The Piedras Negras sculptures played a crucial role in Maya historiography in the twentieth century, most notably in the recognition of historical content in the Maya inscriptions (e. g., Proskouriakoff 1960). But at the same time as scholars were using them to make progress in understanding the Classic Maya civilization and inscriptions, looters—starting in the late 1950s but culminating in the 1960s—began to destroy them in order to sell the fragments to art dealers, museums, and private collectors.
The extraction of monuments from Piedras Negras and other Maya sites in the middle of the twentieth century was drastically different from the earlier removals. The Guatemalan government had approved the taking of monuments from Piedras Negras in the 1930s, and those sent to the United States traveled as temporary loans. But beginning in the 1950s, looters moved sculptures from Piedras Negras and elsewhere without the consent of their home countries (I. Graham 2010:367-68; Mayer 1980:10). Another significant difference was the treatment of the sculptures. When the Penn Museum removed monuments in the 1930s, the workers went to great lengths to keep the sculptures intact. In contrast, the later looting depended on physical fragmentation of the monuments. The illicit trade thus destroyed not only the sculptures’ archaeological contexts but also the monuments themselves.
Looters removed portions of these sculptures and sold them to networks of the international art and antiquities market. Eager dealers, museums, and private collectors soon acquired them. Their fragmentation, which enabled removal, became a standard part of their transformation from religious or political objects—or archaeological artifacts in Maya sites—into commodities in dealers’ hands and objects of aesthetic or cultural value in art galleries and museums. Some sculptures were cut up and jettisoned at the site, and other fragments were lost or destroyed.
Many fragments ended up in the wealthiest and most cultured places in Europe and the United States, but looting was a dangerous business. Looters often carried guns and even committed murder to obtain monuments. Those who tried to protect or simply document the monuments were at times threatened and even killed. For instance, Pedro Arturo Sierra del Valle, a Tikal park ranger who accompanied
Ian Graham to the site of La Naya in 1971, was murdered when Graham and his assistants interrupted looters at work there (I. Graham 2010:349-54; Robertson 1972:147; Sibley 1972:36; Sullivan 1971:8).
A great deal of money was at stake, especially once monuments had been smuggled out of Mexico and Central America. In the early 1970s, for example, Macha-quila Stela 2 was sold in Belize (then British Honduras) for $1,800 or $3,000 (I. Graham 2010:436; Isenberg 1976).4 But in 1972, the California dealer Clive Hollins-head asked $350 thousand for it, although the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) apprehended him before he could sell it (Lacombe 1976:8).5 The violence and high economic stakes of looting have continued over the decades. Indeed, John Dorfman (1998:29) reported that in 1997, a Yaxha site guard was murdered when a stela was stolen (see also Dobrzynski 1998; Honan 1995). Dorfman (1998:29) cited a figure of $120 million a year for the market of Maya looting, although he noted that the looters themselves only get a few hundred dollars for each object they sell.6
Some of the looting in Guatemala and Mexico in the 1960s was commissioned and performed locally. There are reports that people from Tenosique, in the Mexican state of Tabasco, were involved in the looting of Piedras Negras sculptures (Stuart and Graham 2003:8). Graham (2010:431) names a particular Tabascan man who had chicle and lumber concessions in the region as the organizer of the dismantling and looting of the Piedras Negras stelae. Graham recounts that this man set up camp at El Cayo, an archaeological site on the Mexican side of the Usumacinta River, upriver from Piedras Negras, and removed the monuments from Piedras Negras by taking them across the river to Mexico.
In addition, in at least one case on Guatemala’s eastern border, local police were charged as accomplices to looting. As reported in the 30 March 1967 New York Times, “Ten men led by Mario Cosillo Ortiz, the former police chief of a town in Guatemala’s Peten region, near the British Honduran border, have been arrested on charges of stealing ancient Mayan archeological treasures and shipping them over the border for sale to collectors. Mr. Cosillo Ortiz was chief of the police in Melchor de Mencos” (New York Times 1967:25). The article does not identify the archaeological site from which the antiquities came.
In other instances, looting and smuggling were commissioned or aided by wealthy dealers and investors from outside Mexico and Central America (Coggins 1972:263; Melton 1968a:1). One of them was the American Everett Rassiga, a former airplane pilot who became an antiquities dealer and was involved in the removal of a stucco facade from the site of Placeres in Campeche (Freidel 2000:24; I. Graham 2010:388-89).
Looters would cut the monuments into smaller pieces in order to smuggle them in boxes and suitcases that they transported in airplanes, helicopters, boats, or on the backs of people and mules (Coggins 1972:265, fig. 2; Melton 1968a:20; Meyer 1972:14-15). They also commonly trimmed the monuments in order to salvage carved figural forms but lighten the weight of the pieces destined for removal. The trimming frequently destroyed texts and images carved on the monuments’ sides, backs, and tops (Coggins 1969:94). This type of fragmentation was especially damaging because it was undertaken while the decipherment of the hieroglyphs was in its infancy, and much important information was lost. In response, Graham founded a project in 1968 to document monuments and inscriptions that were increasingly vulnerable to fragmentation and looting (Brenner, n. d.; I. Graham 1971:63; Meyer
Figure E.2. Fragment, Piedras Negras Stela 25. Photographs by author, 2011. Courtesy of the Ministerio de Cultura y Deportes de Guatemala and the Museo Nacional de Arqueologia y Etnologia de Guatemala.
1972:3-4; 1973:26-27). This project became the Corpus of Maya Hieroglyphic Inscriptions (CMHI) and is part of the Peabody Museum of Harvard University.
Looters used various techniques to fragment the monuments. One technique was to cut the monuments with power saws, some of them diamond-tipped (Coggins 1969:94; Reinhold 1973:97). Careful sawing reduced the loss of carved forms, although an erratic saw could destroy a monument. Other methods were to use chisels, acid, and fires to break up stelae (Coggins 1972:263; Lacombe 1976:4; Meyer 1972:15-16; Robertson 1972:154); these methods were even more destructive, at times breaking the monuments into pieces.
In the middle of the twentieth century, looters damaged nearly all of the Piedras Negras carved stelae that the Penn Museum had not removed in the 1930s. Multiple monuments or pieces of monuments from the South Group, for example, including Stelae 25, 26, 29,
32, 34, and 35, were looted. Looters attacked most of K’inich Yo’nal Ahk II’s monuments from Structure J-4 as well, including Stelae 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 7, and 8. Also fragmented were Stelae 9, 10, and 11, three of Itzam K’an Ahk II’s monuments from Structure J-3. Some stelae at the site were not cut or looted, but these were eroded or did not have substantial carving.
Looters sliced the backs and sides off some stelae and cut the fronts into pieces, but they collected the front pieces and sold them together. This was the case for Stela 34, whose image of Itzam K’an Ahk I was fragmented but reassembled. The Parisian Galerie Jeanne Bucher, which primarily specializes in modern painting but purchased a number of Maya works in the 1960s, acquired this stela before 1966 (see Galerie Jeanne Bucher 1966, plate 17). Stela 2 also was fragmented and later reconstructed; looters sawed off its back, sides, and top, which had both glyphs and human figures, and cut the rest of the monument into pieces (Coggins 1969:96;
Stuart and Graham 2003:21).7 They reassembled the front of the monument and its image of K’inich Yo’nal Ahk II. This stela was acquired by the Minneapolis Institute of Arts (MIA) from the Stendahl Galleries circa 1966 (Huber 2006: 2-3; Mayer 1980, plate 20).8
In other cases, looters attempted to cut around the figures on stelae to extract those figures for transport and sale. The saw lines traced around the edges of faces and headdresses to keep them intact but sacrificed other parts of the sculptures, including texts, costume elements, and human bodies below the neck. For example,
Stela 25 was trimmed below the ruler’s chin and near the top of the headdress (Alfonzo 1986:203, fig. 2) (fig.
Figure E.3. Fragment, Piedras Negras Stela 7. Photograph by author, 2011. Courtesy of the Ministerio de Cultura y Deportes de Guatemala and the Museo Nacional de Arqueologia y Etnologia de Guatemala.
E.2; compare with fig. I.5). Similarly, looters cut around the face and headdress of Stela 7 (fig. E.3; compare with fig. 3.17).9 It appears that human faces were deemed especially valuable, for when cutting the monuments, looters usually attempted to preserve the face of the portrayed ruler or other person. This contrasts with Classic period modifications of stelae that generally focused on pecking or breaking the eyes, noses, or mouths or violently smashing the faces as part of dismantling the monuments.
In other cases, looters attempted to isolate the entire body of a central figure but failed, as was the case for Stela 8.10 Photographs of Stela 8 from the 1970s show the remains of the carved body of K’inich Yonal Ahk II at Piedras Negras after looters damaged the monument.11 The saw cuts follow the contours of his body, but the looters must have accidentally cut his proper right leg while they worked to separate the captive who was portrayed kneeling at the ruler’s feet (fig. E.4; compare with fig. 2.13). As a result, they abandoned the large fragment with the ruler’s body. The captive that knelt on the ruler’s left-hand side was taken away.12 The other captive also was cut from the monument, but it was abandoned at the site. Fortunately, the PNAP rediscovered this captive during excavations and buried it at Piedras Negras for its protection (Stephen Houston, personal communication, 2011).
As they did with Stela 8, looters frequently removed the captives from the Piedras Negras warrior stelae, including Stelae 4, 9, 26, and 35, perhaps because the captives were relatively small and could be transported without fragmenting the depicted person’s form. The captive at the lower right of the front of Stela 4, for example, was looted and became part of the collection of the Galerie Jeanne Bucher in Paris
Figure E.4. Fragment of Piedras Negras Stela 8 with body of K’inich Yo’nal Ahk II (Ruler 3), after fragmentation by looters. Photograph by Ian Graham, Peabody Museum #2004.15.1673.4. Courtesy of the Maya Corpus Program, Peabody Museum, © President and Fellows of Harvard College.
(Donald Hales, personal communication, 2010).'3 At least one of the captives on Stela 26 was looted as well; Graham’s unpublished notes in the CMHI archives report that one of this stela’s carved captives was once in Mexico City and owned by a French collector.14 Stuart and Graham (2003:50) also report that looters in the 1960s removed the captive from Stela 9. Finally, a 2005 photograph taken at Piedras Negras shows that the captive from Stela 35 had been cut from the monument. Looters must have taken it, although its current location is unknown. They also took the top of the monument, now at the Rautenstrauch-Joest-Museum fur Volkerkunde in Koln, Germany (fig. E.5).15 In addition, some heads from rulers’ belt decorations or thrones were cut from monuments and sold to collectors and museums. One fragment of Stela 4, with only the head from the ruler’s belt, is now
Figure E.5. Piedras Negras Stela 35, before and after looting. a. Photograph by Teobert Maler, ca. 1899. Courtesy of the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, Harvard University. Peabody ID #2004.24.2659. Digital File #130910008. b. Upper fragment in Rautenstrauch-Joest-Museum, Koln, Germany Rautenstrauch-Joest-Museum Inventory #60333, Sammlung Ludwig #SL/XXXIII. Photo © Rheinisches Bildarchiv Koln, rba_c023101. c. Lower fragment at Piedras Negras. Photograph by Stephen D. Houston, ca. 1997-2005. Courtesy of Stephen D. Houston.
In the Rufino Tamayo Museum in Oaxaca (Teufel 2004:321). The head ornament from the throne portrayed on Stela 10 also was removed, although its whereabouts are unknown.16
The twentieth-century art market’s preference for human faces also inspired the modern recarving of faces on stelae that the ancient Maya had modified. In the Late Classic period, for example, the Maya had smashed the face of K’inich Yo’nal Ahk I on Piedras Negras Stela 25. But in the second half of the twentieth century, after looters fragmented Stela 25, the facial area was completely recarved (Alfonzo
Figure E.6. Piedras Negras Stela 32, before and after recarving, with Lacanha Stela 1 for comparison.
A. Piedras Negras Stela 32, ca. 1899. Photograph by Teobert Maler. Courtesy of the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, Harvard University. Peabody ID #2004.29.7558. Digital File #9800005.
B. Piedras Negras Stela 32, ca. 1968, cut, recarved, and labeled as “Large Mayan Limestone Stele,
Peten, Guatemala, Classic, c. 500 a. d.” Photograph from Parke-Bernet Galleries (1968:73, fig. 109). Photograph Courtesy of Sotheby’s, Inc. © 2011. c. Lacanha Stela 1, drawing by Simon Martin. Courtesy of Simon Martin. (Images not to scale.)
Figure E.7. Fragments of Piedras Negras Stela 3 compared with stela when whole. a. Portion of Piedras Negras Stela 3, back, top, ca. 1966, after fragmentation and looting. Note that glyphs on right side are incorrectly placed (upper right fragment should be shifted down; bottom right fragment should be at top right). Photograph by Ian Graham, Courtesy of the Maya Corpus Program, Peabody Museum, © President and Fellows of Harvard College. b. Area of looted fragments overlain onto drawing of Stela 3: shaded area marks extent of the fragments acquired by the Brooklyn Museum. Drawing by David Stuart, Corpus of Maya Hieroglyphic Inscriptions, vol. 9, pt. 1, Piedras Negras, reproduced courtesy of the President and Fellows of Harvard College. With modification by author. (Images not to scale.)
Figure E.8. Display of the Piedras Negras Stela 3 fragments (right) in the Brooklyn Museum. Brooklyn Museum Archives. Photograph Collection [S06]. Museum building: interiors. Arts of Africa, the Pacific and the Americas. Mesoamerica installation view (n. d.).
1986:203) (fig. E.2; compare with fig. I.5). They had to make the head smaller, however, to squeeze new eyes, a nose, and a mouth from the significantly reduced stone mass. In refiguring ancient bodies in accord with contemporary taste, modern carvers obliterated essential parts of this and other sculptures’ life histories and thereby obfuscated significant indices of Classic Maya interactions with them. Fortunately, in at least one case, the reconstruction was not permanent, for the ruler’s face on Stela 2 was reconstructed with hard putty fill circa 1966, but this putty was removed in 1993.17
Other stelae were more substantially recarved. Piedras Negras Stela 32 was largely eroded when Maler (1901, plate XXVI) photographed it, and little more than an outline of the original figure remained (fig. E.6). However, a 1968 Parke-Bernet Galleries catalog advertised an unidentified Maya stela that actually is Stela 32 after significant recarving (Mayer 1980:11; Parke-Bernet Galleries 1968:72-73, fig. 109). The stela had been cut into pieces, its upper text had been removed, and its entire front surface was recarved. Notably, the modern sculptors recarved Stela 32 with Lacanha Stela 1 as the inspiration for form and imagery. They added new features to the figure’s body and costume, transforming his body position to one in which his right arm is bent across his torso and holds a vertical spear, exactly like the Lacanha stela. Lacanha Stela 1 also had been fragmented and looted, and its ruler’s face was recarved as well (Galerie Jeanne Bucher 1966, plate 11; O’Neil 2003).
Despite the preference for the faces and bodies of Maya sculptures, the demand for Maya sculptures was so voracious that looters and dealers successfully sold partial images and text blocks. Piedras Negras Stela 3 is a noteworthy example. In the
Late 1950s or early 1960s, looters fragmented Stela 3. They tried to extract the body of Lady K’atun Ajaw from Stela 3 by cutting around her body and headdress. However, they left these at the site.18 They also cut the text from the upper portion of Stela 3 into many pieces.
Looters frequently abandoned text fragments, preferring instead the figural forms, and they left many of Stela 3’s text fragments at Piedras Negras.19 However, they extracted and sold at least eleven fragments of the Stela 3 text (Coggins 1969:96; J. Lujan Munoz 1966:13, 14, 19, and fig. 4) (fig. E.7). In October 1964, the Brooklyn Museum purchased those fragments for $3,000 from Robert Huber, a dealer in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.20 In May 1965, the Brooklyn Museum exhibited them in their Hall of the Americas and juxtaposed the sculpture fragments with painted ceramic vessels (fig. E.8). Although Huber had sold them as pieces from an unidentified Maya stela, Jorge Lujan Munoz (1966) later identified them as a Piedras Negras monument and denounced their acquisition.21
World History
