La Milpa was first explored, and named, by J. Eric S. Thompson (1938; Hammond 1991b) in March 1938. He spent only two days at the site, but mapped Plaza A in his notebook and documented Stelae 1-12 along the east side of the plaza. Although many stelae were carved, most were badly eroded, and only Stela 7 yielded a legible date. This was 9.17.10.0.0 12 Ahau 8 Pax (November 30, a. d. 780, G-M-T correlation at 584285). Stelae 13-19 were discovered in the 1990s: Stela 14 in situ and Stela 15 unerected south of the plaza (Guderjan 1991), Stelae 16 and 17 displaced and fragmentary in it, and the butt only of Stela 18 set into the base of Structure 9’s stair. The plain Stela 19, the first to be found outside the site core, was discovered in situ at the La Milpa East minor center, 3.5 kilometers from the Great Plaza, by Gloria Everson in 1998 (see below).
Study of the carved monuments by Nikolai Grube (1994; Grube and Hammond 1998) has shown that at least Stelae 1, 6, 15, and 16 are of Early Classic date, although none is in situ and all except Stela 15 are fragments. Stela 10, although plain, stands in situ and can be assigned to the beginning of the Early Classic on the basis of the vessels in its dedicatory cache (Hammond and Bobo 1994: 23). Stela 12 may be stylistically dated as early as 9.12.0.0.0 (a. d. 672), although this raises a problem in that La Milpa has virtually no documented occupation in the seventh century; it was still standing as recently as the early nineteenth century (Hammond and Bobo 1994: 30). The plain Stelae 11 and 14 (in situ) and fragmentary Stela 9 (recycled as an altar for Stela 10 many centuries after the latter was erected, and when it was partly buried by topsoil accumulation) seem to be Late Classic on the basis of location (Stelae 11 and 14), thick cross-sections, and raw material; the Early Classic monuments are generally of a much finer limestone. Stelae 4 and 8 appear to be late eighth century from their similarity of carving style to Stela 7. La Milpa thus has one very early stela (10), together with seven (7, 8, 11, 12, 14, 18, 19) of late date, still in their original locations.
The remaining ten stelae are displaced. Of these. Stelae 3 and 6 are fragments re-erected in front of Structure 1 long after its abandonment. Their broken bases are set in shallow pits cut into topsoil and erosion deposits from the pyramid. Stelae 1 and 2, although recumbent, are aligned with them, while Stelae 4 and 5 lie a few meters forward in front of Structure 1, and the plain fragment of Stela 17 was laid flat into the plaza floor where the line between Stelae 3 and 6 crosses one drawn orthogonally equidistant from Stelae 4 and 5. This complex episode of resetting, apparently never completed, has been interpreted by Hammond and
Bobo (1994: 30-32) as part of a revitalization movement, arguably (but not prov-ably) dated to the Contact period.
Stelae 13 and 16 were found lying on the surface of the Great Plaza, Stela 13 close to the east end and Stela 16 (together with a fragment from a larger, plain stela, possibly Stela 9 or 18) near the west end of the north ballcourt. Structure 11-12. Stela 15 lay west of the small Structure 54, midway between the two main groups of the site core. Heavy looting, perhaps occasioned by the stela’s presence, made assessment of context difficult, but excavation showed no socket into which the stela might formerly have been set at this locus (Hammond and Bobo 1994: 24).
Stela 20, discovered as four fragments (comprising the upper portion of a figure) under looters’ backdirt in front of their trench into the center of Structure 1, is a special case: it lay on the pre-looter (i. e., pre-1979) ground surface, but was not there when Thompson explored the site in 1938. The carved surface, found upmost, is crisp and uneroded, the other surfaces too clean to have been weathered for centuries. Stela 20 was clearly buried until the looters found it. The most likely locale, given the stratigraphic relationship with the looters’ backdirt, is inside the tandem building (Str. 199) butted onto the front of Structure 1. This was penetrated by the looters’ trench, which then continued east as a tunnel into the pyramid, the marl fill from which was found covering the stela fragments. The fact that they were found together suggests that a hitherto entire, but cracked, upper half fell apart when moved and was dumped as unsaleable. The absence of the lower half lacks explanation, since it may have been present when the looters came, but broken and unnoticed (and could still lie in the unremoved portion of their backdirt—one uncarved fragment, of the right thickness to be part of the butt, was recovered in 2000). Alternatively, the upper portion of Stela 20 could have been moved to the Structure 1 locale from elsewhere, as seems to have been the case with other fragmentary monuments (Hammond and Bobo 1994); but whether, given its condition and apparent absence from the surface in 1938, this was at the same putatively Protohistoric date seems doubtful. If it was indeed rehoused in the tandem structure, a Terminal Classic date for this would be feasible and paralleled by similar enshrining actions at Xunantunich.
Any Terminal Classic (taken as post-800) association for the La Milpa monuments is thus limited to possible initial dedication of carved Stelae 4 and 8 (if they postdate the similar Stela 7), and plain Stelae 9, 11, 14, 18, and 19. In addition, a Terminal Classic date for the resetting of Stelae 1-6 in front of Structure 1 is possible but unlikely for the reasons given by Hammond and Bobo (1994: 30). For Stela 20 it is possible, but remains moot.
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