is strong evidence that ancient glyphs each k'atun (twenty tun) period. In the Book of Chilam for tun ever refer to "years" in the abstract sense. Balam of Chumayel, for example, we read: "12 Ahau. Despite the considerable time-depth of these The stone was taken at Otzmal; 10 Ahau. The stone was temporal records, the precise symbolic connection taken at Zizal; 8 Ahau. The stone was taken at between funs and time units of 360 or 7,200 days, Kancaba," etc. (Roys 1933:142-143). A sixteenth while evidently extremely close, remains poorly century source known as the Cr?nica de Chicxulub understood. What kinds of stones are being referred to? describes somewhat cryptically the placement of stones In the Classic inscriptions, tun refers to stelae (Justeson in connection with k'atun periods: "In this year the and Mathews 1983) or, alternatively, to the so-called Katun ended, and then ended the putting in place of the "altars" often dedicated with them. For example, Stela E town-stone, for at each twentieth stone they came to from Quirgua, Guatemala, erected on the Maya date place the town-stones, formerly, when the Spaniards 9.17.0.0.0 13 Ahaw 18 Cumku, is named the "13 Ahaw had not yet come to Cuzamil, to this land; since the tun." Here the stone is named for the Period Ending on Spaniards came, it has ceased to be done." The idea of falling 13 Ahaw. Such names immediately recall the stone "placement" to mark time was evidently important, so-called "giant Ahaw altars" encountered at some sites, assume for Collogudo in his Historia de Yucatan notes: which the form of flat stones bearing large Ahaw day-signs on their upper faces.