The corpus of monumental stone sculptures at Piedras Negras includes stelae, altars, panels, and thrones. The Maya quarried most of the stone from stratified limestone outcrops along the Usumacinta River (Satterthwaite [1943] 2005d:180-81) (plate 2).5 Sculptors carved the limestone with tools made primarily of chert. The limestone was relatively soft when first quarried, and their tool set for carving included chisels, flakes, picks, and bifaces, some probably hafted onto wooden handles; they also used abrasives for polishing the stone (Woods and Titmus 1996:479-85).
Sculptors’ signatures incised on monuments indicate that anywhere from one to eight or more sculptors carved each of the sculptures (Houston, Escobedo, and Webster 2008; Montgomery 1995:445-46, 528), but more workers undoubtedly were involved in the quarrying, transport, and erection of the stones.6 Sculptors’ or carvers’ signatures consist of a hieroglyph structurally analogous to the utz’ihb (the writing/ painting of ) glyph used on painted ceramic vessels and walls. The phrase used on stone monuments differs; it refers specifically to carved as opposed to painted surface treatment (fig. I.3). The same word is used for dedication texts or signatures on ceramic vessels with incised images or texts (Stuart 1989:153-54).
Figure I.3. Glyphs used in carvers’ signatures (top) and dedication statements (bottom). a. yu-xu(?)-lu or yuxul(?) (the carving/scraping of), from Piedras Negras Stela 12 (R1). b. u k’al tuun (his or her stone-binding), from Piedras Negras Stela 12 (B12). c. u yax kal tuun (his or her first or precious stone-binding), from Piedras Negras Stela 6 (A18). Drawings by Kevin Cain, INSIGHT, after David Stuart.
Some epigraphers have proposed a decipherment of this glyphic collocation as yu-xu-lu or yuxul (the carv-ing/scraping of), based on Nikolai Grube’s reading of the T756a-b syllables as xu, although this decipherment remains a matter of debate (Boot 2009; Kettunen and Helmke 2008:20; Looper 1991; Montgomery 1995:5-6, 32-33n6). Regardless, it is clear that it refers to some aspect of carving. The glyph is followed by the artisan’s name and may relate to authorship, tribute, or gift-giving (see Herring 1999:173-94; Stuart 1989; 1995:371-73). Sculptors’ signatures became more prevalent in the seventh and eighth centuries, particularly in the Usumacinta River drainage.
Carved dedication statements include ancient names for stelae. Stuart (1996:151-54) deciphered one name for stelae as k’uhul lakam tuun, which he translates as “sacred big stone” or “sacred banner stone.” This name appears, for example, on Copan Stela A as well as other monuments across the Maya region. The qualifier k’uhul, or holy, was used to refer to both stelae and altars.7 A common phrase used in monument dedication statements in the Piedras Negras inscriptions is k’al tuun,
Which Stuart (1996:154-57) translates as “stone-binding” (fig. I.3). This inscription appears on the stelae of most of the Piedras Negras rulers, including K’inich Yo’nal Ahk I’s Stelae 25 and 31; Itzam K’an Ahk I’s Stelae 32, 34, 37, 38, and 39; K’inich Yo’nal Ahk II’s Stelae 3, 4, 7, and 8; Itzam K’an Ahk II’s Stelae 9 and 22; Yo’nal Ahk III’s Stela 16; and K’inich Yat Ahk II’s Stelae 12 and 15. It is also used in dedication statements for Itzam K’an Ahk II’s Altar 2 and K’inich Yat Ahk II’s Throne 1 (see Teufel 2004:45, fig. 2.2.2-13). The most common form of this phrase is u k’al tuun, “his/her stone-binding.” On Stela 6, the phrase is u yax kal tuun, “his/her first stone-binding” or “his/her precious stone-binding,” which marks this monument as the first that K’inich Yo’nal Ahk II dedicated (fig. I.3).
The predominant mode of design on the Piedras Negras monuments was relief carving. Some Maya sites, including Copan and Tonina, used local volcanic tuff and sandstone, respectively, to make nearly or fully three-dimensional sculptural forms. However, the stratified limestone at Piedras Negras and many other sites was less conducive to sculpting in the round. Sculptors thus relied on low-relief design, using foreshortening, overlap, occlusion, and other techniques to convey the illusion of three-dimensional forms. Although most images are in profile and low relief, rulers’ faces on stelae frequently are shown frontally and with greater depth of relief (plate 3).
Rulers dedicated these monuments to mark the ending and beginning of calendri-cal periods—especially k’atuns, or twenty-year periods—amid rites of community and cosmic renewal. At Piedras Negras, it was common also to mark hotuns—five-year periods—with sculptures (Morley 1946:336). These dates are carved onto the sculptures and commemorate both the period ending and the monument’s dedication.
Flora Clancy (2009:13) questions whether the Maya erected stelae at the time of their dedication dates. She raises this suspicion in regard to K’inich Yo’nal Ahk II’s stelae in front of Structure J-4, remarking that they may have been dedicated in the order in which they stood, from left to right, and not in the order of their stated dedication dates (Clancy 2009:109). However, for the most part, it is clear that we can accept the dedication dates on monuments as accurate.8 Indeed, it is highly improbable that K’inich Yo’nal Ahk II’s stelae were carved in order from left to right because Stela 6, installed third from the right, was his niche monument that celebrated his first hotun in power and must have been dedicated first.
The Classic Maya recorded dates in multiple calendar cycles of varying duration that made up a structure of time perceived to be both cyclical and linear (Farriss 1987; Leon-Portilla 1994; O’Neil 2005:98-101, 110-18). A Calendar Round date— such as 5 Kib 14 Yaxk’in—identifies a day in the 260-day sacred calendar and the 365-day solar calendar, which together form a cycle that repeats every fifty-two years (fig. I.4). The Maya used calendar rounds to emphasize the cyclicality of time, particularly in the ubiquitous celebration of period endings commemorating the ending of one cycle and the beginning of another.
However, a perception of linearity in the structuring and expression of time is evident in the use of the Long Count. The Long Count recorded the number of days that had transpired since the beginning of a 5,125-year cycle with a starting point in 3114 BCE, and this system allowed the Classic period Maya to identify unique days in that large span of time. Long Count dates consist of a series of numbers that represent the amount of completed cycles of progressively decreasing quantities; for example, the date 9.12.2.0.16 records 9 bak’tun (400 years or 144,000 days), 12 k’atuns (20-year
Figure I.4. An Initial Series date with explanation of each component of the Long Count: bak’tun, k’atun, tun, winal, and k’in, in addition to other calendar cycles and lunar information, after Martin and Grube (2008:13). This text records the date 9.12.2.0.16 5 Kib 14 Yaxk’in. It correlates with 4 July 674 ce (GMT + 2 correlation and Julian calendar).
It is the birth date of Lady K’atun Ajaw. Hieroglyphs from Piedras Negras Stela 3, detail of 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.
Periods), 2 years (of360 days), 0 winal (months of 20 days), and 16 k’in (days) since the starting point in 3114 bce; this date correlates with 4 July 674 ce (fig. I.4).
The Long Count system allowed specificity in the recording of historical events and monument dedications, and most sculptures with texts had Long Count dates narrating when the sculpture was dedicated and by whom. However, the Long Count was itself part of a larger cyclical structure; its 5,125-year cycle was one of other repeating cycles of the same length (Aveni 2002:187). Nevertheless, this cycle was so large that the dates attached to human events were unique, thus making time linear within the experience of the Classic period Maya (see Farriss 1987:578-79).
The use of Calendar Rounds enforced and conveyed repetition and cyclicality, such that the past would be replayed in the present, with dynamic interaction between the linear and cyclical structures of time and history. The Long Count allowed different moments to be distinguished from one another, but it also allowed ancestors and descendants to be juxtaposed in different ways, making both distant and proximate events and actors visible at the same time. Because of this, Nancy Farriss (1987:573) explains that for the Classic period Maya, linear time was “incorporated into an all-encompassing cyclical pattern" In such an understanding of time, forward movement may be interwoven with cyclical repetitions that bring distinct cycles and personages together. Yet according to Farriss (1987:575), “it is the repetitive pattern of events that counts and not their exact duplication.”
Furthermore, Charles Golden (2002:72-74) notes that the Classic period Maya, like their colonial period counterparts, may have used these cyclical systems in response to disruptions such as conquest or other social upheaval, emphasizing the cyclicality and the continuity of time and rulership in order to establish, maintain, or feign order in the face of change or chaos.
Stelae
The freestanding vertical stela was a common sculptural form at Piedras Negras. Stelae are taller than they are wide and loom upward like an upright human form (Mary Miller, personal communication, 2000). The massive, vertically rising stone confronts the living person standing before it and impresses and overwhelms the human body. Weighing as much as six tons and measuring as tall as 4.85 meters, as does Stela 40, Piedras Negras stelae generally were erected in front of buildings, whether in plazas or on platforms or terraces overlooking plazas. A few stelae (the earliest and latest at the site) were located on top of pyramids (Mason 1935:560-61; Morley 1937-38, 3:47-49).
Most stelae were carved with images of the k’uhul ajaw and other personages such as their wives, mothers, subordinates, and captives. Hieroglyphic texts narrate ceremonies of period endings and events such as birth, accession, death, and warfare victory. Texts also may refer to earlier period endings commemorated by the current ruler or to ones celebrated by his predecessors. Two Piedras Negras stelae, 29 and 36, have only hieroglyphs and no images. Stelae 42 and 44, from the South Group, were plain, without texts or images (Satterthwaite ([1933] 2005a:19). Sylvanus Griswold Morley (1937-38, 3:47-48) maintained that they once had carvings that had been destroyed. However, they may have always been plain and part of a tradition of erecting plain stelae, also evident at other Maya sites (see Stuart 1996:158).9
Figure I.5. Front, Piedras Negras Stela 25, limestone, 608 CE. a. Photograph by Teobert Maler. Courtesy of the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, Harvard University. Peabody ID #59-50-20/74011.1.2. Digital File #97470002. b. Illustration by Barbara Page from Maya History by Tatiana Proskouriakoff, edited by Rosemary A. Joyce, Copyright © 1993. By permission of the University of Texas Press.
The Maya carved images and texts on the sides and backs of stelae, but the principal focus was the image of the k’uhul ajaw on the front. David Stuart, Stephen Houston, and Karl Taube have argued that the carved stones were representatives or doubles of divine kings, vital images holding aspects of a king’s “extendible essence” (Houston, Stuart, and Taube 2006:57-101; Stuart 1996). To approach a monument may have been deemed akin to approaching the king, and the presence and power of image and object were undoubtedly palpable. At Piedras Negras, monuments remained standing long after the death of the k’uhul ajaw featured on them. They were loci for the memory of rulers and ancestors, and because they were dedicated on successive and parallel calendar endings, they also were materializations of the cyclicality of time and its continued commemoration by the Yokib lords.
The images shown on the various stelae share some common themes. In his 1940 Harvard undergraduate thesis, William S. Godfrey (1940:56, 111-13) used letter designations to distinguish the repeating themes on Piedras Negras stelae. The letter designations enabled him to track changes in their design over time. Later, when Tatiana Proskouriakoff addressed the repetition of themes carved on the monuments, she focused on two principal themes and named them with terms connoting rul-ership and warfare, specifically the “ascension motif” (now also called the “niche” type) and the “warrior motif” (Martin and Grube 2008:142; Proskouriakoff 1960; Stone 1989).
K’inich Yo’nal Ahk I initiated the niche and warrior motifs in the early seventh century, and his successors emulated his monuments, albeit with innovations, for two centuries. With their “niche” stelae, rulers commemorated their accession to kingship and the completion of their first hotun, or five-year period, in office. On the front of the sculpture, the ruler is usually shown enthroned on a cushion covered by a jaguar pelt or a woven mat and set in a niche (e. g., fig. I.5). The niche is surrounded by elements conveying a supernatural location; these elements may include a skyband (with sun, moon, and star symbols) signaling a celestial location. A large supernatural bird, nicknamed the “Principal Bird Deity,” sits above the niche (Bardawil 1976; Stone 1989:155).10 Below the niche is what Stuart has nicknamed the “Starry Deer Crocodile,” a creature that is part deer and part crocodile that bears both star signs and a sun-marked sacrificial bowl containing bloodletting implements for autosacrificial offerings (Clancy 2009:30; Joralemon 1974:59; Robertson 1974; Stone 1985; Stuart 2005:89; Taube 2004b:275, 277). In this location, marked as supernatural, the ruler is elevated to a celestial realm through the ceremonial act he performs.11
In these scenes, rulers wear few clothes, principally a loincloth and jewelry of jade and shells. They also wear elaborate headdresses bearing birds, deity heads, and at times the rulers’ names. The headdresses sprout long quetzal feathers, and Stelae 6 and 25 have maize rising from them (Stone 1989:155). The rulers hold incense bags, often marked with the date of the period ending, showing they are primed for ritual related to calendar renewal. In a few (Stelae 11 and 14), a human body is sacrificed at the base of the scaffold. Citing the presence of images of maize and blood sacrifice, Andrea Stone (1989) demonstrates that these niche stelae concern agricultural and cosmic renewal and that rulers used the commemoration of their first hotun ending while in power to focus on their role as providers or participants in maize production and world renewal.
Figure I.6. Front, Piedras Negras Stela 26, limestone, 628 CE. a. Photograph by Teobert Maler. Courtesy of the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, Harvard University. Peabody ID #2004.29.7562. Digital File #98790013. b. Drawing by Linda Schele, © David Schele, courtesy Foundation for the Advancement of Mesoamerican Studies, Inc., Www. famsi. org.
Figure I.7. Piedras Negras Altar 1, limestone, 692 CE. Photograph ca.
1933, courtesy of the Penn Museum, Image #175939. Altar originally had three supports; an extra pile of stones (at right) supporting the tabletop was added in the twentieth century.
The warrior stelae, on the other hand, show the king dressed in battle garb, frequently with imagery from the Central Mexican site of Teotihuacan (Stone 1989) (fig. I.6). Teotihuacan-inspired elements include an enormous war serpent headdress that engulfs the ruler’s head. Also in this assemblage are abundant feathers, jewelry made of beads and mosaic plates of jade and shell, and often a shield and a serpent staff or spear. Kneeling at the king’s feet are bound captives who are frequently identified by name and polity in captions near their bodies.
Another common type of stela portrays the ruler scattering incense on a period ending. Examples are Itzam K’an Ahk I’s Stelae 32 and 34, K’inich Yo’nal Ahk Il’s Stela 2, and Ha’ K’in Xook’s Stela 13 (see Godfrey 1940:56; Simpson 1995).12 Other images on stelae, such as that on Stela 5, place the ruler in a mythological setting and surrounded by deities, mythical animals, and other supernatural entities.
These diverse portrayals highlight different aspects of the Maya ruler, whose actions as ceremonial participant and warrior were integral to success in the realms of ritual, fertility, cosmic renewal, and warfare. Portrayals of Maya rulers as ceremonial specialists or warriors are also juxtaposed at other Maya polities, although they may be deployed differently. For example, in contrast to the juxtaposed Piedras Negras stelae, the fronts of Yaxchilan stelae frequently portray rulers dressed as warriors lording over captives, whereas the backs of stelae portray the same rulers performing bloodletting or other ceremonial rites (see Tate 1991).
Altars
Another sculptural type was the tabletop altar, a square or disk of stone set on three or four supports. Each part could be carved with images and texts (fig. I.7). Like stelae, altars were dedicated at period endings, and their texts often referred to past and future period endings, thus celebrating the repetition of temporal cycles, the people who commemorated them, and the renewal enacted at these period endings.
The altar tops were flat, likely for the placement of offerings or censers for burning incense or rubber. Altar 4 from the nearby site of El Cayo, or Yax Niil, shows a sajal (a subordinate lord or provincial governor) named Wayib K’utiim making an offering with a censer on a table altar (Martin and Grube 2008:150-51) (fig. I.8). Notably, he holds an incense bag similar to the ones held by Piedras Ne-gras rulers on their niche stelae; the date of the El Cayo ceremony is a period ending (Martin and Grube 2008:150; Zender 2002:172).
Figure I.8. El Cayo Altar 4, limestone, 731 CE. Drawing by Peter Mathews. Courtesy of Peter Mathews.
Other altars were much smaller stone cylinders. Column altars had tenons that were inserted into floors at the tops of pyramids, in shrines, or on pyramid stairways, usually on the central axis. Some showed evidence of burning; they were surrounded by burned ceramics and ashes from offerings made on and around them (W Coe 1959:90, 93-94; Mason, n. d.b, 27, 42, 48; Satterthwaite [1933] 2005a:24). Other cylindrical altars, which Satterth-waite called “drum-shaped” stones, did not have tenons for insertion into floors. They were portable and were probably placed on benches, altars, or floors of temple shrines. They were used in secondary depositions as well, for three were cached in stela cists in K’inich Yo’nal Ahk Il’s reign (W Coe 1959:38; Satterthwaite [1933] 2005a:25, [1936] 2005c:150). Although most are plain, one portable cylinder altar—called Miscellaneous Sculptured Stone 1—had a carved text that mentions K’inich Yo’nal Ahk I’s death.
Panels
Rectangular stone panels, much smaller than the massive stelae, were another sculptural type. They are wider than they are tall, measuring from 1.26 to 1.44 meters long and from 55 centimeters to 1.28 meters high (plates 4, 5).13 Although initially designated “lintels” (Maler 1901:58-60), they were not used as door lintels. Instead, they likely were placed on walls or on the front faces of platforms, piers, or benches (Mor-ley 1937-38, 3:35). Proskouriakoff hypothesized that they were set on masonry altars built into pyramid stairways, as seen in her reconstruction of Panel 7 on Structure K-5 (Proskouriakoff 1963; n. d., 3) (fig. I.9). Houston and Escobedo (2005a:3) decipher the dedication verb of Panel 7 as t’abayi, which they translate as “elevado en su lugar” (raised up in its place). This may correlate with the raising of the panel up the pyramid or its placement on a vertical structural surface.
Each panel shows a narrative scene of multiple figures interacting. A common scene is a ruler standing above kneeling warriors or captives; at times members of the royal family and court are depicted. Each panel’s text spans two or more rulers’ reigns—that of a deceased ancestor and a living ruler, often his son. Each text principally records events in the life of the deceased ruler; it then often recounts his death and ends years later with a successor conducting a burning or censing ceremony in the ancestor’s tomb. Each panel’s image is likely a posthumous depiction of the ancestor commemorated in that ceremony. Evidence suggests that these panels are associated with the honored ancestor’s funerary pyramid, where the burning ceremony took place (Escobedo 2004; Fitzsimmons 1998; Houston et al. 1999:13; Houston, Escobedo, Child, et al. 2000:105; Houston, Escobedo, Forsyth, et al. 1998:18-19; Houston, Escobedo, Terry, et al. 2000:10). Burning ceremonies were carried out in tombs, but others may have been performed on the pyramid. Indeed, Stuart (1998:398) suggests that the Maya may have placed censers with burning offerings on masonry altars that supported the panels, comparable to what Prosk-ouriakoff portrayed in her architectural rendering of Structure K-5 (fig. I.9).
Thrones
Another sculptural type is the stone throne. Throne 1, comprising a table on legs with a back panel, was installed in a niche in the back wall of Structure J-6 in Court 1 of the Acropolis (Morley 1937-38, 3:253-54) (fig. I.10). All parts of the throne were carved with texts or images, and the back panel had a zoomorphic mountain head with two human faces emerging from the eyes.
Excavations have uncovered fragments of other thrones, including Throne 2, which was reused in Structure K-6a, one of the buildings of the West Group ballcourt, but its original location is not known. Houston, Escobedo, and Webster (2008) attribute Throne 2 to Itzam K’an Ahk I and suggest the breakage and burial of Throne 2 and another throne fragment may have resulted from palace renovations and not from violent desecration of his memory.
World History
