The earliest stelae at Piedras Negras, including the sixth-century Stelae 29 and 30 and K’inich Yo’nal Ahk I’s early seventh-century Stelae 25 and 31, were carved only on their front faces. Most had a single image on the front, usually accompanied by a text; Stela 29 had only text. The pictorial focus was generally on the ruler, and there were no carvings on the lateral surfaces. Sculptors in K’inich Yo’nal Ahk I’s reign began to use stela sides for dedication texts, as on Stela 26 from 628 CE. Later, sculptors in Itzam K’an Ahk I’s reign began to carve images on stela sides. Most subsequent stelae have images or texts on the front and sides.
The use of multiple sides of stelae to portray figures interacting in space allowed sculptors to highlight the divine ruler and at the same time to convey pictorial narratives and social interactions, particularly between kings and their wives, mothers, titled elite men of the court, and regional governors.6 The presence of images on monuments’ sides and backs may have guided people to move around the monuments to see and experience the three-dimensionality of the objects and the figures, relationships, and hierarchies presented on them. Furthermore, their depicted likenesses may have acted as mediators between the rulers embodied by the monuments and the people who viewed them.
Scenes of rulers interacting with their mothers were common at Piedras Negras. Sculptors experimented with various portrayals; for example, the key scenes on Itzam K’an Ahk I’s first two stelae—Stelae 33 and 32—depict him with his mother. He was only twelve years old when he acceded to the throne, and his mother, who held an ajaw title, probably was his regent (Houston, Escobedo, and Webster 2008; Martin and Grube 2008:143).
The strategies for depicting Itzam K’an Ahk I and his mother vary, however. His first monument, Stela 33, cedes the focus on the ruler alone to the interaction between the young ruler and his mother (fig. 2.6).7 Dated to 9.10.10.0.0 (3 December 642 ce), Stela 33 celebrates his accession and first hotun ending while in office. Like Stela 25, his father’s first monument, Stela 33 shows Itzam K’an Ahk I seated on an elevated platform (see fig. I.5). But unlike his father’s stela, which depicts the king frontally, with face and body in high relief, Stela 33 shows the young ruler in profile, looking and gesturing toward his mother. The composition suggests three-dimensional space, but it is only a flat representation. Sacrificing the powerful impact of the ruler’s frontal presence, Stela 33 focuses on a social interaction.8
For his next monument, Stela 32, dated to 9.10.15.0.0 (7 November 647 ce), Itzam K’an Ahk I’s sculptors returned the focus to the ruler yet portrayed him interacting with his mother by carving figures on contiguous faces of the stela (fig. 2.7). On the front is an image of Itzam K’an Ahk I, and on the stela’s right side is a woman, probably his mother. She stands behind Itzam K’an Ahk I and looks toward him, again a witness to his ceremonial performance. The portrayal of their interaction uses the
Four-sided stela to create a three-dimensional presence and multi-figural interaction. Indeed, the mother’s depiction correlates with what her position in space would be if she were to stand behind the ruler.
Figure 2.6. Front, Piedras Negras Stela 33, limestone, 642 CE. Drawing by Mark Van Stone. Courtesy of Mark Van Stone.
Sculptors of later rulers also used multiple sides of stone blocks to portray similar interactions between rulers and their wives, mothers, members of the court, and visitors. For example, K’inich Yo’nal Ahk Il’s Stela 2 (dated to 9.13.5.0.0, or 17 February 697 ce) portrays the ruler on the front and a figure (probably a woman, either his mother or wife) on the left side; each is in profile and faces toward the other. On K’inich Yo’nal Ahk Il’s Stela 6, his inaugural stela (9.12.15.0.0, or 11 April 687 ce), the enthroned king is on the front. On the monument’s left side is a standing man who looks toward the ruler and holds an incense bag, which indicates he is an active participant in a rite (fig. 2.8). Last, Itzam K’an Ahk Il’s Stela 11 (dated to 9.15.0.0.0, or 18 August 731 ce) bears an image of the ruler on the front and standing figures on both sides (fig. 2.9).9
On these stelae, the side figures stand behind the ruler as witnesses to the ceremonies performed on the monuments’ front faces. The presence of the side figures conveys both a physical interaction and a metaphorical relationship among the figures. Their placement on the monuments’ sides plays with the convergence of portrayed and actual three-dimensional forms and space as well as the interaction of people in that space. Such figural placement may have affected the experience of people near them by engaging their bodies and integrating them into the monument, in dialogue with the images. Indeed, in order to see and experience a stela’s three-dimensional illusions, a person must move around the monument. Once near the monument’s side, the person’s position is analogous to that of the subsidiary figure, for both stand on the side, looking toward the divine ruler.
These supporting figures are at ground level, with body proportions similar to those of living observers standing on the ground. The close physical correspondence between the subsidiary figures and viewers also created opportunities for identification with the depicted witnesses, such that viewers were not simply looking at the figures but becoming part of the action. The sculptures thus opened a space for people to become witnesses to the vital image and participants in the ceremony portrayed, guiding people to witness the
Figure 2.7. Model of front and right sides, Piedras Negras Stela 32, limestone, 647 CE, as if on stone block. Model by Kevin Cain, INSIGHT. Drawings of front and right side by John Montgomery © Foundation for the Advancement of Mesoamerican Studies, Inc., Www. famsi. org.
Figure 2.8. Left side and front, Piedras Negras Stela 6, limestone, 687 CE. a. Drawing of left side by David Stuart, Corpus of Maya Hieroglyphic Inscriptions, vol. 9, pt. 1, Piedras Negras, reproduced courtesy of the President and Fellows of Harvard College. b. Photograph of left and front by author. Courtesy of the Ministerio de Cultura y Deportes de Guatemala and the Museo Nacional de Arqueologia y Etnologia de Guatemala.
Figure 2.9. Front and sides, Piedras Negras Stela 11, limestone, 731 CE. Drawings by David Stuart and Ian Graham, Corpus of Maya Hieroglyphic Inscriptions, vol. 9, pt. 1, Piedras Negras, reproduced courtesy of the President and Fellows of Harvard College.
Figure 2.10. Left side of fallen Piedras Negras Stela 11, limestone, 731 ce, showing figure cut out from background. Photograph courtesy of the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, Harvard University. Peabody ID #59-50-20/74011.1.4. Digital File #98010008.
Ceremony or make offerings. The sculptors of Stela 11 further emphasized this permeable boundary between living witnesses and depicted witnesses, whose bodies emerge from the background and are given bulk; parts of their bodies overlap the frame on each side of the stela, such that they partially leave the pictorial field and stand closer to the living viewer (figs. 2.9, 2.10).
The depiction of offerings to monuments and rulers further activated the monuments and the space around them. At the base of Stela 11, for example, in front of the depicted scaffold, is an image of a sacrificed human lying over a rounded vessel or altar (Maler 1901:57-58; Taube 1988a:336, 343) (fig. 2.11). The image shows that another way of interacting with rulers and their monuments was to place offerings in front of them. It also further designates the space in front of the monument as one of offering and supplication. Moreover, it makes permanent what was an ephemeral ceremony, similar perhaps to ones conducted in front of earlier stelae.
Stela 14, dated possibly to 9.16.10.0.0 (13 March 761 ce) (Houston, Escobedo, and Webster 2008), was the inaugural stela of the next ruler, Yo’nal Ahk III; like the first monuments of his predecessors, it portrays him in an elevated niche (plate 3). As with his immediate predecessor’s niche stela, it includes a sacrificed human in front of the scaffold (Maler 1901:63; Taube 1988a:336, 343). But Stela 14 has another crucial addition, for Yo’nal Ahk III’s mother stands in front of the scaffold and looks up to her son. Holding a feathered bloodletter (Taube 1988a:346), she is both a witness to and an active participant in her son’s period-ending ceremony.
In its portrayal of an interaction between a ruler and his mother, Stela 14 is reminiscent of Itzam K’an Ahk I’s Stela 33. However, on Stela 14’s front, Yo’nal Ahk III’s sculptors used techniques of three-dimensional sculpting, including variations in depth of relief, and two-dimensional design, such as overlap and occlusion, to portray both the frontally facing ruler and his interaction with his mother. That her body obscures many details of the elaborately adorned scaffold was an inherent part
Figure 2.11. Front, Piedras Negras Stela 11, limestone, 731 CE. Photograph by Teobert Maler. Courtesy of the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, Harvard University. Peabody ID #59-50-20/74011.1.4. Digital File #98010008.
Of the artifice. With this combination of overlap, occlusion, and varying depth of relief, they crafted a more fully formed sculptural embodiment of the ruler facing outward, with his mother shown in a prominent place.
Her presence also may have created an opportunity for people looking at the monument to join this interaction. Indeed, as Herring (2005:194, 197, 200) has observed, the upward gaze of Yo’nal Ahk III’s mother draws attention to the ruler in the niche. In addition, like the figures on other monuments’ sides, her depiction at ground level places her closer to a person standing near the monument (see also Clancy 2009:138; Herring 2005:195). Her body is carved in a slightly higher level of relief than the background, so she is closer to an observer’s physical space, further blurring the line between her—the depicted witness—and a living witness. The depictions of both the mother and the sacrificial victim before the king would have functioned as reminders of the practices of veneration of these divine rulers. Such veneration was crucial not only within the frame of the monument but also outside of it and involved people who, standing before the monument, could enter its sphere of ritual action.
These aspects of Piedras Negras sculptures’ compositions and their relations with ambient space and potential viewers correspond with what we know about the cultural and social importance of witnessing and the display of social relationships in ancient Maya court culture. Houston, Stuart, and Taube have shown that the act and acknowledgment of witnessing performed important social functions in interpersonal and inter-polity relations. This emphasis on witnessing is apparent in texts and images on ancient Maya sculptures. For example, the hieroglyph IL, graphically written with an image of an eye, is the root of the verb “to see” (fig. 2.12). It is a common verb in the inscriptions, and Houston (2006:140-41) as well as Houston, Stuart, and Taube (2006:172-73) argue that it conveys not only seeing but also witnessing. In some cases, its use implied validation of an event and its actors by a person or being of higher status whose seeing and witnessing authorized the actors and actions. The act of witnessing and its commemoration in text and image also bound the actors together in social relationships and often in a hierarchy.
Another common glyphic expression that connotes witnessing and validation is y-ichnal (fig. 2.12). Houston, Stuart, and Taube describe y-ichnal as the visual field around a ruler or deity. They decipher the meaning of the ancient hieroglyph through its cognate in modern Yucatec Maya, y-iknal, which William Hanks
Figure 2.12. Glyphs related to seeing and field of view.
A. IL. b. y-ichnal. Drawings by Kevin Cain, INSIGHT, after John
Montgomery.
(1990:91) describes as a “mobile field of action related to an agent the way one’s shadow or perceptual field is.” Hanks emphasizes the interactive nature of this relation, explaining that under face-to-face conditions, “the - iknal of either participant includes the other as well” and that the interactive corporeal field involves “reciprocal perspectives” (Hanks 1990:92). The interactive nature of this corporeal field appears to have been just as vital in the Late Classic period, and Houston, Stuart, and Taube (2006:173) maintain that the use of y-ichnal has a social function, for it is a “field of vision and witness that appears to have been crucial in validating ritual.” Through this
Reciprocal relationship, they contend, witnesses become “active celebrants” by way of their eyesight.
Images on ancient Maya stone sculptures portray deities and people in the act of witnessing; even when words such as il or y-ichnal are not used, pictorial interactions convey affiliations, hierarchies, and social bonds connoting validation and authorization. For example, third - and fourth-century Tikal sculptures such as Stelae 29 and 31 show ancestors hovering above rulers’ ceremonial performances; shrouded in smoke or with characteristics of deities, they sanction the event through their presence and sight. In comparable scenes on the sides of the fifth-century Stelae 31 and 40 from Tikal, ancestors portrayed as living humans bear witness to the rites performed by the living rulers on the monuments’ front faces. In addition, on the eighth-century Stelae 10 and 11 from Yaxchilan, ancestors appear in celestial cartouches above rulers; their presence validates the occasion and actors. Last, as discussed in chapter 3, older sculptures of rulers at Piedras Negras remained on view after the rulers had died. Newer sculptures generally were set next to or facing the older sculptures, and through these arrangements, the older sculptures acted as witnesses to their successors.
A person’s presence in the role of a witness bound him or her in a visible social relationship with the rulers. In the Piedras Negras sculptures discussed in the current chapter, for example, women and men are portrayed as witnesses to rulers performing ceremonies. Through these portrayed associations, witnesses are shown connected to power. Sometimes, when the images link personages of different polities, the relationships cross kingdoms. The presence of figures on the sides of stelae from the reigns of Rulers 3, 4, and 5—as well as the images of rulers and multiple subsidiary figures on Ruler 7’s Panel 3 and Stela 12—may coincide with the growing importance of members of the court, regional governors, war lieutenants, and others in the Usumacinta River region in the eighth century, evidenced by increasing numbers of courtly titles, individuals using those titles, and their dedications of monuments (see Houston and Stuart 2001:74-75; Jackson 2005).
Moreover, the importance of witnessing may apply not only to the characters depicted on the sculptures but also to the human experience of these sculptures. The qualities of the sculptures enumerated here guided people to engage with them. As people interacted with stelae and their vital images, they became witnesses to the portrayed ceremonial performances and were integrated into these social relationships. The act of witnessing the monument is thus analogous to and intertwined with the portrayed figures’ witnessing of the ruler’s ceremonial performance. By inspiring or enacting engagements and relations among objects, humans, and the divine, these monuments fostered essential Classic period Maya religious and political behavior.
Nonetheless, not everyone was allowed such interaction with the monuments. As indicated in images on ceramic vessels (see Jackson 2009), proximity to an ajaw would have been a privilege. Likewise, access to these monuments was probably controlled. The types of people portrayed as witnesses on the monuments, including rulers’ family members, regional governors, war lieutenants, and other titled elites, were likely among those with access to the monuments. Yet even more could have watched their interactions. People in the West Group Plaza, for example, might not have had physical access to the stelae on the J-1 terrace, but they could have seen performers interacting with them. These varying degrees of participation and looking would have produced hierarchies of proximity, witnessing, and performance.
At the same time, some aspects of Piedras Negras stelae distanced the people who stood near them. One of these is that rulers were often positioned above a person standing on the ground. The carved design of K’inich Yo’nal Ahk I’s Stela 25 is not as tall as later monuments, but Satterthwaite ([1944] 2005e:190) recorded that one meter of the plain part of the stela was exposed when the monument was upright, such that the ruler’s face was “on eye level” (see also Clancy 2009:27). Unfortunately, Satterthwaite does not state the height of that hypothetical person or what his or her eye level would be. For Stela 26, the height of the ruler’s eyes is about 1.5 meters above the image’s carved ground line; the ruler’s face thus would have been at the eye level of someone around 1.5 to 1.6 meters tall.10 Both Stelae 25 and 26 were installed on a platform extending from Structure R-9. There would have been little room to stand in front of these monuments, and access likely was restricted; a more typical viewing perspective might have been from the court about 2.5 meters below.11 For someone standing in the court, the rulers on both stelae were significantly more distant. K’inich Yo’nal Ahk I’s Stela 31, in contrast, was on a more expansive platform with more room for spectators, but the monument was much larger than those earlier stelae, reaching 4.5 to 5 meters in height (Morley 1937-38, 3:64-65). The ruler on Stela 31 would have towered over anyone on the R-2 platform and even more so over people on the court level.
Itzam K’an Ahk I’s Stelae 32, 33, and 35 are comparable in size to Stela 26, and thus the ruler’s face on each was close to a viewer’s eye level.12 However, similar to the placement of Stelae 25 and 26, these stelae were set on a terrace in front of Structure R-5. Although at eye level of someone on the terrace, whether circumambulating the monument or acting as witness to the scene, the images of the ruler’s face would have been more distant for the majority of people, who probably watched from court level.
The height of K’inich Yo’nal Ahk Il’s inaugural Stela 6 was comparable to many of his predecessors’ stelae, but the platform that held Stelae 1-7 would have added about 40 centimeters more (Satterthwaite [1943] 2005d:180).13 Clancy observes that the ruler’s face on Stela 6 was above the vision of a viewer 1.5 meters tall, and she says this arrangement would have created a disconnection between viewer and ruler (Clancy 2009:101-102). The disconnection would have been true also for sculptures of previous reigns, especially for the majority of spectators standing at court level in the South Group Court.
The other stelae of K’inich Yo’nal Ahk II were much larger than those of his predecessors, and all but Stela 8 stood on the 40-centimeter-tall stela platform that was built on the J-1 terrace. For Stela 4, the ruler’s eye level was almost 2.5 meters above the level of the terrace floor, where a potential spectator could stand, and for Stela 8, the ruler’s eye level was about 1.75 meters above the terrace floor.14 The stelae’s size and positioning made the portrayed rulers loom larger and even more distant from viewers’ bodies, regardless of where they were standing, thus increasing the disconnection for all. For someone in the West Group Plaza, 5.4 meters below the terrace level, the rulers on the stelae were at an even greater distance (Satterthwaite [1933] 2005a:25). Consequently, Clancy (2009:99) affirms that a viewer in the plaza would have seen much less detail than someone on the terrace, resulting in “different types of ‘reading.’ ”
The heights of Itzam K’an Ahk II’s stelae show variation; some are comparable in size to his predecessor’s larger monuments. The ruler’s eye level on Stela 11 was almost two meters above ground level and would have towered over an adjacent spectator, but on the smaller Stela 9, the ruler’s eye level was about 1.6 meters above ground level.15 Yet, like his predecessors’ stelae, Itzam K’an Ahk Il’s stelae were on a terrace that was 6.4 meters above the West Group Plaza (Satterthwaite [1933] 2005a:25). People in this plaza, presumably the majority of spectators, had to look up toward the distant ruler.
Although the ruler’s face on some of these monuments was near “eye level,” this perspective probably was reserved for a select few. For the majority of spectators, looking at the stelae from courts and plazas, the architectural settings of these stelae established significant distance between the rulers and viewers. These distances correspond to depicted interactions of rulers and other people on the stone monuments and in paintings on Classic period Maya ceramic vessels. In these images, the rulers are the highest persons in the scene; subsidiary figures may be close to the ruler but are on a lower level, and persons of lower rank are at an even lower level, with captives generally the lowest in the visual hierarchy (see Houston 2006:142).
The portrayal of opened, fastened curtains also may heighten the conceptual distance between the ruler and those on the ground (fig. 2.9). On the one hand, the curtains are an example of playful verism, and the carving of soft, draping cloth in apparently obdurate stone offers another level of three-dimensional illusion, for they are layered on top of the niche and the ruler inside. At the same time, their open position reveals the ruler and conveys a privileged view, for the opening of the curtains and glimpses of rulers in these ceremonies may have been infrequent.
The monuments themselves may have been covered in curtains or wrappings (Stuart 1996:156-60). If covered, sculptures may have been revealed only to select audiences or on special occasions such as new year ceremonies, comparable to the sixteenth-century Yucatec changing and renewal of the materials that wrapped idols on the first day of the new year, as described by Diego de Landa (Tozzer 1941:151).
Such hints of revelation and theatricality may have further activated the monuments and their performance by heightening the experience of seeing them and emphasizing the ephemeral nature of their exposure.
World History
