Conclusion

Piedras Negras sculptures changed over time, particularly as the rulers portrayed on stelae died and became ancestors, and as newer sculptures were placed in arrangements with older sculptures. Over time, most of the older monuments at Piedras Negras remained in the places where they were originally installed. They became connections to ancestors, and continuing interaction with them would have been analogous to other practices of ancestor veneration, including commemorative burning ceremonies. Furthermore, newer sculptures were placed in dialogue with them. Both older and newer sculptures were potent agents that may have been considered able to witness the actions of other monuments and living people.

The multiple stelae also marked the continuing passage of time and the periodic renewal of time, community, and cosmos. But while the transitions between reigns were not always smooth, they were presented as such, and the sculptures’ emphasis on tradition created a semblance of continuity, even when—or especially when— there had been ruptures or conflicts.

Emulation and alignment of sculptures also were part of a larger system of making associations across time and generations through diverse but complementary historiographic practices that used narrations, materials, and performances to venerate ancestors and emphasize continuity. Examples of narrations are those in panel texts that juxtapose actions of rulers of different generations and imply correspondence. Texts also narrated rulers’ performances of rites commemorating their ancestors. Through the inscription of these events, descendants displayed their association with earlier generations. At the same time, those ceremonies, in which rulers censed the material remains of their ancestors in tombs or in funerary pyramid shrines, would have constituted material and performative links with the past. These rites would have employed multiple media, including recitation, song, movement, burning, aromas, and the offered objects.

Other examples of material links between present and past are the placement of stelae in front of ancestors’ funerary pyramids and the orientation of newer stelae to older ones. But these also could take on a narrative dimension, particularly through the discourse generated at the intersection of sculptures, which could have been expressed in recitations and travel among the monuments. These performances inevitably changed over time, both because of time’s passage—for each ruler had to revise the past as it led to his present—and because of the reconfiguration of the site and its architectural groups and causeways.

In short, as the monuments remained on view in the places where they were dedicated, there was both transformation and persistence of meaning. The sculptural embodiments of rulers were transformed into loci of memory for still-powerful ancestors, and the monuments remained relevant and revered. The older and newer monuments interacted with one another, and the movements of people further activated the discourse among them. And through these actions, Maya people at Piedras Negras in the seventh and eighth centuries created visual, material, and performative displays of tradition, continuity, and communal memory.