Water, Cacao, and the Early Maya of Chocolá (Maya Studies) 0813056748, 9780813056746

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Water, Cacao, and the Early Maya of Chocolá Maya Studies

University Press of Florida Florida A&M University, Tallahassee Florida Atlantic University, Boca Raton Florida Gulf Coast University, Ft. Myers Florida International University, Miami Florida State University, Tallahassee New College of Florida, Sarasota University of Central Florida, Orlando University of Florida, Gainesville University of North Florida, Jacksonville University of South Florida, Tampa University of West Florida, Pensacola

Water, Cacao, and the Early Maya of Chocolá

Jonathan Kaplan and Federico Paredes Umaña Foreword by Arlen F. Chase and Diane Z. Chase

University Press of Florida Gainesville · Tallahassee · Tampa · Boca Raton Pensacola · Orlando · Miami · Jacksonville · Ft. Myers · Sarasota

Copyright 2018 by Jonathan Kaplan and Federico Paredes Umaña All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper This book may be available in an electronic edition. 23 22 21 20 19 18

6 5 4 3 2 1

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Kaplan, Jonathan H., 1947– author. | Paredes Umaña, Federico, author. | Chase, Diane Z., author of foreword. | Chase, Arlen F. (Arlen Frank), 1953– author of foreword. Title: Water, cacao, and the early Maya of Chocolá / Jonathan Kaplan and Federico Paredes Umaña ; Foreword by Diane Z. Chase and Arlen F. Chase. Description: Gainesville : University Press of Florida, 2018. | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2017042170 | ISBN 9780813056746 (cloth : alk. paper) Subjects: LCSH: Mayas—Guatemala—Suchitepéquez—History. | Water-supply—Guatemala—Suchitepéquez—History. | Archaeology—Guatemala—Suchitepéquez. | Chocolate—Guatemala—Suchitepéquez—History. | Suchitepéquez (Guatemala)—History. | Suchitepéquez (Guatemala)—Antiquities. Classification: LCC F1469.S92 K37 2018 | DDC 972.81/65—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017042170 The University Press of Florida is the scholarly publishing agency for the State University System of Florida, comprising Florida A&M University, Florida Atlantic University, Florida Gulf Coast University, Florida International University, Florida State University, New College of Florida, University of Central Florida, University of Florida, University of North Florida, University of South Florida, and University of West Florida. University Press of Florida 15 Northwest 15th Street Gainesville, FL 32611-2079 http://upress.ufl.edu

This book is dedicated to the memory of Robert J. Sharer (1940–2012) and Juan Antonio Valdes (1954–2011).

Contents

List of Figures ix List of Tables xv Foreword xvii Preface and Acknowledgments xxi 1. Introduction and Historical Context 1 2. Physical Environment and Cultural Ecology 71 3. Ethnohistory and History of the Southern Maya Region, Suchitepéquez, and Chocolá 93 4. Archaeological Operations: Mounds, Plazas, and Features 126 5. The Ceramics of Chocolá 194 6. The Monuments of Chocolá and Nearby Sites 224 7. Materialist Factors: Water and Cacao at Chocolá 263 8. Conclusions 316 Appendix A. Chocolá Archaeobotanical Remains 331 Felipe Trabanino

Appendix B. Global Positioning System Survey: Chocolá Archaeological Site 353 William Clay Poe

Appendix C. Origin of Chocolá Obsidian from X-Ray Fluorescence 365 Julio Cesar Alvarado H., Guillermo Acosta Ochoa, Victor Garcia Gómez, Federico Paredes Umaña, and Jonathan Kaplan

Appendix D. Radiocarbon Dates for Chocolá Operation 4 (North Sector) 395 Federico Paredes Umaña and Jonathan Kaplan

Appendix E. Theobromine, Fatty Acids, and Carbohydrates in Ceramic Samples from Chocolá 405 Mauricio Obregón Cardona, Luis Barba Pingarrón, William J. Hurst, Eos López Pérez, Marielos Corado Mena, José Carlos Aldana, Lucía Cano, Jonathan Kaplan, and Federico Paredes Umaña

References 425 Index 473

Figures

1.1. The Guatemalan piedmont: View from atop Mound 1, Chocolá’s Central Sector, looking east 2 1.2. Coffee secadora (roaster) designed by Josep (José) Guardiola, widely used during postcolonial times, and still used today in Chocolá 3 1.3. The Southern Maya Region, showing Chocolá and other major archaeological sites, as well as major volcanoes and obsidian sources 4 1.4. PACH sign, 2003, posted at the entrance to the modern village 5 1.5. Extant fragment of Chocolá Monument 1, on display at the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology 6 1.6. Ancient cacao heartland in the Southern Maya Region 18 1.7. Cacao tree and Don Fidel Velasquez, dueño of coffee parcelas and of a small cacao grove, Chocolá, 2003 19 1.8. Ataco, El Salvador: Stela 1 and jaguar heads 62 2.1. Several rivers surround Chocolá 72 2.2. Guatemalan agricultural regions 75 2.3. Annual rainfall at Chocolá 76 2.4. The large and almost intact Mound 1 looming over the center of the modern town 79 2.5. The piedmont and Lake Atitlán as seen from Tajumulco 80 2.6. Rivers in southern Guatemala interlace with many pre-Hispanic settlements, large and small 83 2.7. Scorpion (possibly Centruroides gracilis), Pseudosphinx tetrio

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(Frangipani hornworm), pajarito (“puss moth,” Megalopyge opercularis), and large bat (possibly Molossus currentium) 88 3.1. Modern settlements around Chocolá 95 3.2. “The Conquest of Tzapotitlan” 96 3.3. Ceramic support in the shape of a cacao pod recovered by PACH 98 3.4. Rollout photo of eighth century AD Classic Maya “Vase of the Seven Gods” from Naranjo 111 3.5. Xaman in the entrance to “La Ventana” cave, Chocolá, 2003 112 3.6. Photo composite: stencil for coffee sacks (circa 1950), finca coins in use until 1942, Victorian architecture of the German-owned Chocolá plantation (1891–circa 1943) 114 3.7. Commemorative plaque celebrates the centenary of the giant German clock mounted in 1895 by the German owners of the Chocolá plantation on the Beneficio 115 4.1. Altered version of the first georeferenced map of Chocolá 127 4.2. Mound 2, also known as El Cerro Partido (“Divided Hill”) by the town residents: as excavated by Robert Burkitt in 1928 and in 2003 as a garbage dump 133 4.3. Mound 2 construction method employing taxcal guacales 140 4.4. White stone figurine pendant recovered from excavations of Mound 2, 2003 142 4.5. The water system, Mound 15 146 4.6. Operation 4 excavation grid and associated features, 2004 147 4.7. Oversized olla cached near the center of Structure 15-1 149 4.8. Ritually deposited cobblestones representing the five directions, found covering olla cache 150 4.9. Example of subterranean laja-covered conduit, Mound 15 water management system 152 4.10. Mound 15 road cut 153 4.11. Coincidental find in 2003 of damaged mound’s profile exposing similar water conduits, near Mazatenango, 11 km from Chocolá 154 4.12. Long view of exposed conduit, Mound 15 155 4.13. Operation 4-91: radiocarbon dates from carbon samples drawn

Figures · xi

from pits near the center of and below Structure 15-1, with sampling of sherds from the same level 157 4.14. Operation 4-72: radiocarbon dates from carbon samples drawn from center pit below Structure 15-1 with sampling of sherds from the same level 159 4.15. Part of the caja (redistribution box) and/or well, center, Structure 15-1, 2004 161 4.16. Feature 31, Structure 15-1: caja (stone chamber) north of the water conduit, associated with water system features below the structure’s center 162 4.17. Figurine from Feature 39, Mound 15 163 4.18. Features 40, 64, and 66, Mound 15 water system 164 4.19. Small Early Classic tripod vase found deposited at juncture in Mound 15 conduit system 165 4.20. Operation 14, Mound 5: topography of mound; profile detail, Structure 5-1 wall; Structure 5-1, plan view; and digital elevation model of Mound 5 167 4.21. Operation 14: Mound 5 excavation grid 168 4.22. Structure 5-1 north wall excavation in progress, 2004 172 4.23. Operation 16, Mound 7: topography of mound; eastern stairway; and reconstructive drawing of Structure 7-1, 6-1, and plaza 174 4.24. Operation 16: excavation grid 175 4.25. Mound 7 topography, superimposing eastern façade of Structure 7-1 masonry edifice, with sloping talud walls, and piered stairway 180 4.26. Photo and drawing of Feature 32, eastern façade of Structure 7-1: 4-m-long section of a water conduit 181 4.27. Excavating cache, northeast corner, Structure 7-1, 2005 182 4.28. Feature 39, excavations in the east plaza, 2005 183 4.29. Operation 16, floors recorded in the east plaza, Unit 67 184 4.30. Monument 27 photos and drawing 185 4.31. Mounds 6 and 7, two mounds in the lower North Sector: the relationship between Mounds 6 and 7; Operation 17’s focus on Structure 6-1, with its southern stairway and associated Monuments 29 and 30; and the mound’s topography 186

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4.32. Operation 17, Monument 30, “potbelly,” at the moment of its discovery 188 4.33. Operation 15 (rescue): plan view drawing, photos of whole vessels, and photo of whole vessels in situ 190 5.1. Ceramic chronology for selected sites in the Preclassic and Early Classic Maya Lowlands and Highlands 195 5.2. Proposed ceramic traditions in the Southern Maya Region (SMR) with archaeological sites, large and small, including Chocolá (no. 18) 197 5.3. Balsamo Brown Ware and Chocolá Brown Utilitarian Ware 202 5.4. Chocolá Black-Brown Slipped and Polished and Glossy Orange Ware 203 5.5. Orange Slipped Wares 206 5.6. Morfino Ware and Semetabaj Brown Ware 209 5.7. Chocolá figurines 213 5.8. Two sellos (stamping devices) from Chocolá 214 5.9. Whole vessels from Mound 15, Operation 4 215 5.10. Whole vessels from Operation 16 (Mound 7, Structure 7-1, and east plaza) 216 5.11. Verbena-Arenal correlated whole vessels from Operation 15 (rescue operation) 217 5.12. Surface treatment for Middle and Late Preclassic ceramics from Chocolá 218 5.13. Surface treatment for more Preclassic ceramics from Chocolá 220 5.14. Reconstructable vessel from Operation 17 (Mound 6 and Structure 6-1) 221 5.15. Common forms in Preclassic wares from Chocolá 222 6.1. Examples of Miraflores-style bas-relief sculpture, Chocolá 225 6.2. Round altars: Chocolá monuments 7 and 10 and the “Shook Altar” 227 6.3. Two full-round sculptures, Chocolá: two views of Monument 30 and two views of Monument 31 231 6.4. Two pedestal monuments and three potbelly sculptures 233

Figures · xiii

6.5. Examples of human bodies in full-round sculpture, Chocolá: Monument 11 and Monument 16 236 6.6. Schematic of mounds, Chocolá’s Central Sector, showing location of several monuments 239 6.7. Examples of “cupule” monuments, suggestive of a water cult at Chocolá: Monument 3, Monument 15, Monument 27, Monument 29, and two uncatalogued monuments 241 6.8. Two views of the “Lovers’ Altar” Suchitepéquez monument showing two twined human bodies 245 7.1. Shook ficha (identification ticket) accompanying sherds in the Shook archives, Universidad Del Valle, Guatemala City 302 A.1. Morphotypes of archaeobotanical remains from Chocolá: Pinus spp., Terminalia sp., Poaceae Bambusoideae, Manihot esculenta, Malvaceae, and Erythrina sp. 339 B.1. Chocolá control points 354 C.1. Location of Chocolá in the Southern Maya Region, with other important archaeological sites and major obsidian sources in the Preclassic Period 367 C.2. Scatter plot of the concentrations of strontium (Sr) and zirconium (Zr) in samples from Chocolá Operation 4, compared with the geological samples from Chayal (CHY), Ixtepeque (IXT), and San Martín Jilotepeque (SMJ) 370 C.3. Scatter plot of the concentrations of strontium (Sr) and zirconium (Zr) in samples from Chocolá Operation 14, compared with the geological samples from CHY, IXT, and SMJ 371 C.4. Scatter plot of the concentrations of strontium (Sr) and zirconium (Zr) in samples from Chocolá Operation 17, compared with the geological samples from CHY, IXT, and SMJ 372 C.5. Dendrogram result of the cluster analysis, and obsidian sources assigned to each cluster 373 D.1. Calibration of radiocarbon age to calendar years for sample 198188 397 D.2. Calibration of radiocarbon age to calendar years for sample 198189 398 D.3. Calibration of radiocarbon age to calendar years for sample 198190 399

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D.4. Calibration of radiocarbon age to calendar years for sample 198191 400 D.5. Calibration of radiocarbon age to calendar years for sample 198192 401 D.6. Calibration of radiocarbon age to calendar years for sample 198194 402 D.7. Calibration of radiocarbon age to calendar years for sample 198196 403 D.8. Chocolá calibrated ages according to the intcal 13 database 404 E.1. Drawing of sherds from North Sector (Operation 4), Central Sector (Operation 16 and 17), and South Sector (Operation 16), with positive readings for fatty acids and carbohydrates 412 E.2. Drawings and photos of ceramics from Chocolá with positive identification for methylxanthines, by sector 415 E.3. Chromatograms for positive HPLC identification of cacao on Chocolá samples 88 and 89, and negative samples 85 and 91 416

Tables

1.1. Forty-three sites in Suchitepéquez 65 2.1. Wet forest plants, Chocolá today 85 2.2. Some common fauna, Chocolá 87 3.1. Cacao quality circa 1560 106 4.1. Data from the first assessment of the ancient architecture 129 4.2. Types of mounds or structures found at Chocolá, 2003–2005 131 4.3. Sherd counts by arbitrary 20 cm levels 137 4.4. Excavation coding for Operations 4, 14, 15, 16, and 17 144 4.5. Description of strata, Operation 4 145 4.6. Excavation units for Structure 15 and adjacent structures 145 4.7. Features recorded for Operation 14, Mound 5, 2004 170 4.8. Features recorded for Operation 16 (Structure 7-1 and its eastern plaza) 176 5.1. Chocolá wares 199 5.2. Chocolá’s ceramic phases with corresponding wares 200 A.1. Archaeobotanical remains from Operation 4 340 A.2. Archaeobotanical remains from Operation 14 341 A.3. Archaeobotanical remains from Operation 16 342 A.4. Archaeobotanical remains from Operation 17 343 A.5. Ancient plant remains identified at Chocolá 344 B.1. Network accuracy, adjustment biased by CORS 359 B.2. ArchMapBZ Control Point Coordinate Values, Control Point WGS84 Coordinates 359

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B.3. Control Point UTM Coordinates, Latitude and Longitude, WGS84, UTM 360 B.4. Conversions from WGS84 to NAD27 361 B.5. Geodetic surveyors 361 B.6. NGS Data Sheet for Guatemala City CORS 362 C.1. X-ray fluorescence applied to obsidian samples from Chocolá 374 D.1. Chocolá calibrated ages according to the intcal13 database 396 E.1. Quantity and percentages of vessel forms identified from sherds selected for SQT pretesting 407 E.2. Ceramic fragments from Operation 4 with positive readings of fatty acids and/or carbohydrates according to operation 408 E.3. Ceramic fragments from Operation 14 with positive readings of fatty acids and/or carbohydrates according to operation 409 E.4. Ceramic fragments from Operation 16 with positive readings of fatty acids and/or carbohydrates according to operation 409 E.5. Ceramic fragments from Operation 17 with positive readings of fatty acids and/or carbohydrates according to operation 409 E.6. Ethnographic container control values 411 E.7. Ten vessels with positive results for HPLC and their correlation to fatty acids and/or carbohydrates 411

Foreword

The research by Jonathan Kaplan and Federico Paredes Umaña does much to bridge the gap in our knowledge of one of the more important sites of the Guatemalan Highlands. Chocolá was one of only a few truly major centers in this portion of Mesoamerica, along with Kaminaljuyu, Takalik Abaj, Izapa, and El Ujuxte. For too long, we have not recognized the role that the Southern Maya Region—and Chocolá—played in laying a framework for the later rise of Maya civilization in the interior lowlands. Much to the detriment of a better understanding of broader social patterns, Maya archaeology has frequently tended to be parochial. Scholars who work in the Southern Maya Lowlands often overlook the archaeology of the Northern Maya Lowlands and the Southern Maya Region (Highlands and Pacific Coastal Plain) for comparisons. And those who work in the Guatemalan Petén have seldom waded into the study of ancient Maya sites and archaeological data from Belize and Mexico. Similarly, archaeologists working in Belize only infrequently consult the archaeological data from Mexico or Guatemala. And, with English as the current lingua franca of Maya archaeology, writings in Spanish are also often omitted from publications. Happily, this tendency toward narrow scholarship is beginning to ebb in the field of Maya Studies. Kaplan and Paredes Umaña frame their understanding of Chocolá in terms of the site’s early water management strategies, the patterning of its carved monuments, and its participation in the long-distance trade of cacao. The anthropomorphic landscapes created by extensive water management strategies in the Southern Maya Region during the Preclassic Period—at sites like Chocolá, Kaminaljuyu, and Takalik Abaj—have only recently been recognized, and Paredes Umaña and Kaplan effectively explore the significance of the early water management systems in this part of the Maya World. They view the control of water and the extensive landscape

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modifications (and constructions) made by the inhabitants of Chocolá through the lens of the early iconography found on the site’s carved stone monuments and within the framework of the agricultural production of a cacao surplus to argue that the institution of Maya kingship was partly an innovation of the peoples in the Southern Maya Region. While the Southern Maya Region has been long known in Maya Studies, the fact that many of its sites are located both in areas of modern population and under valuable commercial crops has made a full understanding of the archaeology of this area difficult. Kaplan and Paredes Umaña also explore the difficulties that they encountered in working at Chocolá through contextualizing the region in terms of its modern political history to point out current tensions and problems that need to be overcome by archaeological researchers; even though practicing a form of community archaeology, their research team was still forced to terminate their project early because of modern political pressures. To them, the tensions of the present are embedded in a colonialist past. Chocolá was the location of some of the earliest excavations in the Maya area. These were carried out by Robert Burkitt, an independent researcher hired by the institution that eventually became The University Museum of the University of Pennsylvania in 1912 in order to acquire objects for display in Philadelphia. Burkitt was welcomed by the Guatemalan landowners in the Pacific piedmont and was given ready access to the large coffee plantations that dominated the landscape of the Southern Maya Region in the early twentieth century. Even he, however, had difficulty working in this region; because of the changes wrought by World War I, many Germanowned plantations were appropriated by the Guatemalan government; and natural calamities also led to the forced incorporation of local inhabitants, who served as Burkitt’s laborers, into militia units. It was not until 1920 that he was able to ship 30 crates of artifacts to his employer (see Danien 1985). One item included in this shipment was the famous Chocolá Monument 1, now displayed on a wall in The University Museum. We walked by this carved stone masterpiece on our way to university classes in the 1970s, never realizing that Burkitt had purposefully broken it for shipping and that the adjoining pieces had been lost or were not sent. We also were familiar with Burkitt’s excavations at Chocolá; the pictures of his investigations at the site published in his 1930 article showcase the differences between current and early twentieth-century excavation strategies. This volume finally permits the earlier digging and the items excavated by Burkitt and others to be contextually situated for a better understanding of the site,

Foreword · xix

firmly placing Chocolá as one of the more important centers yet known in the Southern Maya Region. The entire Maya area was clearly interlinked throughout prehistory. We know this from the archaeology undertaken in the subregions of the Maya area that has revealed the existence of long-distance trade and communication almost from the inception of Maya civilization. Within the last quarter century, archaeological data have also documented that there were precocious social developments throughout the Maya area during the Middle and Late Preclassic Periods, particularly in both the Southern Maya Region and the northern part of Guatemala’s Petén where researchers now argue that complex, state-level societies arose. This book by Kaplan and Paredes Umaña provides a better knowledge of how and why this came to pass. Arlen F. Chase and Diane Z. Chase Series Editors

Preface and Acknowledgments

The archaeological site of Chocolá is located centrally in the Southern Maya Region, a part of Mesoamerica still quite underinvestigated despite evidence that events and processes took place in this part of Mesoamerica that were possibly key to the rise of Maya civilization. To investigate this and other questions, in 2003 Kaplan created the Proyecto Arqueológico Chocolá (PACH). Before PACH, no one in academia knew if the site still existed in any condition to be investigated. While future research could prove that Chocolá was a relatively unimportant player in the larger context of Maya civilization, our evidence suggests otherwise. If modern developments do not destroy the site, unquestionably a great deal is still to be found. As this book goes to press, a new road is being planned in the modern town and new houses are being built, damaging or destroying ancient structures, some of which were actually studied as part of our excavation program during the 2003–2005 field seasons. Given the threats to the ruins and their archaeological context, the record of our work may be all that remains for posterity and world cultural patrimony.1 In addition to providing experts with archaeological data from the project’s first three full field seasons, in this book we offer information to the general reader who wants to know more about a hitherto little-known ancient Maya city which had, to Southern Maya archaeologists, a rather legendary status. Including La Blanca, Monte Alto, Ujuxte, and others, Chocolá was one of several sites that veteran researcher Edwin M. Shook, in conversations with Kaplan, emphasized promised rich information from the Southern Maya Region. Of all of these, Chocolá was the only one with superbly carved Miraflores sculpture; it also had at least 100 mounds. As well as professional colleagues who should be interested in our data for synthetic and comparative reasons, amateur Mayanists may be curious

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to know better how at least some of us undertake archaeology at an ancient city located immediately beneath a rural Maya village and about the special challenges attendant on this juxtaposition of the present with the past—the living with the dead. In an appendix intended at one time to be added to the book, Kaplan recounts some of his experiences directing the project. If not quite a blow-by-blow account, it is one that perhaps exemplifies how at least some archaeological projects are undertaken within the context of what is called the Developing World, and in the southern part of the Republic of Guatemala today, a context of scientific research adding its own special challenges to the task of understanding the past. If it can be taken to represent a model of the difficult archaeology of the Southern Maya Region, this mainly anecdotal narrative also provides material for deeper analysis by documenting the encounter between indigenous peasants and representatives of Western scholarship. Kaplan is seeking publication elsewhere for this account. The difficulties that arose for us may be of special interest to a third group of readers, social historians of Latin America. Radical critiques assert that New World archaeology in many ways may be said to further the Conquest and, in the case of the Maya, to continue to reify the Maya as a dead culture, providing mostly First World scholars, teachers, universities and museums with more objects for display and study and for academic careers and coffee table books. Kaplan’s twenty years of experiences living and working in Guatemala led to troubling self-examination as a response to this critique. Paredes Umaña’s experiences are more in keeping with what he knew already, from boyhood. For him, however, the questions of archaeological study in Central America have been both more immediately conflicted and at least as personally transformative because he stands in two worlds, as student in the American Ivory Tower and, previously, coming of age in civil war–torn El Salvador; he obtained his licenciatura in archaeology at San Carlos University in Guatemala City, a modern Third World city and capital of a country of a United Nations–labeled genocide.2 Unfortunately, just as the fourth year of the convenio began, our research was halted by threats from Christian evangelical pastors and wealthier families in the town wishing to build bigger churches and homes, destroying mounds containing ancient edifices. They saw the archaeological project, with its mandate from the Cultural Ministry to protect the mounds, and the Guatemalan cultural patrimony protection laws themselves, as impediments to their ambitions. The previous year, before the official beginning

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of the field season, PACH offices were taken over for several months by a former Guatemalan Army commandante (not from Chocolá) and his associates. The purpose, as this person admitted to Kaplan, was to present an official-looking backdrop for his attempt to swindle former members of the Patrullas de Autodefensa Civil (PACs) by offering illegal “processing” of claims for payment for their paramilitary service; many of these latter men had been forcefully drafted into the PACs supposedly to fight the tiny guerrilla groups during the Guatemalan Civil War, and which were described by the Guatemalan government, as well as the U.S. government, as “Communist” (see Falla 1992, Grandin 2000, Stoll 1993, Reed and Brandow 1996). As a result of this takeover and occupation of PACH field offices, some of our equipment was damaged, and a cloud of uncertainty arose over the continuance of the archaeological research. By mentioning these facts, some of our readers may criticize what they see as “politics” wrongly inserted in a scholarly monograph; simply from the perspective of social science, and without commenting on what ethics, in our view, require, such criticism would reveal positivist assumptions many American archaeologists shed years ago. While many Mayanists and Mesoamericanists today are familiar with some of the underlying philosophical issues that were discussed during processualist archaeology’s heyday and in the postprocessual trends that followed, these discussions rarely have been pursued to the radix. The fundamental reason these matters are referred to here is that, in many if not most ways, events of the last 500 years in Guatemala lay behind the obstruction of PACH’s research: conquest, postconquest slavery and massacre, colonial and postcolonial exploitation and repression, a CIAinspired coup d’état in 1954 (Immerman 1983) fundamentally to protect the interests of an American corporation, the United Fruit Company (Bruyn 1971), which led to decades of death squad activity, and, in the late 1970s and early 1980s, the genocide of Guatemala’s rural Maya and many Guatemalan labor organizers, educators, academics, and human rights workers. Several other projects in the Southern Maya Region in addition to ours have experienced similar difficulties; projects near the Lago de Atitlán and at Ocós (Santa Clara) are but two of these. Also, the Guatemalan regional inspector assigned to our project recounted dozens of threats—often at the point of a gun—that he has received in the course of his work; many of these were from large landowners who did not want the protection of the ancient Maya past to impede their commercial enterprises. Because there

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are social and historical reasons for these difficulties, ours and theirs, we believe that it is not only appropriate but useful to seek to place PACH’s work in this larger perspective. Specifically because of the modern situation in Guatemala and at Chocolá, before beginning our project we espoused a “community archaeological” paradigm and program (see Bawaya 2005). In advocating community archaeology and in addition to mounting sustainable development subprojects for the villagers, we explained many times, in town assemblies as well as to our workers and to town schoolchildren, what archaeology is and does and what our purposes in Chocolá were. We also sought input regularly on how our work could be used to help construct the larger project of the townspeople themselves, to learn more about their past and who they are as people with a particular history as Maya speakers. In the end, perhaps it should be unnecessary to point out that for any small benefits we think our research has provided to the people of Chocolá and to our scholarly colleagues, the compromises Western social scientists may make to their research by setting community needs on at least an equal basis as the research are greatly overshadowed by the realities of the larger contingencies of the Third World/“Developing World” of a Central American nation, a nation continually impacted by the great and seemingly ineradicable residues of conquest, followed by colonial, postcolonial, and now global system economics and genocide. Despite our best intentions, the benefits we brought—cash wages added to the small-plot farmers’ once-a-year coffee harvest income, sustainable development initiatives, and information about the Maya and their history previously unavailable to the townspeople—were minor and fleeting in the contexts of the profound difficulties the townspeople face every day to survive in the great shadow of time and history. For readers interested in connections between the global world system and the contemporary Maya, see Fischer (2001); for a recent discussion of how Maya indigenous in Guatemala and Chiapas, Mexico, continue to be impacted, but are responding, see Pitarch at al. (2008). For a larger perspective on the collision between the Old and New Worlds, Eric R. Wolf ’s Europe and the People without History (Wolf 1997) remains essential. We all, scholars and lay persons alike, must be aware of grave threats to the survival of the diversity of human cultures if not only because of anthropogenic climate change, of life itself on the planet. To us, this means understanding connections for the sake of saving culture/s and environments, even those matters not usually included in archaeological monographs—in

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our case, the wider social and political contexts in which Maya archaeology is done. Acknowledgments

In offering this monograph—if the size of our bibliography does not indicate this by itself—we are the first to acknowledge how much we have relied on the extraordinary work of many other archaeologists, ethnographers, ethnohistorians, and art historians of the Maya and Mesoamerica, past and present. In addition to our American, European, Japanese, Australian, Russian, and South American colleagues, Mexicans and Guatemalans feature prominently. First, we must thank the current and former administrators at the Instituto de Antropología e Historia de Guatemala for their support and, specifically, for the initial five year convenio or permit given to Kaplan, entrusting to him as he has directed PACH the discovery, study, and protection of the cultural treasures of the site of Chocolá. We are grateful also to many collaborating scholars from Australia, El Salvador, France, Germany, Spain, Uruguay, and the United Kingdom who assisted us, freely and generously. We thank, as well, the 149 Earthwatch volunteers who, in exchange for helping out with so much of the sine qua non of field archaeology, the tedious tasks of screening, carrying, washing, marking, and all-purpose lugging, learned firsthand about Chocolá and about the Maya. We are particularly grateful to Takeshi Inomata, Payson Sheets, and a third anonymous reviewer for very helpful criticisms that made the monograph much better, in every respect. In addition, Inomata was assiduous in answering many questions both before and after the formal publisher’s review process. For their great assistance in many ways, including a highly successful visit to Chocolá in 2005 by the German Ambassador, Dr. Claude Ellner, we thank Dr. Ellner and Sebastian Werther, then–Third Secretary in the German Embassy. Academic support in the form of staff and students was provided primarily by the University of San Carlos. Generous grants from the National Geographic Society, the New World Archaeological Foundation, the Earthwatch Institute, the Foundation for the Advancement of Mesoamerican Studies, the Brennan Foundation, Mae K. Millstone, and several other smaller granting institutions, patrons, and benefactors supported our efforts. To Joseph Ball, we extend a particularly warm thankyou for advising us on pottery; Laura Kosakowsky was very generous also with her advice about Chocolá’s ceramics. To Oswaldo Chinchilla Mazariegos, the same for guidance about Cotzumalguapa. To William Clay Poe,

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we are indebted for his generous help setting permanent benchmarks at the initiation of the field work. We are grateful also to Bruce Bachand, James Brady, Donaldo Castillo, Michael Coe, Kirk French, Mauricio Díaz García, John Graham, David Grove, Simon Martin, Steven Post (who helped Kaplan develop an initial mapping strategy), Robert Rosenswig, Christa Schieber de Lavarreda, Miguel Orrego Corzo, and David Webster, who read parts of this monograph, offered suggestions on how to improve it, provided unpublished information, and/or answered many questions. Fred Bove, John Clark, Michael Love, Donaldo Castillo, and Marion Popenoe de Hatch visited the site during the years of fieldwork and offered helpful advice from their own knowledge and long experience. As much as we gratefully acknowledge assistance from these colleagues we are, of course, solely responsible for all errors and omissions. To all of the Earthwatch volunteers, and particularly, to Gordon Baty, Carl Schweser, Leland Chambers, Pat Coen, Ladnor Geissinger, Harold Green, John Hill and Brenda Barham Hill, Eric Kingsbury, Susan Mach, Dr. Tom Reilley, Karen Upton, and others from the organization formed directly from Kaplan’s pleas, the Amigos de Chocolá, we also extend our warmest thanks. Perhaps most of all, we thank our workers from Chocolá, all of whom deserve to be named here, though space limits prevent this. For them, we mention, foremost, Egidio Cifuentes, Mario Tambríz, Rogelio Tuy, and our unforgettable cocinera, Doña Maria Noriega de Zapeta. Kaplan wishes to thank Tim Maxwell, Eric Blinman, Steve Post, and the Office of Archaeological Studies (OAS), the Museum of New Mexico, for training him as a field archaeologist. The OAS, in his opinion, is one of the finest archaeological field schools in existence. For their excavation notes, material analysis, and assistance in the laboratory, we also thank Lic. Oscar Gutiérrez, Lic. Rene Ugarte, Dr. Cristina Vidal Lorenzo, Pablo Herrera Sanchez, Carlos Chiriboga, field team leaders Diana Belches, Margarita Cossich, Sonia Cañada Cañada, Damien Bazy, Audrey Al-Ali, Victor Castillo, Oscar Molina, Victor Diaz Can, and Antonio Portillo Caspolán. We also thank Berenice García, Galia Gonzalez, and Alfredo Soriano from Mexico, Gabriela Molina and “Muwan Chocolate” from El Salvador, and Marielos Corado, Mónica González, and Leonel González from Guatemala. Finally, the ethnographic sample used as a laboratory control for cacao residues was provided by María Teresa López, owner of “La Taberna” restaurant at San Juán del Obispo, Sacatepéquez. Because of space limitations, we have not included a very thorough report on Chocolá’s caves, by Jenny Guerra and Dr. Reiko Ishihara, nor an

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excellent chapter by Edgar Gutiérrez Mendoza which also appeared in our reports to the Guatemalan Cultural Ministry, on the industrial archaeology of Chocolá—these reports available now on the University Press of Florida website. Last, but by no means least, Meredith Babb, our editor, and her team have been extraordinarily understanding and helpful as we worked to bring the book up to the high standards of the University Press of Florida. We also thank Prof. Arlen Chase for channeling the book to the press. Notes 1. As soon as it was possible, the informe for 2004 was put on the FAMSI website (www. famsi.org). Similarly, as soon as it was possible to do so, in 2006 Kaplan put online, available for anyone interested, the informe delivered to IDAEH for the 2005 field season (www. Chocoláproject.org). The informe for 2003, which Kaplan considers incomplete, was not posted but is now available on the UPF website, at http://ufdc.ufl.edu/AA00061833/00001/ all volumes). These informes contain all of the details of the field results. 2. The UN-led investigation of the conflict in Guatemala, referred to as the “truth commission,” was made public in 1999 (Sieder 2008: 74–75).

1 Introduction and Historical Context The mountains ar close above you, and the sea apears az a white streak on the horizon. But the mountains ar often in the clouds, and both the sea, and the wide intervening hot-country below you, ar usually very much lost in the haze. (Burkitt 1930: 5)

Thus a somewhat peculiar Irishman and amateur archaeologist and linguist, insistent on his own idiosyncratic spelling, trained in mining at Harvard and the first to excavate its ruins, described the vista from Chocolá when he was drawn to live there for much of the 1920s. In contrast with the monotony of the steamy, sugar cane–planted coastal plains to the south, the natural beauty of what in Spanish is called the paisaje in the southern piedmont is striking. Situated 600–950 m above mean sea level (MAMSL) at the northern limits of the Guatemalan Pacific piedmont, or Bocacosta, the modern village and archaeological site perch immediately below a high shelf of stratovolcanoes to the east and north. Visible except during the torrential wet season afternoon rain, faint tapers of their smoke frequently are seen piling into the sky. Tolimán and San Pedro are small on the horizon, Atitlán, much nearer and larger. Even closer—a mere 30 km east over the steeply higher forested slopes leading to the volcanoes—is the extraordinarily beautiful Lago de Atitlán. Adding to the sense both of richness and centrality, immediately adjacent to the modern town is a remnant pocket of subtropical wet forest, flush with botanical and animal diversity. At the local level, modern political divisions and categories in Guatemala demographically proceed, smallest to largest, from, to use the informal terms, caserío (“hamlet”) to aldea (“village”) to pueblo (“town”). Lying 4 km from the cabecera, or municipio (township center), San Pablo Jocopilas, the modern aldea of Chocolá dates to the nineteenth century. At that time, workers were drawn largely from Totonicapán to the north to labor on the great finca; the finca was first owned by José (Josep) Guardiola I Grau, a Spaniard educated in England and an agricultural inventor/

2 · Water, Cacao, and the Early Maya of Chocolá

Figure 1.1. The Guatemalan piedmont: View from atop Mound 1, Chocolá’s Central Sector, looking east. (PACH)

entrepreneur, and, from 1891, by a German consortium. Many remnants of industrial agricultural processing lie within and around the modern town, including—in their Spanish names—despulpadoras, secadoras, clasificadoras, lavadoras, centrifugas, and alambiques, some still used today; one of the sustainable development projects we contemplated was to renovate, for tourism purposes, what to us constituted a living museum of late postcolonial agricultural enterprise (compare Mendoza 2004). In certain ways, the modern village is typical of a medium-sized indigenous community in the rural remotes of southern Guatemala. Approximately 10,000 speakers of Maya languages live there today, principally K’iche’ with some Kaqchikel and a few Tz’utujil and Mam. Most if not all also speak Spanish, if ungrammatically, which is consistent with the network of indigenous populations that migrated from the highlands to serve as a labor force in the southern Guatemalan plantation system. We do not know with any certainty what language the ancient Chocolenses spoke; at least some artifacts suggest that, at some point in its long past, they spoke a Maya language. The mounds of the ancient city lying beneath and around the village once totaled 100 or more, some likely more than 20 m high.1 In 2003, Proyecto Arqueológico Chocolá (PACH) counted 59 of these still undamaged or fairly intact. Ceramics and some edifices date to the equivalent of the Pacific coast Conchas ceramic phase or 850–650 BC; the city continued to grow without interruption through to the Early Classic, or circa AD 200, and a Late Classic (AD 600–900) occupation is

Introduction and Historical Context · 3

Figure 1.2. Coffee secadora (roaster) designed by Josep (José) Guardiola, widely used during postcolonial times and still used today in Chocolá. (PACH)

evident as well. For the inhabitants of the town today, the mounds’ origins are supernatural, according to informants. In this chapter, the intent is to explain our selection of the ancient site beneath the modern village of Chocolá for research and our own motivations for focusing our work on the Southern Maya Region (Love and Kaplan 2011). Chocolá is found centrally in this region that has long been believed seminal both for the overall trajectory of and key hallmark achievements adopted by the Classic Lowlands Maya. Compounding this long-held view, the Southern Maya Region is described as “multiethnic, and constituted by politically competitive communities whose interaction stimulated the growth of sociopolitical institutions and led to the expansion of some polities at the expense of others” (Sharer, Canuto, and Bell 2011: 317). Thus our own questions about the significance of Chocolá as a major player in this process are crosscut by inquiries about what or how the southern area in the Preclassic contributed to the larger picture of Maya history. Summary of PACH’s Findings and Background to Our Research

Previous to PACH, archaeology at Chocolá was limited to Burkitt’s intermittent excavations and artifact acquisitions in the 1920s, and a brief visit

Figure 1.3. The Southern Maya Region, showing Chocolá and other major archaeological sites as well as major volcanoes and obsidian sources. By modern roads, Chocolá lies 158 km from, and 96 km almost due west (270.28°) of, Guatemala City. The mountains to the north and east loom close over the volcanically enriched soils of the community’s fields and plots. (PACH)

Introduction and Historical Context · 5

Figure 1.4. PACH sign, 2003, posted at the entrance to the modern village. (PACH)

by Shook and John Graham in 1978 during Graham’s first season directing the Takalik Abaj project for the University of California, Berkeley. Burkitt’s efforts included putting an enormous trench in Mound 2 (see Chapter 4) and acquiring monuments for the University of Pennsylvania Museum— including a fragment of Monument 1 (Figure 1.5), still on display in the museum; unfortunately, we do not know the circumstances by which he shipped what he did of the monument back to the museum. It is speculation that he, himself, broke the monument into pieces, in order to send only what he considered the most important part or parts, and thus to save on shipping cost and to avoid the attention that a large shipping container might arouse. It is not to be doubted that he knew his mission to gather ancient artifacts, particularly monuments, for the museum collection was not authorized by the government of Guatemala and that some subterfuge entailed. In any event, the other pieces now cannot be located. Shook and Graham placed a test trench into Mound 2, but wrote no report of this. In our correspondence and meetings with Graham, he explained the “work was done under authorization to Shook, funded by me, excavation [undertaken] by Shook and Edgar Torres (Abaj Takalik ceramicist)”; the purpose was “to obtain a ceramic collection for comparative purposes” (Graham 2003). Unfortunately, Graham has not been able to locate his notes for

6 · Water, Cacao, and the Early Maya of Chocolá

Figure 1.5. Extant fragment of Chocolá Monument 1, on display at the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology. (University of Pennsylvania Museum Archives)

the test trench. In addition to these efforts, Christopher Jones published a drawing and analysis of Chocolá Monument 1 (Jones 1986). In capsule form, PACH has confirmed the existence of what previously had been a site that was as significant as it was so little known—that was known of, but almost completely unexplored. Because of our research, we believe Chocolá can now be placed securely in the small group of primary regional centers in the Preclassic South thus far studied long-term, including Chalchuapa, Chiapa de Corzo, Cotzumalguapa, Izapa, Takalik Abaj, and the probably extraregional giant, Kaminaljuyu. Underscoring its ancient importance, Chocolá is one of only nine cities in the Preclassic Southern Maya Region known to have displayed ruler portraits (Paredes Umaña 2012: 49). During PACH’s fieldwork, after thorough reconnaissance was conducted and survey maps prepared, administrative edifices, elite residences, smaller

Introduction and Historical Context · 7

temples, shrines, and special deposits were excavated; the excavations are detailed in Chapter 4. Adding to the already notable monuments from the Southern Maya Region, as part of a probably much larger ancient corpus, we have identified and catalogued 31 carved monuments from Chocolá, and several more from the immediate surrounding area. Chocolá’s corpus includes plain and carved stelae, “potbellies” (Monte Alto–style monuments), zoomorphic and anthropomorphic figures carved in the round, seated Olmecoid effigies, and other forms well known elsewhere in the Southern Maya Region (Chapter 6). In the process of the fieldwork, many thousands of artifacts have been recovered, marked, recorded, bagged, and stored in warehouses of the Guatemalan Ministry of Culture’s Instituto de Antropología e Historia (IDAEH) in Guatemala City for later analysis. In addition to gaining a sense of the size of Chocolá’s core, equal to that of many major Classic Maya cities, PACH has begun to document its long occupation, evidenced by ceramics dating conceivably from as early as the Early Preclassic until the Postclassic. We have begun to record some of the city’s large-scale infrastructural achievements, including a comparatively extensive and sophisticatedly engineered system of water management conduits that dates, we believe, to the Late Middle Preclassic, or, conceivably, circa 500 BC. Our work thus far has also mapped a north-centralsouth altitudinally tiered spatial distribution of elite palaces, shrines, and administrative structures that, in this respect as in others, resembles Takalik Abaj, Chocolá’s near neighbor, and a commoner support and agricultural area. In addition, based on our data we have proposed what we believe to be a plausible economic model for Chocolá’s rise and endurance as a major Southern Maya Region polity, an economy underlain by intensive cultivation and trade of cacao. We suggest our work can form the basis of theoretically informed hypotheses to better understand the Preclassic South as a whole, which by comparison with the Maya Lowlands is still little-known but long-considered highly important for “complex” development and for manifesting certain high traits, arguably aboriginal, in Maya and Mesoamerican civilization. An aside. Because ancient Chocolá’s developments took place early enough in the Mesoamerican trajectory, the normative descriptor, “complex,” seems to apply. This is not only because of the Preclassic “hydraulic” system we discovered, with its unreconstructed Wittfogelian implications, but certainly partly because of the ancient community’s water management system.

8 · Water, Cacao, and the Early Maya of Chocolá

Not only archaeologists but other social scientists often use “complex” and “complexity” to describe, employing a more baldly value-laden term, “advanced,” social, economic, political, and cultural characteristics and developments. Since its beginnings in postcolonial modernity, cultural evolutionary theory remains, to some degree, enfolded within the customary thinking of many Mesoamerican archaeologists. The normative presumptions derived from Marxist V. Gordon Childe’s lists of idealized characteristics of the “Neolithic” and “Urban Revolutions,” come to rest, for many of us in informal discourse, with Elman Service and Morton Fried’s models of simple or egalitarian societies evolving to complex, or ranked, stratified, and state societies, often modified by Julian Steward’s ecologically based evolution. Despite the problematic of the underlying presumptions, drawn as they have been from positivist and historically constructed thinking, we do not disparage the energetic efforts of neoevolutionists to continue to debate ideal “types” of stages of social development.2 Science needs theories in order to gather data to test the theories. Ultimately, the effort to refine the developmental stage labels might describe an asymptotic curve, never reaching the zero point where quantity transforms to quality in the drive to match reconstruction with some ancient reality. Typologies are obfuscated additionally by the blunt tool of subjective-historical linguistic constructs. We lack the space here to venture further into the debates, except to indicate to our readers that we are aware of how perhaps more usefully we can systematize the movement from “simple” to “complex” societies and cultures. We ask our readers to accept our intent in using “complex” and “complexity” to mean little else than social, political, and cultural change, or changes, within a temporally uninterrupted development, in which both scale and degree, quantitative and qualitative, of variables change for the greater. We ask our readers to permit us the normative usage—with the understanding that “complex” is descriptive, not analytic—in the hope that our data might help bring about a better sense of what the word “complex” usefully might mean. Dictated by specific discoveries, our evidence in these first three seasons has emphasized materialist factors underlying Chocolá’s complex developments. Accordingly, PACH has differed somewhat from other recent and contemporary Maya research that emphasizes elite ideology, finding its place, therefore, among studies of long-distance trade and political economy and other so-called etic structural or formalist characteristics of

Introduction and Historical Context · 9

ancient Maya civilization employed to try to explain “emergent advanced social complexity” (Kaplan and Valdés 2004, Kaplan 2004, 2005a, b, c). Despite this materialist emphasis, our results also strengthen the basis for older arguments (for example, Sharer and Sedat 1987: 453) suggesting the Southern Maya Region did play a special role in the invention of hallmark parts of an ideological system that strongly influenced Lowland Maya civilization in the much-studied Classic period; while evidence in the south of the Maya Long Count calendar in texts remains the earliest thus far known in the Maya world, archaeoastronomical studies (H. Green 2014) suggest that elements of the Maya calendar may have originated at Chocolá. In addition to ideology, Chocolá’s Preclassic water system, and what we propose to have been a long-distance cacao trade from the ancient city, suggest highly ingenious manipulation of material resources, and concomitant labor organization, that were significant by comparison with the lowlands. Despite an emphasis on material factors, water management, and cacao, ideas about social organization and other ideology tied to the development of institutions and innovations directed and maintained by elites have guided our interpretation of the data. For the latter, it seems even more apparent that a key part of a ruler cult template—the “stela-altar complex” that, for so long in Maya research, has been associated with Classic Maya rulership and is linked to “king”-like rulership (either through lineage or “houses” [Gillespie, cited in Kaplan 2011a: 397])—was in place by the Late Middle Preclassic at Chocolá and Takalik Abaj.3 Manifestations of other Southern Maya Region–specific high developments include an early logosyllabic script—not found yet at Chocolá—and, as mentioned, a highly sophisticated, extremely accurate calendar, indicated possibly at Chocolá by a string of alignments from public architecture to features on the eastern horizon at sunrise (H. Green 2014). Chocolá lies very near two important Southern Maya Region sites with Preclassic Maya writing, El Baúl and Takalik Abaj; a third Southern Maya Region site with Preclassic writing is El Portón; these latter three sites also displayed Preclassic stelaaltar pairings with the hieroglyphic texts on the stelae of these pairs. Moreover, Chocolá is equidistant from two other important Preclassic Southern Maya Region cities and polities, Izapa to the west, and Kaminaljuyu to the east; by consensus Kaminaljuyu is considered the greatest Preclassic political and economic entity in the southern area, the latter with many (at least nine and, originally, probably many more) Preclassic monuments carved

10 · Water, Cacao, and the Early Maya of Chocolá

with early hieroglyphic texts (Kaplan 2011a: 249; compare Kaplan 1999: 64, 2002a: 312, 322–323). Three longstanding identifying markers of ancient Maya civilization are (1) hieroglyphic writing, (2) the Long Count calendar, and (3) sacred rulership manifested as the stela-altar cult (Martin and Grube 2000: 8). One of the arguments in favor of a socioculturally complex Preclassic Southern Maya Region temporally prior to, or at least coeval in, these respects to the Preclassic Lowlands, is based on the fact that the largest number of early hieroglyphic texts are found in the south, for example, comparatively numerous and sometimes lengthy texts on monuments from Kaminaljuyu. Some of the earliest Long Count calendrical texts are found in the south at, for example, Takalik Abaj and El Baúl, although the earliest—by about 60 years—discovered thus far are from Chiapa de Corzo and Tres Zapotes, sites with an Olmec (or “epi-Olmec”) affiliation or identity. The development of the Maya calendar has been attributed to the south, in part, because Maya sacred calendar cycles are only directly observable using markers along the eastern sunrise horizons in a thin latitudinal band stretching across southern Guatemala, and including sites such as Chocolá, Takalik Abaj, and Izapa (Malmstrom 1973, 1978: 107), although several other possibilities also exist (J. Henderson 1974, Rice 2007: 47). The first clear cult of Maya sacred rulership, the stela-altar complex, with particular traits comparatively found through time and space elsewhere in the world, appeared throughout the south, associated at first with uncarved stelae paired with altars and later with masterfully carved monumental art, manifesting at Kaminaljuyu, Takalik Abaj, and Chocolá. Finally, an intricate religious ideology, probably based on a primordial body of mythology of which the Popol Vuh is a fragment, seems evident at least as early in the Southern Maya Region as the lowlands (Kaplan 1995, 1999, 2000, citing M. Coe in many publications). Beginning with V. Gordon Childe, “state” development has often been applied to societies that possessed writing. Along with writing, adjectives such as “high” and “advanced” have been applied to the Maya; prominently mentioned among the high traits of the ancient Maya are the Long Count calendar and a sacred rulership whose ideology is expressed in an elaborate and highly accomplished art style. We caution against such a somewhat broad-brush characterization not only because other, what most would consider complex, cultural traits and sociopolitical innovations have been associated with groups or peoples that lacked one or more of these developments.

Introduction and Historical Context · 11

Often mentioned along with hieroglyphic texts and the stela-altar complex, impressive traits found in the Southern Maya Region Preclassic also include 20 m and possibly higher pyramidal administration structures, well-elaborated carved monumental art styles, and “urbanism” and longdistance trade; the latter two, along with writing, have long been associated with the ancient “state.”4 These hallmark traits usually have been cited for justifying the label Southern Maya Region, where, as we suggest, at least some appeared earlier than in the lowlands. While we use this term here, we refer to the cautions of some of the contributors to the Love and Kaplan (2011) edited volume, for example, Josserand, that “Maya Region” skews the characterization unduly to a Maya homogeneity. Some art styles and narrative content on sculpture quite similar to Lowland Maya styles appear at Preclassic Kaminaljuyu, Takalik Abaj, and other Southern Maya Region sites (compare Kaplan 2011b). The two art styles delineated at Takalik Abaj, “Maya” and “Olmec” (Popenoe de Hatch et al. 2011), justify the term “Early Maya” in the Southern Maya Region as appropriate in both a more or less neutral historical but also a cultural historical sense; this is to say, in the Southern Maya Region, there were clear manifestations of a style, and an ideology, linkable to the later Classic Maya. Such ideological innovations contributed to the responses to challenges the Lowland Classic Maya faced and to what is characterized in popular culture as the Maya genius, the elaborate ideology and material culture found in Classic Maya civilization that has intrigued so many since Europeans first encountered it. A few early hieroglyphs associated with painted murals (Saturno et al. 2006)5 and pyramidal buildings adorned with giant masks considered to represent “self-effacing elites” (Freidel and Schele 1988: 93) are known from the Terminal Preclassic Central Lowlands. However, most of these southern region traits appear to have developed, were elaborated upon, and then disappeared in the south earlier than the time they had emerged or were emerging in the Maya Lowlands. Nakbe Stela 1, probably dating to the Late Preclassic, may have been more than 3 m high and depicts two probable ruler figures carved in what Hansen asserts is a “very early” style (Hansen 1992: 77). Similarly, extremely large stelae and thrones from the Southern Maya Region include Late Preclassic Kaminaljuyu Stela 68 showing a single ruler figure treading on a captive and Monument 67 (Ugarte 2001); Monument 65 from the same site depicts three throned figures on one side of the monument and a hieroglyphic “tree” of history” on the other (Kaplan 2000). Sharer and Traxler also assert that, “given the sculptural style of Nakbe’s earliest carved monuments, the

12 · Water, Cacao, and the Early Maya of Chocolá

Middle Preclassic centers in the Mirador Basin must have been influenced by interaction with the southern Maya area” (2006: 219). In addition, possibly supporting the development of an influential Southern Region rulership model associated with hieroglyphic writing, an ajaw glyph appears on Kaminaljuyu Stela 68. Accordingly, while the ajaw institution in Classic times contains several other significant elements, it is entirely plausible to conclude that a temporally prior emergence in the Southern Preclassic led to hieroglyphic and ruler complex developments in the lowlands. Even as they refuse to settle on any particular theory, Inomata et al. cite a “lattice model” proposal for relations between the south and the lowlands (2014: 403) as an alternative to a “one-directional” model of influence for the southern area to the lowlands. By contrast, we assume that sociopolitical and cultural innovations, for example, writing and some traits of an early “kingship,” must be distinguished among themselves. All available evidence worldwide supports the theory that pristine invention of writing was very rare; therefore it seems to us that writing would have been invented not in a lattice manner but singly and individually, and then diffused. Even if the Olmec are to be credited with this pristine invention, Maya writing, quite different and distinct from Olmec texts, similarly would not have taken place according to a lattice model but rather at distinct places and times. “Kingship” is another matter, composed by Classic Maya times of many elaborate ideological, iconographic, and symbolic elements. However, contra Inomata et al.’s proposition, we also reiterate that the particular Southern Maya Region traits of “kingship”—represented at least by the stela-altar cult that formed the basis ideologically and symbolically of the stela as a cosmological tree, and that later contained hieroglyphic writing describing dynastic history—would have occurred at distinct places and times. The point we make is that, with inventions or innovations that are specific to a significant degree, a similarly distinct and specific origin must be assumed. Compounding the hieroglyphic writing debate, the time frame for the appearance of the Maya script(s) seems quite narrow—perhaps no more than about 100–200 years; without earlier Cycle 7 Long Count–dated inscriptions, determining if literacy occurred first in the lowlands or in the south may therefore simply be impossible. Nevertheless, continuing to search for evidence and to theorize simultaneously about when and where specific traits, such as the first Maya scripts, did appear does seems both justified and sensible. We address this further below and also in Chapter 8. Whether, as it seems, Maya hieroglyphic writing appeared first in the Southern Maya Region and spread from there to the lowlands, or it

Introduction and Historical Context · 13

appeared first at sites such as San Bartolo and then spread south, two of the three earliest Long Count–dated inscriptions are Takalik Abaj Stela 2 and El Baúl Stela 1. Rich burials first appear at Tikal in the 1st century AD. The earliest Classic Period carved monument bearing the Tikal emblem glyph is Stela 29, dated to AD 292. The comparatively large number of monuments having or once having Preclassic texts at Kaminaljuyu also may support the claim of a temporal priority, although simple texts at San Bartolo, which may date to as early as 100 BC–AD 100, would conceivably be as early. With such evidence, much debate among Maya and Mesoamerican researchers has focused on temporal priority and diffusion from one region to the other. In general, we believe that simple contentions by archaeologists that “my area is earlier than your area” do little to advance research and understanding. To us, the only justification for considering simple diffusion is if the cultural trait or innovation is single and singular, for example, writing (see Chapter 8 for further discussion). Inomata’s objection to simple one-way influence arguments (Inomata et al. 2014: 403) depends on the specificity of the isolated trait. Theorizing different interplay among a cluster of traits depends on the levels of abstraction of the theory or theories, and in any event implies a processual theoretics that is useful only insofar as it permits the gathering of more data. Unquestionably, overall, research at the lowland sites of El Mirador and Seibal is unveiling a much more complex picture of possible interaction with the Southern Maya Region. Many if not most Lowland Mayanists continue to reject the scenario of a temporally prior Southern Maya Region role; Inomata et al. reconstruct events and processes by which Maya writing appeared earlier at San Bartolo than at El Portón and Kaminaljuyu (Inomata et al. 2014: 400), and the ajaw institution and other high traits may have occurred more or less simultaneously in the Central lowlands and the south. Nevertheless, in their efforts to prove temporal priority for high autochthonous developments for the lowlands, for example, sites in the Mirador Basin, the problem Lowland Mayanists still confront is the quantity of data from Kaminaljuyu and Takalik Abaj for writing and “kingship.” This problem is expressed in the stela-altar cult, the very likely origins of the Maya calendar in the Preclassic South, and the general wealth overall of evidence there and also in this period, as new evidence from Chocolá—described in the present volume—indicates. On the other hand, no Southern Region investigator can sensibly deny the evidence, for example, of extraordinary labor organization at Preclassic El Mirador and other centers in the Mirador Basin, nor of triadic temple construction patterns “found [also]

14 · Water, Cacao, and the Early Maya of Chocolá

at . . . Cerros, Nohmul, Lamanai, Tikal and Uaxactun” (Sharer and Traxler 2006: 254), which attest to accurate astronomical observations of solstices and to other well-elaborated Classic Maya ideology.6 Richard Hansen has well deserved great credit for his and his collaborators’ work over many years revealing these astonishing early Maya cities in the northern Petén.7 In a cluster of high traits, along with writing, is the pairing of stelae with altars. Notably, in addition to Chocolá, the stela-altar ruler cult has been documented in Middle and Late Preclassic monuments at El Naranjo and Kaminaljuyu, in the Valley of Guatemala, and at Takalik Abaj, El Baúl/Bilbao/Cotzumalguapa, Chalchuapa, El Portón, and now at Chocolá; also, at Preclassic Ataco, El Salvador, an elaborately carved stela resembles in many ways the ruler stelae of Preclassic sites to the west and of later Classic Lowland Maya stelae (Paredes Umaña 2012: 127). Stela-altar pairs, set among the public architecture at these sites, are very numerous; Takalik Abaj and Kaminaljuyu, for example, have many. Although at non-Maya centers, such as Chalcatzingo (Monuments 24 and 25, Grove 1987: 138, 436 and Monuments 33 and 34, Grove 2012: 48–49), pairings have been found, evidence seems to support a temporal priority in the south with the ruler-stela/altar “cult.” To these high or advanced traits in the Preclassic Southern Maya Region must be added highly sophisticated large-scale water control (as we have discovered at Chocolá, and which is very similar if not identical to systems at Kaminaljuyu and Takalik Abaj), early intensive or surplus agriculture, specifically of cacao arboriculture, and early, well-elaborated, long-distance trade in commodities such as obsidian from Kaminaljuyu and, we believe, cacao from Chocolá and other piedmont sites. Our proposition of a cacao trade from Chocolá is based in part on identification by the Hershey laboratories of cacao residues in Chocolá vessels (Appendix E, Kaplan et al. 2017), indirectly by palaeobotanical analysis (Appendix A), and by our proposal of a “Cacao Heartland,” in which Chocolá is centrally located (see below and Chapter 7). The literature on long-distance trade in archaeological research is very large (see papers in Patterson and Gailey 1987 and Chase-Dunn and Hall 1991a for discussion of some of the general comparative issues). Long-distance exchange networks have been causally connected to the origins of Lowland Maya civilization (Fowler et al. 1989, citing Rathje 1971, Tourtellot and Sabloff 1972, Webb 1973, 1975, and C. Jones 1979). “World-systems theory,” advanced by Wallerstein and elaborated by many others (for Mesoamerica, notably Kepecs and Kohl 2003, Smith and Berdan 2003, and

Introduction and Historical Context · 15

Carmack and Salgado González 2006), becomes a presumptive guide because the existence of long-distance trade axiomatically implicates a system of economic relationships of “cores” and “peripheries” (see Chapter 7). As Chase-Dunn and Hall have pointed out, “Though we may argue about the relative importance of ‘internal’ versus ‘external’ factors, almost all social scientists now agree that the larger intersocietal context and hierarchical relations among societies are significant factors in societal development” (Chase-Dunn and Hall 1991a: 1). With these socioeconomic and cultural advances in mind, however, many basic questions remain unresolved, among them terminological ones: what precisely is “Maya”? What is “Maya civilization”? Lohse points out, “The question of when the earliest Lowland Maya appeared continues to defy understanding despite decades of research specifically addressing this topic. In many ways, the question is a tautological one, since the first appearance of most Mesoamerican cultures, including the Maya, is commonly recognized by the same traits used to define those cultures” (2010: 312; compare Kaplan 2011a: 396–397). These questions have particular relevance for the Preclassic Period when what we now refer to by these terms was beginning to form or emerge. “Maya civilization,” like “the Maya,” is a modern construct as much as comparative evidence supports constitution of these constructs as analytically, or scientifically, real. We address these problems—how much is reconstructed, how much constructed?—below. Our initial research goals targeted the Preclassic, but many Classic as well as Postclassic artifacts have been recovered. Just as a Classic Maya collapse occurred in the tenth century AD, a cessation of activity or large-scale change took place at sites throughout the Southern Maya Region at the end of the Preclassic (Shook 1965: 184–185; D. Green and G. Lowe 1967: 9, G. Lowe 1962: 10, compare Becquelin et al. 1996, 2001). Such a punctuation might have happened also at Chocolá, although as yet we have no specific evidence for this, other than the finding of a temple-shrine seemingly abandoned by the end of the Late Preclassic, where a stone “potbelly” sculpture, a style dating to the Late Preclassic Period, was found at the bottom of a southern stairway (Monument 30, see Chapter 6); even if abrupt and largescale changes did occur from the Late Preclassic to the early Classic, at Takalik Abaj, Chocolá’s near neighbor, archaeologists do not see a violent termination of activity (Popenoe de Hatch et al. 2011: 227). In addition to Late Preclassic as well as Early Classic connections proposed between Kaminaljuyu and Tikal (for example, three black-brown fine incised vessels in the royal burial of the presumed Tikal founder, Yax

16 · Water, Cacao, and the Early Maya of Chocolá

Ehb’ Xook, Tomb 85; compare Culbert 1993: fig. 3), we construe a bookend pattern of interaction with Olmec civilization by the Middle Preclassic, followed by contacts with Teotihuacan by the Early Classic. Similar ties later between Mexica or Aztec civilization in the Late Postclassic are attested to ethnohistorically. Several of these ties—which may, in theory, and based on available evidence be characterized as donor-recipient relationships (notably, writing and the calendar)—evidently also were based on significant Preclassic trade. Trade in the Maya world involved staples (highlands obsidian, supplemented by jade, mica, hematite, cinnabar, and other minerals [Sharer and Traxler 2006: 232]) and prestige, “preciosities” (compare Chase-Dunn and Hall 1991: 11–12) or sumptuary goods; we believe piedmont cacao, as sumptuary based on distance of travel, went north to the Maya Lowlands and elsewhere in Mesoamerica. Many studies have sourced obsidian traded from El Chayal, in the southern highlands, particularly, to numerous sites in the Central Lowlands of the Classic Maya. Evidence of Preclassic trade in cacao, a product that, unlike obsidian, is highly perishable, is difficult to obtain and must be inferred; while plentiful iconographic and hieroglyphic evidence exists pointing to the importance of cacao in Maya civilization, only a relatively few papers (J. Henderson and Joyce 2006, J. Henderson et al. 2007, Hall et al. 1990, Hurst et al. 2002, Joyce and J. Henderson 2010, Powis et al. 2002, 2007, 2011), have identified cacao residues in Preclassic Maya pottery (most of these from the Southern Maya Region), and the only direct support thus far for long-distance trade of cacao derives from ethnohistorical sources, that is, from writers, chiefly Spanish priests living in Guatemala and Mexico, recording their observations of the Maya shortly after the Conquest (Lowe et al. 1982: 44, 47, Gasco 1989b, 1996b, Fowler 2006). Our results suggest that certain processes leading to complex social organization operating at Chocolá, and perhaps at Takalik Abaj, though common in ancient complex cultures and societies around the world, had different initial motivations. Our discovery that probably by 500 BC the ancient Chocolá community developed, maintained and managed a system of stone-encased hydraulic drains with flagstones on top (lajas) spanning at least 1.5 km northwest-southeast, implies that labor was organized and supervised by a bureaucratic and religious elite. Similar contemporaneous evidence at Takalik Abaj supports a significantly stratified society. Although we have clear evidence of a subterranean and above-ground

Introduction and Historical Context · 17

hydraulic system extending south at least 1.5 km (Chapters 4 and 7), the full extension of this system awaits further testing and excavation. Moreover, distinguishing a bureaucracy, “full-time” or “part-time,” that supervised the hydraulics is impossible without more and finer grained data; this distinction has been a concern for sociologists and theoreticians of the “state,” from Weber to the present, as well as for anthropologists (see papers in Patterson and Gailey 1987). While the normative typologies of states include full-time bureaucracies, “archaic states” (including non-Western types) as known through archaeology, have been defined to encompass the genesis of these forms and thus we do not expect them to adhere to the canonical definition of a modern state (see papers in Feinman and Marcus 1998, also Yoffee 2005). As in other areas of the world (compare Lansing 1991: 37–48), at Chocolá water management was developed for at least two complementary reasons: (1) draining excess water during the rainy season (as much or more than 6,000 mm of rain fell annually, and there were two high-discharge rivers, several riachuelos or streamlets, and nine natural springs (see Chapter 2); and (2) preventing water shortages during the dry season. In this way could excess water presumably be returned to conduits and conveyed to deposits, which later fed irrigation systems. Such planning must have required a bureaucracy to supervise workers in order both to protect structures from erosive effects (compare Kaplan 2008: 410) and to convey water into a redistribution system (see Chapter 7); Carmen Rodríguez and Ponciano Ortiz suggest this same development, evidenced by the distribution of ritual objects at La Merced in the Olmec Gulf Lowlands of Tabasco and Veracruz (2000). With such material processes at work, we believe that a stratified society must have been in place no later than about 500 BC. The higher elevations of elite palaces—for example, the structure probably beneath the Classic Period Structure 7-1—suggest that those at the top of the Chocolá society resided in a sector of the settlement more difficult to access, north of the administrative center, and were privileged by access to cleaner water (Kaplan 2008: 409); based on palaeoclimatological studies indicating little change through time elsewhere in the Maya area (French 2009), the villagers at Chocolá today obtain potable water from the same nine springs north of Mound 15. With radiocarbon dates from possibly as early as the Late Middle Preclassic stratigraphically above the drains of this system (see Chapter 4 and Appendix D), a bureaucracy of manager-elites overseeing

18 · Water, Cacao, and the Early Maya of Chocolá

Figure 1.6. Ancient cacao heartland in the Southern Maya Region. (PACH)

workers would have been in place with the capability to undertake and maintain irrigated cacao cultivation before the beginning of the Late Preclassic period. In addition to water control, cacao has been the subject of much recent research in Maya archaeology although, because of the plant’s fragile taphonomy, much of this research remains speculative. From abundant evidence, cacao was of central importance not only in cuisine but ideologically among the ancient Maya in the political economy of early regional Maya powers. How this came about we discuss in Chapter 7. Wild cacao likely originated from a small area around the Brazil-PeruColombia borders (Motamayor 2002 et al.; compare Cheesman 1944). Evidence to date suggests that cacao was first domesticated in the western Southern Maya Region, probably by the Mokaya people (Powis et al. 2007; see Clark and Blake 1989); however, domestication may have first occurred anywhere in what we propose was a larger Cacao Heartland stretching from Izapa in Soconusco to the west, to Ahuachapan and Sonsonate in western El Salvador to the east, a heartland in which Chocolá sits epicentrally.

Introduction and Historical Context · 19

Figure 1.7. a) Cacao tree; b) Don Fidel Velasquez, dueño of coffee parcelas and of a small cacao grove, Chocolá, 2003. (PACH)

Briefly, we suggest that cultural transformations mediated by time and distance must have taken place as the rest of the Maya world (and Mesoamerica at large) discovered and adopted cacao; we propose that, through the various effects of long-distance trade, an ideology was developing that, at least by Classic times, conceivably positioned cacao second to maize in importance to the Maya. The ideological importance to the Maya of cacao has been documented recently by many writers (for example, Martin 2006, 2010, 2012; and see the 2006 volume edited by McNeil). Citing Wallerstein’s criteria for bounding a world-system, first by mode of production and, second by trade in bulk goods, Chase-Dunn and Hall have asserted that “networks of the production, distribution and consumption of basic goods (everyday raw materials and foodstuffs) unite people across societal boundaries and create the systemic unity of a world-system” (1991b: 10). We propose that long-distance trade of the sort known for obsidian and cacao in Mesoamerica must be considered central to the establishment of a precapitalist world system because of the emphasis on relationships rather than on fixed internally evolving entities sealed off from influence, that of the “billiard balls” in cultural evolutionary theory (compare Wolf 1997: 6).8

20 · Water, Cacao, and the Early Maya of Chocolá

Transformation of the use-value of cacao into an ancient commodity presumably would have been marked by processes Appadurai and others analyze (Appadurai 1986; see Kopytoff 1986); we discuss these ideas at more length in Chapter 7. Given the importance that cacao came to have for the Maya and the rest of Mesoamerica, and the long-distance trade that by the Late Postclassic period carried great quantities of it as far away as Central Mexico, an important question is: when did Chocolá become conspicuous in its local and regional context? Compared with other centers occupying the same time and space, when did Chocolá develop a complex, hierarchically ordered society because of its status as trade good producer of a highly valued product? By such relatively unadorned raw products transformed ideologically by valuations derived from time and distance, we surmise a relationship was built between Chocolá, as one in a group of piedmont polities, and the rest of the Maya world, and perhaps further at large in Mesoamerica. We suggest that not only Chocolá was a large-scale provider of cacao; other “kingdoms of chocolate” (Kaplan and Valdés 2004, Kaplan 2008; compare Gasco 1996b, G. Lowe et al. 1982: 43–54), including Takalik Abaj and Izapa, also were major cacao producers, as were other sites in the Pacific piedmont and coastal areas as yet unidentified but whose remains may still exist (see Chapter 7). We suggest that the character of the Southern Maya Region, in addition to the multiplicity of languages spoken at different centers at different times as well as simultaneously, was that of cores and peripheries linked by long-distance trade, all of which had their own effects in creating more complex social and cultural adaptations. To summarize, by PACH’s identification of a major, previously almost entirely unknown ancient city at least 1 × 4.15 km in size, we have recovered more evidence with which to reconstruct the culture history of the Southern Maya Region and of Southern Mesoamerica and to speculate in a more informed fashion about some of the processes in play. It remains for us to note that many questions remain that only further excavation can answer, and that many of our theories, for now, need much more confirmatory evidence. This summary of the background to our work and its intentions omits mention of what we found to be a problematical working environment of the Guatemalan South. PACH was forced to halt its work in 2006 because of threats to our volunteers.9 Accordingly, by “problematical working environment” we mean both for scholarly interpretation, as knowledge and understanding of the region is still poorly developed theoretically, and also

Introduction and Historical Context · 21

for the undertaking of fieldwork. Southwestern Guatemala continues to play the same primary economic role as a very fertile agricultural region just as it did in postcolonial and early post-Conquest times as well as, we believe, in pre-Columbian times. Expropriation of lands from the native population, population replacement, “ladinoization” (Guzmán Böckler 1970: 185–186)10—and migrations circa 1875 or somewhat before from the highlands of indigenous peasant populations in order to work on the industrialized coffee, sugar cane, and cotton plantations to the south—have all had their effects on the land and on the Maya campesino (compare Navichoque 199911). The archaeology of the Southern Maya Region has not occurred and does not occur in a scantily inhabited rainforest environment but in a highly populated one where natural resource shortages are increasing and poverty continues to be endemic and severe. PACH undertook its work in a village of small-plot farming families belonging to an agricultural cooperative, the Comunidad Agraria Chocolá. As mentioned, at the time the project began, some 10,000 people lived in the village; nearby neighboring cooperative communities of both aldea and pueblo size, which under German ownership were part of a greater whole centered at Chocolá, were and are somewhat smaller. Since the halt to our research, we have come to understand better how local strategies were deployed and operated both to cooperate with us and, with respect to a tiny but coercive group in the village, hinder us. Great violence, marked by death squad actions from 1954 to about 1996, culminated in genocide12 in the late 1970s–early 1980s. This characterizes the history of the great economic forces of exploitation that have been inflicted on the poor, mostly indigenous community, and that have operated in modern times at Chocolá and in Guatemala for half a millennium; we provide more details of the modern history of the town in Chapter 3. Ultimately, and not to excuse any of Kaplan’s decisions as director of the project, we believe that this history of violence and exploitation that has twisted and contaminated every relationship, economic, social, cultural, individual and group-based is the larger reason for the difficult working environment and for the project’s halt. Chocolá in Context: Mesoamerican, Maya, and Southern Maya Region Archaeology and History

Drawing on many different disciplines and frameworks of analysis, including not only archaeology but also ethnohistory, political anthropology,

22 · Water, Cacao, and the Early Maya of Chocolá

economic anthropology, art history, iconography, comparative religion, and a spate of increasingly sophisticated technological methods, study of ancient Mesoamerica and the Maya more or less has matched waxings and wanings in popular cultural interest. In all of this great body of research, the Southern Maya Region has received less attention than the Central Lowlands. The thermometer theory (Kaplan 2011b: 398) and the Southern Maya Region considered heuristically as an autochthony are two conceptual frames necessary in bringing a balanced perspective to the data from Chocolá and from any site or ancient center in the Southern Maya Region. In a 2011 edited volume, the Southern Maya Region, shown here in Figure 1.3, is described as follows: Anciently the Southern Maya Region is a part of Mesoamerica [lying] within a broad arc from Chiapa de Corzo, in the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, in the northwest, due south to Paso de la Amada and Izapa from Chiapa de Corzo southeast to Copan, Honduras, and from Copan south to Chalchuapa, El Salvador. . . . The South is as much a cultural area as it is a geographical one; furthermore, part of its importance, as many scholars have described it, is temporal, that is, because of its Preclassic developments. What has for some time been accepted by consensus to comprise a diversity of languages and cultures, increasingly it appears to have been constituted both by a unity of some early high cultural features but also by distinct areas of different traditions that sometimes interacted and sometimes did not. (Kaplan 2011b: 394–395; compare Paredes Umaña 2012: 49–50, 211–216) Taking into account both those investigated archaeologically and the many not yet adequately studied or not yet studied in addition to Chocolá, known, still-extant Southern Maya Region sites include the major and lesser centers of Ataco, Balberta, Chalchuapa, Chiapa de Corzo, Cotzumalguapa (El Baúl-Bilbao-El Castillo), El Jobo, El Mesak, El Portón, El Sitio, Gumarcaaj (Utatlan), Iximche, Kaminaljuyu, La Blanca, La Libertad, La Nueva, Montana, Monte Alto, Palo Gordo, Paso de la Amada, Santa Leticia, Semetabaj, Takalik Abaj, Ujuxte, Ocós/Santa Clara, Zacualpa, Zaculeu, and many others; some of these centers are believed to have been built by speakers of Maya languages and others by speakers of other Mesoamerican languages. In his entry in the Handbook of Middle American Indians about the Pacific coast of Mesoamerica, Shook described what unifies, in effect, most

Introduction and Historical Context · 23

of the Southern Maya Region as possessing “natural environmental conditions . . . advantageous to man from early times,” adding: Ready access to marine food and products, a rich flora and fauna, fertile soil (M. Coe 1961), and an abundance of fresh water are prime factors bearing directly on the occupation and utilization of this area by man from the earliest settlers to the present-day population. (Shook 1965: 182) Shook’s often-quoted observation echoed an earlier characterization by McBryde: “There is no region in the New World that surpasses western [sic] Guatemala for illustrating direct relations between culture and nature” (1947: 2). In his 1965 paper, Shook also declared that after years of investigation in the south: [T]he area was a crossroads of cultural influence. . . . [G]eographically this is obviously a key area, not just for the local archaeology but for hemispheric problems relating to the diffusion and development of man in the New World. (Shook 1965: 193–194) Earliest and Later Western Accounts

The Southern Maya Region is distinguished by geography, physical environment, history, and culture from the Maya Central and Northern Lowlands. We address the geography and physiography of the Southern Maya Region in Chapter 2; here we describe the historical and cultural characteristics that define it. Despite the interest in the Classic Maya generated from John Lloyd Stephens’s time, within the Maya area as a whole the southern region has been both distinct, almost from the beginning of European exploration and colonization, and underemphasized or overlooked by Maya researchers. One reason for the latter is the difficulty of discerning patterns of processes in the patchwork of group boundaries, while encountering each other and the different languages spoken there, Maya and non-Maya (Josserand 2011). Another reason is both physiographical and culturally geographical: the pattern of highlands, piedmont, and plains, the latter two constituting a great agricultural growing area, with the plains amenable to homogeneous crop-for-export enterprise and hence more rapid and enduring urbanization; other modern development has made archaeological remains much harder to study because of debilitation.

24 · Water, Cacao, and the Early Maya of Chocolá

Still another factor, and contributing to the modern developments, is the particular history of the Spanish military and religious entradas in the south. All of these reasons or factors played a role in making the Southern Maya Region much more of a colonially and postcolonially commercialized region than the lowlands. Also, an early dynamic of interaction between different linguistic groups in the south perhaps made it difficult for any enduring region-wide cultural or political entity to be sustained anciently; by the same token, it has likely been easier there than in the lowlands for modern economic agency and process to enter and change the indigenous bases of life. A conceptual dichotomy between lowlands and highlands perhaps began to develop in Tenochtitlan in 1512 when Cortés commissioned Pedro de Alvarado to march south to subdue Guatemala. Sixteenth-century accounts by Spanish friars, Augustinians, Franciscans, and Dominicans scattered throughout New Spain—for example, in Sahagún and Durán (Central Mexico), Landa (Yucatán), Las Casas (the Guatemalan Verapaces), Ordoñez and Motolinía (Guatemala City), Ciudad Real (Isthmus of Tehuantepec, southwestern Guatemala, and Soconusco), and Sotomayor (Guatemala City, Chiapas)—especially those who lived among sixteenthcentury Maya who managed to survive the Conquest, provided and still provide scholars with detailed descriptions of early post-Conquest native life. Other sources, like Torquemada (relying on Mendieta), Antonio de Herrera, and Clavijero, are valuable resources despite having had no direct experience in the New World. From these accounts also, a sense of a compartmentalization of central and southern regions in New Spain began to develop. Alvarado’s notorious subjugation of the Maya in Guatemala was offset in certain ways by that of his compatriot, Bartolomé de las Casas, the Dominican friar and so-called “Protector of the Indians” stationed in “Tuzulutlán,” now the Verapaces (Phelan 1970). Alvarado is formally anathematized today; Las Casas’s opposition to the encomiendas earned him the hatred of many of the conquistadores and their families and allies at the time, as well as the enmity of other religious, mainly Franciscans like Mendieta and Motolinía. Just as Alvarado distinguished the southern area by the ruthlessness of his submission of the K’iche’, Las Casas’s creation in the Verapaces of a place of protection for the Maya marked at least that part of the southern area as having a radically different character from anywhere else in New Spain. In addition to this religious regionalization, the Southern Maya Region early

Introduction and Historical Context · 25

on is attested to as a place for commoditization of agricultural resources. Thomas Gage, the anti-Jesuit author of The English-American: A New Survey of the West Indies, 1648, found refuge with the Dominicans in the late 1620s and traveled extensively in the Southern Maya Region; he comments many times on cacao as an important product coming from Suchitepéquez, and, about southern Guatemala specifically, speaks of “this hot but rich country” (Gage 2014: 205). If southern Guatemala was favored by Europe for its exploitation of agricultural wealth, the lowlands received attention for their archaeological wonders. In the eighteenth century, Carlos III and Carlos IV of Spain ordered official crown expeditions—in effect early archaeological missions—to the ancient ruins in the lowland jungles. Even as its importance has mostly been overlooked (Dávila 2007), the 1822 report of one of these expeditions by Del Rio to Palenque in 1787 triggered interest in the Maya among antiquarians and geographic societies; this including the American Antiquarian Society (founded in 1812), the Lyceum of Natural History of New York (1817), the Société de Geographie de Paris (1821), and the Royal Geographical Society of London (1830). Perhaps the intellectual antiquarian fascination with and emphasis on the lowlands were the result of the “shocking” and “demonic” beliefs and practices there, which could better be isolated and emphasized to justify the post-Conquest slavery and otherwise enforced peasant labor by means of the encomienda, repartimiento, and mandamiento; thus the economic conquest would be less noticeable even as the exploitation was much more intensely effected and perpetuated in the south. Other unscientific and often fantastically colored exploits in the eighteenth–nineteenth centuries dwelled on the “mysteries” of the “jungle civilization,” further defining the lowlands for their archaeological value in contrast with the economic emphasis given to the south; Frenchman Jean-Frédéric Maximilien de Waldeck, at Palenque from 1832 to 1834, drew elephants in his renderings of the hieroglyphic texts, and the British-American Freemason Augustus le Plongeon opined that the Maya came from Atlantis. These early efforts also included an Irishman, Juan Galindo, at Copan and Palenque, who, to his credit, like John Lloyd Stephens (see below) connected the ruins to the modern Maya; another figure was the French photographer and “expeditionary,” Claude-Joseph Désiré Charnay, who had been in Yucatán when the Caste War broke out and was at Palenque and “Lorillard City” (Yaxchilan), where in 1881 he met A. P. Maudslay (1850–1931), usually considered the first modern Maya archaeologist to

26 · Water, Cacao, and the Early Maya of Chocolá

conduct systematic research (Willey 1984: 42). In the years between Stephens and Maudslay, the Abbé Brasseur de Bourbourg, the French priest and ethnohistorian who rediscovered not only the Popol Vuh but also Landa’s Relación de las Cosas de Yucatán, was, by contrast, a highly significant contribution to scholarship, even though he, like le Plongeon, speculated the Maya came from Atlantis. Others from Maudslay’s era include F. W. Putnam, T. A. Joyce, H. J. Spinden, Charles Bowditch, and A. M. Tozzer of Harvard’s Peabody Museum, and E. H. Thompson, of the Field Museum of Chicago and then at the Peabody; none evinced discernible interest in southern Guatemala. Roughly contemporary with Charnay but of much greater seriousness as a scholar was Daniel Brinton, an American physician whose interest in indigenous American languages led him to study the Annals of the Cakchiquels (Brinton 1883),13 an important native document from the Southern Maya Region, and who became the first chair of the Department of Anthropology at the University of Pennsylvania. Firmly establishing the divide methodologically between presystematic and scientific study, Maudslay, whose emphasis was also primarily on the lowlands, began to lay the foundations for scholarly attention to the Southern Maya Region. Although he investigated several Central Lowland sites, including Palenque, Quirigua, Yaxchilan, and Copan in Honduras, and worked at Chichen Itza, in the Northern Lowlands, he also was drawn to study Kaminaljuyu (Maudslay 1899–1902, (text) 2: 38–39; vol. 2, pl. 74, 75; see also Maudslay and Maudslay 1899: 17–18). At the same time as Maudslay, the Harvard Peabody Museum excavations at Copan, directed by John G. Owens, and later by George Byron Gordon, “moved Maya archeology beyond its initial explorer stage and are viewed by some scholars as the start of the modern period of Maya studies” (Sabloff 1991: 8). Initially inspired by Stephens’s travelogues (Stephens 2010 [1841]; compare Tozzer 1931: 404), Maudslay’s work and the Harvard Copan excavations spanned the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and Maudslay’s and a few others’ discoveries in Petén, Chiapas, Yucatán, and Belize inspired the next generation of Maya archaeologists. Prominent among these were Sylvanus Morley, who first came to the Petén in 1914, and J.E.S. Thompson, whose initial visit to a Maya city was at Chichen Itza in 1926. From Maudslay, followed by the era of Morley and Thompson and the Carnegie Institution of Washington (CIW) (see Weeks and Hill 2006), professional scholarship of the Maya commenced. However, it remained fixated on the lowlands until research from the CIW’s work at Kaminaljuyu

Introduction and Historical Context · 27

beginning in 1935 and Stirling’s Olmec finds beginning in 1939 began to broaden the perspective. Contemporaries of Morley and Thompson, Kidder and Shook virtually by themselves broadened the focus of Maya scholarship to include the southern highlands of Guatemala (Willey 1984: 44). Their 1946 volume, written with Jennings, described excavations at two Esperanza phase mounds in Kaminaljuyu’s southeast precincts, finding evidence of connections with Teotihuacan. This was followed in 1952 by their report on the largest mound at Kaminaljuyu, which included an account of two rich tombs in the Miraflores phase E-III-3 structure. From that point on, a temporal priority of high developments for the south became a point of discussion for scholars. Over a long career, Leopoldo Batres, who explored Teotihuacan in the 1880s and provided descriptions of Xochicalco, investigated Kaminaljuyu in the early years of the twentieth century (Batres 1916: 224–226). Another Mexican, Manuel Gamio, a student of Boas at Columbia University, worked in the highlands and specifically at Kaminaljuyu, where in 1925 he excavated a stratigraphic pit in order to determine Kaminaljuyu’s chronology (Gamio 1926–1927). The Guatemalan Villacorta brothers also devoted their careers to the south, principally Kaminaljuyu. In 1940, J.E.S. Thompson, considered the leading Maya scholar for much of this time, briefly turned his attention south, focusing on Late Classic developments at Cotzumalguapa, and, later, among many other valuable papers, he wrote on cacao and the Maya (Thompson 1956). Thompson, who, nevertheless, serves as an example of how single individuals can have repressive paradigmatic influences on scholarship, was in error about several major matters. Chief among these were his dismissal of the phonetics of Maya writing, his “peaceful Maya”–“barbaric Central Mexican” model, the construction of the “Putun” as “Mexicanized Maya” (L. Jones 1997; compare Kaplan 1998), and his dogged refusal to accept that the Olmec predated the Lowland Maya. Accordingly, his general lack of attention to the southern area helped to form a lowlands construct of preeminence for research. A German Presence and a Linguistic Emphasis

German scholars contributed greatly to lowlands studies14: Ernst Förstemann (1822–1906), noted for his seminal work on the Dresden Codex; Eduard Seler (1849–1922), who studied pan-Mesoamerican iconography as well as Maya cave use; iconographer and epigrapher Paul Schelhas (1859–1945); and Teobert Maler (1842–1917), whose reports and photographs of Mitla,

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Chichen Itza, Palenque, and sites along the Usumacinta River, preserved what would later disappear as victims of vandalism and looting. However, seemingly without geographic bias or because of distinct interest outside of the lowlands area, several other Germans who were Maudslay’s contemporaries made singular contributions to Southern Mesoamerican and Maya archaeology, where archaeological, ethnohistorical, linguistic, and ethnographical research coincided with large-scale German postcolonial enterprise, at Chocolá and elsewhere. Travelogues, informal surveys, linguistic analyses, maps, drawings, photographs, and preservation of sculpture by these men, many of them with family links to German coffee enterprises in Guatemala, added substantially to a picture beginning to be discerned of significant if not aboriginal developments in southern Guatemala that impacted the rest of the Maya world. Some of these men, like Karl Sapper (1866–1945) and E. P. Dieseldorff (1868–1940) were careful investigators (see, for example, Sapper 1897) even though their presence in the south was connected to their families’ Guatemalan agribusinesses. In 1904, Seler, Förstemann, Schelhas, Sapper, and Dieseldorff contributed to a volume for the Smithsonian Institution Bureau of American Ethnology; Sapper’s contribution was on Yucatán, Dieseldorff ’s on two ceramic vessels from Chama.15 While Förstemann, Seler, and Maler were working on lowlands Maya calendrics, iconography, and archaeology, in the last years of the nineteenth century and the early years of the twentieth, Dieseldorff and Sapper surveyed and recorded whatever attracted their notice during travels occasioned both by business and scholarly curiosity. Sapper was the first to record Chocolá as an archaeological site. His cousin, David Sapper, was one of several German owner-managers of plantations in latifundia-dominated southern Guatemala, and a brother, Richard, oversaw German coffee and sugar farms there (Wagner 2001: 121). These and other efforts and activities represented an extraordinary German investment in Guatemala in the heyday of postcolonial enterprise16 when the greatest risks were not uprisings by the pacified laboring population but earthquakes and volcanoes (Wagner 2001: 129). Others of German descent include the Prussian-American physician, Gustave Bruehl (1826–1903), who toured Utatlan and Cotzumalguapa, and later, Quirigua, and was the first to visit the fincas on and under which lay the ruins of Takalik Abaj (see below), and, in Chiapas (as well as Central Mexico, Veracruz, and Yucatán), and Karl Hermann Berendt (1817–1878), who recorded his observations of the ruins of Chiapa de Corzo (L. Lowe 2012: 276).

Introduction and Historical Context · 29

From 1930 to 1931, and again in the 1960s, Franz Termer explored Palo Gordo (Termer 1962, 1973, 1990), about 14 km from Chocolá—a few hours walk (for comparison, Chocolá is about 35 km, 40 km, and 100 km, respectively, from Takalik Abaj, El Baúl/Bilbao/Cotzumalguapa, and Kaminaljuyu). In the early 1950s, yet another German with considerable achievements in the lowlands—for his contributions to the decipherment of the “emblem glyph” of Maya cities or polities (Berlin 1958)—Heinrich Berlin excavated a large mound in the D group, D-III-13, at Kaminaljuyu (Berlin 1952); the D group was by most evidence the Preclassic core of the great ancient highlands city (Kaplan 2011b: 243; compare Kaplan 1999: 17, 2002a: 326). Notable in this early period was Bruehl who, after making his way through “the Altos” of Guatemala, was the first Westerner to note the ancient monuments at the Santa Margarita and San Isidro fincas, where Takalik Abaj’s ruins lay (Bruehl 1888). Citing early linguist Franciscan Alonso de Molina, the eighteenth-century Dominican friar, and Francisco Ximénez, the Popol Vuh and the Titulo de los Señores de Quetzaltenango, visiting Utatlán (Gumarcaaj) and Cotzumalguapa, from the Titulo, Bruehl described ethnic divisions, and “homelands”: “[T]he country between Mazatenango (“Cakolqueh”17) and Mazatlan was tributary to the Quiches; nay, even in the list of tributes, fish from the rivers Samala, Uquz (Ocós), Nil, and Xab are enumerated” (Bruehl 1888: 295). Ascribing a K’iche’ identity to the inhabitants of Takalik Abaj emphasized the seesaw palimpsest of peoples’ movements over the land and settlements in the Southern Maya Region—conceivably, as we now reconstruct them, from Olmec to a possibly Cholan Maya to K’iche’-speakers, along with Lenca, Xinca, Nahuat, and Nahuatl, at various times distinct and predominant or subordinate as they overlapped. The Olmec, the CIW, and the Southern “Maya” Region

With the great expansion and greater professionalization of Mesoamerican and Maya research following these first epochs of post-Maudslay scholarship, preferences for the lowlands (or Central Lowlands) of the Classic Maya grew even stronger. George Vaillant was possibly the first archaeologist to seek the Preclassic origins of the Maya specifically, but he looked only in the lowlands (compare Willey 1984: 43). Thereafter, until the CIW’s efforts, no other Maya geography except the lowlands seemed to exist. Founded in 1902, from 1935 to 1952 the CIW helped bring attention to the Southern Maya Region’s complexity and the importance of its early

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achievements. In this it was aided by Stirling’s momentous finds of Olmec monumental heads at Tres Zapotes (Stirling 1939), a short distance north on the Isthmus of Tehuantepec from the southern Pacific coast. The fundamental importance of Stirling’s discovery of the Olmec was at first denied or discounted by the leading Lowlands Maya archaeologists, Thompson in particular. Despite the resistance, knowledge of the Olmec irrevocably redrew the scholarly picture of the sequence of primordial civilization in Mesoamerica. Stirling’s work did not cause the lowlands archaeologists to reassess their view that everything of importance lay in the rainforest of Petén and Chiapas until it was significantly furthered two decades later by Michael Coe and Richard Diehl (Coe and Diehl 1980). However, at the same time as Stirling’s discoveries, archaeologists from the CIW were investing time and effort outside the lowlands, and making landmark discoveries. In many ways game changers of Mesoamerican chronology, their reports in annual CIW publications, culminating later in carefully detailed volumes about Kaminaljuyu (Kidder et al. 1946, Shook and Kidder 1952), indicated that the Lowlands Mayanists needed to reevaluate everything they had assumed hitherto about the trajectory of Maya civilization. Because of the relatively great amount of research the CIW undertook focused on the Maya and Mesoamerica, the even-handed interest the CIW researchers displayed in the Lowland Maya area, and the generally painstaking excellence of the work—not only archaeology but ethnography and linguistic research—the CIW occupies a special place in the history of Americanist archaeology and in Maya research in particular, and constituted one of the great constellations of Mesoamerican and Maya scholars in Americanist archaeology. In some ways, the New World Archaeological Foundation (NWAF) has continued the CIW’s legacy of clearly written, evidentially well-supported Mesoamerican archaeology undertaken by Americans that takes as its interests wider regions and topics than only the Lowlands Maya. The impact of both the CIW reports and Stirling’s work was sufficient to generate a symposium and another “landmark volume” (Willey 1984: 44). The Maya and Their Neighbors (Hay et al. 1940) attempted to broaden the context of Maya research by including papers on non-Maya peoples and cultures, in so doing acknowledging the picture was more complicated than that indicated by Morley’s and Thompson’s simple timeline of Lowlands Maya traits. In the first paper in the section of the book entitled “The

Introduction and Historical Context · 31

Maya,” Kidder’s “Archaeological Problems of the Highland Maya” discussed one of the outstanding issues then, and now, confronting Mayanists, “the bearings of Guatemala highlands archaeology upon the Archaic problem” (Kidder 1940: 119), declaring “the question of Miraflores-Archaic ancestry . . . immensely important” (1940: 120). By “Archaic,” Kidder meant the culture or cultures represented by ceramics found in the deepest stratigraphic levels at Tehuacan, Monte Alban, and Teotihuacan. He linked the ceramics from the Finca Miraflores, Kaminaljuyu, with the “Mexican Archaic,” declaring by this what we call the Southern Maya Region as antecedent and contributory to the rise of the Lowlands Maya. The nature of the evident relationship between the Kaminaljuyu Miraflores and the Mexican Archaic is a matter of much importance. Does the Miraflores represent, as Spinden and Gamio held, a southward spread of the Archaic? Is it a contemporary manifestation of an early, widespread, autochthonous culture of the Middle American highlands? Or is it the outgrowth of a southern culture gradually working its way northward? (Kidder 1940: 119–120) Kidder also referred to the so-called “Q complex” of traits, by which Samuel Lothrop (1927) and George C. Vaillant (1930, Merwin and Vaillant 1932) proposed a separate, but still “Maya,” stimulus precedent to the Classic Maya to explain apparently older non-Maya development of high culture diffusing to the lowlands. In another chapter, Francis Richardson described what he called non-Maya monumental sculpture from Central America, and included several illustrations of carved stylized zoomorphic heads from western El Salvador that recent research has shown belong specifically to a Preclassic development in which these monuments are associated with carved stelae, plain stela-and-altar pairings, and other carved-inthe-round monuments (Paredes Umaña 2012). Paredes Umaña has also noted (Paredes Umaña 2012: 12) that Mesoamerica as a category was only introduced by Kirchhoff in 1940, the same year the book The Maya and Their Neighbors was published. This is relevant here because the CIW was attempting to broaden the scope of Maya research into Central American countries other than Guatemala. Still, the lack of a vaulted arch, masonry constructions with karstic stone, and other cultural traits attributed to the Classic Maya were observed to be missing from the Pacific coast, piedmont, and adjacent highlands. Accordingly, developments such as the stylized “jaguar heads” (Paredes Umaña 2012),

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described by Richardson were not understood for decades to come for their contributions to early ruler ideology, a development that we now know took place in the Southern Maya Region from the Middle Preclassic on. The same year The Maya and Their Neighbors was published, Charles Wisdom’s ethnography of the Ch’orti’ appeared; the significance of Ch’orti’, spoken by a dwindling few Maya speakers living in southeastern Guatemala and northern El Salvador within the Southern Maya Region, was confirmed much later when it was identified as resembling most closely the language spoken through much of the Classic Maya Lowlands (Houston et al. 2000). A volume series, The Handbook of Middle American Indians, published in 1965 and intended as a synthesis of the entirety of “Middle America,” was another “landmark” (Marcus and Spores 1978: 99). Included in the Handbook were two large volumes devoted to the “archaeology of Southern Mesoamerica” which included, among other offerings, a synthesis of the Guatemalan Highlands by Borhegyi (1965), the survey by Shook (1965), and a treatment of southern area sculpture by Miles, who observed that Kaminaljuyu Stela 10 “carries the earliest hieroglyphic text known” (Miles 1965: 275; see Kaplan 2011b, fig. 9.17). Beginning in the 1970s, what came to be called the “epigraphic revolution” dominated Maya research, understandably because decipherment of the Maya writing system had remained one of the great unsolved problems of Americanist archaeology since study of the Maya commenced in the nineteenth century. Contributing to the overall or longer-term seesaw of emphasis alternating between the lowlands and highlands,18 another edited volume appeared in 1977, The Origins of Maya Civilization, edited by R.E.W. Adams, incorporating new information obtained in the intervening three decades after The Maya and Their Neighbors. This volume emphasized Early Preclassic ceramic phases in the lowlands, thus placing developments in the part of the Southern Maya Region then construed as early and important, the highlands (for example, Kaminaljuyu), well after the “origins” ascribed to the lowlands. However, a chapter by Michael Coe looked at the relationships between the Olmec and the Maya (M. Coe 1977b); at this stage in Maya archaeology, the precedence of Olmec civilization to all other Mesoamerican civilizations was fully assumed, but only when Coe and Diehl’s 1980 volume appeared. Gareth Lowe’s chapter on the Mixe-Zoque as “competing neighbors of the Early Lowlands Maya” described another perspective, by which, at this stage in Maya archaeology, “most of the Lowlands Maya area was a cultural

Introduction and Historical Context · 33

backwater for the better part of a millennium while the Ocós, Olmec, and related early western and southern cultures flowered and faded around it. . . .” (1977: 198). Lowe then detailed much of the evidence in support of the “precocious Ocós horizon” (G. Lowe 1977: 207)—later confirmed by archaeologists at the NWAF, finding the oldest known ball court in Mesoamerica (Hill et al. 1998, Hill and Clark 2001), and a rich child’s burial at Paso de la Amada (Blake et al. 1993: 13)—and also of high developments during the Middle Preclassic in Chiapas (Clark and Pye 2011: 36); these developments notably included craft specialization, fine ceramics, more ball courts (at El Vergel, Finca Acapulco, and San Mateo), further evidence of hereditary elites, axis-aligned architecture, cut stone platforms (by 500– 400 BC), and other signs of advanced community planning. The Olmec and Their Neighbors (Benson 1981)—the volume title inspired by the earlier Maya and Their Neighbors—was followed a few years later by Regional Perspectives on the Olmec (Sharer and Grove 1989), which brought to the fore contentious debate about the nature and status of Olmec civilization in Mesoamerica, a debate persisting today. Nevertheless, despite these forays outside of the Maya Lowlands, beginning with Maudslay, the lowlands-centric tilt, strengthened by the Lowland Classic Maya–focused epigraphic revolution of the 1980s and 1990s, has held sway. The intervals interspersed were relatively brief: from 1946 to 1952 (Kidder et al. 1946, Shook and Kidder 1952), the culmination of work at Kaminaljuyu since 1935 by the CIW (see below), Pennsylvania State University’s project at Kaminaljuyu in the 1960s, and Coe, following Stirling, confirming the existence of an Olmec heartland, explaining to considerable degree what underlay an Olmec horizon. An exception in the United States were the important, continual efforts by the NWAF. From the 1960s through the 1990s and after, NWAF investigators’ evidence of fundamental events and processes in Chiapas was accumulating, reaching what should have been a tipping point of persuasion about the temporal priority of the Southern Maya Region when Clark and colleagues began publishing their results from work on the southwest Mexican coast, and at sites such as Paso de la Amada and Chiapa de Corzo (Clark 2004; G. Lowe 1962, 1977; compare G. Lowe 2000, Clark and Pye 2011). In 1987 the Simposio de Investigaciones Arqueológicas en Guatemala began annual meetings, at which much if not most of southern area scholarship has found outlet ever since. Guatemalan archaeology began to come into its own with these meetings; today, the Simposio arguably is the foremost venue for the presentation of Maya scholarship in the world.19

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In 2011 the Love-Kaplan volume, containing papers from several of the leading researchers in the Southern Maya Region working from the 1980s and today, was the first comprehensive attempt in many years to update and synthesize research from the Southern Maya Region. In the four decades between the Penn State project at Kaminaljuyu and the Love-Kaplan publication, much of the competitively contested research funds went to projects at Classic sites in the lowlands. During these 40 years great advances were made in the decipherment of the Classic period texts—which, as far back as the 1950s, Coe had identified as one of the great remaining scholarly problems to be solved (M. Coe 2012)—and which, with an accompanying emphasis on the art and ideology of the Classic Maya, also explains why an emphasis remained more fixed on the lowlands. More on the Sampling Universe of the Southern Maya Region and the Thermometer Theory

If an imbalance because of the long-enduring research slant toward the lowlands may persist today between the great quantity of literature on the Lowland Classic Maya and, lagging behind, much scanter research in the Southern Maya Region, the disparity might also be considered a sampling problem. Southern Guatemala has had much larger populations for a longer time than the Central Lowlands. From early on, a far more modern development (beginning with the industrialization of large plantations and now including shopping malls in the southern Maya hinterlands, some now approaching Chocolá) has occurred in the south that has damaged or destroyed ancient sites and contexts or made access to ancient remains much more difficult. After exploring in the vicinity of what is now known as Takalik Abaj, in 1888 Bruehl wrote: “Careful explorations in the dense forests along the Pacific coast would undoubtedly reveal more ruins and sculptures similar to those of Santa Margarita” (Bruehl 1888: 256). Today, all the available evidence suggests that a great many more sites can indeed still be found throughout the Southern Maya Region and investigated if the kind of difficulties in the working environment PACH encountered can be avoided, and if both contemporary commercial developments and local actions unsupervised by cultural officials do not, in the meantime, completely erase the archaeological record in the south. In addition to a sampling limitation and, possibly, what southern area researcher Fred Bove described as over-attention to rulership in the lowlands

Introduction and Historical Context · 35

as opposed to other aspects of Maya civilization and archaeology (Bove 2011), other factors may produce a bias arguing against a south-to-north space-time sequence of development: (1) the relative earliness, or lateness, in the modern timeline of projects mounted at specific sites regardless of the sites’ own chronologies which had the effect of skewing the perspectives and research funding for long periods of time20; absolute dating would or should correct all of these distortions as they produce the unintended consequence of overly simplifying Maya chronology or just getting it wrong, as long as suites of dates can be obtained throughout the individual site trajectories, from initial settlement, to rise, to demise or end of occupation; (2) parsimony in theory making; and (3) the Lowlands Classic Maya presenting a full plate to the earlier generations of archaeologists. Finally, archaeologists build their careers usually focusing on a site and a region, and, for the sake of funding and publications, expend energy justifying and defending their choices as they compete with other scholars from other sites and regions for grants and university positions. The thermometer theory gets its name from a long-held belief that complex events occurred earlier, or earliest, in the southern part of Mesoamerica, and heated up, as time passed, increasingly in the north; this south-to-north time-space trajectory can also be traced back to Maudslay (Willey 1984: 42). Accordingly, the “bottom,” or Southern Mesoamerica, in the Early Preclassic as well as in much of the rest of the Preclassic, was considered proprietarily to have hosted innovations in writing, the calendar, and the stela-altar cult, and in other ways before they arrived in the lowlands. Events and processes coalesced on the Pacific coast of what is now Guatemala and southern Mexico and in the piedmont and highlands of Guatemala and western El Salvador; they moved north in Classic period times to the lowlands of northern Guatemala and southern Chiapas, Mexico, migrating still farther north into Campeche and Yucatán after the tenth century AD end of Classic Maya civilization. As we have stressed, such a view comes with a necessary caveat: the “south/early–north/late” model greatly oversimplifies Maya chronology. Ever more evidence suggests significant Preclassic developments elsewhere in the ancient Maya world, for the Petén, for example, as Inomata has demonstrated at Ceibal (Inomata et al. 2013, Munson and Inomata 2011) and several projects have shown for sites in Yucatán (for example, Stanton and Ardren 2005, Robles and A. Andrews 1986) and in Belize, where almost every project undertaken in recent years has uncovered significant Preclassic occupations (for example, Aimers et al. 2000, Hammond 2009,

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Kosakowsky 1988, Powis et al. 2002, Scarborough 1983). Considering all of the evidence, old and new, however, temporally prior, “emergent” developments, including high traits such as the stela-altar cult, Maya writing, and the Mesoamerican calendar, must tenuously still be attributed to the south. “Emergent” is the adjective earlier prehistorians and archaeologists of Mesoamerica often employed to signify cultural manifestations that, without apparent explanation, “transcended” processes considered simple by contrast via a qualitative change to “civilization” (Willey 1976). New Paradigms of Research in the Construction of “the Maya”—the Southern Maya

It is worth emphasizing that the weight given relatively early to Kaminaljuyu—in the 1930s and 1940s—largely created the lowlands-highlands dichotomy seen elsewhere in New World archaeology, for example, Peru. This frame of consideration has changed such that “Southern Maya Region,” as proposed by Michael Love and Kaplan (2011), seems more appropriate, given the large sites found since Kidder and Shook’s work at Kaminaljuyu, which lie on the Pacific coast, in the piedmont of Guatemala, and western Chiapas, including Chocolá. For many years, a few isolated monuments with Cycle 7 Long Count dates could have been cited in support specifically of an argument that the south was seminal, at least with regard to writing and the Maya calendar. Stela 1, El Baúl, was discovered sometime before 1923 (M. Coe 2013), and Tres Zapotes Stela C in 1939. A much later addition to the Isthmian “first writing” argument came with the discovery in 1986 of La Mojarra Stela 1. The Cascajal block, which was presented to the scientific community only recently (Rodríguez Martínez et al. 2006), has no secure context and therefore perhaps has not been given proper attention. This monument could indicate that, by 900 BC, a formal arrangement in reading order had developed from previous Olmec symbols, into what could be termed an emergent Olmecoid script. While it was primarily the CIW monographs on Kaminaljuyu in 1945 and 1952 that made the case, with work commencing at Takalik Abaj in the 1970s, a model of the southern area as a special region began to be constructed. More recently, a steady flow of evidence detailed by Clark and colleagues of the earliest complex societies in Mesoamerica arising on the southern Pacific coast of Mexico has seemed to confirm beyond doubt an early southern chronology primordial to developments in the Northern

Introduction and Historical Context · 37

Petén and elsewhere. We now discuss the factors contributing to the Southern Maya Region concept in greater detail. The foundations underlying the south-to-north Maya developmental sequence may be traceable explicitly to Maudslay, who worked not only in the Petén and Yucatán but also undertook informal mapping and recorded some sculpture at Kaminaljuyu (Maudslay 1899–1902). After Maudslay, some Mayanists, including Thompson and Tatiana Proskouriakoff, briefly extended their interests synthetically to try to include the south. Proskouriakoff ’s sculptural seriation (1950), without recourse to the then very new method of 14C dating, to Proskouriakoff ’s great credit largely has held up to later scrutiny; it stylistically dated a set of carved monuments from the Preclassic Southern Maya Region, including Chocolá Monument 1. What could be called the Morley-Thompson phase of Lowlands Maya archaeology focused almost entirely on the Classic Lowlands, such that Morley’s erroneous “Old Empire”–“New Empire” model predominated, the former assigned to the “south,” the latter, to the north of the Central Lowlands (Willey 1984: 42), replaced later by “Early Classic” and “Late Classic.” Thompson visited Cotzumalguapa21 and the fincas on and under which rest the remains of Takalik Abaj. But he still assumed a general lowlands autochthonous development and, for at least two generations of scholars, Tikal Stela 29 represented the oldest Long Count–bearing monument and its Initial Series date was considered to mark the beginning of Maya civilization. The notion of a “Terminal Preclassic” followed by, or overlapping with, a “Protoclassic”22 was grafted onto the discussion later to signify relatively brief interim periods more sharply focused on the ending of the Preclassic and the beginning of the Classic; perhaps similarly, “Terminal Classic” and “Epiclassic” were widely employed to characterize both a downfall and/or an epigone, with differently manifesting art and architecture occurring at the transition from the Classic to the Postclassic but which, no matter how different, could be linked by certain particular traits held in common to what came before it. In his “Trial Survey of the Southern Maya Area,” Thompson—ironically the first to refer explicitly to a “southern area”—provided a general outline of the developmental stages of the Maya: Maya history can be divided into four great periods: the formative, the initial series, the Mexican, and the Mexican absorption. The formative period (prior to AD 300) comprises the Mamom and Chicanel

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phases at Uaxactun and several phases found elsewhere in the central area (Petén, British Honduras, Chiapas, Tabasco, lower Motagua drainage), the northern area (Yucatán, northern Campeche, Quinta Roo) and . . . the southern area. This last comprises the highlands and Pacific slope of Guatemala and adjacent parts of western El Salvador. (Thompson 1943: 106) While he identified the southern area as having its own interest, he was uncertain about Kaminaljuyu: “Most of the sculptures at Kaminaljuyu presumably fall in the initial series period, but some date back to the Formative.” To give him credit, he ends his brief survey admitting, “Let the reader bear in mind the pitifully little controlled excavation so far made in the area, and read each [of his] statement[s] in that light” (1943: 132). Certainly in the years when Morley and Thompson were most influential, Maya civilization posed so many difficult research questions that the matter of origins was not yet systematically being addressed. Further, research questions often require years to find answers, and the natural tendency of scholarship is to persist with a particular research question long enough to answer it. Nevertheless, Thompson’s comments were made, as we have mentioned, despite startling but what were considered anomalistic discoveries in the south. If Maya writing and the Long Count calendar are to be considered two of the cardinal traits of Maya civilization, the fact that El Baúl Stela 1, dating to AD 37,23 was found sometime prior to 1923 on the Herrera finca at Cotzumalguapa perhaps should have received greater attention. Matthew Stirling’s discovery in 1939 of Tres Zapotes Stela C, dating, by its Long Count, to 32 BC, added to the evidence of Southern Maya Region temporal precedence; Thompson “immediately challenged this interpretation” (Willey 1984: 46). In 1961, another of the earliest Maya Long Count–dated monuments was found, Stela 2 at Chiapa de Corzo (Clark 2013), its Long Count date equating to 36 BC. Takalik Abaj Stela 2 is Cycle 7,24 with an incomplete inscription that yields a date between 39 and 19 BC (Macri 2011: 17925). By the late 1950s, more Long Count–dated sculptures were found that predated the Tikal stela that was for so long considered the earliest Classic Period monument; its Long Count date equates to Cycle 8. Linguistically, a proto-Mayan homeland was traced to Huehuetenango in the western Guatemalan Highlands (Kaufman 1976: 104; compare McQuown 1956: 194, 1971, Diebold 1960, and Swadesh 1960) spreading from this homeland (Kaufman 1969, 1971; McQuown 1971) from about 2000 BC (Josserand 2011:

Introduction and Historical Context · 39

153). This assertion, as much as any other in modern scholarship, may have planted in Mesoamericanists’ and Mayanists’ minds the notion that the roots of the Maya were to be found in the Southern Maya Region. A recent review by Lohse summarizes this view: Relying on linguistic evidence, Kaufman (1976: 104) postulated the breakup of a proto-Mayan language by about 2200 B.C. in the Cuchumatanes Highlands of western Guatemala and suggests that splinter groups began moving into the Lowlands by circa 1400 BC, reaching as far north as Dzibilchaltun by approximately 1000 BC. If this model is correct, these early pioneers presumably would have brought with them ideas about pottery from Highland traditions established in the Antigua Valley, at Kaminaljuyu, and elsewhere. Geographically intermediate early Formative complexes, particularly Xox (1200–800 B.C. [Sharer and Sedat 1987: 428]) in Alta Verapaz, could have provided “stepping stones” linking purported Highland areas with the Lowlands. (Lohse 2010: 314) Lohse cites Clark and Pye (2000) and Powis (2005) for the view that “[t] he period from ca. 1100 to 900 B.C., correspond[ed] with the rapid widespread appearance of ‘pan-Mesoamerican’ motifs” and that scholars have “combined ceramic and linguistic evidence to propose in-migrations into the Lowlands by ceramic-bearing Mixe-Zoque speakers from the Isthmus of Tehuantepec or by way of Honduras or by proto-Mayan speakers from the Guatemala highlands” (Lohse 2010: 316). Earlier he notes: “[a]ccording to available dates, the transition from preceramic to early village life took place over a brief interval, between approximately 1100 and 900 or even 800 B.C. in the Central and Northern Lowlands” (Lohse 2010: 314). Accordingly, a problematical presupposition is that the appearance of ceramics marks the appearance of a distinct historical entity, “the Maya,” that is, by the sedentism that would accompany use of ceramics. First and Later Investigations of the Olmec, the “Olmequista”–“Primus Inter Pares” Debate, and Significance of Olmec Influences in the Southern Maya Region

Publications beginning in 1939 in National Geographic Magazine of Stirling’s work at Tres Zapotes (Stirling 1939, compare Stirling 1943) were “astounding” (Grove 1997: 61) for what at the time seemed an important anomaly in the understanding of Mesoamerica and the Maya because it suggested an

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earlier and differently emphasized sequence of Mesoamerican civilization. However, even with the publication in 1957 of radiocarbon dates from La Venta (Drucker et al. 1957, 1959), another 20 years were required for the full importance of the Olmec to be appreciated; this came in 1966 with Coe and Diehl’s work at San Lorenzo (Coe 1965a, 1965b, 1970; Coe and Diehl 1980; compare Diehl 2004). From this point on—at the same time that the NWAF began publishing its work on Izapa and, then even more notably for understanding the primordial beginnings of Mesoamerican civilization—the Olmec were recognized as the earliest high civilization in Mesoamerica. This established a paradigm by which the force of the historical impetus and extraregional extent of this group or entity was seen to manifest as far away as sites in central west Mexico, at Chalcatzingo, in Morelos, and at Juxtlahuaca and San Miguel Amuco, in Guerrero (Cook de Leonard 1967, Gay 1966, Grove 1969, Grove and Paradis 1971), and, closer to what is called the Olmec Heartland of Veracruz and Tabasco, at Takalik Abaj. John Clark and others at the NWAF since have demonstrated that an Olmec presence of some kind extends throughout the southern area and into El Salvador (Clark and Pye 2011). The particular importance of Takalik Abaj, not only in regional culture history but in absolute terms in the history of Mesoamerica, increasingly became clear when it became apparent there were, in addition to a “local” style, two major artistic styles present, a Maya and an Olmec. A process also was suggested, in which coexistence, heterogeneity, syncretism, and multiethnicity had taken place synchronically and dynamically, the two civilizational impulses encountering one another and producing a juxtaposition or blend whose specific origins and actual workings remain not fully understood; however, these possibilities have become more tenuous following Inomata et al.’s chronological revision (2014) and the evidence may well represent distinct different occupations. History of Research at the Great Preclassic Sites in the Southern Maya Region

Kaminaljuyu We now provide a brief account of the archaeological context of Chocolá by summary descriptions of other major centers in the Southern Maya Zone. By size and assumed local and regional influence, along with the Isthmian

Introduction and Historical Context · 41

center Chiapa de Corzo, the largest ancient cities in the Preclassic Southern Maya Region were Kaminaljuyu, Takalik Abaj, and Izapa. Archaeologists have long assumed that, by the Late Preclassic, Kaminaljuyu was the largest, most powerful, and most influential of these four centers because of its size, number of carved stone monuments, presumed control of highlands obsidian traded into the lowlands,26 centrality for trade between coast, highlands and lowlands, rich royal tombs, and masterful and eclectic art. Except for Takalik Abaj, Kaminaljuyu also has the greatest number of Preclassic hieroglyphic texts carved on its monuments of anywhere in the Maya world; however, considering the destruction and otherwise loss of so many monuments from Kaminaljuyu, it is likely there were more, perhaps many more. Evidence also suggests that another development—a multiethnic solution to the challenges of survival and the maintenance of an upward trajectory of social life, for the present more theorized than fully demonstrated, but possibly matching the mixture of peoples at Takalik Abaj—may have been realized at Kaminaljuyu (Kaplan 2002b; compare Kaplan 1999: 336–340). Specifically evidenced by hieroglyphic texts at Kaminaljuyu which contain both Maya and “epi-Olmec” or “Isthmian” glyphs (Kaplan 1999: 337–339), this would have occurred conceivably before barrios, or enclaves, of foreigners existed at Teotihuacan (Manzanilla 2001: 101, and see Cowgill 2015). At roughly the same time as Stirling’s Olmec discoveries, in the CIW Yearbooks from 1935 until 1950 and in the two Kaminaljuyu monographs (Kidder et al. 1946, Shook and Kidder 1952), CIW archaeologists were reporting other major Preclassic Southern Maya Region developments at Kaminaljuyu. Thus, events and processes outside of the Maya Lowlands were beginning to flesh out a counternarrative of “first developments” leading to the rise of Classic Maya civilization. At roughly 2100 m above sea level, in the great cup of the Valley of Guatemala and overshadowed by volcanoes, Kaminaljuyu arose sometime in the Middle Preclassic. Achieving its Preclassic developmental apogee in the Late Preclassic Miraflores period,27 the Kaminaljuyu city and polity, grown to extend at least 10 and possibly 14 km2 in the Valley of Guatemala, displayed an extremely large number of eclectically styled stone monuments over time—as many as 400 (Kaplan 1995), with a Miraflores subset possessing a distinctive set of art styles and iconography; many depicted royal figures with captives, standing or seated on distinctive thrones. Adding to a picture of “kings,” evidence was obtained indicating that different distinct precincts were bureaucratically managed parts under the control of a single administrative center.

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No one until recently had counted the Kaminaljuyu Preclassic monuments that bore or had once born hieroglyphics; there are probably many more than the nine known thus far (Kaplan 2011b: 249, compare 2002a: 322–336). Over the years, Mesoamericanists and Mayanists came to accept an apparent temporal priority to Maya writing, not only by the “Terminal Preclassic,” or “Protoclassic” from Long Count–dated monuments at El Baúl and Takalik Abaj, but also at Kaminaljuyu itself; researchers cited Kaminaljuyu Stela 10’s text as possibly primordial to Classic Maya writing (for example, Miles 1965). In addition to a likely material basis for Kaminaljuyu’s power and influence, namely, control of the great obsidian fields of El Chayal, its strategic position for extraregional trade—located advantageously between piedmont and coast, with the Central Maya Lowlands to the north—is assumed to have played a role. Some of the reports from the Southern Maya Region were available to these early Lowlands Maya investigators. That they did not try to account for them in any formal sense until the volume The Maya and Their Neighbors appeared in 1940 is, in many ways, understandable. Although from 1935 and continuing until 1950, Kidder’s and Shook’s reports on Kaminaljuyu began appearing periodically in the CIW annual reports, both this 1940 volume and these reports came before the advent of widespread use of radiocarbon dating and before careful ceramic sequences earlier than the oldest phases in the lowlands had been constructed, and also before the important La Victoria sequence (M. Coe 1961) established a fundamental comparative chronology for Preclassic developments in Southern Mesoamerica. Epitomized by Kaminaljuyu, the southern developments were seen to consist of sharp hierarchical stratification, the stela-altar complex of rulership, and fully urbanized “sacred-center” settlements large enough to include substantial commoner residential and support population areas. Some years later, attention focused on what was speculated to have been a virtually pan-Maya long-distance obsidian trade emanating from and controlled by Kaminaljuyu (Shook 1952, Coe and Flannery 1964), the El Chayal obsidian fields less than 20 km from Guatemala City, suggesting obsidian as a material basis for Kaminaljuyu’s size and achievements. The stela-altar complex, the phrase used for decades by Mayanists to describe the notable pattern of physically pairing these two sculptural forms, evolved from an altar stone for ritual activities in front of a stela cosmologically representing a world tree with, during Classic times, carved hieroglyphic texts recording royal annals as a “tree of history” or “creation,”

Introduction and Historical Context · 43

perhaps in the same sense as the Biblical “[i]n the beginning was the Word.” The Maya ruler came to symbolize, and instantiate comparatively, a world creator or bringer of order in the form of history. The verso side of Kaminaljuyu Monument 65 is a Late Preclassic rendering of this development (Kaplan 1995, 2000). The well-established settlement of Kaminaljuyu, in place before the first Long Count–dated sculptures in the Central Lowland, also was striking. Shook and Kidder observed, [A]n average of about 200 sherds per cubic meter [in the mound were found] . . . in its final stage [having] a volume of some 75,000 cubic m [yielding] the astounding total of approximately 15,000,000 fragments. . . . [A]llowing 30 sherds to represent one vessel—a high average considering the abundance of small pre-Classic bowls . . . at least 500,000 complete vessels had been used, broken, and their fragments incidentally incorporated in the fill of this one mound. (Shook and Kidder 1952: 46) In the 1960s—between the end of the Morley-Thompson era and the beginning of NWAF work in the Southern Maya Region—as a counter to the lowland-centric emphasis of research in time and money, Sanders and colleagues at Pennsylvania State University laudably undertook an ambitious salvage effort at Kaminaljuyu. Complementing this effort, roughly at this same time Parsons was gathering information about Kaminaljuyu but focused only on the sculpture, which Penn State excluded from consideration. With a similar art historical emphasis, Parsons also investigated Bilbao, producing a monograph (Parsons 1967, 1969a) with copious photographs of the sculptures from that site and more from what was then called “Cotzumalguapa”; Chinchilla Mazariegos has since redefined the latter to include three sites that are part of the same larger site, Bilbao, El Baúl, and El Castillo (Chinchilla Mazariegos 2001a, b). Throughout these years, Shook continued his intermittent peripatetic research in the south (Shook 1945, 1950, 1952, 1965, n.d.; Shook and Proskouriakoff 1956); in the 1980s, with Popenoe de Hatch, he also revised the Kidder, Jennings, Shook sequence of the Kaminaljuyu ceramics. For relative chronologies, this revised sequence stands today, although in 2014 the absolute dates for its phases were found to be too early by some 300 years (Inomata et al. 2014). Nevertheless, although this revision has broad implications for social process in Mesoamerica, it does not change the fact that Southern Maya Region temporal priority for writing, the calendar, and

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certain key aspects of Maya “kingship” still may hold; again, by such assertions we do not mean to slight the extraordinary Late Preclassic developments in the Mirador Basin even as the high elements of these advances seem to have manifested differently. Apropos of our earlier discussions about lowlands vs. Southern Maya Region temporal priorities, Richard Hansen (2012: 139) recently asserted that “a true state-level society came to an apogee there [the Mirador Basin] during the Late Preclassic Period between 300 BC and AD 150,” although he does not define what he means by “true state-level.” Elsewhere, Hansen has proposed what he calls the “Kan kingdom,” whose origins can be dated to about 1000 BC (or 1500 BC28; see Hansen 1994), that is, contemporaneous with early Olmec developments; once again, however, he does not define what he means by his terms, in this case, “kingdom.” Along with others, we do not agree that a “kingship,” if this equates with a “true state-level” society, was in place by 1000 BC. We are more willing to accept that, even if no ruler tombs have been found at El Mirador, or ruler portraits, for that matter, quite significant at this great site is that “carved stone monuments in the form of stelae and stone altars were introduced during the Late Middle Preclassic period at the sites of Nakbe, Isla Pedernal and possibly El Mirador” (Hansen 2001: 56). Evidence of writing at El Mirador includes a proposed Late Preclassic glyphic text inscribed on Stela 2 (Hansen 1991, 2001: 63) which, together with the extraordinary San Bartolo murals, shows a striking Late Preclassic development. Other lowland archaeologists have made arguments that, at Late Preclassic Lowlands sites, “self-effacing elites” may be considered “kings” who sought to disguise their role and power behind giant architectural masks (Freidel and Schele 1988 :93). To us this argument contorts the evidence in order to be able to claim a temporal priority of the “kingship” institution for the lowlands, even as, once again, what is meant by “kingship” is not defined (Kaplan 2002a: 356–357, Kaplan 1999). More recently, Freidel (2007: 18) has interpreted Preclassic Lowland Maya giant masks as mimicking Olmec art, but he makes no mention of Southern Maya Region sites. Also in the 1980s, Popenoe de Hatch excavated at San Jorge (Popenoe de Hatch 1991), south of most of the precincts of Kaminaljuyu appearing on Shook’s map (which continues to be the standard map29 even as it reflects only a part of the Preclassic expanse of the city (Kaplan 2011b: 244– 249, 272). Penn State encountered stone-lined drains of the laja type later found at Takalik Abaj and by PACH at Chocolá (see Chapter 5). Popenoe

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de Hatch hypothesized that a network of earthwork canals at San Jorge were used for agricultural irrigation (Popenoe de Hatch 1991, 1997) and Valdes followed suit for a 1 km2 area in the B and D mound-group area just north of San Jorge (Valdés 1998). In 1986, Parsons published his monograph on Kaminaljuyu sculpture, The Origins of Maya Art, updating and significantly extending Suzanne Miles entry in the Handbook of Middle American Indians (Miles 1965). Also in 1986, citing Francisco Antonio de Fuentes y Guzmán, who described the structure 300 years previously as an indigenous hydraulic system, Navarrete and Luján Muñoz published a monograph on the Montículo de la Culebra, the largest earthwork in the Valley of Guatemala. Constructed with clay and sand and now supporting vestiges of a colonialera aqueduct, the earthwork runs for more than 4 km from Santa Catarina Pinula to the national zoo at La Aurora. Navarrete and Luján date the construction, based on ceramics recovered from various cuts into the mounds, to 300–100 BC (although, like many other dates relating to Kaminaljuyu and the Southern Maya Region, these need to be reviewed, following Inomata et al.’s 2014 paper). A little more than a decade later, providing evidence of several construction episodes dating back to the Arenal phase in the Middle Preclassic, Martínez and Cabrera confirmed the claim: “The mound functioned as a hydraulic system, which ran through a water channel made out of stone slabs” (Martínez and Cabrera 1999). Throughout these decades, while many Lowland Mayanists seemed unaware of discoveries in the south, every several years at Kaminaljuyu another extraordinary oversized monument was discovered during accidental disturbance caused by the more or less constant activities of demolition and construction in an expanding Guatemala City. In addition to the giant throne, Stela 10, unearthed in 1955, these include Monument 65, found in 1983 (Kaplan 200030) and, most recently, discovered in 2001, Monument 67 and Stela 68 (Ugarte 2001, Kaplan 2002a: 357, 2011b: 244–245). To the extent sculptural functions and depictions can indicate this, all of these monuments have added to the weight of evidence about how powerful and sociopolitically advanced Kaminaljuyu must have been in the Late Preclassic (and/or Terminal Preclassic: Inomata et al. 2014) by comparison even with many major Classic Maya sites. As mentioned, not only were they often of great size, in addition to Stela 10, many of the ruler stelae and altar-thrones from Kaminaljuyu once bore lengthy texts (Kaplan 2002a: 323, 2011a: 249). As Miles (1965) and then Parsons and Christopher Jones (1986)

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noted, very close similarities in carving style and content exist between Kaminaljuyu Stela 10, the oversized four-legged ruler throne (Kaplan 1995), and Chocolá Monument 1; these similarities, in part, were what motivated Kaplan to investigate Chocolá. The 2002 AAA session Kaplan co-organized, “The Southern Maya in the Late Preclassic: Urbanism, Rulership, and Ethnic Interaction” and which led to the 2011 volume, assembled several of the principal researchers in the south. At the session Kaplan suggested that multiple ethnicities likely were present at Kaminaljuyu in the Late Preclassic, represented possibly in a multiethnic governance (compare Kaplan 1999: 415), and further, that a core-periphery relationship existed between Kaminaljuyu and sites to the west. “Core-periphery” relationships are described by Wallerstein (1974, 1980, 1989), and for precapitalist societies are discussed in Chase-Dunn and Hall (1991a, 1997) and by Gledhill and by Kohl in Patterson and Gailey (1987). World-systems theory, whose usefulness was partly for its adumbrations and corrections of cultural evolutionary theory, has a large literature; unfortunately, few Mesoamerican archaeologists seem familiar with it, or with longstanding discussions of precapitalist states and other early complex sociopolitics. Kaplan has postulated that a Southern Late Preclassic world-system existed, with Kaminaljuyu as a or the core (Kaplan and Valdés 2004: 78, 2011b: 273–274). World-systems theory extrapolated from Wallerstein and applied to precapitalist economies (compare Chase-Dunn and Hall 1991a) does not speak necessarily to the size and influence of Kaminaljuyu respective of other polities in the Southern Maya Region, even though its preeminence in the south has long been accepted by most Mayanists, but only, or at a minimum, to a system of economic relations in which Kaminaljuyu would likely have been a core. As we argue later (Chapter 7), Chocolá as a cacao producer could have been either a periphery providing the raw material to Kaminaljuyu in exchange for obsidian, or its own core with its own peripheries; however, because our obsidian-sourcing study (Appendix C) has identified the bulk of Chocolá’s obsidian to come from San Martín Jilotepéque, Chocolá’s presumed cacao trade might better be hypothesized as corresponding to Chocolá as a core rather than a periphery. Along with Chocolá, other sites such as Izapa and Takalik Abaj could have been part of a subregion core of sites growing surplus cacao. Recent studies (Ebert et al. 2015) have determined that El Chayal obsidian composed the bulk of obsidian imported to La Zanja and San Lorenzo from circa 1400 BC and

Introduction and Historical Context · 47

that San Martín Jilotepéque obsidian was not represented, which suggests that the San Martín Jilotépeque exchange sphere was a smaller one, reaching less far and, therefore, one in which Chocolá might have loomed larger as a polity and commodity producer. Here we lack the space to attempt to explain the belief system at Kaminaljuyu at its Miraflores heights31 except to emphasize that present were both a constellation of deities, mythology, rites of sacrifice, and other elite ritual preoccupations, and praxis in the form of carved stone thrones, stelae, altars, and other monuments closely resembling those of the Maya elsewhere. However, just as clearly, a local and/or syncretistic ideological flavor and cultural expression were represented by other types of monumental art, as well as figurines, ceramics, and personal ornament. A very large deity pantheon, or, as Kidder et al. phrased it, “a crowded Olympus” (1946: 248)—of rain, lightning, and maize, but also of trade and commerce, and a shamanic rulership closely comparable to sacred rulerships worldwide (Kaplan 1999: 436–449)—also characterized the ideology of elite Kaminaljuyu. Particularly prominent in the Miraflores stone carvings are representations of the “Hero Twins,” Jun Junajpu (“One Blowgunner”) and Xbalanque (“Seven Jaguar”), as presented in the mythology of the Popol Vuh (Kaplan 1999: 411–415 passim). Participation in rituals were conducted in sacred spaces outside or within pyramidal temples with stairs numbering five, nine, thirteen, and twenty, to signify sacred directions and cosmic levels as well as the Maya vigesimal counting system. Within the residences of elites and commoners, household ritual filled much of each day; in great market areas as well as storage warehouses were the constant coming and going of porters. Within noble palaces, the network of stone-encased conduits brought in water for drinking and other domestic purposes and evacuated it out in the same canals or drains. In sum, if any sociopolitical and economic model fits Miraflores Kaminaljuyu, perhaps from the Late Middle Preclassic until the Preclassic collapse, Kaplan has suggested that a smaller version of the tribute empire of the Aztecs may be the most appropriate in consideration of its obsidian trade and geographic nexus for commerce in other products between coast, lowlands to the north, and jadeite sources to the east. Another factor was its status as a possible or likely pilgrimage site to which lesser polities sent emissaries for ideological instruction, consultation, and confirmation of legitimacy of governance in a Kaminaljuyu sphere of influence.

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Takalik Abaj By straight line a mere 34 km west of Chocolá, in the southwestern department of Retalhuleu, sits Takalik Abaj; most accounts have described this as in the lower Pacific piedmont (e.g., Graham 1977: 196) or the Costa Cuca. Based on size, longevity, and its very large monumental corpus, Takalik Abaj is generally placed second in the Southern Maya Region after Kaminaljuyu for archaeological importance. Despite the many individual projects at Kaminaljuyu over time, Takalik Abaj remains the most continually studied major site in the Southern Maya Region. In the 1970s, the University of California, Berkeley, worked at Takalik Abaj for five seasons. From 1987 to the present, a Guatemalan national project has been documenting its Preclassic developments. Settled from as early as the Early Middle Preclassic, or about 900 BC, and by the Late Preclassic extending over 6.5 km2, the site consists of 63 public or administrative edifices set on ten humanly modified terraces rising successively higher; 311 stone monuments have been counted thus far (Popenoe de Hatch et al. 2011: 203). Occupation continued until AD 800–900 (Schieber de Lavarreda and Orrego Corzo 2013: 187).32 In the culture history of the Southern Maya Region, the Takalik Abaj archaeologists view the site as “a bridge between the Olmec and Maya Cultures” (Schieber de Lavarreda and Orrego Corzo 2013: 187), although what this constituted socially and politically they do not venture to describe. What is assumed to have been some kind of relationship between Takalik Abaj and Kaminaljuyu contributes to the complex picture of dynamic activities at different levels and scales, commercial, ideological, and linguistic, in the Southern Maya Region in the Preclassic (Lacadena 2010).33 The first published account of Takalik Abaj, by Bruehl, appeared in 1888. Karl Sapper described Stela 1, lying on the ground surface in 1894 (Sapper 1894: 344). A German artist, Max Vollmberg, drew the same stela; on a visit to the two fincas on which Takalik Abaj is found, San Isidro Piedra Parada and Santa Margarita, Walter Lehmann commented on the drawing, noticing on it “four small, highly weathered Mayan hieroglyphs” (1926: 175–176). Little research occurred after Lehmann until Thompson’s brief account (1943). The Takalik Abaj archaeologists have reported a Middle Preclassic ball court (Schieber de Lavarreda 1994). Also, two rich burials have been found: in 2002, a richly stocked apparent ruler’s tomb (Schieber de Lavarreda 2003), later dated to about AD 100, and in 2012, a tomb the archaeologists dated to between 700 BC and 400 BC of a ruler nicknamed “K’utz

Introduction and Historical Context · 49

Chman” (“Grandfather Vulture,” in Mam) who “bridged the gap between the Olmec and Mayan cultures in Central America,” according to Miguel Orrego Corzo (2015; Atwood 2013). The archaeologists propose the tomb to be the oldest Maya ruler burial discovered thus far anywhere. Subsequent redating of this tomb places it some 300 years later (Inomata 2015). Other recent discoveries, for example, at Chiapa de Corzo of a Middle Preclassic tomb found inside a pyramidal building (Bachand and L. Lowe 2011), contribute to the picture of a fairly widespread tradition emerging of similar ruler ritual and belief that transcended ethnolinguistic boundaries. Also notable at Takalik Abaj are the particular settings, contexts, and distributions of its monumental corpus (Popenoe de Hatch et al. 2011: 218 passim), many in situ, although, given the lengthy occupation of the site, current locations of at least 30 percent of them, according to personal communications from the IDAEH archaeologists, reflect only the final arrangements. Some were placed symmetrically or axially in front of edifices or by stairways. Notable among these sculptures are 17 stela-altar pairs (Schieber de Lavarreda and Orrego Corzo 2015), evidencing an early rulership template acquired by the lowlands, which became part of the Classic Maya model of rulership, the stela or lakamtun (Stuart 1992). An evolution of the use of the stela in Maya history occurred, as we reconstruct it, in which the uncarved stela, by Late Preclassic times, began to be carved with writing. Carved stelae are mostly associated with rulers on which historical dynastic texts were recorded. Worldwide, “kings” are envisaged to bring order to chaos, to bring a nation or a people into being and represent them, and, in effect, to be the agents of creation of a or the people, and a or the cosmos—in other words, of the beginning of history (Kaplan 1999, 2000). Further underscoring Takalik Abaj’s importance in the Maya trajectory of development, 14 monuments are carved with hieroglyphs, and, as with at least some of Kaminaljuyu’s texts, appear to be precursors to the Classic Lowlands writing system. The Altar 48-Stela 14 pairing is a particularly representative early example of the stela-altar tradition. Altar 48 depicts a seated human figure emerging from within a reptilian zoomorph whose body is conflated with a quatrefoil sign, with three of this sign’s foils depicted and the fourth obscured by the emerging ruler figure; the ruler’s posture is an early version of what human bodies of Maya ruling figures will come to be in the Classic Period Lowlands, the posture of the ruler figure on Chalchuapa Monument 1 representing another. As mentioned, Altar 48 also bears four early glyphs, yet undeciphered, and was radiocarbon dated

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to 770–410 BC34 (Schieber de Lavarreda and Orrego Corzo 2009: 457); Inomata et al. (2014: 403) suggest 100 BC or later for this monument. Based partly on these texts, the archaeologists theorize that the people of Preclassic Takalik Abaj “participated in developing Maya calendrics, cosmology, and writing, keeping in close communication with Kaminaljuyu and probably Preclassic sites of the Maya lowlands as well” (Schieber de Lavarreda and Orrego Corzo 2013: 187). So far not well understood is how and why an evident four-fold separate style of its monuments exists: Olmec/Olmecoid, Maya/Mayoid, potbelly, and local. This four-fold stylistic division is evidence either of a complex syncretistic ideology or of distinct periods of occupation, or of both. Corporate labor of some form was employed for the construction and maintenance of edifices and of a water management system (Marroquín 2005). The apparent organization of labor is suggested as well by the “gigantic effort” made to modify the landscape for the sake of creating great terraces for the administrative temples (Schieber de Lavarreda and Orrego Corzo 2009: 187). In summary, Takalik Abaj must have had connections and interaction with Kaminaljuyu and with Chocolá, friendly or competitive, depending on when the links were in place. Popenoe de Hatch identifies a ceramic boundary between Takalik Abaj and Chocolá (Popenoe de Hatch 2006) that, if accurate for the Late Middle Preclassic and Late Preclassic, would indicate, according to her assumptions about ceramics and ethnicity, different people linguistically; Chocolá would be linked more to groups around the Lago de Atitlán, evidenced, for example, by the similarity of Chocolá ceramics to the ceramics from Semetabaj (Popenoe de Hatch et al. 2011: 211; Monterroso et al. 2012). We speculate both Chocolá and Takalik Abaj were invested in cacao cultivation and trade. Takalik Abaj archaeologists propose significant trade links between Takalik Abaj and Kaminaljuyu (2011: 211). Izapa After Kaminaljuyu and Takalik Abaj, the “super political and ideological capital” site of Izapa (Bove 2011: 296) in the Pacific coastal plain of Chiapas is the third great Preclassic site known from the Southern Maya Region. Using LIDAR technology to survey 43.1 km2, Rosenswig et al. assert Izapa was “the largest archaeological site in the [Soconusco] region” of southern Chiapas (2013: 1494). Clark and Pye (2011: 40–41) refer to “Izapa and Chiapa de Corzo [as] the primary capitals in the Soconusco and Chiapas

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interior, respectively.” In scholarly history Izapa’s renown has come principally from its dense display of elaborately carved monuments (see Guernsey 2006, Laughton 1997). Most researchers believe a Mixe-Zoque language was spoken, and Clark and Pye specifically assert Mixe (2011: 37); Coe suggests Izapa was a Maya center (M. Coe 2008). Izapa was first excavated by Drucker (1948) following up on a report by Stirling (Stirling 1943). Beginning in 1961, the NWAF has been investigating Izapa. Despite their and others’ research, more precise reasons for how and why Izapa, with more than 100 mounds in its central group, became large and powerful have not been satisfactorily determined nor, while “[m]uch is assumed about Izapa’s population and political organization . . . virtually nothing has been documented about these topics” (Rosenswig et al. 2013: 1495). From ethnohistory we propose, as have others (for example, Lowe et al. 1982: 42–54, Laughton 1997: 8), that the material underpinnings principally included cacao cultivation and trade. Sononusco is prominently mentioned in ethnohistory and later as a great source of cacao for wider Mesoamerica (for example, Gage 2014; compare Gasco and Voorhies 1989, Gasco in many other publications). Relevant to our proposition of a Preclassic cacao industry at Chocolá, on a field trip to Izapa in February 2015, Paredes Umaña observed a cacao production system still growing today in and around the site (compare López Baez and Sandoval Gallardo 1983). Cacao trees, with some reaching 10 to 15 m in height, were planted some 5 to 10 m apart, and shallow water conduits ran across the fields. Perhaps significant, the toponym of the locality where Izapa sits is “Cacahuatán.” The even taller shade trees belong predominantly to the Zapotacea family, and produce a round fruit seemingly depicted in Izapa’s art (see, for example Izapa Stela 2, and Stela 10 [Lowe et al. 1982: 52]). The apparent apogee at Izapa was reached during the Late Preclassic Guillén phase (350–100 BC; G. Lowe et al. 1982, but see Inomata et al. 2014: 398–399). Twelve plazas with administrative and religious edifices were constructed by this time, some of the structures more than 20 m high. Eighty-nine stelae and 90 altars were recorded during the 1961–1965 NWAF research; distributed throughout these plazas, many of these were carved with narrative scenes legitimizing rulership. In his doctoral dissertation, Laughton (1997) argued that a unified sacred narrative message is contained in the carved depictions and the spatial distribution of the monuments,

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aligned with solar and night sky phenomena, tying together the iconography and figural depictions into a single ritual and mythological/cosmological narrative based on a primordial version of the Popol Vuh, and linking this with the monuments’ spatial distribution. By contrast, Guernsey argued for an understanding of the Izapa sculptural corpus in the fashion of Maya scholarship initiated by Proskouriakoff at Piedras Negras, that is, searching for annalistic history and genealogies recorded in the sculptural corpus. The carving style and iconography of the Izapa stelae is distinctive in Mesoamerica. Some scholars have proposed that Izapan public art represents a transition from Olmec to Classic Maya art (M. Coe 1957, G. Lowe et al. 1982: 324–325; Pool 2007: 271–279; compare Clark and Pye, 2000: 243). After the Late Preclassic Guillén phase, construction of the edifices of Izapa’s central plazas (Groups A, B, C, D, E, G, and H) halted. Perhaps because the original motivation to investigate Izapa was the site’s very large sculptural corpus, the initial conclusion was that Izapa functioned primarily as a ceremonial center, with elite religious practitioners in residence and not settled year-round with a commoner population. The conclusion that Izapa was primarily a religious center appears to be due to a sampling error. Using LIDAR and a pedestrian surface survey, Rosenswig et al. found that the site was “significantly larger during both the Formative and Classic periods” (2013: 1493). Accordingly, as a political and economic power in the Late Preclassic, Izapa conceivably would have been as secular (secular-sacred) as Kaminaljuyu, Takalik Abaj, Chocolá, and other large Preclassic Southern Maya Region centers. If our cacao thesis has merit for Izapa as having been, like Chocolá, a “kingdom of cacao,” this material basis for Izapa being a particularly important Southern Maya Region center and not just a dense locus of monuments would make sense. Finally, it is likely that the ancient Izapans constructed a water system to manage the heavy rains of the southern Pacific coast and to convey water to their crops in the dry season. Fragments of carved stone water conduits are known from the monumental core—for example, Miscellaneous Monument 3, a carved representation of a zoomorphic creature, found in a secondary deposit on Mound 121. Norman points out: [Its] most interesting feature is the hollow which extends from the mouth through the trough at the rear. The lower part or floor of the mouth perforation and the trough is worn smooth assumedly from

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water which once flowed through the trough and poured out of the mouth. . . . It is reasonable to conclude that this head-trough, along with Miscellaneous Monument 20 and other fragments, was part of an ancient water system which conveyed water from springs near the ceremonial center. (1976: 260–261) Cotzumalguapa (El Baúl/Bilbao/El Castillo) Located in the department of Escuintla and originally settled during the Late Preclassic, these three sites comprise a site cluster generally considered fourth in archaeological importance in the Southern Maya Region. Previously each was excavated independently; the reason they are now grouped as one is because, while individually studied archaeologically, they are located very near to, or overlap, each other and Chinchilla Mazariegos, the most recent archaeologist to study the site, discerns a unity between all three “architectural compounds” and causeways connecting the three acropoleis during the Late Classic (2013: 79; compare Chinchilla Mazariegos 2011a, 2011b, 2012). Cotzumalguapa’s nuclear zone extended about 5 km2 during the Late Classic and early Postclassic, or AD 650–1000, with Bilbao, El Castillo, and El Baúl connected by causeways radiating around it, with the latter in what Chinchilla Mazariegos proposes was a defensive position (1998: 513–516). As a site with ancient self-contained or self-referring meaning, El Baúl either is not known or does not exist; if there is such an entity, it likely is Preclassic. El Baúl had an important Late Preclassic development, evidenced by Stela 1 (Chinchilla Mazariegos et al. 2001), carved with one of the three earliest Maya Long Count dates known thus far. If not for the Cycle 7 date, the accompanying text, figures, and iconography are Classic Maya Lowland-style. In 1941–1942, Thompson undertook to excavate selectively at the site (Thompson 1948), seeking more information to resolve the debate about the Stela 1 dating. Many Late Classic Cotzumalguapan-style monuments also were found at the site. Bilbao was investigated in the early 1960s by Parsons (1967) who proposed a Teotihuacan influence. However, ongoing research has demonstrated otherwise; some materials in private collections associated with Teotihuacan were wrongly assigned. The Teotihuacan-like biconically shaped incensarios of the “scenic type,” with a profusion of fluids coming out of human figures associated with owls, flowers, corn, and cacao

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symbols, are found also at Montana/Los Chatos, and date to circa AD 350 (Medrano 1994), significantly earlier than the rise of the Cotzumalguapan polity in the Late Classic. The Preclassic is represented only by El Baúl Monument 1 and one fragment, Bilbao Monument 42. Nothing is known about the Preclassic architecture at Cotzumalguapa partly because the sugar cane fields make excavation very difficult, and also because of superimposed Late Classic occupations. Chiapa de Corzo At much greater distance is Chiapa de Corzo, situated 302 km to the northwest on the Grijalva River in central Chiapas, which was, “during the Middle Formative the principal paramount chiefdom in Chiapas” (G. Lowe 2000: 123). NWAF research has proposed a Mixe-Zoque speaking people occupied it (G. Lowe 1977, 1981, Clark and Pye 2011: 38; compare G. Lowe 1962). With a long sequence of occupation from 1150–1050 BC to AD 350–450 (Bachand 2013, Bachand and L. Lowe 2011), by Miraflores times, Horcones phase iconography and art style (by Inomata’s revision [2014: 402] AD 1–250) are associated with Kaminaljuyu (Agrinier 1960). A Preclassic apogee is estimated for 700 BC–AD 200 based on finding thus far the earliest tomb burial in Mesoamerica (circa 750 BC). From circa 900 BC, a connection of some kind with La Venta existed. Chiapa de Corzo Stela 2 bears the earliest Maya Long Count date found thus far. Along with other early centers in Chiapas, the earliest “E group” arrangement of edifices for astronomical observations (Clark and Pye 2011: 37) is another marker with high significance throughout the Maya world. Confirming the importance of western Chiapas for primordial developments, Clark and Pye assert that Paso de la Amada, another and even earlier site, was “at 1700 cal BC . . . the largest in Mesoamerica, and the earliest ceremonial center” (2011: 31). More generally, and in addition to these major sites, discussions in which the Southern Maya Region was considered tended to ignore or downplay the region’s importance. Mesoamerican scholars had held that Teotihuacan, just north of the Valley of Mexico, was responsible for one of two great impulses, Maya and Central Mexican, apparently encountering one another, violently and/or via trade, at some point probably as early as the end of the Preclassic or the beginning of the Early Classic. With Stirling’s discoveries, however, before either great impulse, the Olmec of Tabasco

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and Veracruz came to be considered the “mother culture” (Caso 1942a) for much of both great areas, whether by direct conquest or other kinds of interaction, for example, “missionary” (emissaries from large, influential and ambitious ideological, political, and commercial entities) or by diffusion of ideology; some researchers believe the origin of Maya hieroglyphic writing lies with the Olmec (Rodríguez Martínez et al. 2006). This idea of some kind of distinctive Olmec presence, if not the term and concept “Mother Culture,” has been much debated, and while it may be less demonstrated or, indeed, insupportable elsewhere, in our view it may well have particular resonance in the south. Most recently, Clark and Pye (2011), summarizing and adding to previous work with other colleagues have argued, with much supportive detail, how the Olmec impact, influence, or stimulus manifested outside of the “Olmec Heartland,” notably in the Southern Maya Region. While we are not prepared to rehash the dispute between the so-called “Olmequistas” and the “primus inter pares” advocates (for example, for the former, Neff et al. 2006; for the latter, Sharer 2007)—except to say that the disagreement seems to us partly terminological, as may characterize many archaeological disputes—we find ourselves in agreement with much of what Clark has long asserted for the Olmec in the Southern Maya Region and, specifically, a propos of our research, because of suggestive findings from near Chocolá. One example is the so-called “Shook Altar,” found at San Antonio Suchitepéquez, the modern larger town leading to the village of Chocolá (see discussion in Chapter 7). Palo Gordo Consisting of 31 mounds, Palo Gordo is located 3 km west of the Nahualate River, at 260 m above sea level, and 14.7 km south of Chocolá. Like Chocolá and Takalik Abaj, the site lies between two streams, the Chegüez to the west and Tziquiná to the East. Termer explored Palo Gordo toward the end of the 1930s and resumed his work in 1960–1961 with sponsorship from the Ethnological Museum of Hamburg; official relations between Germany and Guatemala were severed during the Second World War but resumed in 1960, which accounts for the long interval in Termer’s research. During his first effort, Termer identified six mound groups, which he denominated A–F, with Group C forming an acropolis with two plazas; he counted 23 monuments, including one from the Preclassic, a kneeling human figure on a vertical shaft. Some of these monuments had been

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moved to Chocolá but, according to Termer, disappeared from the latter site sometime before 1960. Monument 26 is held by the Museo Popol Vuh, and Monument 11 is stored at the National Museum in Guatemala City. On a visit before beginning PACH’s fieldwork, one of the first monuments Kaplan was shown at Chocolá was another from Palo Gordo sitting in front of the German casco, the curious altar with an inscribed cross that Termer had designated Palo Gordo Monument 20. Palo Gordo possesses the largest number of carved monuments in the Cotzumalguapan style outside of the Cotzumalguapa Nuclear Zone (Chinchilla Mazariegos 2002: 147–149). Based on Termer’s reports and on our own observations made during a visit in 2003, the site reached an apogee during the Late Classic, as attested to by abundant Tiquisate cylinder vases, some of the stamped variety and similar to whole vessels found deposited as a ritual cache in the northeast corner of Chocolá Structure 7-1 (see Chapter 4). In his preliminary report, Termer commented on Preclassic sherds recovered during his excavations, but the extent of the Preclassic occupation remains undetermined. Chinchilla Mazariegos has asserted that, parallel to developments at Cotzumalguapa, a Preclassic development was followed by construction of the Late Classic acropolis (2002). Burkitt visited Palo Gordo in 1930, followed by J. Alden Mason in 1938. Mason photographed the oversized Monument 1 which, with its representation of a humanized seated figure with a zoomorphic monster’s face, is considered to have contributed disproportionally to the development of a Preclassic era of monumental carvings on the Pacific coast. According to Termer—which our visits confirmed—ever since its discovery it has been in ceremonial use by the surrounding community and by pilgrims from elsewhere. Termer discussed the monument, locally referred to as “Piedra Santa,” at some length, proposing that it has been accessible on the modern ground surface since the sixteenth century; anecdotally, it was discovered during construction of a road, circa 1928. Termer also suggested that the long nose of the monument was a “wrong” addition cemented over the original with a different kind of stone (Termer 1973: 52–59). La Blanca, El Bálsamo, and El Ujuxte We refer to these three sites under the same heading because they are representative of Middle Preclassic developments in the coastal plains of the Southern Maya Region. The first two sites are located, respectively,

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southwest (70 km) and southeast (60 km) of Chocolá; the third, just southeast of La Blanca. All three emerged at roughly the same time, circa 1000– 900 BC, if not a little earlier. La Blanca was abandoned by 600 BC, the other two by the end of the Preclassic. La Blanca was first described by Shook in 1973.35 It is reputed to have had what was once the largest pyramidal building in the Southern Maya Region, measuring more than 100 m at its base and 35 m in height. In 1972, this mound was largely destroyed and its fill used in road construction. Archaeologists at La Blanca (Love 2002a; Love and Guernsey 2005, 2007; see Guernsey 2010) found Monument 3, a large basin fashioned in clay and shaped like a quatrefoil, which appears to be one of the oldest representations of a Mesoamerican sign associated with water, caves, and the underworld. Once a site that Love considers had regional importance (2011a: 9), La Blanca collapsed after 600 BC and soon after a new regional center emerged, 12 km to the east, El Ujuxte (Love 2002b, 2011b: 54–57). The transition from the Middle to the Late Preclassic at these sites remains a discussion of prime research importance, both because there are few sites dating to the Middle Preclassic that did not transit to the Late Preclassic, but mostly because Middle Preclassic social complexity remains poorly understood. Despite La Blanca having the largest building known for its time, Love contrasts a “large chiefdom” at Middle Preclassic La Blanca with a “city-state” for El Ujuxte in the Late Preclassic (ibid.). While two portable potbelly sculptures are reported for Late Preclassic El Ujuxte (Guernsey 2012), the absence otherwise of sculpture at the site adds to evidence of a scarcity of monuments in the immediate locale, that is, to where Izapa, to the north, and Takalik Abaj, to the east, are found. Also first described by Shook (Shook and Hatch 1978), El Bálsamo consists of 22 mounds on the west bank of the Camarón River. The main group has several structures aligned to form two parallel narrow plazas; the largest structure is 15 m high. As at Chocolá, the structures’ fill consisted of earth, gravel, and cobblestones (Shook and Hatch 1978: 2); unlike La Blanca, this small site once displayed sculpture, including two plain stelae and one carved-in-the-round stylized jaguar. Again, investigations at La Blanca do not show plain stelae, carved stelae, round altars, or other sculptural traditions better known for the Southern Maya Region, and only minor stone carved monuments have been reported; a tradition of few or no monuments at the sites may characterize an area of some 2400 km2, contained within the Naranjo Ceramic tradition (see Love 2010; Bove

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2011: 108; Popenoe de Hatch et al. 2011: 207; Paredes Umaña 2012: figs. 3, 4, 39, 41). Ceramics from El Bálsamo include several types of undifferentiated coastal wares. Shook and Hatch prepared a preliminary ceramic sequence showing an uninterrupted development from Cuadros and Jocotal phases into early construction stages contemporaneous with neighboring Monte Alto (9 km to the east), which has a Middle Preclassic occupation but differs from El Bálsamo in also having a Late Preclassic/Early Classic presence above it (Shook and Hatch 1978: 7, 1981). Monte Alto The occupation at Monte Alto was dated based on associated sherds studied by Shook and assigned to the Late Preclassic (300–0 BC: Shook 1972). Located in Escuintla 66 km in a straight line southeast from Chocolá, Monte Alto was visited by Burkitt and Carlos Villacorta in the 1930s when some of the “potbelly” or barrigón stone monuments at the site were already exposed. A 1968 field project by Shook and Parsons tried to solve cultural sequences and art historical problems with the chronological placement of the site’s monumental corpus within the Southern Maya Region. Eleven carved monuments and 15 plain stelae presently are known from the site, some of them already exposed at the time of Burkitt’s visit; in 2005, at Chocolá, Paredes Umaña unearthed Monument 30, a slender version of a potbelly (Chapters 4 and 6). Parsons described the Monte Alto monuments as stylistically uniform, with the exception of Monument 3, a colossal head Parsons described as “Olmecoid” (1986: 93). Paredes Umaña distinguishes on Monument 3 a feline monster mask whose traits relate to the Jaguar Head Tradition in western El Salvador (Paredes Umaña 2012), to water deities along the Pacific coast, and to giant masks on Late Preclassic structures in the Maya Lowlands.36 Completing the corpus are five colossal human effigy heads and an equal number of full-round human effigy boulder sculptures, known from other sites in the Late Preclassic Southern Maya Region as the potbelly tradition. Monte Alto was “substantial”—according to Shook (1971) extending nearly 1 km2 and containing 50 mounds. The main architectural group resembles other Late Preclassic settlements (and that of La Venta in the Olmec heartland), with a large pyramidal building to the north and one to the south, and smaller structures laterally forming an elongated plaza.

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Noteworthy is the alignment of three plain stelae south of Mound 2 which marked the winter solstice; under this feature a stone drain was unearthed, consisting of both ingress and egress drains as part of a rectangular cobblestone enclosure which was, to Parsons, “well suited for holding liquid” (Rose and Parsons 1970: 3). Another plain stela was found on the west bank of the stream, in association with a water conduit, a feature also reported at Takalik Abaj (El Escondite) and at Middle Preclassic Naranjo (Arroyo et al. 2006, Arroyo et al. 2007), where one of the plain stela was erected near a spring on a hillside. The stela was flanked by a well-preserved stone rubble terrace wall. Parsons described the “stone drain” as composed of carefully fitted cobble sides and capstones (like the lajas at Chocolá, Takalik Abaj, and Kaminaljuyu), and was encountered about 2 m below the stela and on sterile soil (Parsons 1969b: 3). A pattern of association of stone monuments with water conduits was strengthened when Monument 11 was discovered to have been placed just two m apart from a “stone drain of similar construction to the drain described above” (Parsons 1969b: 4). Chalchuapa Perhaps of equal importance in the Southern Maya Region as Takalik Abaj and Izapa, is Chalchuapa, located 200 km east of Chocolá and comprising an area of 4 km2; this cluster of sites represents one of the oldest settlements in western El Salvador. The first scholarly attention dates to more than 100 years ago. Santiago Ignacio Barberena (1910) reported a carved stela originally located near the western slope of Structure B1-1 at Tazumal, the Late Classic–Early Postclassic group. Lardé published a detailed description of Tazumal’s main structure (Lardé y Larin 1959). In 1944, Longyear and Boggs provided a preliminary map identifying the El Trapiche, Casa Blanca, Las Victorias, Pampe, and Tazumal groups (Longyear 1944: 17). They also reported a rock carving from Las Victorias depicting four human figures in a style resembling the Olmecoid rock carvings at Chalcatzingo, Morelos, and Pijijiapan, Chiapas. Beginning in 1942, Boggs undertook excavations at the Tazumal group, finding more than a dozen individuals in several tombs. Greenstone artifacts from those tombs numbered more than 600 and pottery vessels dating to the Late Classic more than 100 (Boggs 1962, 1963). In 1953, Kidder, then head of the Carnegie Maya project, visited Chalchuapa, observing that ceramics at El Trapiche and Casa Blanca were similar to types already seen at Middle and Late Preclassic Kaminaljuyu

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(Sharer 2006). A year after Kidder’s visit, W. Coe, under the auspices of the Museum of the University of Pennsylvania, excavated El Trapiche’s structures E3-3 and E3-6, also finding rich ceramic deposits on the shores of the Laguna Cuzcachapa; this confirmed Kidder’s observations about the close connection of Chalchuapa with the Maya Highlands (W. Coe 1955). Some years later, at roughly the same time that the New Archaeology was solidifying as a paradigm in American archaeology, Sharer and colleagues extended excavations at El Trapiche and Casa Blanca. Their efforts resulted in the first full ceramic sequence from Chalchuapa, which provided evidence of an almost continual human occupation from 1200 BC into the Late Postclassic and the colonial era (Sharer 1978). Instrumental neutron activation analysis provided strong evidence of ceramic types shared between Kaminaljuyu and Chalchuapa, based on ceramic shapes and decorations rather than on direct exchange since most samples tested proved to have been made locally (Bishop et al. 1989). Recent research based on pollen recovered from Laguna Cuzcachapa has also provided abundant evidence of maize, suggesting horticulture was present by the Early Preclassic and pushing back dates for human settlements in western El Salvador to as early as 1650 BC (Dull 2007). Sharer’s excavations in 1969 of the 24-m-high El Trapiche Structure E3-3 also found the broken Monument 1, particularly important because of its hieroglyphic text, unfortunately, badly eroded. Near Monument 1, another carved monument, Monument 3, was found, also broken, belonging to the “Jaguar Head Tradition” and investigated by Paredes Umaña (2012) as part of his doctoral dissertation for the University of Pennsylvania. Monument 3 is a zoomorphic head carved in the round. Subsequent excavations at the base of Structure EIII-3 by Ito (Ito et al. 2015) recovered Monuments 50 and 51, also assignable to the Jaguar Head Tradition. Stratigraphy and ceramics date these monuments to the Late or Terminal Preclassic (Sharer 1978: 67, 69; compare Anderson 1978: 155, 165). Both the Miraflores carving style of Monument 1 and the few glyphs that could be read (a winal sign, the most secure identification) bear close resemblances to the large throne monument from the Southern Maya Region, Kaminaljuyu Stela 10 (Kaplan 1995). Although Chalchuapa remains the best-known site in Salvadoran archaeology, since these first efforts, investigations have been undertaken largely by Salvadoran scholars with sponsorship from the Japanese mission (Ohi 2000). In 2012, based on monumental sculpture distributions, Paredes Umaña described a Preclassic Jaguar Head Core Zone, comprising about 3,000 km2 in western El Salvador, which constituted a regional process of

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social and political evolution that led to the establishment of a settlement hierarchy for polities whose leaders carved and displayed what have been termed “jaguar head” monuments. Chalchuapa was most likely the political center for the tradition (Paredes Umaña 2012: 211–212). Santa Leticia, Ataco, and the Jaguar Head Tradition By the end of the 1960s, and along with archaeological studies of ceramics and architecture in general, art historians were starting to turn their attention to the Southern Maya Region. Carved-in-the-round sculptures from Monte Alto received particular focus. At the same time, projects at Santa Leticia, at 1,400 m above sea level in the western Salvadoran Highlands, revealed a village occupation dating to 400–100 BC, which was later punctuated by a large construction episode (a terrace), dating to circa 150 BC–AD 200. Santa Leticia extends over 0.5 km2 and comprises a large pyramidal structure and several minor structures placed along a hillside. Three colossal potbelly stone sculptures (Monuments 1, 2, and 3) with strong similarities to the Monte Alto potbellies were found facing west on a north-south axis atop the terrace. In addition, two more sculptures of the Jaguar Head Tradition were discovered, Monuments 4 and 5 (Demarest 1986: 17); Paredes Umaña 2012: 72). Speculations since the 1960s about the origin of the potbelly tradition, based on size and the relative crudeness of the carvings, suggested a preOlmec origin for them, a matter that was not clearly resolved because stratigraphic and ceramic associations for the monuments at Monte Alto were lacking. Later radiocarbon and associated ceramic dating of the Santa Leticia potbellies to circa 500 BC–AD 100 resolved the dispute, placing them in post-Olmec developments. These investigations also refined the Preclassic sequence developed by Sharer (1978) at Chalchuapa, particularly with respect to the very widespread Usulután tradition, and furthered the concept of two ceramic spheres of interaction between western El Salvador and the Guatemalan Highlands (Bishop et al. 1989). A fortuitous find at nearby Ataco, 1,250– 1,300 m above sea level, and only 12 km west of Santa Leticia, contributed to the picture of regional interactions (Paredes Umaña and Escamilla 2008). Ataco was mapped and excavated in 2009–2011 by Paredes Umaña. The site’s main group resembles the main group at Monte Alto, with a very similar arrangement of buildings and the tallest pyramidal structure 12 m high. A set of seven radiocarbon dates provided evidence for the rise of the site by cal 360 BC–AD 91. Prior to a formal archaeological excavation program,

Figure 1.8. Monuments from Ataco, El Salvador: a–d) Stela 1; e–g) jaguar heads, “Jaguar Head Tradition.” (F. Paredes Umaña)

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a deposit near the southwest corner of Mound 2, excavated by municipal workers, was found to contain 12 stone monuments, including a square throne and the lower portion of an extraordinary carved stela (Monument 1), depicting a standing human figure in the Late Preclassic Southern Maya Region tradition of ruler portraits (Paredes Umaña 2012: 122, 127, 181) (see Figure 1.5). The Highlands and Southeastern Guatemala Excavations by Sharer and Sedat at El Portón, in the Baja Verapaz, aimed at recovering information about the social complexity of sites in the Preclassic Guatemalan Highlands. Notably, they discovered El Portón Monument 1, another Southern Maya Region carved stela with an early hieroglyphic inscription (Sharer and Sedat 1987). The monument was badly eroded due to the quality of the rock, but a single column of hieroglyphs was intact. The proposed 400 BC date has not been universally accepted (Inomata et al. 2014: 396). Simultaneous with and after Penn State’s work at Kaminaljuyu and the University of Pennsylvania’s at Chalchuapa, several French teams mounted regional survey projects; these included excavations in the departments of El Quiche, Alta Verapaz, and Baja Verapaz, at La Lagunita, Nebaj, which Dieseldorff visited much earlier, and smaller centers. Ichon (1996) determined that most if not all of the small sites they studied had Middle and Late Preclassic occupations underneath Classic ones (1996: 43). Regional survey findings combined with household archaeology provided comparative data applicable to small-site social, economic, and ritual or religious adaptations dated by 14C from circa 730–210 BC. Early and Middle Preclassic Ceramic phases “corresponded perfectly” with the coastal Conchas and the Kaminaljuyu Las Charcas phases (1996: 56). Interestingly, no Preclassic occupations were found at Nebaj (Becquelin et al. 2001: 211), perhaps providing support for the “Chicanel expansions” (compare Clark and Pye 2011: 42, Clark et al. 2000: 459), which reached their limits later and well north of the highlands and Pacific coast; these expanding lowlands pottery distributions were theorized to represent Lowland Maya conquest of Olmec territories and sites. Reconnaissance in eastern Guatemala by Ichon and Grignon at 42 Preclassic sites, large and small, detailed settlement patterns and site density in the departments of Zacapa, Chiquimula, Jalapa, Jutiapa, and Santa Rosa. Large centers were settled near rivers, and smaller ones at higher elevations; edifice construction was of packed earth with stone support. These Preclassic societies,

64 · Water, Cacao, and the Early Maya of Chocolá

for whom ball courts were rare, found their way to local obsidian sources (Cerro Chayal, San Carlos) and better established obsidian workshops (El Chagüite a notable example, Ichon and Grignon n.d.: 56), while participating in a regional exchange of ideas, expressed through a participation in the Providencia and Miraflores ceramic spheres (Bishop et al. 1989). Other Research In 1999 Estrada-Belli’s survey of southeastern Santa Rosa was the first regional GIS approach to the lower portion of southeastern Guatemala and resulted in additions to the monumental corpus of the Pacific coast and to a greater knowledge of settlement patterns. In part, this confirmed Ichon’s work to the north and provided evidence of Early Preclassic settlements dating to circa 1300 BC. Also, more was learned about the local growth of centers such as Nueve Cerros, a site that developed in the Middle Preclassic and grew in the Late Preclassic to be a production center of Fine Red Pottery that was distributed west and east, reaching both Kaminaljuyu and Chalchuapa. In addition, Juan Pedro Laporte (until his untimely death in 2010), as well as Bárbara Arroyo and a few others in Guatemala, have been diligent in making available information from rescue projects and “gray literature” reports through the continued effort, since 1989, of the publications of the proceedings of the Guatemalan symposium.37 Furthermore, Shook’s work on the south coast listed 43 sites for Suchitepéquez, and the painstaking work of Byron Lemus, regional inspector for IDAEH, has yielded new ones. The Southern Maya Region’s Continuing Enigma and the Creation of PACH

Within this context of research Kaplan created PACH. Despite the efforts in the Southern Maya Region described above, a synthetic picture of this region remained elusive at the time PACH initiated its work. In addition to the Pacific region, including the piedmont and adjacent highlands, which continued to be much less explored than other areas in Mesoamerican archaeology, other parts of southern Guatemala and western El Salvador had been investigated only very selectively. Previous to PACH, archaeology specifically at Chocolá was limited to Burkitt’s intermittent excavations and artifact acquisitions in the 1920s, and the brief visit by Shook and John Graham in 1978. Kaplan’s creation of PACH originally was motivated by questions about Kaminaljuyu that

Table 1.1. Sites in Suchitepéquez and elsewhere Site

Municipio

Y

X

1

Chocolá

San Pablo Jocopilas

1616509.543

669293.8777

2

Panamá (Finca)

San Pablo Jocopilas

1620309.55

663493.8618

3

Montoya

San Pablo Jocopilas

1620309.551

665493.8667

4

Cabán

Chicacao

1620309.553

671493.8814

5

Cuyotenango

Cuyotenango

1609909.52

653393.8415

6

La Máquina

Cuyotenango

1590909.473

656793.8581

7

Las Palmeras

Cuyotenango

1594709.482

654693.8512

8

Trapiche Grande

Cuyotenango

1601509.499

653393.845

9

Oquendo

Mazatenango

1614309.535

663593.8647

10

Las Delicias

Mazatenango

1560409.397

661393.8834

11

Don Carmelino

Mazatenango

1610309.523

658493.8539

12

San José

Mazatenango

1610309.523

659493.8564

13

Salinas Sinaloa

Mazatenango

1570309.423

662393.8815

14

Odilia (El Martillo)

Mazatenango

1570409.42

656493.8662

15

Zanjón Negro

Mazatenango

1570309.42

655493.8637

16

Patulul

Patulul

1596209.507

699093.9617

17

Saltana

Patulul

1591909.494

693593.9503

18

Cocales

Patulul

1591709.493

693593.9504

19

1620309.548

659493.8521

20

Cerrito de Don Gabino Pueblo Nuevo (Palenque) Peña de Popo Pueblo Nuevo

1620409.548

658493.8496

21

Santo Tomás

Río Bravo

1591009.485

681693.9208

22

Variedades

Río Bravo

1591909.49

686193.9317

23

Río Bravo

1580309.449

662393.877

Río Bravo

1580409.45

664493.8823

25

Cerrito Chiquistepéque (Salinas) San Francisco El Retoque Samayac

Samayac

1612509.531

665793.871

26

Palo Gordo

1602409.51

673093.8937

27

San Vicente

1604509.515

672993.8925

28

San Bernardino

San Antonio Suchitepéquez San Antonio Suchitepéquez San Bernardino

1608409.521

665593.8723

29

San Francisco Zapotitlán

San Francisco Zapotitlán

1613509.531

659293.8545

24

66 · Water, Cacao, and the Early Maya of Chocolá

Site

Municipio

Y

X

30

San José El Idolo

San José El Idolo

1599209.5

669193.8855

31

San Juan Bautista

San Juan Bautista

1594309.501

695693.9543

32

El Izote (Santa Clara)

San Lorenzo

1600409.499

660493.8632

33

La Peña

San Lorenzo

1600309.498

659493.8608

34

Sin Nombre

San Lorenzo

1590309.473

659393.8649

35

Turingia

San Miguel Panám

1601909.51

676693.9029

36

San Rafael Panám

Santa Barbara

1603509.52

688693.9319

37

Pradera

Santa Barbara

1589809.486

688393.9383

38

659493.8607

1590309.476

666393.8826

1570309.424

664393.8867

41

Salinas Altamira

1570309.422

661393.8789

42

Salinas Morelia

1570409.423

661393.8789

43

Don Chibete (El Armado)

Santo Domingo Suchitepéquez Santo Domingo Suchitepéquez Santo Domingo Suchitepéquez Santo Domingo Suchitepéquez Santo Domingo Suchitepéquez Santo Domingo Suchitepéquez

1600409.498

40

Tahuexco (Centro de Salud) El Cristo (Santa Elena Conacaste) Laguna Verde

1590309.476

665493.8803

39

Source: PACH. Note: This table combines 23 sites in Suchitepéquez (Barrientos Q. 2010), derived from sites listed by Shook (Shook Archive, Universidad del Valle), with others identified and provided to the authors by Byron Lemus, regional inspector for the Guatemalan Institute of Anthropology and History.

he had been unable to answer for his doctoral dissertation. As the 2003 season progressed, the focus pivoted to include two major emphases, water control and cacao. Accordingly, we followed in the footsteps of others studying long-distance trade and the rise of Maya civilization (for example, Fowler et al. 1989; earlier, Rathje 1971, 1973, Tourtellot and Sabloff 1972), and, as mentioned, have thus far emphasized a materialist bias in our own investigations at Chocolá. If and when research continues, a more holistic approach is envisioned as more and finer-grained evidence is obtained. Beyond testing the thermometer theory and providing more detail for the culture history of the region, to build a better picture of the extraordinary ancient city it appears to have been, we have continually asked ourselves

Introduction and Historical Context · 67

what more might be determined in order to explain, rather than merely describe, the dynamic events and processes of the Southern Region. Notes 1. From Burkitt’s and our own work at Mound 2, it appears that original heights of structures may have been greater than modern measurements of mounds indicate them to be; see Chapter 4. 2. Many discussions and debates in various formally theoretically inclined schools of thought about cultural evolution continue to be debated; for example, one recent proposition is “collective action theory,” as “collective action” may apply to early societies (see, for example, Blanton and Fargher 2008), and which would be contrasted with hierarchical—class—ones. 3. A revision to the Kaminaljuyu chronology (Inomata et al. 2014) indicates high ideological developments in the southern area took place later in the Late Preclassic Period than previously thought. In general, we accept this revision; however, considering not only ideological but material accomplishments as well, we are not ready to abandon the prospect of significant influences from the Southern Maya Region on developments elsewhere in the Maya world. See below for more discussion. We place “king” in quotation marks to indicate that too-ready usage of the term, we believe, may have impeded analysis of political institutions in other studies of Maya and Mesoamerican rulership (compare Kaplan 1995, 1999). 4. Despite much effort (for example, Feinman and Marcus 1998), definition of the “state” remains beyond consensus, in part because of subjective or qualitative characterizations. Another term, like “king” and “state,” often used without consensual definition, “city” (M. Smith 2009, Fox 1977) as opposed to “urban,” is usually differentiated by the ideal-material/qualitative-quantitative dichotomy. 5. Hansen reported a stela at El Mirador in the Mirador Basin, northern Petén, bearing traces of glyphs and arguing for a date of 500–400 BC (Stela 2, Hansen 1991); Sharer and Traxler point out that these dates are not universally accepted; in addition, no Middle Preclassic ruler tombs have been found there (2006: 214; compare Inomata and L. Henderson 2016: 467). 6. We are, of course, indebted to the many Mayanists working over many years in the lowlands for profound insights gained into Classic Maya epigraphy, rulership and its ideology, dynastic history, and the political relationships between polities. We would not be able to propose our hypotheses without reference to their work. Because of the multidisciplinary nature of many lowland projects, other insights have been gained from household archaeology, osteology, and other specialist work. 7. In an excellent paper, Hansen details the architecture and site design of these giant centers (Hansen 1998). 8. Precedents to the application of this concept in southeastern Mesoamerica and Central America are by Fowler (1987) and Gasco (1987a) and, more recently, by Carmack and Salgado González (2006). Discussions of world-system theory applied to ancient Mesoamerica in general appear in Kepecs and Kohl (2003) and Smith and Berdan (2003).

68 · Water, Cacao, and the Early Maya of Chocolá

9. In 2006 PACH stopped its work because of threats from two groups: evangelical Christian pastors with ambitions to build large churches, and a few wealthy families receiving remesas from the U.S.; for the latter, these funds were then used to enlarge their houses or build new ones that destroyed mounds. 10. A category very much alive in the 21st century, Ladino identity in Guatemala is a generic designation involved with social relations of denial and exclusion, and, in effect, denotes anyone or anything native but not Indian. Guzmán Böckler (1970) theorized that Ladinos are a by-product of colonialism and its economic relations of production. As an alienated class, cast in a dialectic relation with the Indian, Ladinos emerged as intermediaries between Spanish-born elites and Indians. 11. Transcription of the debate between Severo Martínez Peláez and Robert Carmack at the Universidad de San Carlos de Guatemala, Instituto de Investigaciones Históricas Antropológicas y Arqueológicas. 12. https://www.usip.org/publications/1997/02/truth-commission-guatemala. 13. Brinton also contributed early and, for his time, insightful studies of the Maya calendar (1893) and of Maya hieroglyphic writing (1895)—for example, his speculations on the phonetics of Maya writing. 14. See Beaudry-Corbett and Hardy 2000 for specifics about Karl Sapper, Walter Lehman and Franz Termer. 15. Available online at http://archive.org/stream/mexicancentralam00bowd/mexicancentralam00bowd_divu.text; Charles Bowditch supervised the translation of the papers from the German. 16. Regina Wagner (1991, 2001) has chronicled the story of Germans involved in the Guatemalan coffee enterprise. Calderón Tobar describes the postcolonial history of Guatemala as represented at Chocolá (Calderón Tobar 2000). 17. Kaqchikel. 18. Instead of the “southern area” or “region,” which would include the Pacific coastal plains and the Guatemalan piedmont, whatever references that were made to developments outside of the lowlands were to the highlands, in other words, Kaminaljuyu. 19. One of the great strengths of the Simposio has been the breadth and detail of the paper sessions and the rich data derived from reports from both lowland and highland sites. In 2005, a biannual meeting for archaeologists working in Central America was inaugurated at the National Museum in San Salvador, marking further growth of locally trained Central American scholars. 20. An example is claims of far too early dates for Lubaantun; an example now may be to be too-early claims for the Mirador Basin. 21. In 1942 he also visited El Baúl. 22. This term used, for example, by Sharer, in his Chalchuapa report (1978). In addition to “Protoclassic,” “Terminal Preclassic” and “Epiclassic” are often employed by Maya scholars but without clear distinctions or justifications as to their utility. Accordingly, we use them sparingly and only when their use is commonly accepted in specific contexts of discussion. 23. Coe was the first to date Stela 1 correctly (Coe 1957; compare Parsons 1986: 61); to that point, most Mayanists had fallen into line with Thompson’s (1941) erroneous rejection

Introduction and Historical Context · 69

of Coe’s dating because acceptance would have admitted the stela predated all lowland Long Count–dated sculpture. 24. Maya scholars refer to Maya Long Count–computed “cycles” of time based on the “Maya ages”; Cycle 7, according to the Goodman-Martínez-Thompson correlation (or GMT), virtually universally accepted today, in Gregorian dates spanned from June 3, 354 BC to September 4, AD 41. 25. Chinchilla Mazariegos (2015) disputes the reading of the baktun coefficient, and dates the monument to Cycle 8. He adds, “The shape of the stela is very close to the welldated Stela 5, as is the design that shows two standing characters flanking an inscribed column, and a paramount being overlooking them from above. Photographs taken with raking light show traces of the exfoliated central dot that completed the Cycle 8 numerical notation.” 26. Because El Chayal spreads over 300 km2, control by Kaminaljuyu’s exploitation of its obsidian may have emphasized manufacture of macrocores for long-distance trade; however, “the procurement of raw material, transport of material to workshops in Kaminaljuyu and elsewhere in the Valley of Guatemala, pochteca-like merchants leading trading missions far afield, secondary, tertiary and smaller sites serving as regional or local distributors, compensation to Kaminaljuyu from recipients, bureaucracies to manage the trade, and associated cooperative and/or coercive activities,” remain speculative (Kaplan 2011a: 273). 27. “Miraflores” is the name of a onetime large finca whose lands incorporated some of the ancient city; it was used for a ceramics phase temporally associated with Late Preclassic Kaminaljuyu until Shook and Popenoe de Hatch’s work refined the Kaminaljuyu ceramic chronology (Kaplan 2002a: 318–319). 28. http://bmaf.org/node/609. 29. A work in progress by Kaplan is updating Shook’s map, employing overlays of previous city maps showing undeveloped areas before the modern city encroached, in which archaeological sites, including those identified by Shook in his notes, would be interpolated. 30. Some of Kaplan’s interpretations have been challenged (Doering and Collins 2010). While, for the record, he accepts correction on one—the identification of what he suggested were modern construction hammer marks as anciently made—he stands by his reading of the narrative scene on the front or recto side that the figures on either side of the throned figures represent captives for sacrifice, in part because of their having been denuded, characteristic of Maya depictions of victims destined for ritual sacrifice. 31. In several papers, Kaplan has written about Miraflores ideology (for example, 1995, 2000, 2002a, 2011b). 32. Perhaps complicating a better understanding was the Takalik Abaj project’s decision, until fairly recently, not to employ chronometric dating. 33. Lacadena (2010) outlines problems related to early scripts and languages in the Southern Maya Region. 34. Date published as: Beta-244727, 2450 +/- 40 BP, 13C/12C Ratio -24.4 o/oo, *2460 +/- 40 BP; 2 Sigma Cal BC 770- 410 95%. 35. See http://www.famsi.org/reports/02087/02087Arroy001.pdf:_21.

70 · Water, Cacao, and the Early Maya of Chocolá

36. The masks on Structure 5D-Sub1-1st at Tikal, excavated by C. Jones (W. Coe 1990) are typical, with other examples at Cerros, Cival, Cuello, Lamanai, San Bartolo, Uaxactun, El Mirador, and other sites in the Mirador Basin. 37. Available online at the Asociación Tikal website, http://www.asociaciontikal .com/v2/.

2 Physical Environment and Cultural Ecology The spectacular grandeur of this landscape defies description. (McBryde 1947: 6)

The remains of the ancient center of Chocolá lie between 600 and 950 m above sea level at the upper limits of the Pacific piedmont, on the border between the Guatemalan departments of Suchitepéquez and Sololá. Located in the highlands rather than the piedmont but a mere 18 km virtually due east of the ruins and the modern town, the nearest great landmark is the Lago de Atitlán, a testament itself to the dynamic natural processes in play in the physical environment of the upper piedmont and highlands. In addition to very high rainfall and rich soils, high-discharge rivers with many caves dotting their steep banks, numerous streams, and natural springs water a diverse flora and fauna, as well as a very varied insect life. Chocolá’s wider physiographic and geographic setting had great impacts on the cultural ecology and also on the particular ancient achievements of the people who settled and thrived there. Physical Geography

Mesoamerica The term Middle America has signified not only what later was distinguished as “Mesoamerica” (Kirchhoff 1943), but a somewhat larger area of highly diverse but rough geological unity. Middle America’s volcanic uplifts are separate from the Rocky Mountain chains that stretch from Alaska to the Andes. The mountainous regions and numerous volcanoes between the termini of these chains to the north and south belong to a series of ranges and subterranean bridges that rise in the east as the islands of the West Indies and are known as the Antillean Mountain System, itself characterized by “crustal folds of late geological date, [which] runs more or less east-west,

Figure 2.1. Several rivers surround Chocolá. Lake Atitlán lies to the northeast. Modern towns are represented by black dots. (PACH)

Physical Environment and Cultural Ecology · 73

instead of north-south as do the Andean system and the Rocky Mountain system” (Ricketson 1940: 11). Guatemala The more local geographic area of focus of this monograph includes the southern highlands, Pacific piedmont, and coastal plains of Guatemala. This subregion is distinguished from the southern lowlands to the north, which include the northern Alta Verapaz and the department of Petén in Guatemala as well as Belize and most of Chiapas and southern Yucatán in Mexico, and from a third general division of the Maya area, the northern lowlands, which are entirely in Mexico and which include central and northern Yucatán, all of Quintana Roo and Campeche, and parts of Tabasco. A fourth partition, southeastern, sometimes called “peripheral” or “frontier” Mesoamerica, includes El Salvador and part of Honduras; although it is distinguished from the southern highlands and Pacific piedmont and plains, it is often associated with it. Within the southern Guatemalan subregion there are five subdivisions, divided on the basis of geological and climatological continuities and, in varying degrees through time from the Preclassic until the end of the Postclassic, by artifacts or traits, that is, cultural material diagnostics (if not necessarily group affiliation); we distinguish “southern area” from “Southern Maya Region,” the latter encompassing more territory and referring to what scholars define as a distinct cultural area (Love and Kaplan 2011; see Chapter 1). These five subdivisions are: (1) the eastern lowlands, including the Guatemalan departments of Chiquimula, Zacapa, and Jalapa; (2) the southern coast and lower piedmont, including the Guatemalan departments of Jutiapa, Santa Rosa, Escuintla, and Retalhuleu; (3) the western highlands, in the departments of Quiché, San Marcos, Huehuetenango, Totonicapán, and Quetzaltenango; (4) the northern highlands, which include El Progreso, Izabal, Baja Verapaz, and most of Alta Verapaz; and (5) the central highlands and upper piedmont. Within this last subdivision are the departments of Guatemala, Sacatepéquez, Chimaltenango, and Suchitepéquez, in which lies Chocolá. Felix Webster McBryde, author of a well-regarded cultural geography of southern Guatemala, divides the coastal plains into three parts: “the narrower western section . . . called Costa Cuca; the wider central part, Costa Grande, and the narrow eastern Lowlands, Costa de Guazacapán” (1947: 5). The piedmont, also referred to as the “Boca Costa,” extends between the rugged Sierra Madre range to the north and the less populated coastal

74 · Water, Cacao, and the Early Maya of Chocolá

plains to the south, and from Jutiapa and the densely populated, almost completely ladinoized Motagua River Valley in the east to the department of San Marcos in the west, where many of the indigenous Maya still live. Guatemalan Piedmont The piedmont is a relatively narrow strip, encompassing about 8,000 km2 in Guatemala (Higbee 1947: 179), which ascends relatively sharply from the coastal plain to the highlands, from 90 to 300 m at its narrowest, to 1,370 to 2500 m at its widest. The piedmont is divided into an upper and lower part. Also citing McBryde (1947, map 6), Parsons (1967: 23) classifies the piedmont climate as Amw”I in the Köppen system: “A meaning tropical, being more than 64.4o F, m standing for monsoon, that is, despite a dry period in the winter, enough rain is received to foster tropical rain forest vegetation, w” referring to the dry winter period, plus an additional short dry period (called the canícula or veranillo) in late July or August, i meaning isothermal, or little annual variation in monthly temperature means.” This distinct wet and dry seasonality has obvious implications for agriculture. Several rapid, high-discharge rivers interrupt the quite dissected or hilly-to-flat plateau piedmont topography; at times, deeply cut riverbeds create dramatic gorges. McBryde comments on the effect these river gorges make on human movement: “The Pacific versant here is ribbed with narrow ridges that divide innumerable straight, parallel rivulets, swift-flowing, sharply entrenched, often deep, so that in traveling along the piedmont one must be constantly ascending and descending at frequent intervals” (McBryde 1947: 5). The combination of rich, deep, alluvial topsoils and very high rainfall contributes to making the upper piedmont around Chocolá almost ideal, not only for a diverse subtropical agriculture, but also for various temperate-region montane crops. At the same time, frequent flooding often caused by Pacific hurricanes, resulting in washed-out bridges and temporary isolation of communities, deprived of food and drinking water, can seem the natural world’s way of resisting taming for human purposes. In this setting, the ancient city of Chocolá rose and thrived largely because of a palaeoenvironment that, in many respects, resembled the natural environment today, and in which very productive farms have contributed to maintaining agriculture as the largest sector in the Guatemalan economy for much of its post-Conquest history.1 Notably, one of the highest rainfalls in Central America—in the upper piedmont, 5,000–6,000 mm of rain per year (Portig 1965: 70, fig. 1; compare Pedreros 2009: 21, fig. 132)—caused by

Figure 2.2. Guatemalan agricultural regions. Chocolá—represented by the black dot—sits centrally in the upper Guatemalan piedmont. (PACH)

Figure 2.3. Annual rainfall at Chocolá (adapted from Portig 1965, fig. 1). (PACH)

Physical Environment and Cultural Ecology · 77

the Pacific-moistened warmer air of the coastal plains meeting the cooler air of the highlands, falls on soils greatly enriched by volcanic deposition. Portig describes the piedmont rainfall as part of a “non-monsoonal pattern.” Correcting McBryde and Sapper, whose assertions much earlier that “monsoons,” with seasonal reversals of wind accompanying rain, characterized rainfall in southwestern Guatemala, Portig cited leeward wind directions, which prevail year-round at both lower and higher altitudes (74). Within the immediate proximity of the ancient city and the modern town, and separate from climax forest and forest-cleared pastures, is a very small remnant pristine forest wetland, called “La Montañita” by the contemporary villagers, with abundant and diverse flora and fauna characteristic of a subtropical jungle. During Preclassic times, this forest wetland likely would have extended seamlessly to its natural environmental zone boundaries. Reduced to a fragile remnant patch, it is threatened today with erasure by ever-increasing Third World devolution. This threat takes the form of hastily and shoddily erected shopping malls, urban-sprawl slum and shanty housing extending from the nearby largest city, Mazatenango, and other developments that reflect private or corporate commercial interests functioning with little governmental oversight that might otherwise seek to protect it. Perhaps its only guardians are the agricultural cooperatives, which keep the immediate region “rural” instead of “developed.” Falling regularly and predictably each mid-afternoon, the rains begin in May and end in October; peak rainfall is from June to September. Accompanying temperatures vary essentially between two seasons, roughly equally divided between a very wet, warm summer (May–October) and a dry, hot winter (November–April). The two short dry periods of a few weeks each interrupting the rains, a “big” and “little” canícula, a “relative drought” (Alvarez Sánchez and Becerra 1996: 658), occur elsewhere in Central America and also in Mexico. Along with very high rainfall, the many rivers and streams provide natural irrigation for a wide variety of cultigens. These grow in such great export quantities that, principally because of its coffee exports to Europe, the German plantation at Chocolá became one of the largest coffee farms in Guatemala, including not only Guardiola’s finca but the immediately adjacent lands that later became their own entities,3 along with Chocolá. In 1900, the Hamburg-incorporated Companía de Plantaciones “Chocolá” bought 56 caballerias of adjacent pastureland on Finca Madre Mia, today in the Santo Tomas Perdido District, the municipality of Santo Tomás la Unión, Suchitepéquez. With 500,000 mature trees, this plantation

78 · Water, Cacao, and the Early Maya of Chocolá

produced between 7,000 and 13,000 sacks of coffee annually; in the banner year of 1894/95, the farm produced 17,000 sacks (Wagner 2001: 127). Postcolonial Processes and Physical Geography German operation of the Chocolá plantation contributed to the great transformation of the physical and cultural landscape of southern Guatemala begun after the Conquest but, most particularly, which occurred from the nineteenth century to today. During the postcolonial regimes, as their owners and managers adapted to the geography and climate of southern Guatemala, commercial export agribusinesses cleared forests for coffee monocropping, built processing buildings and worker housing, constructed roads for both rail and wheel, and manipulated water systems. By the mid-1860s, huge tracts of former farmland, and previously “abandoned” (baldío) communal lands in Guatemala, were in coffee production (Cambranes 1996; see Chapter 3 below). After the Liberal Revolution of 1871, which sought, under the name of “reform,” to develop the country’s social and economic resources in order to establish a modern state, coffee became Guatemala’s dominant export, which it remains today (Cambranes 1996, Wagner 2001: 85, V. Adams 2006: 2). The piedmont’s rolling, dissected terrain easily accommodates both the great fincas and the many individually managed smaller coffee fincas, introduced into Guatemala as early as 1778 and evolving into large plantations by 1842–1843 (Wagner 2001: 29 passim). At Chocolá, many parcelas, or small plots, of coffee—called cafetales—grow on flat tracts, but also on top of archaeological mounds and on their slopes. In addition, the piedmont plateau of the town is ideal for large-scale cultivation of cacao, although the altitude of the ancient city is at the upper extreme of the tree’s normal range (compare Millon 1955a: 14–21). Traders carrying cacao beans and, early on, perhaps nursling plants, would have followed exchange routes running south (coastal), south-north and westeast; to the north and east, these would have risen through steep mountain passes (see Lowe et al. 1982: 44–45). We cannot determine when or even how what we would consider substantive precapitalist trade emerged from the social, cultural, and historical matrix in Guatemala and somehow led to the accumulation of wealth by polities, communities, and/or family groups. However, we must assume such wealth accumulation occurred, and that alongside, or as part of, this process began the large-scale transformation of the land increasingly for human purposes. Coastal as well as piedmont groups likely circulated their

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Figure 2.4. The large and almost intact Mound 1 looming over the center of the modern town is located at UTM 669260 E, 1616530 N, or 14.617 latitude and -91.433 longitude. In the foreground is a huerta (house garden) with some cash-crop coffee plants. Photo circa 1977. (Donated to PACH by John Graham)

products first by gaining the altitude of the highlands and then proceeding west, north, and east (Parsons and Price 1971, Lee and Navarrete 1978, Sharer 1974). To the south, trade would have brought the ancient Chocolenses to the coastal plains; while the piedmont’s principal crops, since the Conquest and in modern times, have been cacao and coffee, the plains, with a distinctly different ecology, still host equivalently great export monocropping, today primarily sugar cane, rubber, and palm oil. Tectonics The piedmont has deficits as well as benefits for human life, true today as in ancient times. Today, as in the past, the advantages provided by the rich soils and extreme rainfall are countered by the constant threat of floods and also of severe events triggered by the crustal plates in motion against one another. Just as the decisions of the inhabitants of the ancient city to adapt their actions and behavior must have been calculated to exploit the water and soil resources, other decisions in the ideological sphere must have been intended to try to control natural events beyond human prediction and capability otherwise. In one of the most dramatic topographies in the ancient Maya world, the southern Sierra Madre range (also called the Sierra Madre de Chiapas), the largest mountain range in Central America, crosses southern

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Figure 2.5. The piedmont and Lake Atitlán as seen from Tajumulco. From left to right are the volcanos Agua, Acatenango, Fuego, Atitlán, San Pedro, Cerro Quemado, and Santa María. Tolimán is obscured by Atitlán. (PACH/Mathias Geck)

Guatemala from northwest to southeast through the departments of San Marcos, Quetzaltenango, Totonicapán, Sololá, Chimaltenango, Guatemala, and Jalapa. To the north is the continental divide. Great tectonic activity has occurred in the southern highlands and in southeastern Mesoamerica as a whole, and the effects on all life in southern Guatemala have been catastrophic. Tectonics have long been considered fundamental to understanding the human adaptations or cultural ecology of these areas (Gamio 1926–1927) and the punctuated equilibria of human developments in them. The Sierra Madre range was created from the subduction of the Cocos Plate beneath the Caribbean Plate and the southern part of the North American Plate. The mountains form the main divide between the watersheds in Central America and also the boundary for rivers flowing into the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. The onshore continuation of the Cayman Trench, also known as the Bartlett Deep, is the Motagua Fault, a left lateral-moving transform fault cutting across southern Guatemala as part of the tectonic boundary between the North American Plate and the Caribbean Plate; the Motagua Fault continues along the Pacific coast of Mexico and through the southernmost tip of Oaxaca until it meets the Middle America Trench near Acapulco.4 Earthquakes have accompanied the ongoing geological formation process in Guatemala. Periodically during the fieldwork, PACH staff and volunteers felt tremors in the town. The many tectonic episodes are due to the separating plates in the Cayman Trench (Donnelly 1989: 313). Extending westward from Haiti through the Caribbean, where it reaches its greatest depth (4,500–7,600 m) the rift lies immediately south of Puerto Rico.

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Closely approximating the course of the Motagua River near Salamá in the southern plain of Baja Verapaz, it passes some 50 km to the north of Guatemala City. In recent modern times—December 1917 and January 1918—Guatemala City was “shaken by a series of severe earthquakes” (Saville 1918); and in 1976, 26,000 people died in Guatemala City alone from a quake measured at 7.5 Mw. In addition to earthquakes, geologists have long been impressed by the tremendous amount of volcanism in the Guatemalan Highlands (for example, Bryan 1945: 168–70; and see Kidder et al. 1946: 5). In 1901 at Chocolá, the eruption of the Santa Maria volcano and the earthquakes that followed severely damaged the farm (Wagner 2001: 127). Although not considered part of the physiography of the piedmont, but rather of the highlands to the north, several volcanoes, also the geological products of tectonic faults, are near enough for eruptions to have had and continue to have great impact on it. Part of a chain stretching from Chiapas, Mexico, into southwestern and central Guatemala south to Nicaragua, Costa Rica, and Panama, several presently or recently active stratovolcanoes stretch from well east of the Valley of Guatemala into Mexico. In the later Pleistocene or early Holocene Epoch, a massive eruption created the great caldera that became the Lago de Atitlán. The Lago de Atitlán sits in the bowl of the Atitlán III caldera, formed about 84,000 years ago, along with the volcanoes around it (Drexler et al., 1980), when a mega-volcano, possibly of the maar type,5 erupted. In 1773, the first capital of Guatemala, Antigua, was destroyed by a mudslide caused by an eruption of the Volcán de Agua (“Water Volcano”), hence its name. Extending from western El Salvador in the east to Tacaná and Tajamulco in the west, the latter the largest volcano in the group, the Southern Sierra Madre range includes the highest peaks in Central America. Three andesitic stratovolcanoes in this range dating to the Early Holocene Epoch loom close to the east of Chocolá, Atitlán (3,535 m), Santo Tomás (3,542 m), and Tolimán (3,158 m). Testament to the continuing activity, a lava flow that entered the Lago de Atitlán from the parasitic lava dome of Cerro de Oro on the northern flank was considered by Newhall et al. (1987) to be fewer than a few thousand years old based on the thickness of sediment accumulated on the sublacustral part of the flow. Clustering around the Lago de Atitlán, 30 km to the east, the conical peaks of Atitlán, Tolimán, San Pedro, and Santo Tomás, with its most recent peak, Zunil, are clearly visible from Chocolá. Atitlán, looming nearest, last erupted in 1853. Two other Holocene stratovolcanoes, Santa Maria rising

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almost directly north of the town, and Fuego, visible as a smaller peak, also figure on the Chocolá horizon; both last erupted in 2013. When Santa Maria erupted in 1902, in addition to damaging the Chocolá farm during German ownership, it also destroyed large parts of the city of Quetzaltenango. Pedology and Edaphology A deep nutrient-rich topsoil at Chocolá is formed by a heavy annual detritional accumulation from profound vegetal growth and extraordinary rainfall. As mentioned above, contributing significantly to enriching the soils of Chocolá and its neighboring ancient cities—the modern pueblos and aldeas—is volcanic alluvia in the form of not only wind-and-rain driven talus, but also explosive deposits from the shelf of volcanoes in the Southern Sierra Madre range. While “only one crop a year is assured” in the Guatemalan piedmont (Odell 1982: 50), several domesticates are harvested at least twice a year in the huertas or house gardens, and maize and other crops grown for surplus sale have at least two harvests. Within the upper strata below topsoil, and particularly at higher levels of the upper piedmont in which lie volcanic breccias, one finds constituents natural to an area represented by igneous rocks formed from the cooling of volcanic magma. Crystalline parts of the rock are classified as glassy or cryptocrystalline alkalis and silicates. By composition, the igneous rocks can be divided into tholeiitic, alkaline, and calc-alkaline. The harder igneous rocks—andesites, dacites, rhyolites, and basalts—correspond to the Tertiary and Upper Quaternary periods (Molina and Valdés 2003: 146–47). The result of these constituents in the pedological matrix is agriculturally conducive drainage with some pooling caused by scattered pockets of subsurface clay and taxcal, the local name for an iron-rich, waxy, flaking, granular amalgam with water-impermeable qualities; it may be associated with compacted, pumiceous, ashy subsoils. Taxcal was used as a sealant in the ancient city’s water conduits (see Chapter 7), large lenses of which were also employed as stabilizers in the interior of Chocolá’s early earthen structures (Chapter 4). River Systems and Natural Springs The wider context of the drainage from the western Sierra Madre and the volcano belt is marked by several narrow but rapidly flowing arteries directed south-southwest through the piedmont and the coastal plains, emptying into the Pacific. Moving west to east, these include the Suchiate, Naranjo, Ocosito, Samalá, Icán, Nahualate, Madre Vieja, Coyolate, Acomé,

Figure 2.6. Rivers in southern Guatemala interlace with many pre-Hispanic settlements, large and small. (PACH)

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Achiguate, Maria Linda, Los Esclavos, Paz, and Lempa, of which the Nahualate is the nearest to Chocolá. Straddling the core of the ancient city, two high-discharge rivers, the Chocolá and the Chichoy, probably formed natural boundaries limiting earlier ancient occupation until expansion carried settlement across them. Near the northern limit to the area of PACH’s site map, the distance between them is 400 m; at the southernmost point where they sharply diverge—the Chichoy to the west, ultimately emptying into the Ixtacapa, the Chocolá into the Nahualate—the distance is 950 m. From the wider perspective, both the town and the archaeological site are framed by the rivers Camache, Chocolá, and Nima to the east, as well as other streams that flow into the Nahualate River. To the west are the rivers La Montañita, Chichoy, Arroyo Gorgonato, and others that flow into the wider stream, the Ixtacapa. In addition to the Rio Chocolá and Rio Chichoy, smaller streams around and through the site must have provided their own specific and increased benefits for agriculture and large plantations intensively cultivating multiple products by obviating elaborate or long-distance conveyance of water for irrigation; these and other artificial or humanly contrived exploitations of water are discussed in Chapter 7. In addition to the very high rainfall and the several rivers and streams, another water resource today consists of nine natural springs, which supply domestic-use water to 90 percent of the community (Kaplan, Valdés, and Paredes Umaña 2004; Kaplan 2008). Flora and Fauna

Flora As Steymark noted, falling within the subcategory “Pacific Bocacosta,” “[t] he flora of Guatemala are the richest and most diversified of any in Central America” (Steyermark 1950: 368). The general transformation in southern Guatemala from native, then colonial, to postcolonial latifundia plantation export cropping came increasingly to depend on global market forces. The individual crops undergoing this transformation included cacao, sixteenth century; añil, seventeenth century; cochineal, after 1821; and, after the Liberal Revolution in 1871, coffee (Wagner 2001: 29). Other export products, particularly by the Germans, included honey, hule, leather, lumber, sarsaparilla, tobacco, and wax (Wagner 1991: 107–108). Profound damage from deforestation, mining, population growth, occupational sprawl, and other

Table 2.1. Wet forest plants common at Chocolá today Domesticated Food Plants Apple (Malus domestica) Avocado (Persea americana) Banana (Musa spp.) Black beans (Phaseolus vulgaris) Cacao (Theobroma cacao) Chaperno (Andira inermis) Chayote or guiskil (Sechium edule) Chili pepper (Capsicum annuum) Chipilín (Crotalaria longirostrata) Chufle or platanilla (Calathea macrosepala) Cilantro (Coriandrum sativum) Coconut (Cocos nucifera) Coffee (Coffea arabica) Cuxín (Inga edulis) Green beans (Phaseolus spp.) Green tomatillos (Physalis ixocarpa) Guaya (Melicoccus oliviformis) Izote (Yucca gigantea) Jocote (Spondias purpurea) Lemon (Citrus sp.) Macuy, quilete, or yerba mora (Solanum nigrum) Madre de cacao (Gliricida sepium) Maize (Zea mays) Mandarin orange (Citrus reticulata) Mango (Mangifera indica) Melocotón (Sicana odorifera) Onion (Allium sativum) Palo blanco (Roseodendron donnell-smithii) Palo volador (Terminalia oblongata) Papaya (Carica papaya) Platano (Musa paradisiaca) Pataxte (Theobroma bicolor) Pepper tree allspice (Pimienta dioica) Pineapple (Ananas comosus) Red tomato or jitomate (Solanum lycopersicum) Source: PACH.

Sapodilla (Manilkara zapota) Squash (Cucurbita spp.) Watercress (Nasturtium officinale) Yerba buena (Mentha arvensis) Yuca or cassava (Manihot esculenta)

Medicinal Plants Aloe (Aloe vera) Achiote (Bixa orellana) Lemon tea (Cymbopogon citratus) Rue (Ruta graveolens) Cempasúchil or flor de muertos (Tagetes erecta) Quequexte (Xanthosoma sp.)

Lumber Trees Caspirol (Inga laurina) Caulote (Guazuma ulmifolia) Cedar (Cedrela odorata) Ceiba (Ceiba pentandra) Chokecherry (Prunus virginiana) Conacaste (Enterolobium ciclocarpum) Quachipilín (Diphysa americana) Palojiote (Bursera simaruba) Madre de cacao (Gliricidia sepium) Mahogany (Swietenia macrophylla) Nance (Byrsonima crassifolia) White wood or palo blanco (Roseodendron donnell-smithii) Sunza (Licania platypus) Whistle (Catalpa musicalis)

Poisonous Plants (Partial List) Chichicaste (Chichicaste grandis) Chiltepe root (Capsicum spp.) Certain fungi

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human activities, makes Steymark’s assertion, some 65 years ago, perhaps nostalgic, today. Around Chocolá, the climax forest is interspersed with forest-cleared pastures. Still untouched by modern developments, as mentioned, an ancient piedmont subtropical wet forest, called “La Montañita” by the modern townspeople, exists in dwindling patches just north of the town and west of the Chocolá River; it comprises less than about 1 km2, an area in which one finds more of the biological diversity of Chocolá. Along with the major export crops of coffee, sugar, bananas, palm oil, herbs, spices, and cut flowers, were trees and wet forest plants, many of which were and are still grown today. See Table 2.1 for common plants at Chocolá. Fauna For a list of many of the common animals, see Table 2.2. Insect life, particularly, is yet more abundant and varied and includes several stinging caterpillars our workers warned us strongly to avoid, including the pajarito, the local name for Megalopyge opercularis (Figure 2.7c). In the rivers and streams, crabs, shrimp, and a variety of fish, including what informants refer to as mojarra but which may be misnamed, are caught. Today, however, water contamination makes eating these risky.6 Cultural Geography

Understanding the physical context in which the ancient city was founded and maintained itself conceivably over 1500 years or more helps to explain not only its longevity and the specific adaptations and advantages exploited by the ancient Chocolenses, but also the regional political center it likely became by the Late Middle Preclassic. As suggested, in contrast with later larger areal trade, particular regional trade advantages existed for early human settlements. Ancient Exploitation of Natural Resources A hunting and gathering culture would have found ample resources to convert to year-round settlement, a transition that we can speculate would have occurred probably earlier rather than later in comparison with bands and tribes in other physical environments. While a straightforward transition to settled life can be envisaged because of the extraordinary agricultural advantages of rich soils and copious water resources, advancing to

Table 2.2. Fauna in or near Chocolá, today or in recent times Common Mammalia (Current) Armadillo (Dasypus spp.) Bat, several varieties (Chiroptera) Chipmunk (Neotamias spp.) Coatimundi (Nasua spp.) Comadreja or long-tailed weasel (Mustela frenata) Forest rabbit (Sylvilagus brasiliensis) Gray fox (Urocyon cinereoargenteus) Hog-nosed skunk (Conepatus semistriatus) Howler monkey (Alouatta pigra) Mouse (Heteromys) Opossum (Didelphis spp.) Raccoon (Procyon spp.) Red-bellied squirrel (Sciurius aureogaster)

Mammalia (Extinct, Partial List) Jaguarundi (Puma yagouaroundi) Ocelot (Leopardus pardalis)

Common Aves (Current) American Black Swift (Cypseloides niger) Black Catbird (Melanoptila glabrirostris) Common Raven (Corvus corax) Dove, several species (Columbidae) Eagle, several species (Hieraatus Spilogaster) Flycatcher, several species (Tyrranidae) Gnatcatcher, several species (Polioptilidae) Gray Catbird (Dumetella carolinensis) Hawk, several species (Buteo jamaicensis) Hummingbird, several species (Trochilidae) Jay, several species (Cyanocitta cristata) Kingfisher, several species (Alcedines) Kite, several species (Chondrohierax) Martin and swallow (Hirundinidae) Northern Mockingbird (Mimus polyglottos) Owl, several species (Strigiformes) Source: PACH. *Local name.

Parrot, several specie (Psittaciformes) Tropical Mockingbird (Mimus gilvis) Vireo, several species (Vireonidae) Vulture, several species (Cathartidae) White-throated Magpie (Calocitta formosa) Woodcreeper, several species (Dendrocolaptinae) Woodpecker, several species (Furnariidae) Wren, several species (Troglodytidae)

Common Reptilia (Current) Anoles, many species (Anolis) Barba amarilla or fer-de-lance (Bothrops asper) Cantil sapo* (Agkistrodon taylori) Coral snake (Micrurus spp.) Cutete* marrón, Guatemalan Helmeted Basilisk (Corytophanes percarinatus) Frogs, many species (Anura) Guatemalan beaded lizard (Heloderma charlesbogerti), also called the Motagua Valley beaded lizard Lizards, many species (Lacertilia) Masacuata* (Corallus anulatusor, possibly, Boa constrictor imperator) Mud turtle (Kinosternidae) Newts, many species (Pleurodelinae) Niño dormido* (Heloderma horridum) Pond or marsh turtle (Emydidae) Raxquel* (species unknown) Salamanders, many species (Caudata) Tingling* (species unknown) Toads, many species (Bufo) Uxnayera (Bothriechis bicolor) Zumbadora (Middle American indigo snake, Drymarchon melanurus)

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Figure 2.7. a) Scorpion, possibly Centruroides gracilis; b) Pseudosphinx tetrio (Frangipani hornworm); c) pajarito (“puss moth,” Megalopyge opercularis); d) large bat, possibly Molossus currentium. Despite the creep of unplanned urban development, with many once-native species, such as the larger felines, now extinct, Chocolá and its immediate surround remain biologically diverse, in part because the traditions of latifundia and plantation ingenio have halted or slowed urbanization in the Guatemalan piedmont and preserved at least some of the natural species which otherwise would have died out. (PACH)

what archaeologists consider complex society must have brought its own regional as well as areal challenges and opportunities, principally including competition and/or cooperation with both smaller and larger centers economically and politically in the Southern Maya Region whose own situations physiographically exhibited similarities as well as differences in closely varying degree. Since the first human settlements, southern Guatemala has always been significantly agricultural (Carrasco 1982b, M. Coe 1961, Gage 2014, Juarros 1936, Lutz and Lovell 1990, McBryde 1947, and see Gasco 1991, 1996a, b, 2003). Borhegyi, a longtime Southern area researcher, observed: “By 2000 B.C. there was, in the Southern Maya area, a sedentary way of life based on a primitive method of agriculture. Cotton and various food plants, primarily corn and beans and later squash and avocado, were

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cultivated. Stone metates and manos for grinding grain as well as clay griddles (comales) are present in the earliest archaeological strata discovered to date in the area” (1956: 345). As elsewhere in Early Mesoamerica, houses were probably “pole-andthatch” (Borhegyi 1956: 346). Beginning about 1000 BC, “intensified local food production” began to replace more freely distributed smaller gardens (1956: 346). The profound agricultural assets of the upper piedmont stand out even in the context of rich and valuable resources for agriculture in southern Guatemala as a whole (Higbee 1947: 177), already extraordinary in Mesoamerica by comparison with other great agricultural regions in the world. Anciently, as mentioned, one of the important benefits must have been for trade, depending on the degree of the site or center’s political integration of the communities surrounding it; the “vertical archipelago” model Murra described for the prehistoric western Andes (1967, 1972) seems applicable, although in a much less extreme form, for southwestern Guatemala the coastal plains, piedmont, and highlands lying in such close proximity to each other that trade of products between distinct environmental zones may have given a special character to early economic systems there (Kaplan 2011a: 389). Contributing to both the blessings and the colonial and postcolonial curse on the indigenous peoples brought about by the country’s natural environment, agriculture remains today the largest single component in the Guatemalan GDP. Most of the export agriculture is grown in the south, less in the highlands to the north, and little in the Petén rainforest still farther north. In addition to relationships built early on across different ecozones, internally generated distinctive characteristics probably developed. As Netting observed, “The more we learn about indigenous agricultural methods, the more clearly it appears that food producers characteristically practice varieties of shifting and intensive cultivation simultaneously” (1986: 67, cited in Wilshusen and Stone 1990). Wilshusen and Stone refer to Carter’s (1969) research on “folk classifications of soil” with the K’ekqi, who noted that this ethnolinguistic group of Maya in Guatemala identified 40 separate types of soil. Given the very special soil requirements for cacao, we speculate that the Chocolenses in the Preclassic, or whenever they cultivated cacao intensively, observed, categorized with their own terms, and otherwise studied the soil at Chocolá as part of their development toward and maintenance of a high productivity of a quality bean.

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Advantageous risk strategies must have been incorporated in daily and seasonal as well as multiseasonal practice and planning. Certainly by late Postclassic times, as one of the letters from Pedro de Alvarado attests, a well-established cacao industry was located immediately around Chocolá (1924; see Chapters 3 and 7). Ancient Chocolense Ideology and the Physical Environment

Cultural ecology studies the distinct manifestations of interaction between human groups and the physical environment. Effective human agency for the Maya-speaking campesinos has been lost, in many ways, due to their greatly damaged consciousness. Today, imprisoned in endemic violence and the gloom of postcolonial and globalist poverty, they have been alienated from a once ideologically informed natural environment, an ideology that had linked their ancestors intimately to the volcanoes and rivers, the soils and rains, the caves and forests. The ancient cultural expressions of or responses to the dramatic destructive power of tectonic activity in the Guatemalan piedmont must have been expressed in ideology and particular ritual. From pan-Maya evidence, we can assume that the ancient Chocolenses attributed to their city and community a cosmological centeredness of place. Located between flat coastal plains and ocean below, and volcanic ranges closer above, an instability in the ancient routine, particularly because of the latter, must have presented vivid challenges to understanding and prediction if not control. An eastern horizon on which solstices, equinoxes, and other calendrical phenomena could be observed—and the observations recorded and then employed for both almanac and ritual purposes—may have been of great importance. Although soil studies have determined that no volcanic eruptions occurred in the Preclassic Valley of Guatemala (Williams (1960: 63–65), if Chocolá was connected politically and economically with Kaminaljuyu, it is perhaps remarkable that both cities and polities were physically adjacent to volcanoes, implying certain cultural geographic similarities and similar sacred or ritual expression as part of their cultural evolution. Whatever the consequences of this proximity, it would seem reasonable to assume an ideological consequence as well for the elites and their claims, directly and indirectly, through religious beliefs and activities. In the same manner, the ideology developed to accompany economic

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and political influence or power must have reflected, or bore telling traces from, the physical conditions of life, discernible in whatever way from the sculpture and other material culture; as an example, the Middle and Late Classic sculpture of Cotzumalguapa is filled with cacao and war imagery, pointing to a context of a dynamic trade in cacao and conflict over trade routes for this and other products. As we note in our discussions in Chapter 7, cacao was central not only in ancient Maya cuisine but also in cosmology, expressed in an ideology in which cacao would become, to the Classic Maya, a central part of their creation story as well as an essential sumptuary in the social hierarchy. The fact that the Southern Maya Region contained the Mesoamerican cacao heartland—where, at least from ethnohistoric times, the greatest quantities, and the highest quality, of cacao derived— seems to constitute still another argument in support of the seminal role of the south in the rise of Maya civilization. Problems

While the initial as well as later, more complex, adaptations at Preclassic Chocolá must have been strongly impacted by the particular physical characteristics of the upper piedmont, such speculations, of course—like all archaeological reconstructions, to lesser or greater degree—remain surmise. Today it remains as problematical for us to find the key to unlock in any convincing manner the epistemics of ancient Chocolá with respect to the natural world as it is perhaps less difficult to reconstruct a likely quotidian praxis—craft production, water management, domestic agriculture, and the like. Within the contexts of the secrecy of the hieratic, the role of lineages in social and political functions, and a profound sense of identity derived from place, we can speculate about what we imagine were responses to extremely fertile soil, as well as almost too-copious rain, fire, and ruin from the volcanoes and earthquakes. To use an overly worn cliché, the ancient Chocolenses, we imagine, must have felt “close to nature,” but this was a nature that was volatile and powerful, both positive for its life-giving assets and dangerously unpredictable. Perhaps one overall impression can be rather safely assumed, that of living not only vertically in a cosmological sense—with caves found commonly in the piedmont, easily accessing underworld and upperworld—but also horizontally, visited perhaps constantly by foreigners trading goods for the riches the piedmont had to offer the rest of Mesoamerica, just as these

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goods were sent out far and wide. As we discuss in Chapter 7, the extraordinarily conceived Shook Altar, its likely single protagonist depicted with legs bending back and completely around himself (or a second figure)—apparently a trader or trader deity identifiable by a carved footprint—seems testimony to this. The theorized Late Preclassic multiethnic character of Kaminaljuyu, conceivably, was duplicated at Chocolá, given that several languages probably were spoken in the Preclassic Southern Maya Region. Ethnohistory from the upper piedmont can perhaps better explain what happened later to the land and the people interacting with it. Perturbing the factors of richly productive soils and the reliability of the rains, along with disruptions caused by hurricanes, floods, and earthquakes, were the human contributions of intergroup conflict just before the Conquest. All of the impacts of these natural and human forces were overwhelmed by invasion and conquest war with the coming of Alvarado, then by sweeping colonial and postcolonial transformations when the anthropogenic impact became a much greater player in determining both the environment and climate of southern Guatemala and the lives and fates of the peoples of the New World, of Guatemala, and of Chocolá, interacting with them. Notes 1. As of 2014 (est.): agriculture 13.5%, industry 23.8%, services 62.7%; 38% of the labor force is agricultural https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/ gt.html. 2. For 1900–2012, see also http://sdwebx.worldbank.org/climateportal/index.cfm?page =country_historical_climate&ThisRegion=Latin%20America&ThisCcode=GTM. 3. The Chocolá finca, today, which is a cooperative, is formally known as the Empresa Campesina Agricola Chocolá, abbreviated as “ECA Chocolá.” Adjacent cooperative entities, once part of the larger German-owned farm, are ECA La Ladrillera, ECA Madre Mia, and ECA Lolemí (see Chapter 3). 4. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motagua_Fault. 5. Volcanoes of this type are characterized as having a broad, flat crater, created by a single explosive eruption that fills with water. 6. Flora and fauna information is drawn from a variety of sources, including Campbell 1989 and Smythe 1966, as well as from townspeople and personal observations by PACH staff.

3 Ethnohistory and History of the Southern Maya Region, Suchitepéquez, and Chocolá

Information from ethnohistory has long been one of the most valuable accompaniments to archaeology in Mesoamerica and the archaeology of the Maya. Although we cannot be sure that habits and beliefs of Maya speakers in the sixteenth through nineteenth centuries bear any resemblance to the Classic or Preclassic Maya living 1,000–2,000 years earlier, descriptions from ethnohistorical sources provide a basis for cautious, informed hypotheses about the ancient Southern Maya Region, Suchitepéquez, and Chocolá, itself. Two important questions for archaeology often to answer are the language(s) spoken by an ancient people and the ancient economic activities at the various scales at which these activities operate; ethnohistoric sources can provide information about both of these. If written texts are available, and the language these represent is known and the texts deciphered, the former can be used potentially to access culture historical but also “emic” meaning, as well as some kinds of larger-scale “etic” analysis.1 The latter may be employed in functional, formalist topics of analysis; ancient economic systems and activities help explain structure and process, with implications for degree and kind of social complexity. Although we do not know when Maya speakers populated the piedmont, and Chocolá, some indigenous Conquest-era documents confirm that groups speaking a K’iche’ dialect lived near Chocolá in the fifteenth century. Whether there were Maya speakers in the immediate region earlier is beyond determination, apart from, at times, very circumstantial architectural, ceramic, epigraphic, art historical, and settlement pattern information; art historical analysis of ceramics and sculpture tentatively does indicate Maya speakers occupying Chocolá by the Late Preclassic. However, no matter what we may surmise, a fundamental question remains:

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to what other Maya-speaking groups, or their artifacts, can we draw comparisons for the Southern Maya Region in the Preclassic given that what we call “Maya” was still forming? Glottochronology—a disputed method for determining linguistic evolution—suggests proto-Maya appeared by 2000 BC, perhaps in the western highlands and thus relatively near Chocolá (Josserand 2011), but the specific distributions in the Preclassic Southern Maya Region remain unclear. For immediate purposes of historical and ethnohistorical reference, on maps and legal documents the Comunidad Agraria Chocolá, or Chocolá Agrarian Community2—the modern town or village we refer to as Chocolá—is located in Suchitepéquez; it is 4 km northeast of San Pablo Jocopilas, the local administrative head or cabecera of the municipio, the principal local governmental unit in Guatemala, and 12 km northeast of Mazatenango, the largest nearby city (population today, about 45,000) and departmental capital. To the north, Chocolá borders Finca Santa Isabel, in the municipality of Santo Tomás La Unión; to the west is the Suchitepéquez farming community, Lolemí, now incorporated, like Chocolá, as an Empresa Campesina Asociativa or Peasant Agricultural Company. To the south is the Madremía ECA and the Basilea farm, included in the San Antonio Suchitepéquez municipality. To the east is the Olympia estate of Santo Tomás La Unión and the agricultural community ECA La Ladrillera. Today K’iche’ and Kaqchikel speakers form the great majority of the residents of Chocolá and the other adjacent cooperatives and towns. During German ownership and administration, all four of the ECAs were part of one larger Chocolá farm. The two principal groups in most ethnohistories of the Southern Region are the K’iche’ and Kaqchikel, the great contestants in the rivalry exploited by Pedro de Alvarado, the conqueror of Guatemala (Lovell and Lutz 2013: 62 passim). After the Conquest, in the early sixteenth century, among other great transformations, a great native population decline because of the toll of slavery, smallpox, and pulmonary plague as well as new distributions of linguistic affiliation took place (Lovell 1992: 70, Orellana 1995: 73). In 1579, the Zapotitlán-Suchitepéquez area was inhabited by speakers of Mexican (Nahuatl), Achí, and Mam (Orellana 1995: 73, citing Estrada 1955: 71; compare Cortés y Larraz 1958, vol. 2: 271–278). Based on historical documents, Jean Piel notes that by 1577 tribute demands from the Spaniards upon the natives in Verapaz forced Maya speakers to migrate toward Sonsonate, Chiquimula, and Zapotitlán (Piel 1989: 73), adding to the Pacific coast and piedmont colonial ethnogenesis.

Figure 3.1. Modern settlements around Chocolá. (PACH)

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Figure 3.2. “The Conquest of Tzapotitlan” (from the Lienzo de Tlaxcala [1892], lamina 76). (Chavero 1979)

Pre-Conquest, Conquest, and Post-Conquest Ethnohistory

Information from observers near the time of the Conquest about preConquest and Conquest-era groups and agents from Mexico, Guatemala, southwestern Guatemala, and the immediate locale around Chocolá is comparatively plentiful. Here, we provide documentation from the major sources about the specific ethnolinguistic groups of this locale and the wider areas in which they lived. Anales de los Cakchiqueles Containing descriptions of its many different ethnolinguistic groups, including K’iche’ and Kaqchikel, the ethnohistory of the Southern Maya Region includes accounts from and about what became the modern department of Suchitepéquez before the arrival of Alvarado. Composed from 1571

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to 1604, the mythico-historical narrative of the Anales de los Cakchiqueles (Brinton 1883), also known as the Memorial de Sololá (Lovell and Lutz 2013), relates presumably Postclassic events; after the symbolic sacrifice by arrow of a male captive (recapitulating an underworld trial of the spiritually surviving part of the deceased individual) and a journey through a “lagoon,” which may be a reference to a mythico-historical event near or at the Lago de Atitlán, the protagonist group journeyed to “Panpatí and Chocol Payan . . . practicing witchcraft arts,” the latter suggesting particular cosmological referents, including deities such as Itzamnaaj.3 Reference to such magical personae and activities in ancient Mesoamerica often is related to mythico-legendary origins of a particular group. The location for the new homeland of the Mexica, or Aztec, was signaled to Huitzilopochtli by an eagle roosting on a nopal cactus; the Maya originated from the mating of maize with “Lady Blood,” producing the Hero Twins as the first men. Arrow sacrifice, particularly, occurs in one of the levels of the Mexica underworld—one of the trials after death that the remnant part of the commoner individual must undergo in order to reach the ninth and lowest level where the spirit entity is evacuated from existence entirely. The account traces a route descending southwest from the Lago into what is now Suchitepéquez, where the group founded “Chitulul” (a variant of a K’iche’ word, “Xetulul,” translating in Nahuatl for what became “Zapotitlán,” “place of sapodilla”), in the modern Zapotitlán district. The earliest colonial map known for the Costa de Zapotitlán y Suchitepéquez was prepared in the sixteenth century (Acuña 1982: 54) The Anales recounts struggles between K’iche’, Tz’utujil, and Kaqchikel groups for control of territories in and around the Lago, at the time, the specific vicinities of these conflicts and their resultant affiliations, as follows: south and southwest, Tz’utujil; north and east, Kaqchikel; and west, K’iche’. Also competing for lands were Nahua-speaking groups (formerly called “Pipil”), for example, the people of “Yscuintepeque” and “Panatacat,” towns mentioned by Alvarado in the fourth letter to Cortes (Alvarado 1924: 94; compare Restall and Asselbergs 2007: 27 passim). Chronologically, the account continues on to the arrival of the Spanish at “Xetulul” and “Xepit.” Tz’utujil groups controlled territories between the Zapotitlán piedmont and Patulul, including the territory around Chocolá and bordering, to the south, “Miahuatan,” where more Nahua-speakers seemed to have settled. Originally leading 400 soldiers from Mexico, along with thousands of native soldiers gathered for the expedition, Alvarado entered Guatemala from Soconusco in 1524 and fought a major battle with

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Figure 3.3. Ceramic support in the shape of a cacao pod recovered by PACH. (PACH)

the K’iche’ at Xetulul (Zapotitlán), which by then, apparently, had become a province of political importance in what is now Suchitepéquez. Alvarado defeated the K’iche’; a few months later, near the Lago de Atitlán, he defeated the Tz’utujil.4 Two of four surviving letters from Alvarado to Cortés served as progress reports of the conquest of Guatemala; Alvarado’s lieutenant, Gonzalo de Alvarado y Chávez, also wrote an account, as did Bernal Díaz del Castillo many years later in his Historia Verdadera (2005 [1632]), providing the same general information. Notably, in part 3, chap. 1, of the Historia Verdadera, Bernal makes a reference to cacao as one of the “valuable articles of tribute” to Tenochtitlan and also observes how Motecuhzoma was served cacao several times during his meal; citing Torquemada, Bergmann writes that the household of the Texcoco ruler, Nezahualcoyotzin, consumed about 22.5 kg of cacao daily, adding that it was for sale in the markets of Tlatelolco (Bergmann 1969b: 85–86). Bartolomé de las Casas arrived in Guatemala in 1537 and helped construct the legend of Alvarado’s ruthless treatment of the natives. However, the polemical nature of las Casas’s efforts makes some details unclear, and the sparseness of Alvarado’s account, from which Gonzalo and Bernal Díaz

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drew, adds to a sense of incompleteness in the record, yet an incompleteness perhaps not substantively greater than that of most accounts from New World ethnohistory. Torquemada refers to an earlier, circa AD 800–900, expulsion of populations from Soconusco by Central Mexicans (Josserand 2011: 158), but the time-space distance renders this somewhat suspect. Titulo Ixquin-Nehaib A periodic depopulation in the Suchitepéquez region, and specifically in the vicinities of Zapotitlán and Chocolá, seems to have occurred in both Postclassic and post-Conquest times. The Titulo Ixquin-Nehaib (Recinos 2001), another early colonial account belonging to a tradition of the lineage of the leader or ruler, “Quikab Kiche,” refers to expansionistic wars during the Late Postclassic period. Led by “Gumarcaah-Izmachí,” these conflicts took place near the volcanic shelf to the north—presumably, therefore, close to ancient Chocolá. The document narrates how 13 heads of calpulli gathered to raid a group—the Achí—not mentioned in the Anales de los Cakchiqueles, who were possibly K’iche’an-speakers and who had settled in piedmont and coastal locales known as “Xetulul” (Zapotitlán). Other towns during colonial times in the vicinity were Mazatenango, Cuyotenango, Zapotitlán, and Samayaque (today Samayac is sometimes given as Zamayac or Zamayaque in other ethnohistoric accounts), as well as Sambo and other smaller communities where Africans descended from slaves (cimarrones) lived in resistance to colonial rule from the sixteenth century on. Thus “Zapotitlán” was both the general name for a district in colonial southwestern Guatemala, and the name or part of the name of towns created by the Spanish, the place names of these towns combining Spanish with indigenous designations, for example, “San Francisco Zapotitlán.” In this particular case, the name was simply the same as the district. The Titulo records a victory by these 13 K’iche’ groups over another possibly K’iche’an group, the Achí of Zapotitlán, and from whom a forced tribute of cacao and pataxte was given to the apparent principal K’iche’ chief, Don Francisco Izquin Ahpalotz y Nehaib. The Achí recognized this chief as “king” (rey) and agreed to continue paying tribute. The defeated towns also granted to the K’iche’ some kind of jurisdiction over vicinities of the Zamalá, Ucuz, Nil, and Xab Rivers. Other K’iche’ chieftains made forays into “Naguatecat,” “Ayutecat,” “Mazatán,” and “Tapaltecat,” ancient towns on or near the coast of Soconusco. Somewhat oddly, neither the Matricula de Tributo5 nor the Codex Mendoza (Mendoza Codex 1938) makes any reference to tribute from

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Zapotitlán (the district), and Suchitepéquez, to Moctezuma. However, the Titulo Ixquin-Nehaib narrates how the indigenous people from this region in the K’iche’ quest for these lands were later to do so (Recinos 2001: 85). Kaqchikel territories by the early sixteenth century included most of what are now the departments of Chimaltenango and Sacatepéquez, the northwest corner of the department of Guatemala, the northern end of Escuintla, the northeastern part of Suchitepéquez, and the northern part of the vicinities of the Lago de Atitlán in the department of Sololá. The territories mentioned in the Titulo controlled by the K’iche’ of Santa Clara la Laguna included what are now the modern towns or cities of Totonicapan, San Gaspar Yabacoj, Mazatenango, Quetzaltenango, Cuyotenango, San Francisco Zapotitlán, San Martín Zapotitlán, San Bartolomé, and Santa Maria Samayac. The Titulo concludes with the K’iche’ groups ceding the territories around what became Chocolá, circa 1470, when Quikab’s authority within the K’iche’ confederation had been weakened, presumably by continuing conflicts over the lands. At this time, a Tz’utujil group resumed control of the territories temporarily and resettled near present-day Samayac. If other ethnohistory is reliable, these conflicts were driven, at least in part, by competition over control of lands rich in groves of cacao and pataxte (see below). In addition to cacao and pataxte, the Titulo mentions other trade products, including fish and shrimp. We speculate that trade routes also were fought over, and privileges won. Late Postclassic tribute demands of Moctezuma appear to confirm the motivations for the rivalries and conflicts (Recinos 2001); however, Late Classic Cotzumalguapa’s art motifs and themes of cacao, warfare, and sacrifice seem to indicate such conflict as more or less characteristic of this part of the Southern Maya Region from still earlier. Early or Colonial Economic Factors in the History of the Guatemalan Piedmont As we have stressed, the direct historical approach to economic activity brings risk but also offers insights, if carefully drawn. In line with the materialist approach in these early phases of Chocolá research, by sketching out the possibilities of the economics of the historical context of Chocolá and the upper piedmont lands on which it sits, which are also centrally sited for cacao, we link economic activity as a structural cause not only to superstructural spheres such as cultural habits and styles, but also politics and ideology. As we have stressed (Chapter 1), the project’s research goal is

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to progress toward the mainstream conjunctive archaeology that has characterized Maya and Mesoamerican research at least from the 1970s. Post-Conquest Linguistic Accounts While colonial sources provide clues to the ethnic and ethnolinguistic identity of the community and site or vicinity, these accounts also help us understand the linguistic diversity of the northern piedmont. According to some colonial records (Orellana 1995: 33–34), the language spoken in Suchitepéquez was Achí. Burkitt described the indigenous people at Chocolá as speakers of “Kichechí” (Burkitt 1930: 5) by which we think he meant, K’iche’; another possibility, Q’eqchi’, would not make sense because speakers of this Mayan language are found at some relative distance from Chocolá. As mentioned, linguists today identify Achí as a probable member of the K’iche’an family (Nordhoff et al. 2013). Termer’s assertion that speakers of coastal Achí were descendants of the Pipil was corrected by Fowler who refers to bilingual speakers of Nahua and Achí in the Pacific coast (Fowler 2000: 94). Pedro Cortés y Larraz In the eighteenth century, Pedro Cortés y Larraz (1958, vol. 1: 18) mentions San Antonio Suchitepéquez as the sixth of the ten provinces of the Arzobispado, which was composed of seven parishes: San Antonio Suchitepéquez, Mazatenango, Cuyotenango, Retalhuleu, “Sapotitlan,” Samayac, and San Pedro Jocopilas. Cortés y Larraz refers to the parish of San Pablo Jocopilas as being “a quarter of a legua North of Zamayac,” and, as the head of the parish, having two annexed villages, Santo Tomás, “three leguas from there, and San Miguel, seven leguas from the head. . . . The language spoken was Kiche and was in [the] charge of Father Miguel Arrevillaga . . . [a] Franciscan religious.” The parish of San Antonio Suchitepéquez was “three short” leagues from “Zamayac . . . [t]owards the east, the road crossed three rivers: [the] Istacapa, Pahoca and Chicoy, which are the same to be crossed from Xocopilas [sic] to its annexes, all tributaries of the mighty Nahualate river.” He adds that the mother tongue was Tz’utujil, although “some outsiders have also introduced Kaqchikel and Kiche and many also speak Castilian” (Cortés y Larraz 1958 vol 1: 271–278). Van Akkeren (2005: 1–3) has noted that “Mexican influence on Postclassic nations (in the Guatemalan Highlands) does not come from the Gulf Coast of Mexico, but much closer: from the Pacific Coast,” a suggestion that may indicate how Postclassic polities often are confused with ethnic

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and linguistic categories. As we have noted here and elsewhere, directly attributing to cultural materials certain ethnic and/or political entities, and ignoring processes that we do not yet well understand, are common pitfalls in archaeological scholarship (Bove et al. 1992 Sharer and Sedat 1987: 344, Kaplan 2002a: 320). Western Discovery of Cacao in Ethnohistoric Accounts Because of our materialist focus on water management and cacao in these early stages of research at Chocolá, we now discuss the particular ethnohistory of the plant and its product(s). The first Europeans to encounter cacao were Columbus and his sailors on his fourth voyage, in 1502, when a canoe was captured at Guanaja near the coast of what is now Honduras. The canoe was conveying a large quantity of what Columbus referred to as “almonds” (Columbus 1867 [1571]: 292, cited in Millon 1955a: 150); Columbus did not eat the beans or sample any cacao-based beverage. Indeed, he seems to have had no interest in the “almonds” except for the fact that, as he learned from his interviews with the apparently Yucatec Maya in the canoe, they were used as currency (ibid., Millon 1955a: 204–210, and see Blom 1932). Nearly 100 years later, José de Acosta, arriving in Mexico in 1586, noted: “They vse it instead of money, for with five Cacaos they buy one thing, with thirtie another, and with a hundred another, without any contradiction; and they vse to give it to the poore that beg for almes” (Acosta 1880: 244). Employing the Aztec vigesimal system, which was widespread, 8,000 beans were divided into countles (or zontles), each of which consisted of 400 beans. An unpublished manuscript by Antonio Vázquez de Espinosa, a Spanish monk, describes the trading units and the abundance of cacao in what we refer to as an ancient Mesoamerican cacao heartland: A load of cacao contains 3 xiquipiles; each xiquipil consists of 8,000 cacao beans, making 200 zontles; thus each zontle has 400 cacao beans and each load, 24,000; that is their system of computation. . . . It is so abundant in the district of the Diocese of Guatemala that every year this district takes in over 1,500,000 ducats, in the Provinces of Soconusco, Suchitepequez, Guazacapan, Sonsonate, Zacatecoluca, and Chiquimula, which are the chief producers; the other parts of this jurisdiction are held in less esteem.6 Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo noted, “De manera que en aquella provingia de Nicaragua, un conejo vale diez almendras destas, é por quatro almendras

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dan ocho pomas ó nísperos de aquella exgelente fructa que ellos llaman munongapot; y un esclavo vale giento, é mas é menos almendras destas, segund es la piega ó la voluntad de los contrayentes se congiertan” (Oviedo y Valdés 1851–1855: 316). The first European presumably to taste cacao was Cortés in 1519, when Moctezuma brought him and his retinue 50 jars of what the Mexica called xocoatl.7 The drink was brought hot and whipped to a froth,8 a serving preference also evident from scenes depicted on many Classic Maya pots (see below, and see W. Popenoe 1919 on batido), and apparently spiced with achiote (annatto). Noting the frequency, each day, that the Aztec emperor was brought the drink, Cortés also mentions the enormous stores held in Tenochtitlan (Cervantes de Salazar 1936, vol. 2: 107). With Cortés’s return to Spain in 1528, he makes no mention of cacao. The concoction Moctezuma and his nobles drank was introduced to the Spanish court in 1544 by Q’eqchi’ nobles, brought from the New World by Bartolomé de Las Casas and other Dominican friars to meet Prince Philip, later Philip II (Estrada Monroy 1979: 195). Over the next 100 years cacao consumption spread to England, France, Holland, and elsewhere in Western Europe, enjoyed for its taste and employed as a medicinal aid. When sugar came to be added to it—first probably in Spain sometime in the seventeenth century—demand for cacao led the Portuguese to establish plantations in Brazil, the French in the Caribbean, and the Spanish in their Venezuelan and Philippine colonies (Bloom 1998, Coe and Coe 2013). Ethnohistory of Cacao in Mesoamerica, the Southern Maya Region, and the Guatemalan Piedmont Observations and accounts by other Spanish friars at the time of and shortly after the Conquest provide information not only for the Maya but for Central Mexico and other parts of Mesoamerica. The Tasación de Tributo, Diego Garcés, Gage, Estrada, the Relación Zapotitlán, and Acuña, all speak of a cacao industry in Suchitepéquez or even immediately around Chocolá. Bergmann cites Alvarado’s second letter to Cortés “in which he reported his band of men having had to force its way through a dense growth of forest and cacao orchards on entering the native town of Zapotitlán in Suchitepéquez province” (Bergmann 1969b: 90). The Mexica obtained great quantities of cacao from Soconusco, the Matricula de Tributo, part of the Codex Mendoza, and other sources describing

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how much they received annually in the years shortly before the arrival of the Spanish. Millon notes that the Codex Mendoza (Mendoza Codex 1938, vol. 1: 81) describes Xoconochco as paying “twice as much cacao in tribute to Tenochtitlan as any other province,” and refers to “the area from Mapachtepec to Xoconochco . . . as one of the richest cacao producing areas in ancient Mesoamerica” (1955a: 65). Millon also cites Barlow’s study of the Matricula de Tributo, observing that Xoconochco sent 200 loads of cacao every six months as tribute to Tenochtitlán (Barlow 1949: 97–98). In Tabasco at the time of the Conquest, a “load”—“the normal load carried by bearers”—consisted of “two arrobas,” or 50 lbs. (22.68 kg) (Millon 1955b: 704, citing Diaz in Maudslay [1908–1916, I: 166, 211]). According to Fray Toribio de Benavente, or Motolinía (Benavente 1950: 218), the cacao load contained 24,000 cacao beans (Millon 1955b: 704). Perhaps even in reference specifically to the immediate area of Chocolá, Millon (1955a: 67) refers to another ethnohistoric source, Antonio CiudadReal’s (1872, vol. 1: 431–434) description of a journey through the area as being so detailed that, in his comprehensive cultural and historical geography of Southwestern Guatemala, McBryde (1947: 5, 92) was able to locate four towns, “rich in cacao . . . in the piedmont, south of Atitlán on the other side of the continental divide where today a “monsoon forest where cacao is still grown”; the “monsoon forest” would correspond to the subtropical wet piedmont forest we observed for Chocolá. Motolinía mentions cacao several times in his Memorias9 in the context of merchant activities, deity offerings, and its use as currency and medicine, and he describes the popularity of cacao as a beverage (for example, 1914: 104). Other early colonial era documents included instructions for the medical use of cacao; a mention in the Badianus Codex, composed in 1552 (Emmart 1940), notes that the cacao flower alleviated fatigue, and the Florentine Codex, written in 1590 (Sahagún 1950–1978) describes a concoction of cacao beans, maize, and the herb tlacoxochitl (Calliandra anomala), used to assuage fever and shortness of breath. Even after only a few decades of Spanish rule, subsistence patterns, institutions, social structure—all aspects of life—were greatly altered. Ponce de León, in his Relación de la Provincia de Soconusco (1574) described both rich cacao orchards and a paucity of people in Soconusco. In 1832, almost three centuries later, Galindo, early explorer at Copan and Palenque—one source among several—described contemporary “Mayas . . . of Petén” as cultivating cacao along with maize and tobacco, but repeats Acosta’s comment:

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The tree whereon this fruite growes is of reasonable bignesse, and well fashioned; it is so tender, that to keep it from the burning of the Sunne, they plante neere unto it a great tree, which serves only to shade it, and they call it the mother of Cacao. There are plantations where they are grown like to the vines and olive trees of Spaine. The province where there is greatest trade in cacao is Guatimala. (1833: 59) Other accounts that refer to events and processes before the Conquest are also available, although in less reliable form. Just as these accounts speak of competition over control of the producing sites and the trade routes, we can infer the context of development and competition at Late Classic Cotzumalguapa, where the iconography of cacao conflates with an iconography of death, war, and sacrifice (Chinchilla Mazariegos 2013: 87, 2016: 362–363, Borhegyi 1969, Thompson 1948; see Kaplan 2008: 409). The ethnohistoric accounts specifically citing the area in which Chocolá sits so centrally are many and striking in their descriptions of a commodity or product that apparently was in high demand (see Acuña 1982: 25– 60; Carrasco 1982a, b; Fuentes y Guzmán 1932–1933: 17, 61, 91; Gage 2014; Gasco 1982, 1987a, b, 1989a, b, 1993, 1996a, b, 2003; Gasco and Voorhies 1989; McBryde 1947: 33–34, 92; Parsons 1967: 13; Recinos 1984: 79–94). These ethnohistoric accounts record very dense populations at the time of the Conquest and fierce fighting between various caciques for control of cacao in the area of the Achí, where today one finds the towns or localities of Mazatenango, Cuyotenango, Zapotitlán, San Antonio, and Samayac, all attested by ethnohistory to have been significant centers of cacao production and trade, and all clustered very closely around the ancient city of Chocolá (Kaplan, Valdés, and Paredes Umaña 2004: 39, Kaplan 2008: 409). The Importance of Cacao in the Region Adding weight to Vázquez de Espinosa and Millon, and indicating that perhaps the major pre-Hispanic industry for trade in the Guatemalan piedmont was cacao, in an often-cited survey of the distribution of cacao in Mesoamerica, Bergmann found that in one of the three major cacaoproducing areas of Southern Guatemala, “Zapotitlán, Samayac (Ystalabaca y Samayaque), and Suchitepéquez bore the heaviest [encomendero tribute] assessments of the Suchitepéquez piedmont pueblos” (Bergmann 1969b, citing the 1548–1551 Tasación de Tributos). As mentioned, from Middle and Late Classic times in the Maya area,

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Table 3.1. Cacao quality circa 1560 Locality

Encomendero

San Juan de Nagualapa

Gaspar Arias de Ávila

San Antonio Santo Tomás

San Gregorio Zamayaque

San Pablo

Zambo

Zapotitlán

Mazatenango and Cuyotenango

Characteristic

“El pueblo más rico en cacao de la costa” Juan Méndez de Sotomayor “Tan rico en cacao como and Francisco de Ayllón los de Nagualapa” Gaspar Arias de Ávila “A dos leguas de los and Alonso Gutiérrez de Suchitepéquez hacia la siMonzón erra de Totonicapán, tierra templada y no muy fértil para el cacao” “Hacia la sierra, una legua más arriba, clima frío” Alonso Gutiérrez de “A una legua de San Monzón Antonio Suchitepéquez . . . Bueno para el cacao, pero no tan bueno como los de Suchitepéquez” Lorenzo de Godoy, Juan de Morales de Cevallos, and Juan Rodríguez Cabriíllo Secretario Diego de “A dos leguas de Zamayaque; pueblo templado” Robledo, Gaspar Arias de Ávila, and el menor Diego de la Barrera “Tiene el mejor cacao” Juan Maldonado de Guzmán and Doña Juana de Sayavedra “Sujetos al pueblo de Zapotitlán”

Source: Adapted from Diego Garcés’s account of cacao quality in the Suchitepéquez province, circa 1560.

any account of cacao in the Southern Maya Region must take note of the art of Cotzumalguapa, with its iconography of cacao and sacrifice, as exemplified by Bilbao Monument 21. Together with early post-Conquest ethnohistory from the region, which describe frequent warfare over the cacao trade, this iconography as a theme in Cotzumalguapan carved stone sculpture suggests that cacao formed a nexus for intraregional power politics and competition between the elites of different centers. The implication

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is that, by this time in the Southern Maya Region—as undoubtedly elsewhere in Mesoamerica—cacao as a commodity had come to be charged with a certain tension and energy, necessary even for the survival and growth of individual towns and their people (compare Chinchilla Mazariegos 2012: 109). Other scholars before us have speculated about a great cacao industry in early post-Conquest times without explicitly justifying their speculation in a direct historical manner. Of significance in considering these ethnically complex circumstances is the fact that early colonial accounts record the importance of cacao and pataxte in the Zapotitlán-Suchitepéquez area. The “best” cacao production reportedly was centered from “Cotzíj” to Patulul and, although this was not the only crop, it seems certainly to have been the most important; “best” seems to have referred to the quality of the bean at least as much as to the quantity produced (for Zapotitlán, see Table 3.1). Maize and various fruit products were important also. Cotton grew naturally and abundantly between the Samalá and Ixtacapa rivers and without the need for artificial irrigation.10 The letter by Diego Garcés to the Real Audiencia of Guatemala (composed circa 156011) recounts the inspection of several villages in the Suchitepéquez jurisdiction, mentioning each town’s encomenderos, and providing notes on the quality of cacao in specifying how each town could be taxed. In his 1648 account of the region, Gage noted that Suchitepéquez was “the chief store of cacao” (2014: 177), observing also that the most prominent trade product from both Soconusco and Suchitepéquez was cacao, and commenting that others were important as well: achiote, mecasúchil, vanilla, and other “drugs for chocolate” (2014: 204–205). Gage also mentions indigo and cochineal from around San Antonio, the capital of Suchitepéquez (2014: 205). Relación de Zapotitlán By 1549 Zapotitlán, San Antonio Suchitepéquez, and Samayac were producing the greatest quantity of cacao in what is now the Suchitepéquez province. The map included in another ethnohistorical document, the Relación de Zapotitlán (Estrada 1955), written between 1579 and 1580, mentions the following towns: Tolimán, San Juan Nahualapa, San Francisco Zapotitlán, Santo Tomás, San Antonio Suchitepéquez, Samayac, Saint Pablo, and Mazatenango. Chocolá lies in the center of the cluster of these early post-Conquest towns.

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Juan de Estrada, corregidor of the province and author of the account, describes the native towns, noting the lack of “Spanish people,” by the late sixteenth century. In these towns lived “mostly merchants and traders of cacao, who traveled from that province to New Spain [Mexico] . . . trading clothes made for the Indians, linens and other merchandise” (Estrada 1982 (1579)). The same account describes the inhabitants of these towns, already formed and of long standing, as speaking three languages: a shared “Mexican”; Achí, “the mother tongue of the coast”; and Mame or Mam. The Relación contains a document attributed to the “Indians of the Province of Zapotitlán,” who emphasize their K’iche’ ancestry (Acuña 1982: 25–60). The thirteenth numeral of the Relación Zapotitlán explains the native names of the towns of the region; for example, the Nahua noun, tzapotl (root of the toponym Zapotitlán), translates as “Tulul” in several of the K’iche’an languages. The region is alternatively known as “Pa Tulul.” Suchitepéquez is a Mexican (Nahua) toponym derived from xochitl, “flower”—as the Relación explains, “since there are many trees bearing many flowers and of many different ways.” San Juan Nahualapa took its name from the river Nagualat. Naualli is Mexican for “witch,” and -atl, for “water”; hence, “water witch” or “river of the witches.” The fourteenth and fifteenth numerals deal with the natives “in times of paganism, their worship, rites and customs, how they once ruled and how they lived.” The alcalde recorded the following account in which cacao is described as a sumptuary: A los indios de baja suerte no les era permitido comer carne ni beber cacao, sino que comían maíz y chile y frutas y yerbas y raíces. Y ahora comen de todo, aunque son tan míseros los más que no salen de su ordinario antiguo, si no es en lo de la carne. Tenían costumbre de bañarse en los ríos, y la misma tienen ahora. Las ceremonias, ritos y supersticiones que tenían, dícese que eran muchas y en diversas maneras. . . . Y lo que se puede entender y saber es que hacían sacrificios a los tiempos de año, de los inviernos y de los veranos, y particulares para todo género de sementeras: de maíz, frijoles, algodón y otras legumbres, y particular sacrificio al plantar y cultivar las milpas de cacao. . . . Las armas con que antiguamente se dice guerreaban eran arcos y flechas, y ciertos alfanjes que, dicen, tenían hechos de pedernal. (Acuña 1982: 38–39)

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The Chocolá Toponym

Early colonial indigenous accounts provide the first references to toponyms in the Suchitepéquez region. However, we do not know with any certainty how the village of Chocolá got its name. According to our informants and from a cooperative internal document12 among the present-day Chocolenses, “Chocolá” is derived from the K’iche’ chok la tat, “come in, sir” or “welcome you are, sir.” Within their memory, when an important person visited, he was greeted with that phrase. Possible variants include the names of two close villages, “Xoqola” and “Xojolá.” Van Akkeren suggests xoqol, may derive from the K’iche’, Tz’utujil, and Kaqchikel word for mud, implying “place of clay” (van Akkeren 2005: 1004) and “Xoqola” may refer to a lineage from Sacapulas, the U’chab, claiming to be originally from the place where a bird effigy once was venerated (2005). A caserio named “Xojolá” is located 5 km northwest of Chocolá, near the archaeological site of Pasac, in the Department of Sololá. Given our research assumptions about the ancient city’s economic base, the temptation is to link the name of the site and the modern village directly to a great pre-Hispanic cacao industry. In support of this possibility, the Geographical Dictionary of Guatemala derives “Chocol-já” from “Chocomol” (“heat”) and ja (“water”), hence, “hot water.” Coe and Coe point out chocol is Yucatec for “hot”; citing Tedlock, they refer to the K’iche’ verb, chocolá’j, “to drink chocolate together” (S. Coe and M. Coe 2013: 63). Noting that chocolatl, considered to be Nahuatl, does not exist in early colonial Nahuatl dictionaries, Coe and Coe mention a possible etymology based on xocoatl, from xoco (“bitter”) and atl (“water”), and also find, in “the Vienna and other very early Maya vocabularies,” chacau haa, literally “hot water” (1996: 118; compare Kaufman and Justeson 2007, 2009, proposing a Mije-Zoquean etymology of “cacao,” in response to Dakin and Wichmann [2000] asserting an Uto-Aztecan origin). Nineteenth Century and Modern Times

Curiously, in all known nineteenth-century accounts, no references are made to an archaeological site. We can only conclude that consciousness of whatever remained of ancient Chocolá, the mounds, sculpture, and whole pots and fragments of pottery, at this time began to be erased in the great turmoil of colonialism and then was lost completely in the preoccupations of postcolonial latifundia cash-crop-for-export enterprise, which must

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have so completely transformed use of the land that whatever vestiges of its pre-Columbian past might have existed were completely sundered from it (see McCreery 1990, 1994). Extraordinarily specific ancient pre-Hispanic beliefs persist, however, as our account in Chapter 1 of the female xamanes encountered in the cave at Chocolá (and see below) attests. The divide between ethnohistory and modern accounts begins to close in the nineteenth century when modern record keeping became more consistent and reliable. With the preceding as ethnohistorical and cultural geographical context, Chocolá first appears in the property records in 1835 when a claim by Mariano Obregón, of Mazatenango was made that land between the rivers Iztacapa and Chocolá, including much of present-day Chocolá, was baldío, or vacant, despite the surveyor’s report of approximately 200 probably K’iche’-speaking people living there (Calderón Tobar 2000: 57). The process continued by which the Catholic Church in Guatemala sold land it had received from the Spanish Crown—but on which Maya presumably had been living for millennia—to individual wealthy European investors and local proxy landowners. The formal records show that the Church sold 55 caballerias of land, or approximately 5,775 acres (1 caballeria equals about 105 acres), or 2,337 ha, to one of these wealthy individuals, Felipe Marroquín, in 1853 (Calderón Tobar 2000: 65). By comparison, the Empresa Campesina Asociativa Chocolá (ECA-Chocolá) currently comprises an area of about 49.5 manzanas, or 345,856.5 m2 (1 manzana equals about 6,987 m2); since 1 caballeria equals 45 manzanas, the area today is slightly larger. These 2,337 ha subsequently were bought in 1864 by a Catalan-born agricultural engineer and inventor named Josep Guardiola i Grau, or José Guardiola, who in turn sold the land in 1891 to a German company. These transactions followed the Conquest, unprecedented in its cataclysmic impacts, and, for Maya speakers, were part of three centuries of stagnation and decline of what was left to a backwater confining the land and its people to the strict economic divisions and deprivations of a feudal economy, the power structure simplified by racial typing. Concurrent with the political processes that brought independence from Spain, economic processes originating in Europe and connected to secularization, as well as the Industrial Revolution, completed the transformation of rural Guatemala away from its colonial shape and ever further from its pre-Columbian past.

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Figure 3.4. Rollout photo of eighth century AD Classic Maya “Vase of the Seven Gods” from Naranjo (K2796 in the Mayavase DataBase); note cigar or cigarette in the mouth of the throned principal deity, Itzamnaaj, and see Figure 3.5. (Justin Kerr/Kerr Associates)

Despite this erasure of indigenous Maya culture and cultural practice, vestiges remain. During the first weeks in Chocolá in the summer of 2003, while walking along the banks of the Rio Chocolá, Kaplan and Paredes Umaña saw two people above them in the mouth of a cave. Upon investigation, we discovered that two xamanes were conducting a ritual containing elements found in a depiction on a seventh century AD Lowland Maya vessel known as the “Vase of the Seven Gods” (Figures 3.4, 3.5). It is extremely unlikely that these two women knew about this vessel; the necessary conclusion is that Maya cultural practices—including the smoking of a cigar as part of cave rituals, miming the smoking of a cigar by God L/ Itzamnaaj as depicted on the vase—simply have continued for the 1,300 years between its creation and our witnessing of it on that day in Chocolá in 2003. If Chocolá, and conceivably other rural places defined largely by their agricultural value, were somehow able to have retained, no matter how tenuous, a connection to a pre-Columbian epistemic, perhaps this is because of the odd protections of such cultural retention afforded by the massif of the modern economic cash-crop-for-export regime (L. Brown 2001 and Brown and Romero 2002).

Figure 3.5. Xaman in the entrance to “La Ventana” cave, Chocolá, 2003; note cigar in her mouth. She puffed and spat, puffed and spat, while circling around a small fire she and her associate had built in the mouth of the cave. (PACH)

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A transaction dated December 20, 1875, took place in the “municipality of Ladinos and Indians of San Antonio Suchitepéquez, approving José Guardiola, before the notary, H. Irondo,” referring to Chocolá at this time as a finca, and specifying its role as an ingenio.13 Because of these transactions, we assume that the present Chocolá aldea is traceable specifically to the establishment of Guardiola’s farm, for it was with Guardiola’s ownership that, around 1864, a significant migration of peasants from the Lago de Atitlán and farther north occurred; whether this migration came about voluntarily, without the specific coercion of writs and edicts, “legal” or counterfeit, we do not know. This was also when Guardiola acquired the associated hacienda building, built a mill, and began the cultivation of sugar, a business that would be relocated more than a decade later to plantation lands just to the south containing another archaeological site, Palo Gordo. During José Guardiola’s ownership, probably occurring roughly at or immediately after the declaration of the 1876 mandatario, the Chocolá village was populated by more K’iche’ Maya who had migrated or were brought from Totonicapán to Chocolá to work as laborers on the finca. We do not know if a community remained consisting of the few hundred who were reported disputing Obregón’s claim, before the “company town” appeared. The Arrival of Coffee The people ar mainly—and hav been since time out ov mind—Indians ov the Nawalá and Ishtawacán (creole spelling, Nahualá, or Nagualá: Ixtahuacán) Indians whose headquarters ar the villages ov those names, in the cold country behind the volcanos. The owners are a company in Hamburg. (Burkitt n.d.[a], 2)14 Thus Robert Burkitt reported to J. Alden Mason, curator at the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, in 1926. Do the linguistic and geographic origins of the present-day Chocolenses shed any light on the ancient site? The mid–late nineteenth century saw more and more substantial migrations from the highlands to the piedmont, satisfying an ever-intensifying labor demand from coffee, sugar cane, and other export-crop agricultural enterprise, such as indigo and cochineal. Thus, Mam speakers joined K’iche’ and Kaqchikel speakers. Within a century, these new historical processes formed a local dialect and blended identity that constituted a giant step away from early colonial agricultural

Figure 3.6. Photo composite: a) stencil for coffee sacks (circa 1950); b) finca coins in use until 1942; c) Victorian architecture of the German-owned Chocolá plantation (1891–circa 1943). (PACH)

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Figure 3.7. Commemorative plaque celebrates the centenary of the giant German clock mounted in 1895 by the German owners of the Chocolá plantation on the coffee-processing structure called the Beneficio by the townspeople. (PACH)

staples and the traditions surrounding them; in consequence, the place and its residents were sealed off still further from the indigenous past. Coffee was introduced to Guatemala in 1750 by Jesuit priests from Jamaica or Cuba,15 with more plants brought probably from Martinique or Costa Rica in the nineteenth century and then initially cultivated with nopal cactus and other plants hosting cochineal; large-scale coffee production after 1850 quickly crowded out even other export crops. Coffee cultivation ended intensive cultivation of cacao, which remained as a small-scale local crop only, sold in powder or brick form at village markets.16 “By 1859,

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over a half million coffee trees had been planted in and around Antigua, Coban, Fraijanes and San Marcos and almost 400 quintales (100 lb. bags) were exported to Europe [and by the] next year, production tripled to over 1100 quintales.”17 By the end of the nineteenth century, coffee hastened the homogenization of land use in Guatemala. Growing coffee today in 20 of its 22 departments,18 as of 2011 Guatemala is tenth on the list of world coffee producers.19 As described, between 1850 and 1925 the rapid growth of the coffee farms drew large numbers of laborers from the highlands and coast to the piedmont, including to Chocolá. Sometime after 1864, a Chocolá community was established, first as a remote aldea connected to the outside world only through the infrastructural connections the owners of the plantation maintained for the purpose of exporting their crop. Exposure to the world beyond the tightly circumscribed community remained as diluted or attenuated as before; over time, the boundaries separating Chocolá and the rest of the world became even more rigid because of the effects of postcolonial labor exploitation, which restricted, as much as possible, activities and energies that might distract the labor force from its economic meaning and function, and thus weaken profits for the postcolonial latifundia enterprise. The forest cover of the piedmont was transformed by coffee, in part because coffee grown at lower altitudes requires substantial shade; our palaeobotanical analysis (see Appendix A) has determined that certain trees, like the palo volador already present, were fostered, and plantain and banana were introduced. Other species were endangered; the ceiba, the giant tree having central symbolic value to the ancient Maya as a mythological world tree (Roys 1967: 100), increasingly disappeared as intensive cultivation sharply expanded not only of cafetales, but also with the new or expanded monoculturing of sugar, rubber, and palm (for palm oil). At the same time as these agricultural transformations were occurring, alterations in demography as well as economic and cultural changes took place because of influences from outside Guatemala. The result was the further fragmentation of indigenous and ladino consciousness and the continuation of very low quality of life, both characteristic of the devolving processes of the Third World, in the unplanned expansion of cities such as Mazatenango. Even as infrastructure, in the form of roads, markets, and malls, were built at an ever-more-rapid rate, the alienation and other perturbation of communities like Chocolá from any consequential body of indigenous tradition and historical meaning became extreme, and, at the same time, the economic order of exploitation became ever more entrenched. Perhaps an

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ironic reminder today of the neoliberal transformations of Chocolá’s—and Guatemala’s—economics and the impact this transformation had on the lives of the villagers is the giant clock mounted in 1895 by the German owners of the gigantic plantation (see Figure 3.7); the clock struck Kaplan as a staggeringly obvious metaphor of Taylorism, the eponymously named nineteenth-century industrial labor-management system (Taylor was also the inventor of the time clock). By 1871 the Liberal Reform, a postindependence outcome that furthered Criollo politics in the former Spanish colonies of Central America, had given farm owners all the legally codified tools to make extraordinarily profitable use of the poor, indigenous labor force. As mentioned, the first plantation farms of southwestern Guatemala devoted to coffee cultivation were assisted to a significant effect by the government, which enforced, for example, individual land ownership instead of communally owned land; the latter previously belonged to indigenous peasant communities. In addition to sugar cane, Guardiola planted coffee, making a name for himself in the industry as the developer of a horizontal coffee dryer marketed and sold to other coffee farms. The taller de máquinas (workshop or machine shop), the beneficio de café (coffee-processing building), and the casco (headquarters building) that remain standing are witnesses to this neocolonial industrial development. A large Victorian wood frame structure, called the “hotel” because it was used to accommodate visitors during the time of German ownership, collapsed in 2013.20 Other larger trends were in play that would complete a transformation of the cultural and commercial geography of pre-Columbian and then colonial Guatemala to the equivalent of one vast farm growing crops for export, the wealth and assets extracted for foreign businesses as well as a few landed Guatemalan elites. Liberal reforms of the era favored a capitalinvested land-use model by which farms became the property of individuals and consortiums of foreign enterprise; this resulted in great profits for these businesses, businessmen, and the foreign governments that encouraged and supported them, working hand-in-hand with the Guatemalan oligarchic state. Campesino labor on the coffee plantations became mandated for the sake of “modernization”: “Disruptions to sedentary family life [were] caused by strict enforcement of mandamiento legislation. Under the terms of mandamiento, authorized by President Barrios in 1876, Highland Maya communities were required by law to send men and women to work on coffee plantations that had been established on the Pacific piedmont with a view

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to developing Guatemala’s commercial agricultural potential” (Lovell and Lutz 2013: 402). European businessmen, notably German nationals, proved very successful in obtaining and managing great-scale coffee plantations. Despite his own substantial profits (Wagner 2001: 64), Guardiola sold his farm to the Chocolá Plantagen Gesellschaft, founded in Hamburg on February 2, 1891, by a consortium of German bankers and investors, operating through its representative in Guatemala, Enrique Neutze (compare Wagner 1991: 151). The purchase price was 2.6 million marks (approximately $650,000).21 At the height of its enterprise or by 1900, the Chocolá plantation was the second largest in the department of Suchitepéquez and was one of the most important in Guatemala, with some 560,000 cafetos22 in production (Wagner 1991: 153). The German owners greatly expanded the size of the farm—at its maximum, we estimate it to have been about 935 km2—and constructed many Victorian-style buildings to house the farm administrators and their families. Vestiges of the luxury in which they lived before they were deported during and after World War II include swimming pools and gardens; private, small-gauge railways were also used, the remains of which we observed both in the modern village and just outside of it. Records from the time of their ownership include registries of German nationals departing from Bremen: for example, “Lengemann,” mother and daughter, en route via ship to “Hacienda Chocolá, Palo Gordo, Dep. Suchitepéquez.”23 From the luxuries of the infrastructure and the leading role the finca had for export coffee, we can assume the Germans enjoyed great profits from Chocolá. Interestingly, informants to PACH staff, elderly residents of Chocolá and in the adjacent cooperatives, remember them from before the Second World War as being “good” and even “the best of men”; one must interpret such characterizations within the context of a master-subaltern relationship conducted over an enormous vertical socioeconomic and cultural distance. With the acquisition of farms and baldío land, the vertical model—by which an enterprise owned and controlled all aspects of its business from the land and the labor to the wholesale distribution and even the retail marketing of the product—was applied; thus over a few decades the Germanowned plantations in Guatemala created an infrastructure to facilitate land transport and ocean shipment of coffee, including banks, roads, new seaports, railways to the coast, and electric utilities. With the approval and direct intercessions of the Barrios government, these infrastructural changes

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in the Guatemalan hinterlands came to be considered as representing the ideal modern progress of the nation. The Chocolá plantation—known variously as the Chocolá Plantagen Gesellschaft, the Plantagen Gesellschaft Chocolá Neutze, and the Central American Plantation Corporation—— was under the supervision variously of managers recorded as Enrique Neutze, Friedrich von Czudnochowski and Fedor Deininger.24 In his book on the Chocolá plantation corporation, Estuardo Calderón notes that plantations, facilities, natural resources, and even the debts of the mozos colonos (tenant farmers who migrated from the highlands to Chocolá to work as laborers) were considered part of the property and sold together with it each time it changed ownership. On December 14, 1923, the Chocolá Plantagen transferred the property to the Central American Plantation Corporation (CAPCO), a transaction notarized by one Javier Bolaños. The new owners were David Sapper (Karl Sapper’s cousin) and John Goebel (Calderón Tobar 2000: 73). The Second World War and the Nationalization of German Properties During and after the Second World War, German-owned farms, including Chocolá, became the property of the Guatemalan state, and national administrators took over both the production and redistribution of goods.25 Previously, by the outbreak of the First World War, the United States had become the principal trading partner in Central America due to its geographical position and its technological modernization. Under Franklin D. Roosevelt’s administration (1933–1945) and before the beginning of the Second World War, the Interamerican Cooperation System (BulmerThomas 1993: 372–380) had begun to benefit the region. The Central American republics were strategically located between the United States and the Panama Canal. The Second World War provided the United States with the opportunity to consolidate geostrategically, a process aided by the political situation in Europe. From 1939 on U.S. pressure to limit or exclude European commercial activity in Central America intensified. Chocolá was to be both witness and actor on this international playing field (Wagner 1991: 366–390). On December 8, 1941, the day after the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, President Jorge Ubico convened the National Assembly to declare a restriction of constitutional guarantees upon German, Italian, and Japanese nationals living in Guatemala for the duration of the war. All five Central American republics declared war on the Axis nations, and prepared the

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way for the expropriation of property held by citizens of the Axis countries (Bulmer-Thomas 1993: 373). In Guatemala on June 16, 1942, auditors were sent to make inventories of the existing assets of each finca, ingenio, beneficio, and hacienda.26 Early in 1943, citing the Custodian of Enemy Property Act, the United States seized assets of the largest German coffee farms in Guatemala held in American banks and other commercial institutions (Wagner 2001: 173). The deportation of German nationals from Guatemala began in 1941 and continued throughout the war. Sent first to concentration camps in the United States, some of the deportees preferred to remain in U.S. prisons until end of the war; others were returned by various routes to Europe. The names of deported Germans from Chocolá and neighboring locations appeared in the January 19, 1943, issue of Nuestro Diario under the title, “List of 141 Germans deported in January 1943 to [the Alien Detention Station], Kennedy, Texas” (Wagner 1991: 431–34). The October Revolution, Death Squads, and Genocide After the October 1944 Revolution forced Ubico to resign as president, Chocolá became a national property during the brief administration of General Ponce Vaides, who created the Office of Domestic and Intervened Properties. In 1945 Germany and its allies had lost the war, and the United Nations was a new institution in international relations. The United States had emerged from the war as the most powerful and influential country in the world; its sphere of influence extended throughout the Americas. The first government in Guatemala after the 1944 revolution that ousted Ubico was the first administration democratically chosen in the country’s history and the first postwar test of the ideology of democracy in Central America. Juan José Arévalo was elected president, reelected four years later, and in 1952 was succeeded by Jacobo Árbenz Guzmán. With Arévalo’s election, historians generally agree that what followed was a social and cultural blossoming, with passage of laws abolishing forced labor and guaranteeing freedom of speech, freedom of association, and freedom for labor to organize, as well as the establishment of new political parties. However, in the years immediately preceding and after the 1952 election of Arévalo’s successor, Arbenz, all of these supposed fundamentals of Western democracy in turn proved the end of the revolutionary government. Cited as threats to freedom, Arévalo and Arbenz’s policies came directly under fire from outside efforts to build an anticommunist

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hysteria. The “communist threat” in Guatemala was a cover for an American agribusiness, the United Fruit Company, the largest landowner in the country, as it fought the revolutionary government’s pressure to allow peasant farmers to use idle parts of its land holdings (Immerman 1983). Agents at the highest levels of the U.S. government (the Dulles brothers, John Foster and Allen, secretary of state and CIA director, respectively), whose law firm represented United Fruit, formed alliances with the old reactionary landed interests in Guatemala; this led to a CIA-sponsored coup in 1954, toppling Arbenz (Cullather 1999). From 1954, with the continuing support of the U.S. government through several administrations, Guatemala entered a long epoch of paramilitary terror (death squads) and military rule. During this period, all the advantages the forces of reaction held essentially since the Conquest until the ten years of Arévalo and Arbenz were regained and reconsolidated. A United Nations’ denominated genocide occurred, killing an estimated 250,000–300,000 mostly Maya peasants in the late 1970s through the early 1980s (see Falla 1992). So one-sided a conflict that the term “civil war” does not truly apply, the military and the oligarchy were implicated by a Catholic Church–sponsored investigation as being responsible for 90 percent of the killings. In 1996, a peace agreement was signed between the government and the handful of tiny armed revolutionary groups. Nevertheless, political and economically inspired violence, as part of a generalized repression by the oligarchic old guard business and landowner clique, in league with military and other extralegal factions, has continued in Guatemala. Elections are routinely described as unrepresentative or fraudulent; murders of union organizers, civil rights activists, and anthropologists investigating land tenure, continue today, and the socioeconomic division between the tiny incestuously connected wealthy and the massive majority of the population27 continues to breed violence such that Guatemala, year-after-year, is listed as having one of the highest homicide rates in the world. The Instituto Agropecuario Nacional, a project organized by the Guatemalan Ministry of Agriculture with the assistance of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, was founded in 1945 and based at Chocolá and its extensions. Chocolá participated in all of these turbulent processes; a record of this project comes from an internal document of the Empresa Campesina Asociativa Chocolá,28 stating that in 1952, during the government of President Jacobo Arbenz Guzmán, the Chocolá farm and its annexes were given

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to the workers and settlers, giving each beneficiary a fraction of 60–90 cuerdas (23.6–35.4 ha). Approximately two years later, the new CIA-supported government of General Carlos Castillo Armas returned Chocolá to state management by decree. The Instituto Nacional de Transformación (INTA) was put in charge of all works, production, management, and operations of the Chocolá finca and annexes until 1981. In 1981, during the administration of General Romeo Lucas García, the Chocolá lands were returned to the villagers, who later formed a cooperative even though the Guatemalan state continued to receive most of the farm’s income. From informants, we learned that this “gift” which, otherwise, defied understanding, seems to have been a quid pro quo for service by townspeople in the Patrullas de Autodefensa Civil, or PACs, the paramilitary cadres in the Guatemalan campo assigned the dirty work of the army.29 Thus the shadows of genocide, and of divisions and rancor among the townspeople, cast over everything and everyone in Chocolá, hung over us as well during our years of fieldwork, and help to explain, indirectly, the difficulties we encountered in 2006. What happened to the ancient remains and the larger artifacts in the months before or immediately after the turning over of the land to the small-plot farming families as a cooperative, also remains obscure. Town informants to PACH described a kind of sculptural garden, located to the west of the soccer field, itself to the immediate west of the center of both the modern village and the ancient city, where several ancient monuments, now missing, had been moved sometime previously by the Germans to form a small park with a vista looking far to the south from the plateau on which the town and site sit. Questions about where the monuments had gone elicited stories about the last government manager, who had absconded with at least some of them in a cooperative truck. Later rumors had it that this man was murdered in Poptún, in the Petén. We have not been able to confirm this. Other rumors were that a previous military junta president (Arana Osorio) had some monuments from Chocolá ornamenting his estate in Guatemala City; this, also, remains unconfirmed. The years from the late 1970s, through the coup d’état and ensuing dictatorship of General Efraín Ríos Montt from 1981 to 1982, saw the most intense part of the genocide; the ever-worsening violence fell most severely against the rural Maya in the departments of Huehuetenango, Quiche, and San Marcos in the mountainous southwest of the country. There the bulk of the Maya speakers still live, who self-identify, ethnically and culturally, as indigenas.

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At least two reminders come to us of Chocolá’s experience of the “bad times,” as Chocolenses refer to them. One came from the project cook, who recalled to Kaplan how the basement of the great building the Germans constructed as administration headquarters and manager-family residences was the site of torture and killing. The other reminder was what we ourselves witnessed, as hundreds of men—many amputees—as well as widows of men who were killed, lined up, over a period of several months in 2004–2005, to pay illegal “processing fees” in order to claim a promised compensation for service in the PACs.30 To many on the PACH staff, in Chocolá, as elsewhere in Guatemala, the “bad times” clouded all activity, almost never mentioned but noticeably present: the elephant in the room no one admits to. According to town informants, at roughly the same time as the seemingly inexplicable “gift” from Lucas García, a group of visiting Scandinavians persuaded the farmers to, in effect, double down, on coffee growing. This turned out to be a disastrous decision. The processes of globalism led inexorably to the marginalization of small-plot farmers, with great pools of capital moving around the globe constantly seeking better profits by finding the cheapest labor. It may have been partly in response to the fluctuations of international coffee prices, partly purely local processes and actions, or both, that led in 1985 to the administrative separation from Chocolá of the communities of Madre Mia, Lolemí, and La Ladrillera. In 1988 this separation resulted in each of the four independent entities becoming their own ECA. The latter term, Empresa Campesina Agrícola, was promulgated by passage of a law, the “67–84 act,”31 which led to the nominal independence of Guatemala’s ECAs from the state, regardless of the supervision otherwise of INTA. Again according to our informants, since 1985 a pattern has continued of seeking loans from banks, which have left ECA Chocolá inextricably deep in debt. Repayment has been intermittent at best, as the debt has prevented any effort by the Chocolá farmers to change the terms of their subsistence to a different crop, cacao, which Kaplan had envisioned and worked to establish for the relief of the farmers. Paid once a year for their coffee crop, the farmers of Chocolá rarely have ready money on hand for emergencies. For all but the families receiving remesas from relatives in the United States, their waking lives are devoted entirely to tending their coffee and, threatened so often by crisis, to the day-to-day struggle of finding enough to eat and keeping their families sheltered from the elements.

124 · Water, Cacao, and the Early Maya of Chocolá

Notes 1. Despite continuing questions in a long debate about the epistemological presuppositions underlying the “emic–etic” categories for anthropology (see, for example, Harris 1976 and Feleppa 1986), these categories still enable dichotomizing between basic kinds of information—informant-valued meaning vs. social scientific abstractions. 2. More commonly known as Empresa Campesina Asociativa Chocolá, “Peasant Agricultural Community.” 3. Zender and Guenter have deciphered the name of this god differently: Ik’- (Y)ak’ab’ Ta[h]an (1993: 109). 4. For a thorough account of Alvarado’s conquest of Guatemala, see Lovell and Lutz (2013). 5. Sixteenth-century indigenous document from Central Mexico; source for the tribute section of the Codex Mendoza (see http://www.wdl.org/en/item/3248/). 6. See: http://archive.org/stream/smithsonianmisce1021942smit/smithsonianmisce 1021942smit_djvu.txt. 7. That the Mexica huetlatoani offered the cacao to Cortés supports the idea that cacao was a sumptuary item. 8. Thompson (1930: 186) cites Villagutierre for the frothing of the cacao beverage. 9. Also titled, Libro de Cosas de la Nueva España o de los naturales de ella. 10. See: http://naldc.nal.usda.gov/naldc/download.xhtml?id=IND43645402&content =PDF. 11. Carrasco 1982b. 12. Monografia Mínima de Chocolá 2001: 2. 13. Calderón Tobar 2000: 67; Archivo INTA, folio No. 03-04 20/12/1875. “Ingenio” is a term in Guatemalan plantation agriculture that dates to late colonial times. Originally applied to sugar mills when European investment brought management with “innovative” ideas and methods to Guatemala, it became synonymous with large fincas (Komisaruk 2013: 265). 14. Where not specifically cited differently, much of the following is taken from Wagner (1991, 2001). 15. http://www.falconspeciality.co.uk/guatemala.html. 16. Despite coffee production, which ended cacao production as an export crop, cacao today continues to be widely grown in Guatemala. “[C]offee, sugar, bananas, and cotton, followed by hemp, essential oils, and cacao,” in that order, constitute the country’s principal cash crops (http://www.nationsencyclopedia.com/Americas/Guatemala-AGRICULTURE.html#b); that cacao remains so widely grown is one indication of the special soils in the southern Guatemalan piedmont that cacao needs in order to propagate. 17. http://www.equalexchange.coop/history-of-coffee-in-guatemala. 18. Report from Chemonics International, Inc., “LAC Bureau: Diversification Options for Coffee Growing Areas in Central America,” submitted to USAID, 2002; this report urging greater agricultural diversification was commissioned in part because of an ongoing economic “crisis” in Central America. Because of global economics, contributing to Guatemala’s very high poverty rate is the fact that 94% of those growing coffee are microto small producers.

Ethnohistory and History of the Southern Maya Region, Suchitepéquez, and Chocolá · 125

19. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coffee#Cultivation. 20. This occurred despite pleas and admonitions from IDAEH to ECA and town residents, which was seeking to protect the infrastructure of the German farm. 21. By extrapolation from http://www.history.ucsb.edu/faculty/marcuse/projects/currency.htm. 22. A cafeto is equal to what a coffee tree produces at its height of production. 23. http://212.227.236.244/passagierlisten/passagen.php?heimatort=Hacienda%20 Chocola,%20Palo%20Gordo,%20Dep.%20Suchitepequez&lang=en; compare http://www. forumdelcafe.com/pdf/F-48_Guardiola.pdf. 24. Feininger also came to own coffee properties in El Salvador (http://www.miradasalemanas.de/Max-Vollmberg.201.0.html). 25. For some of the following, we derived information from the Monografía Mínima de Chocola (2001), a community document. 26. Both the formal and shorthand names of agricultural properties in Guatemala. 27. See C. Smith 1975, 1976, 1978, on how the spatial structuring of markets in southwestern Guatemala confirms these processes. 28. Monografía Mínima de Chocolá. 29. It was into these groups that thousands of rural Maya were impressed, often under threat of harm or loss of life, and whom the Guatemalan army employed to carry out most of the organized killing that the army justified as eradication of sympathizers and supporters of the handful of tiny groups of “communist” guerrillas (see Warren 1999). 30. For several months prior to the beginning of the 2005 season, PACH offices were forcefully occupied by nonlocal operatives of this swindle. 31. http://leydeguatemala.com/decreto-82-78-ley-general-de-cooperativas/41/.

4 Archaeological Operations Mounds, Plazas, and Features

In this chapter selected excavation data and descriptions of how these data were obtained will enable professional colleagues to assess our work. The data are intended, also, to offer a guide for future field research at the ancient city. We present only highlights; full field data can be found online in the informes to the Guatemalan Instituto de Antropología e Historia (IDAEH).1 Because discoveries in 2003 largely dictated choices for investigation in the subsequent two seasons, this chapter is organized, first, to provide narration of the first season followed, second, by presentation of data and discussions of excavation operations of structures and features grouped from both 2004 and 2005. By the end of the 2005 season, at six operations, including five mounds (Mound 2, 5, 6, 7, and 15), intensive excavation had been undertaken. The five mounds represented different types of architecture and different social functions, from north to south, respectively: (1) Mound 15, a large platform containing a rectangular spring house/temple, with an associated system of water conduits emanating from a spring-fed redistribution box, later, a well; (2) Mound 6, a small pyramidal shrine or temple; (3) Mound 7, a large elite structure or palace with at least two occupational components; (4) Mound 2, a large, early earthen structure with cobble support near Mound 1 and likely a central administrative structure; and (5) Mound 5, a stone-walled platform that, based on its location in the flat Southern Sector and also because of its low but broad and wide dimensions, we propose could have functioned to manage agricultural activity. Other types of structures exist that have not been excavated, including very large pyramidal structures in the Central Sector, for example, Mounds 1, 9, and 12, which we assume contain religious and administrative structures. Plazas connecting structures appear throughout the ancient site, with evidence of sculptural displays near the edifices and in the plazas (see Figure

Figure 4.1. Map altered from the first georeferenced map of Chocolá. Initially, from GPS plotting of the shape of the mounds, we assumed the architectural orientations of edifices, edifice complexes, and platforms were generally west of north; however, excavation of Structures 5-1, 6-1, 7-1, and 15-1 found all four to be oriented due north. Accordingly, we speculate that many unexcavated structures also are oriented north. (PACH)

128 · Water, Cacao, and the Early Maya of Chocolá

6.6) which, we assume, were positioned according to ideological orientation, celestial/astronomical, and/or ritual. Slightly altered here, PACH’s first georeferenced schematic map of the structures in the site core is shown in Figure 4.1, along with the excavation operations undertaken. The 2003 Field Season

The first two weeks of the 2003 field season were employed on systematic transect survey, recording 59 mounds and a large number of features, using GPS technology and conventional survey methods. Thereafter, survey continued, but more slowly. In addition to these survey activities, test pitting at selected loci throughout the site attempted to determine, by the depth of artifactual material and by ceramic comparison with known dates from other Southern Maya Region sites, the general stratigraphy and rough age and chronology of the site; some Ocos-like sherds suggested an Early Preclassic initial occupation, copious Middle and Late Preclassic wares and types, Early Classic Teotihuacanoid forms, and plumbate and other Late and Terminal Classic and Postclassic pottery types. In 2003, we could not and, today, we cannot determine if the longevity of occupation of Chocolá was unbroken, although, if other sites in the Southern Maya Region provide any clue, an interruption may have taken place at the end of the Preclassic. Assisted by two American archaeologists2 and accompanied by local guides and Earthwatch volunteers, the University of San Carlos’s Guatemalan student surveying crews took GPS waypoints at mound centers and corners. In addition, a GPS line track was used to trace a basal area for each mound/structure. These data were used to develop the georeferenced map of Chocola’s ancient architecture.3 During the reconnaissance and survey, other information was recorded, for example, the condition of the mounds and location of sculpture and sculptural fragments and artifact scatters (Table 4.1); likely types of structures were also recorded (Table 4.2). Because the approximate area of architectural features was recorded through GPS line tracks, building orientation and conventionalized mound shapes were hypothetical and were presented schematically, following mapping conventions for Maya architecture. Survey, Mapping, and Preparation for Excavations, 2003 A primary initial goal in the first field season was to determine the size and age of the city as it extended in space and time. Permanent benchmarks and datums for grid excavation were placed (Appendix B). Reconnaissance

Table 4.1. Data from the first assessment of the ancient architecture at Chocolá Mound

Size

Condition

Veg. cover

Area

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37

Large Large Medium Small Medium Small Medium Large Medium Small Small Large Small Small Medium Small Medium Small Medium Large Nd Small Large Large Medium Medium Small Large Small Small Small Small Small Large Large

Intact Partial Intact Intact Intact Intact Intact Intact Intact Intact Partial Intact Partial Partial Partial Partial Partial Partial Intact Intact Nd Intact Partial Partial Intact Intact Destroyed Nd Intact Intact Intact Intact Intact Partial Partial

Grass Grass Tree Nd Tree Grass Tree Tree Tree Tree Grass Tree Tree Grass Tree Tree Tree Tree Tree Tree Nd Tree Tree Tree Tree Tree Grass Nd Tree Tree Tree Tree Tree Tree Tree

4285 3700 3237 2811 2878 1609 10999 9437 6708 1649 2409 6956 4627 2698 5346 7588 11041 6946 26807 7827 4982 2296 8561 2866 7038 4407 7478 5359 985 1691 4761 6652 2424 16880 23217 (continued)

130 · Water, Cacao, and the Early Maya of Chocolá

Table 4.1—Continued

Mound

Size

Condition

Veg. cover

Area

39 40 41 42 43 44 45 47 48 49 50 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 16-Plaza

Small Small Small Small Small Small Medium Small Small Small Small Small Small Small Small Small Small Small Small Small

Destroyed Intact Destroyed Partial Partial Partial Partial Partial Partial Partial Partial Partial Destroyed Partial Intact Intact Intact Partial Partial Destroyed

Grass Tree Tree Tree Tree Tree Tree Tree Tree Tree Tree Tree Tree Tree Tree Tree Tree Grass Tree Tree

12937 2787 2712 1583 23724 2725 46344 17024 1512 1917 9265 11210 9180 10521 9495 3574 2629 587 560 8618

Source: PACH. Note: Drawing from PACH’s 2003 GPS-based survey. Areas taken at the mound’s base are given in m squared; vegetation cover is reported, as is mound conservation, as of the same year. Many mounds have since been partially destroyed. Nd = No data.

and mapping teams recorded UTM coordinates of mounds and features throughout what appeared, at the time, to represent the site’s area. Test pits, selected by random stratified sampling, were dug in order to gain sufficient understanding of the city’s social and cultural organization to guide choice of loci for intensive excavations. The test pits, therefore, formed part of the survey, the vertical, for chronological information through stratigraphic analysis and analysis of ceramics, complementing the horizontal surface survey for structures and features. The spatial and temporal information obtained in 2003 about the distribution of large structures and the site’s general chronology led to a presumptive division of the site core into three sectors: higher up, in the north,

Archaeological Operations: Mounds, Plazas, and Features · 131

Table 4.2. Typology for mounds/structures found at Chocolá, 2003–2006 Form

Function

Size

Examples

Pyramidal

Administrative/ religious Ritual/ceremonial; bureaucratic/ supervisory Elite residence; “spring house”; shrine

Small, medium, large Medium, large

Mounds 1, 2, 3, 6, 9, 12, 23 Str. 5-1

Medium, large

Str. 7-1; Str. 15-1

Platform

Range / “palace”; rectangular structure Water conduits

Extended Hydraulic; multipurpose (potable water delivered into structures; waste water evacuated from structures; possibly also irrigation)

Associated with Strs. 15-1, 7-1, Mound 9, center of modern town/ presumed ancient administrative core

Source: PACH. Str(s). = Structure(s).

from about 825 to 950 MAMSL, elite palaces and shrines; somewhat lower, in the center, from about 700 to 825 MAMSL, administrative structures; and, lower still, in the south, a sector for commoner residences, craft workshops, and agricultural support, from about 600 to 700 MAMSL. This reconstruction assumes a “snapshot” view when the city reached a particular size, integration, and development of complexity; fortuitous discoveries, for example, of a cache of whole fine ware vessels in the Southern Sector, while dating to the end of the Preclassic, suggest other temporal and spatiofunctional possibilities. This division correlated closely with changes in topography. From comparisons with Takalik Abaj, we conclude that human labor flattened natural hills to terraces that are clearly visible today, and that represent part of Chocolá’s “landscape capital” (P. Blanton and W. A. Marcus 2009). These modifications appear to have both represented and reaffirmed divisions in Chocolá’s ancient social hierarchy. The terraces resemble those at Takalik Abaj, where the natural landscape similarly was humanly modified, and thus may conform to a pattern in the dissected landscape of the piedmont of site selection and modification. Once we tentatively determined the basic north-central-south spatial divisions, more localized sampling choices for grid excavation became evident. In 2003, in addition to survey and mapping, 30 test pits in all three

132 · Water, Cacao, and the Early Maya of Chocolá

sectors, as well as selective loci in Mounds 2, 3, 5, 9, and 15, were excavated. Because of time and budget constraints, most archaeological projects excavate and otherwise study only a very small part of a site, and many excavate no more than 5 percent or less of a site’s total area. Our sampling choices, therefore, might well differ from those other researchers would have selected. Before arriving in the field, Kaplan decided on the approach that was used because of his concerns that the most general spatial and temporal information be recovered as quickly as possible in order to obtain data from all three sectors by excavation. This decision stemmed from the fact that the project’s interruptions to life in a modern village could lead to problems up to and including shutdown of research, and gaining as much of a picture of the site as a whole had the best chance of making discoveries that would justify, to all the stakeholders, including not only grant sponsors but also the town community, its preservation and study. Other nonsurvey activities were undertaken in 2003. From information provided by town inhabitants, two carved monuments in the North Sector were extracted and moved to a secure location: Monument 14 was recovered from a secondary deposit on the north side and just below the summit of Mound 9 (Pit II-A-9-15), and Monument 15 was recovered beneath the floor of an evangelical Christian church. Other assistance from the townspeople in 2003 came in the form of 86 donations (Kaplan and Valdés 2003: 149–150), chiefly whole vessels and grindstones (manos and metates; Molina and Valdés in Kaplan and Valdés 2003); more artifacts were donated in subsequent seasons. The project also undertook several nonarchaeological activities, which adhered to our long-term strategy of a two-pronged effort, (1) research, and (2) community assistance as part of a partnership to preserve and study the ancient remains while simultaneously developing sustainable resources for the modern community, in an effort to build close, productive and harmonious relationships with its residents. Survey, Test Pits and Excavations of Structures, 2003 Two mounds were the focus of intensive excavations in 2003, 2 and 15, in the Central and North Sectors, respectively. A third mound, Mound 5, was probed by test pitting. In 1927–1928 Burkitt dug an enormous trench, effectively destroying much of Mound 2.4 Given this damage and the mound’s continuing use as a modern town garbage dump (see Figure 4.2a and b), selective excavation was dictated on a salvage basis. Work at both Mounds 2 and 15 revealed that, in the Preclassic period, the ancient Chocolenses constructed their

Archaeological Operations: Mounds, Plazas, and Features · 133

Figure 4.2. a) Mound 2, also known as El Cerro Partido (“Divided Hill”) by the town residents, was excavated by Robert Burkitt in 1927 and 1928; he dug an enormous stepped trench, effectively bifurcating the mound; b) Mound 2 in 2003, used as a garbage dump by the town—PACH removed the garbage before cleaning profiles and excavating beyond Burkitt’s trench. (University of Pennsylvania Museum Archives; PACH)

edifices using earth as fill with partial cobblestone support and distinct aggregations of taxcal5; excavations at Mound 2 revealed a strategy employing a kind of lattice support, described below. In Mound 15—in the fourth test pit placed by the project—an underground conduit was found whose size and, in our view, quite sophisticated

134 · Water, Cacao, and the Early Maya of Chocolá

stone construction led to the discovery of the extensive water management network of stone conduits. This discovery was confirmed a few weeks later by finding more of the water system in pits near Mound 9. Chocolá’s water system preoccupied us in both 2004 and 2005 as we continued to trace and document its extension west and south of Mounds 9 and 15, well down into the ancient administrative core and modern town center. In Chapter 7 we discuss Chocolá’s ancient water management in detail and in the context of water systems in the Southern Maya Region and elsewhere in Mesoamerica. Noteworthy is the fact that the location of the natural springs, to the north of the North Sector of the site, feeding a redistribution node at least in Mound 15, meant that the elite of the ancient city enjoyed privileged access to purer water than commoners living farther to the south (Kaplan 2008: 11). Mound 5, to the south, and Mound 15, to the north, were situated near the limits of what we presumed from our reconnaissance was the formal extent of the ancient city at some point in its occupation trajectory. From the 2003 survey, surface artifacts in the South Sector found on and near Mound 5 (utilitarian ceramic sherds, mano and metate fragments, substantial amounts of obsidian blades, nuclei, and flakes) supported our assumption that this sector of the ancient city had been devoted to craft workshops, agriculture, and commoner housing. Relying on our assumptions about elite-commoner social divisions, we excavated around and within the edifices inside each of the five mounds tested in 2003 in order to determine the purposes that led to the construction of the ancient buildings, the uses of these buildings through time, the social actors involved, and the specific practical and ritual actions performed at or associated with them. For example, features uncovered by test pits in Mounds 3 and 5 were the impetus for excavations in 2004 and 2005 of Structure 5-1, a very large stone-walled platform that we theorize was used to administer and supervise intensive agriculture. Test Pits, 2003 Test pits were placed in plazas and mounds in all three sectors as well as in an area where, reportedly, numerous carved monuments, now disappeared, had been gathered and reset by the German owner-managers of the farm to form a kind of sculptural garden called by the townspeople, “El Kiosko.” Also particularly noteworthy, Plaza 16, just south of Mound 9 or at the edge of its rise, was test-pitted, finding, by contrast with the very small number of sherds found in Mound 2, a comparatively extraordinary

Archaeological Operations: Mounds, Plazas, and Features · 135

amount of ceramics used as fill in this mound (see below). As mentioned, in the South Sector, two features of aligned river cobbles, oriented northsouth, also were discovered. One of these, Feature 14-R-3, was re-excavated in 2004 to begin excavation of what we later called Structure 5-1. Mound 2, Central Sector Mound 2, located in the ancient administrative and ceremonial core, also sits in the center of the modern town, where administrative structures and houses of the German owners and managers of the giant coffee plantation were built and remain today. Lying 75 m apex-to-apex due south from Mound 1 on the other side of the main road in Chocolá—and thus apparently related to that larger mound in administrative function and ideological meaning—Mound 2 appears to be both early in date and important because of its pyramidal form and its size. In 2003, we recorded its height as 12 m but originally it was at least a few meters higher, based on Burkitt’s description. It appeared . . . that on the level of my thirteen meter floor I was down to natural ground. But a short distance in, I began again to find potsherds. And still further in, it turned out that not only was I not down to natural ground. I was not even at the bottom of the ashes. . . . (Burkitt 1930: 13) Proceeding to dig further, he concluded, “the mound was built on [sand and] gravel” (Burkitt 1930: 16), Burkitt also assumed that Chocolá’s architecture was conical, or round (1930: 6), an unlikely conclusion given the near universality of pyramid and rectangular shapes for Maya buildings, and the extreme paucity of round structures. We assume Burkitt did not have access at the time to sufficient data about Maya architecture to know this. The original structure was earthen or primarily earth and adobe, with river cobbles (Gutiérrez 2003: 122, in Kaplan and Valdés 2003) laid as support at the lowest or deepest original construction level and in a higher level inside the mound. A fill matrix consisted of earth, small cobbles, and taxcal blocks hardened and otherwise strengthened by burning (Gutiérrez 2003). Today, townspeople refer to the mound as El Cerro Partido, or “Divided Hill,” because, in his excavation project from 1927 to 1928, Burkitt dug a great trench through it (Burkitt 1930), effectively creating an amphitheaterlike cavity that hollowed out the mound; see Figure 4.2a. As he described in

136 · Water, Cacao, and the Early Maya of Chocolá

a letter to the University of Pennsylvania Museum, Burkitt recorded finding scant artifacts; he noted, at the bottom of his trench, or directly on the ancient platform on which the structure was built, “leaves . . . ashes and . . . charcoal,” the “leaves” from a quantity of branches with the green of the foliage astonishingly well-preserved from the time these were laid down and the structure built until Burkitt’s discovery of them 2,500 years later (Burkitt n.d.[b]). The excavation PACH undertook in Mound 2 in 2003 cleaned profiles and selectively test-pitted (Pits II-D-2-1, 2, 3, 4, 5) what was left of the mound, more or less the two sides, east and west, of the trench, concentrating more on the former. As mentioned, before we could excavate, one of the first tasks of the 2003 season was to clear out a great accumulation of trash that had been deposited over a period of many years in modern times at the bottom of the trench, as shown in Figure 4.2b. Not just considered a garbage dump, Mound 2 was regarded by the townspeople, as were other mounds, as a haunt for supernaturals (Gutiérrez 2003: 117). From the stratigraphy revealed by the cleaned profiles of the eastern remnant of the mound as well as from the varying kinds of fill, we obtained abundant information about early (probably no later than Middle to late Middle Preclassic) construction techniques in the Southern Maya Region. Burkitt did note that what we call Structure 2-1 was built of earth (1930: 19), but he failed to explain the discovery of the river cobbles that he found, as we did in 2003, placed near or at the original terrace floor or near the ancient ground surface and also at a higher level of the structure. While he did note substantial burned material, he also failed to make the connection between the events of burning and the fire-hardening of clay or mud surfaces of floors and steps; PACH’s palaeobotanical studies in 2014 identified likely high-temperature-burning pine from soil samples elsewhere at the site. We suspect that the burned materials in Mound 2, as well as charcoal residues from the stairway of Structure 7-1, represent pine. We also suspect that a mud plaster was applied to smooth visible surfaces and then hardened in this manner, similar to the fire-hardened adobeconstruction process at Kaminaljuyu (Kidder et al. 1946: 17, 21, Shook and Kidder 1952: 46, Villacorta C. 1955: 142). As possible evidence in support of this theory, another material employed in the construction of Chocolá’s edifices was taxcal, naturally occurring ubiquitously in the soils of Chocolá and of Takalik Abaj. We found taxcal was almost always associated with cobblestone construction at each

Archaeological Operations: Mounds, Plazas, and Features · 137

Table 4.3. Sherd counts by arbitrary 20 cm levels, Pit II-A-9-3, at the southern base of Mound 9, 2003 11-A-9-3 Levels

Depth

Sherd count

Level 1

1.05–1.25

989

Level 2

1.25–1.45

374

Level 3

1.45–1.65

360

Level 4

1.65–1.85

409

Level 5

1.85–2.05

708

Level 6

2.05–2.24

601

Level 7

2.24–2.40

399

Level 8

2.40–2.60

112

Level 9

2.60–2.80

72

Level 10

2.80–3.00

213

Level 11

3.00–3.20

59

Level 12

3.20–3.40

30

Level 13

3.40–3.60

Total

0 4326

Source: PACH.

of the five mounds and mound structures that we excavated. Its use was in the form of large and medium aggregations employed as support, not only in Structure 2-1 but other structures, as well, and also as small flakes used as cement and sealant in the Mound 15 water conduits (for example, Pit IIA-15-4) and in other North and Central Sector conduits. NWAF archaeologist and Southern Maya Region researcher John Clark observed on a visit to the project in 2003 that the relatively very few sherds found in Structure 2-1’s structural fill may be considered evidence of its early construction date, having been built before substantial amounts of broken pottery would have accumulated to be used for fill. By comparison, as mentioned, the very high counts of sherds in the fill of the edifice inside the 12 m pyramidal Mound 9 suggest a later date for this structure. In the deep test pit (II-A-9-3), placed at the south base of Mound 9 approximately 36 m due south of the apex, a total of 989 sherds was recovered from the first 20 cm below topsoil and 4,237 through level 10, 3 m below the modern ground surface, and 4,326 at reaching sterile level 13 (Table 4.3). From all

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three of these closely proximate test pits—II-A-9-7, 1,022 at 2.4 m down; II-A-9-14, 1,794 at 5.4 m down; and II-A-9-3, at 3.4 m, 4,325, with no sherds or other artifacts except for one carbon sample recovered in the next 20 cm level down—we recovered a total of 7,141 sherds, suggesting a later date for at least one of the likely “onion-skin” structures in the mound (Herrera Sanchez and Kaplan, in Kaplan and Valdés 2003). Extrapolating from other sites in the Southern Maya Region, for example, Kaminaljuyu—as well from sites in the lowlands—and as we discuss further below, we assume the largest mounds contained successive structures; from Structure 7-1, we have physical evidence of older structures within or under later ones: the stone conduit running beneath, and likely into, an earlier structure contained in a likely Late Classic palace. Burkitt assumes the same onionskin construction in Mound 2, as we describe. Mound 2’s Construction Method: Evidence and Interpretation From excavations in the east side of the mound that were still standing after Burkitt’s bifurcating trench, the PACH team was able to understand the construction technique employed to build the edifice. Here, we describe what we believe was the construction method, incorporating some but rejecting other theories of Burkitt. 1. After clearing, leveling, and smoothing the ground, a floor was prepared by leveling, laying a gravel bed along with copious amounts of taxcal, and then placing large river cobbles (average size, about 0.4–0.7 m × 0.2–0.3) within the taxcal bed (compare Burkitt 1930: 16). The finding of distinct lenses of sand and clay, to Burkitt, was proof these constituents were purposely brought to the building location for use in the construction. Burkitt describes how, at the deepest level in the mound, well-preserved “leaves” (rotten but still green) and associated ashes smelled “bad,” “sulfurous,” or “alkaline,” like “a heap of garbage and ashes,” and of “a heap of ashes mixed with rotten vegetables” (1930: 17); we speculate, tentatively, that what Burkitt was describing was evidence of burning in order to harden the structure or of a sacrificial rite, with food offerings along with other materials that, preserved as they were, might give off the malodors he described; he found the same malodorous remains a little higher up, as well. Such rituals would have been held at various times during the construction of the building.6 Although Burkitt does not specifically propose this, we suggest, from copious comparative evidence, that a commemoration ceremony at or just before the start of construction took place. 2. This floor, like other higher floors, was burned, probably using pine

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(evidence of pinus spp. was found in soil samples analyzed in our palaeobotanical report; see Appendix A). 3. As the edifice grew, more cobbles with taxcal were added to form a ramp proceeding further into the mound for the apparent purpose of permitting workers to bring and dump guacales (crates or baskets) of fill. 4. This step, as we reconstruct it, is perhaps the most convincing of a great preoccupation to resist, in what would have been a more or less constant struggle during the six months of the rainy season, the powerful debilitations by nature of ancient human constructions in the upper Guatemalan piedmont. The ancient Chocolenses’ efforts to build permanence into their lives were challenged by some of the highest rainfalls in Central America falling on their primarily earthen edifices. The intention to add stability to Structure 2-1, as undoubtedly with the other edifices at Chocolá, is first evidenced by a foundation of river cobbles uncovered at the bottom of the mound, which would have given a fixed volume to the base of the structure (see Figure 4.3). These cobbles, again, showed evidence of having been burned, yet more convincing evidence of an overriding concern for buildings that would endure. 5. More evidence of this concern comes from profiles suggesting that triangularly shaped composites of burned earth, in the form of guacales, containing as part of its amalgam cobbles from 0.10–.50 m in diameter, were placed in alternating top-bottom position so as to interlock or more firmly secure them to each other. The 2003 team also noted that these wedges of earthen fill were laid perpendicular to east-west oriented guacales and also that the guacales appeared in all three profiles: north, east, and west. The net effect of the cubic triangles was to “mak[e] part of the slope which gives out onto the shaping of the mound” (Gutiérrez 2003: 121). Depositing the wedge-shaped guacales formed an internally integrated large geometric pyramidal form that, as a whole, was better able to resist the deforming effects of time and weathering on earth deposits of structural fill and therefore as a single larger composite, to contribute significantly to the stability of the structure. The pyramidal form of the fill units added to these stabilizing effects; revealed in the north profile of one of the excavated pits was a notably larger guacal oriented east-west, but always at a 45° angle, and intrusive layers of clay and mud were mixed with surrounding taxcal. Strategies to add permanence to structures were further evidenced by the line of 2-cm thick burned matter found near the mound’s bottom and higher up, which slightly decreased in the southern direction toward the mound center.

Figure 4.3. Mound 2 construction method (Units IIID-2-1, III-D-2-3, and III-D-2-5), employing taxcal guacales. (PACH)

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6. Periodically, new floors were prepared and hardened by burning both taxcal and pumice stone, and adding large river cobbles; cobbles were found in Pit III-D-2-58, 3–3.5 m from the apex of the mound, and added as the edifice grew in size, with the ultimate triangular form of the depositions helping to create the edifice’s pyramidal shape. 7. As we propose, once the structure assumed its final form, a clay or mud facing likely was applied and smoothed; this was burned to harden it. From patterns prevalent in Maya and Southern Maya Region architecture elsewhere, the surface then may have been painted, perhaps red. Comments on Burkitt’s Hypothesis Burkitt’s description partially differs from our reconstruction and, at the same time, seems to overlap or describe some of the same or very similar techniques. Other speculation by him seems to us to have no basis. Without explanation, for example, he speculated the structure was built specifically over a period of 1½ years; accordingly, “not at once, but by degrees,” that corporate labor—consisting of not just a few but many people—were enlisted for the work (Burkitt 1930: 21–22). Evidence we found of distinct quantities of earthen fill, conforming to a V shape, and as if dumped from a container, or crate, is not mentioned in Burkitt’s account. However, Burkitt does describe what he interpreted as “two mounds,” an “inner” and an “outer”: “On that bed of sand and gravel stood the mound, a strange though simple structure, an outer mound of earth like a thick shell, enclosing a mixed mound of earth, sand, and what seemed to be ashes” (1930: 16). This supports our observation of a pyramidal form within the pyramidal structure, the former created from the conical concave-convex guacales interposed on each other, all of which, together, constituted the “inner” pyramid. In another manner, our work seems to document the same fundamental construction method that Burkitt’s notes described. Burkitt found cobbles at the original ground surface, placed before construction of the edifice, and also, both near the base and higher, substantial amounts of burned material. As mentioned, he described an “extensive layer of ashes” (1930: 12), a “very thick layer of ashes (13), and “[h]eaps of ashes” (18), which must be interpreted as the result of deliberate burning episodes—such episodes of burning which, as described above, we suggest were done to harden surfaces. Structures encasing previous structures are well known from the Southern Maya Region and from the Lowlands Maya. Notable examples for the

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Figure 4.4. White stone figurine pendant recovered from excavations of Mound 2, 2003. (PACH)

Preclassic are the structures found “onion-skin fashion” inside Kaminaljuyu Mound E-III (Shook and Kidder 1952: 54). Another example is Early Classic Quiriguá Structure 1B-6-3rd, a structure “built of adobe bricks and finished with a red-painted plaster surface,” which contained a burial that Robert Sharer identified as the interment of the founder of the dynasty, “Tok Casper” (Martin and Grube 2000: 216). This structure was later encased in cobble fill before the construction of Structure 1B-6-2nd around and over it (C. Jones et al. 2008). Still another example is the “Rosalila” structure found inside several later, larger structures encasing it in Structure 10L-16, Copán; the Rosalila structure, itself, was found to contain several still earlier structures (Agurcia Fasquelle and B. Fash, 2004). Perhaps explaining why Burkitt did not construe, as we do, that distinct guacales—crates or basketfuls—of earth fill were dumped for structural strengthening and to hasten construction, Burkitt proposed that building continued through the rainy season, a theory we find difficult to accept given that Chocolá’s very high rainfall forced Burkitt himself to halt work on his great trench in Mound 2 (1930: 14). Pockets of clay in the soils of Chocolá suggest that localized flooding would have been frequent (Kaplan

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and Valdés 2004: 78); we, also, were unable to continue excavation of Structure 7-1 when the rains came. On the other hand, Burkitt lived at Chocolá, on and off, for most of the 1920s and surely was very familiar with the rainy season precipitation. Burkitt concludes his 1930 paper by mentioning finding a jade cylindrical bead, 0.12 × 0.55 cm, with “spiral flutings,” now stored at the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology (Burkitt 1930: 24). Our own excavations in Mound 2 recovered a 4 cm × 1.5 cm highly polished white stone figurine, shown in Figure 4.4 (Gutiérrez 2003: 128). The figure is posed with the legs slightly flexed or shrunken and with arms crossed on the chest and hands near the chin, clasped as if in prayer. The humpback suggests a dwarf or deformed child; deformities in many Mesoamerican cultures were considered to have symbolic significance (Kaplan 1991). From depictions on pottery, Classic Maya elites chose dwarves to be servitors. A hole had been drilled in the base of the neck for the insertion of a string, suggesting use before deposition possibly as a necklace or dangling ornament of some kind. Mound 15 Of particular importance for later investigation were the results of test pitting in Mound 15. Like Mound 5, Mound 15’s excavations were continued in 2004 (see below). In 2003, after Paredes Umaña cleaned the profile on the east side of the road, a related operation consisting of pits II-A-15-20 and 20A took advantage of the north-south cut through Mound 15. Visible to passersby on the road north from Chocolá to the two cacerios (very small communities), Chuajij and Xojolá, and to the boundary of the Department of Sololá, were large stones, some of which protruded from the cut. Two stone-encased conduits were revealed in profile, which proceeded further into the mound and which obviously had continued through where the eastern slope of the mound had been before the road was built. A second discovery confirming the eastern extension of the conduit network was a cobblestone wall more or less oriented north-south with a height and length of approximately 1.5 × 3 m. This wall probably had the same function as walls had at some of the similar earth-and-cobble structures at Takalik Abaj. Other pits excavated in 2003 leading to further excavations and discoveries in later seasons were placed in the North Sector, in the cementerio or where the modern town cemetery and Mound 22 are located (Pit II-B-5319), and in pits placed in or near Mound 9. The cementerio pit provided

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Table 4.4. Excavation coding for Operations 4, 14, 15, 16, and 17 Operation Number

Structure/Feature

4 4 14 15 16 17

Str. 15-1 F 9 (water conduit) Str. 5-1 Rescue. Late Preclassic vessels in burial setting Str. 7-1, Feature 39 Str. 6-1

Source: PACH. Str. = Structure.

evidence of long habitation; 3,400 sherds and 154 obsidian flakes were recovered from modern ground level to 2.3 m below ground surface (Herrera Sanchez, in Kaplan and Valdés 2003: 115). Two exploratory test pits were placed at or near the southern base of Mound 9; in addition to the great amount of sherds found in these pits, a small cache containing several large mica flakes was discovered. Also in Mound 9, Monument 14 (called “María Ba’tz” by locals), was located and removed to the field lab (see Chapter 6). Excavations and Operations, 2004 and 2005

The excavation programs in 2004 and 2005 were intended to better understand the architectural features discovered in 2003, including, from north to south, the water conduits and caja (redistribution box) in Mound 15, the architectural arrangement in the Central Sector of Structure 7-1 and Structure 6-1, to its immediate north, and the associated plazas of these two structures, and Structure 5-1 in the South Sector. Table 4.4 lists the excavation codes for these operations. In narrative and table form, here we summarize the 2004 and 2005 excavations. We order our discussions sequentially by operation number, beginning with Operation 4. Operation 4 Mound 15 lies between 921 and 918 MAMSL. This mound lost approximately the western third of its mass by the construction of a north-south road connecting Chocolá with the two cacerios, Chuajij and Xojolá, and farther north, reaching the boundary of the department of Sololá. According to informants, the road, unpaved at the time of PACH’s research, dates to circa 1900.

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Table 4.5. Description of strata, Operation 4 Strata code

Description

E-I

Organic soil with plenty of roots; black in color, grainy, compact, hard on top and softer as vertical excavation proceeds. Munsell code: 10YR2/2. Dark brown clayey soil; less grainy than E-I; abundant mica and gravel. Ceramics, figurines, and lithic artifacts are found frequently in this stratum. Munsell code: 7.5 YR 3/2. Light brown soil; more compact than E-II with greater amount of taxcal, which increases as vertical excavation proceeds. E-III and E-IV are essentially similar, but taxcal is more abundant in E-IV. In addition to taxcal, pumice and green stones occur frequently in both E-III and E-IV. Cultural artifacts in E-III are as numerous or even more abundant than in E-II. Munsell code: 10 YR 3/4 to 10 YR 4/6.

E-II

E-III and E-IV

Source: PACH.

Mound 15 was a platform placed on one of the northernmost humanly modified terraces of the ancient city. Based on our topographic plot, the mound can be described as a nearly flat or leveled surface of a sloping hillside on the southeast continuing toward the Chocolá River that runs at the bottom of a ravine circa 50 m below. Table 4.5 describes four natural strata discerned for the structures and the water control system, E-I through E-IV; Figure 4.5 illustrates some of the major results of our work at the mound (Operation 4), including the evidence of the water management system; Figure 4.6 is a schematic of the mound’s excavation grid and associated features. Table 4.6 lists the units excavated on the mound.

Table 4.6. Excavation units for Structure 15 and adjacent structures Field Season/Description

2 × 2 m Unit Numbers

2004/recording of Structure 15-1

170, 180, 190, 200, 310, 320, 330, 61, 71, 81, 91, 201, 211, 221, 62, 72, 82, 92, 202, 212, 222, 63, 73, 83, 93, 203, 213, 223, 233, 64, 74, and 84. 205, 214, 215, 224, 225, 227, 228, 234, 235, 238, 243, 244, 245, 248, 272, 285, 276, 277, 204 and 237.

2005/recording of Structure 15-1 and “Annex.” Source: PACH.

Figure 4.5. Operation 4, Mound 15 water system, revealed in 2003 and 2004: a) topographical map showing the human-modified plateau on which sat Structure 15-1, a springhouse or shrine, and water conduits running from it to the south; b) plan and north profile views of conduits immediately south of Structure 15-1; c) worker in front of excavated conduit with laja capstones; d) plan and west profile views of conduits immediately south of Structure 15-1. (PACH)

Figure 4.6. Operation 4 excavation grid and associated features, 2004. (PACH)

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To the north of Mound 15 is a maize plot in which, during reconnaissance in 2003, many surface sherds were found and which gradiometry7 suggested contained stone features. Excavated intensively during the 2004 and 2005 seasons and found within E-II approximately 20–40 cm below the modern surface, Structure 15-1, a rectangular edifice and apparently the principal structure (see Figure 4.5a), was built on single lines of stone foundations. At 920 MAMSL, the structure measured 6 × 12 m. Mound 15 evidenced different Pre-Hispanic occupations, dating from ceramics from the Late Middle Preclassic through to the Early Classic; a whole vessel cache located to the northeast of Structure 15-1 is difficult to date, representing either Late Preclassic or Late Classic wares. Mound 15 contributed five out of ten sherds recovered through our excavations at Chocolá that tested positive for cacao residues. Overall, nine of these sherds with cacao residues were found in likely construction fill; one cacao-positive sherd, PACH 4-276-3 (Sample 121), was found on the north plaza of the structure 15-1, not in construction fill (see Appendix E). Construction and Shape Structure 15-1 was built with its longer side oriented north-south. A corridor or access (Feature 4) and evidence of a possible shallow stairway were found on the east side. The eastern wall of Structure 15-1, recorded as Feature 6, consists of the stone foundations of a 12-m long wall, the smoothest surfaces of the stones facing outward; the corridor lay 60 cm to the east of Feature 6. A wall (Feature 3), 2.15 m farther east of Feature 6, created a space extending from the southeast corner of Structure 15-1. Feature 4 runs parallel between Features 3 and 6. Feature 7 is Structure 15-1’s south wall; Feature 11, a similar stone foundation alignment of elongated river cobbles, represents the west batter wall, partially buried originally and set to slant inward. Feature 30 is a stone alignment 30 cm north of Structure 15-1’s north wall. The south wall held a gap in the southwest corner, perhaps a side access. During the 2004 season, we speculated that yet another side access may have existed in the north wall, accompanied by one or two steps (part of Feature 30). Further investigation in the 2005 season determined that Structure 15-1 was accompanied by other structures to the north and east, of which Feature 30 itself may have been a part.

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Dedicatory Offering in the Center of Structure 15-1 The center of the structure was excavated, finding Features 14, 15, and 16, representing a dedicatory offering placed in Stratum E-II but intruding into E-III. The features consist of a north-south alignment of three flat stones covering yet another stone arrangement of four vertically placed elongated river cobbles, oriented to the four directions, plus a central stone, representing the vertical central axis. A Preclassic red-paste, oversized, intact, spherical olla with simple incised rim decoration was found associated with this arrangement directly east of the cardinal marker. An Inner Chamber A small room (less than 1 m in width) was found inside Structure 15-1 extending from the southeast corner. Divided by at least two walls joining at a corner, the features were labeled as Feature 19, oriented north-south, and Feature 23, oriented east-west. Features 21, 24, and 29 denote stone concentrations inside and outside of the room. Feature 29, north of Feature 23, denotes a group of stones arranged in circular fashion with a central space. Features 20 and 32 denote large stone concentrations found on top of the ancient surface at the southern interior of Structure 15-1, with Feature 20 being the larger of the two, forming a paved floor.

Figure 4.7. Oversized olla cached near the center of Structure 15-1. (PACH)

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Figure 4.8. Ritually deposited cobblestones representing the five directions, found covering olla cache. (PACH)

Structure 15-1 “Annex” In addition to the space described above as an eastern corridor ending with an annex in the southeastern corner of Structure 15-1, excavations in 2005 found that other structures existed to the north and northeast. These rooms were not fully exposed, but several whole pots and grinding stones were recovered from them, indicating a likely function as storage or cooking spaces associated with Structure 15-1, although their deposition appears to have been purely ritualistic (see below) (Features 38–63). Clearly built on E-II, the annex had a north-south wall and an east-west footstep for access. Feature 38 is a fragment of a grinding stone found close to a reshaped (flat) lid capstone, or laja. Feature 49, excavated in Unit 245-3, inside E-II, consists of a floor lying at 919.77 MAMSL, on top of which were cached two black whole pots, a miniature bowl with three vertical handles from rim to shoulder, and a larger bowl with two horizontal handles attached to the rim. Feature 63, also found at E-II, consists of a fragment of a grinding stone and several large sherds pertaining to a thick-walled, openmouth jar deposited on top of a fragment of another grinding stone.

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This depositional pattern was also noticed in Feature 44 (three stones associated with a large sherd deposited in E-II). Features 56, 57, and 58 consist of several serving vessels, large bowls with vertical-strip handles from lip to body; these vessels were found together with several thin mica layers, placed northwest of a stone alignment that was recorded as Feature 50. Excavated in Units 227, 228, 237, and 238, Feature 50 is a special deposit for a number of vessels found in association with smooth round cobbles. Straight-wall bowls, with everted and rounded lips, were found placed one on top of another, mouth-to-mouth. Abundant ceramic fragments and burnt stones were also recorded in this deposit. Further evidence of domestic artifacts, also associated with E-II, came from Unit 235-3 in the form of a machacador (food crusher) and a spindle whorl, associated with a fragment of a grinding stone. Stratigraphically they were placed on E-II. The Water Conduits Along the eastern wall of the road cut in Mound 15, the 2003 excavations revealed two sections that employed a technology consisting of stone conduits built with two vertical walls and laja capstones. This was determined in 2004 to be part of a much larger water management network or system using not only vertical flat stones but, more commonly, the walls then capped by lajas; some conduits also had reshaped cobble floors. A good example of the system was observed under a sandy floor exposed by a test pit placed on a slope just off the top of the mound; see Figure 4.9. In 2003, as mentioned, evidence of the same system was found below the north slope of Mound 9, and in 2004 several more stone-encased water conduits were found that extended through both the northern and central groups of Chocolá. Also in 2004, conduits found not only in the road cut (Figure 4.10) through the western third of Mound 15, but also in the modern road itself proved that the network reached considerable depth below ground surface. Rescue operations in August 2004 recorded five different sections of the same technology 40 cm below surface; the conduits were oriented northeast-southwest in the central group, and lay nearly 1.5 km south of Mound 15. After the 2005 season, another rescue operation found more sections of conduits in the Central Sector. This operation was intended to determine the presence or absence of cultural material before the construction of a new, and very large, evangelical Christian church near the southern base of the very large Mound 12; constructing this church would also cut into two other smaller mounds, 11 and 23.

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Figure 4.9. Example of subterranean laja-covered conduit, Mound 15 water management system. (PACH)

Still more evidence of the same water management system was encountered outside of, but near to, Chocolá. When driving on the main road from San Antonio Suchitepéquez toward Mazatenango, we observed the cross section of a water conduit located in mound fill where a section of the mound had been removed to build a modern brick factory (Figure 4.11). This accidental discovery suggests that the water management technology at Chocolá was quite widespread throughout the Southern Maya Region, not only in the cultural landscape of the Guatemalan piedmont—at Takalik Abaj, for example. The same or very similar system appears in the southern highlands, at Kaminaljuyu and, as was discovered in 2015, at a site possibly associated with Kaminaljuyu, San Juan Sacatepéquez.8 Such technological similarities shared over such a large region is one more indicator of greater connections between sites, and greater integration of this region, early on in the cultural trajectory of Mesoamerica. The 2004 and 2005 excavations at Mound 15 specifically were intended to gain better knowledge of the Chocolá system. By these efforts, we were able to record eight different water conduits that intersected, overlapped, and otherwise joined at redistribution points. Conduits were found to run

Figure 4.10. Mound 15 road cut. In profile, two rectangular stoneencased conduits were revealed, which proceeded further east into the mound and which obviously had continued to the west through where the road was built. (PACH)

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Figure 4.11. Coincidental find in 2003 of damaged mound’s profile exposing similar water conduits, near Mazatenango, 11 km from Chocolá. (PACH)

north-south and northwest-southeast and to have sections completely capped but, also, with some sections where no capstones were found. Figure 4.11 shows one of the conduits branching north to south on Mound 15. Chronological and Stratigraphic Discussion As excavations in Mound 15 proceeded, the center of Structure 15-1 was excavated vertically through several 2-×-2-m units, of which 62, 72, 82, 91, and 92 provided chronological information. A floor was found at a depth of 919.53 MAMSL in Unit 72, which coincided with the height of the floor where the capstone on top of the whole red-paste globular vessel was found in Unit 91, as discussed above. As mentioned, stratigraphic analysis determined four strata, denominated E-I to E-IV; PACH 4-91, dug as a stratigraphic control pit near the center of Structure 15-1, was where we discovered Feature 14: five large cobblestones surrounding and covering a ritually deposited large olla. Two 14C samples were recovered, one from the floor where the olla was deposited, Beta 198194, charred material from PACH 4-91-6, 2190±40 BP, cal BC 379: cal BC 162 (0,991824),9 and the other from a floor approximately 40 cm

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Figure 4.12. Long view of exposed conduit, Mound 15, running south as a continuation of a conduit excavated in Structure 15-1. (PACH)

below, Beta 198196, charred material from PACH 4-91-8, 2120±40 BP, cal BC 212: cal BC 43 (0,882591). A drawing of the west profile from Unit 91 and associated ceramics is shown in Figure 4.13. Additionally, five radiocarbon samples were retrieved from successively deeper levels in PACH 4-72. Beta 198188, charred material from PACH 4-72-4, 2230±40 BP, cal BC 387: cal BC 202; Beta 198189, charred material

Figure 4.13. Operation 4-91: radiocarbon dates from carbon samples drawn from pits near the center of and below Structure 15-1, with sampling of sherds from the same level. (PACH)

Figure 4.14. Operation 4-72: radiocarbon dates from carbon samples drawn from center pit below Structure 15-1 with sampling of sherds from the same level. (PACH)

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from PACH 4-72-5, 2200±60 BP, cal BC 394: cal BC 107; Beta 198190, charred material from PACH 4-72-6, 2200±40 BP, cal BC 379: cal BC 172; Beta 198191, charred material from PACH 4-72-7, 2180±40 BP, cal BC 371: cal BC 151 (0,966985); and Beta 198192, charred material from PACH 4-728, 2210±110 BP, cal BC 540: cal AD 29 (0,996508). Ceramic sherds in fill from level 4 included orange on cream Usulután negative resist, black-brown incised and scalloped incised rims. The latter are Late Preclassic types. Middle Preclassic glossy orange slips are also present. As excavation proceeded to PACH 4-72-6, at 919.13 MAMSL, and in E-III, Beta 198190, dated Cal BC 380–160 (2 sigma) associated sherds in fill contained orange slips, spherical thin-walled incised and punctated tecomates, as well as a few white paste fragments. At PACH 4-72-7, at 918.93 MAMSL and in E-IV, Beta 198191, yielded Cal BC 370–110 (2 sigma). Associated sherds in fill contained light brown thin-walled bowls with double horizontal incised lines below rim and arched-incised-circumferential motifs associated with the Pacific coast Guatalón phase, which is correlated to the Providencia phase of Kaminaljuyu. Also, wide everted-lip jars slipped with a red-orange coat on a cream paste and thin-walled punctated reddish paste sherds were found at that level. At PACH 4-72-8, at 918.73 MAMSL, in E-IV, Beta 198192 provided two ranges, cal BC 500–460 and cal BC 430 to cal AD 20 (2 sigma). Thus, the wider range of carbon dates in Unit 72 comes from the deepest level, implying that the architectural feature found directly under level 8 was constructed possibly in the Late Middle Preclassic and certainly by the early part of the Late Preclassic. A thick, hardened layer of taxcal was found at this elevation covering a conduit made of river cobbles (Feature 17 oriented north and Feature 18 oriented south). Ceramics in fill contained light yellow paste sherds from bowls with scalloped incised flanges, red coarse paste, black-browns and coarse reticulate incised motifs, all pertaining to the Middle and Late Preclassic. Redistribution Box, or Caja (Feature 9) Excavations proceeded to a depth of 918.33 MAMSL to expose the conduits and distribution box or caja, whose bottom floor (Feature 9) was recorded at 918.09 MAMSL.10 Built with stone walls and a taxcal floor, the caja consisted of a north-south rectangular conduit 2 m in length and 40–45 cm wide. Floor sediment contained gravel under 3 cm in diameter. The caja was connected to a conduit built with two stone walls; each constructed using three rows of cobblestones. The central box had no apparent lid or

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Figure 4.15. Part of the caja (redistribution box) and/or well, center, Structure 15-1, 2004. (PACH)

capstone on top, but was connected to the south to a capped conduit (Feature 28) that runs 8 m south toward a conduit juncture. Unit 82, north of Unit 72, reached a depth of 918.30–918.10 MAMSL. At the deepest level excavated was the floor of Feature 31; a whole blackbrown jar was found with two vertical strap handles from lip to shoulder and punctated decoration on the neck and shoulder; this had been deposited in a stone chamber of manufacture similar to the water conduits and lay directly north of Feature 9. To the south of Feature 31, a capped stone conduit (Feature 26) was found, placed on top of and perpendicular to Features 9 and 31. Very likely, Feature 26 is a portion of a water conduit that was constructed up after the other conduit. Finally, a floor above the conduit was found running east and west, (Feature 33) at 919.25 MAMSL. Feature 39: Floor under the Water Conduits Originally recorded as E-V and later as Feature 39, a floor of 10–12 cm in thickness, which existed prior to the construction of the water conduits,

162 · Water, Cacao, and the Early Maya of Chocolá

Figure 4.16. Feature 31, Structure 15-1: caja (stone chamber) north of the water conduit, associated with water system features below the structure’s center. (PACH)

was found at 919.10 MAMSL. Three 2-×-2-m units revealed Feature 39, PACH 4-1-8; 4-110-7 and 4-491-8. Four different sublayers comprised the floor. Top down, the first layer is a hardened surface 5 cm in thickness composed of a white coat mixture of mica and taxcal, soft when hardened top is removed. Next is a light brown soil 4 cm in thickness on top of a 3.5 cm layer of yellow soil with abundant taxcal, and finally a 2 cm layer of light brown or sandy cream in color. Feature 39 is considered the older occupation surface recorded for Mound 15. A carbonized edible tuber was recovered on top of the floor (4-1-7) and identified through anthracology by Felipe Trabanino (Appendix A). Also, a fragment of a Preclassic figurine (Figure 4.17) was recovered on the floor (4-1-8). Abundant ceramics were recovered below the floor surface through levels 1 to 8. PACH 4-491-9 recovered another figurine fragment. The matrix below Feature 39 was composed of E-III and E-IV. Feature 40 is a stone-paved floor above the water conduits. PACH 4-42-4 revealed a burned area (Feature 64) at 919.30 MAMSL, 5 cm below the floor. This pavement of pumice stone, 10–30 cm in diameter, was very likely the floor in use directly on top of most of the water features at Mound 15.

Archaeological Operations: Mounds, Plazas, and Features · 163

Figure 4.17. Figurine from Feature 39, Mound 15. (PACH)

Feature 66, a large boulder, may represent a marker designating a divide between group labor responsibility for construction and/or maintenance of the particular conduit section. Figure 4.18 shows these features as well as the extraordinary branching of the conduit system, one section above another representing either addition of a later conduit, or simply a more complex concurrent system. Summary of the Water System in the North Sector More than 35 m of conduits were dug at Mound 15, of which 18 m run north-south, 2 m southwest, 14 southeast, and an additional meter eastwest. Some noteworthy discoveries include: (1) The caja or redistribution box; (2) a conduit that runs north-south with a branch diverting to the southeast (Features 9 and 54); (3) a conduit that runs under Structure 15-1 and extends southward, under a paved floor (Feature 40); (4) a conduit heading east 50 cm below surface (Features 1 and 2); (5) overlapping conduits—this feature, located to the southeast outside Structure 15-1, exemplifies the complexity of the system, as a branch of the conduit runs just below the other; and (6) a boulder near a water conduit juncture possibly marking off an individual group’s labor responsibility (Feature 66), and burned area (Feature 64); Figure 4.18, shows these features. Construction In general, the construction of the conduits was quite consistent. Materials used varied between andesitic and metamorphic rocks with high

164 · Water, Cacao, and the Early Maya of Chocolá

Figure 4.18. Features 40, 64, and 66, Mound 15 water system. Note the placement of one conduit section above another; also note the large boulder, which may indicate the conduit, at one time, lay on the ground surface. This boulder also may represent a marker for familial or group labor responsibility. (PACH/Mau Acevedo)

concentrations of iron, used as side walls. In many sections of the conduits, carved stone lids or lajas covered them. As additional structural elements, small stones of 0.5 to 0.15 m in diameter, and medium-sized ones of 0.20 to 0.35 m in diameter served as wedges; the small served to fill holes, the medium-sized to level out and hold the lids horizontally. The side walls were constructed of two, three, or four courses of stone, mounted one above the other. Stones are not frequent inside the conduits, except in cases where the level drops sharply. In those cases, a flat stone on the bottom of the conduit controlled the liquid flow, exemplified by Feature 61, a conduit section that ran west-east. Often, the bottom of the conduit was taxcal-abundant. In some cases, this floor consisted of flattened cobbles. Average measurements reveal the capacity of the water conduits was 40 × 40 cm. Additional Comments on the Ancient Use of the Conduit Network Feature 40, found in Units 42, 43, 32, 33, and 31 is a paved surface above a section of the conduit system. Some pavement stones were located on top

Archaeological Operations: Mounds, Plazas, and Features · 165

Figure 4.19. Small Early Classic tripod vase found deposited at juncture in Mound 15 conduit system. (PACH)

of the conduit, suggesting that at least that section of the conduit may have been exposed at some point in time. Visible in Figure 4.18, a large rock or boulder in the northeast of the junction of two branches of the water system (Feature 66), and a burned area (Feature 64) located just to the southwest, indicate that at the juncture some event, construction-related or ritual in nature, took place. Both the water conduits and the burning area were exposed to the one-time surface. If our theory is correct that the boulder’s placement represents a marker for water system construction and/or maintenance, this possibly was organized by family or neighborhood (see Chapter 7 discussion). A well-cut block of pumice stone in excavation Unit 12 represents the clearest example of reusage in the water conduit system of stone artifacts originally having different functions; broken metates also were reused in the system. The water conduits recorded in the north group of Chocolá may have been in operation until the Early Classic period, as indicated by a whole vessel found in Unit 476, a branching or redistribution point of the water channel to the southeast of Structure 15-1. This tripod vase with cylinder supports, decorated with black paint on a cream surface, may also have marked a group labor responsibility division.

166 · Water, Cacao, and the Early Maya of Chocolá

Operation 14, Structure 5-1 In 2003, part of the nine-course north wall of the platform structure 5-1 was discovered; a major operation was undertaken in the 2004 season to explore this discovery. Ceramics recovered from Mound 5-1 were the result of clearance of this wall and the south wall, from test pits dug in the plaza to the north, and from pits located on top of the mound itself; these ceramics were consistent with the Middle to Late Preclassic types first identified in the North Sector. Four of ten sherds determined to contain cacao residues were retrieved from this operation. The mound, at 749.4920 MAMSL, with dimensions of 70 × 78 m, is a low (1.65–1.7 m) platform of greater horizontal size than many of the mounds to the north and one of the largest in the southern part of the ancient city (Figure 4.20). Excavation in 2004 determined that it contained a stonewalled platform structure of about 44 × 56 m. The excavations constituted the farthest to the south undertaken at Chocolá, just as the excavations at Mound 15 were the farthest to the north; Figure 4.21 shows the excavation grid for this operation. We theorize the function of this very large platform structure was to supervise labor for intensive agriculture grown for the community and for trade. From comparable sites, we believe perishable buildings were placed on top. Also in 2004, the team excavating Structure 5-1 noted that the architecture was quite different from the other mounds. The form or shape of the structure, including its relatively great size and roughly level terrace top, and based also on where the structure was located, led us to assume a distinctly different function from the other mound structures. The particular feature in 2003 that led to the unearthing of Structure 5-1 was an alignment of seven river cobbles; both the structure and a cobble feature found in Mound 3 were aligned due north, the cobbles later determined to represent walls and orientations of structures. Pit 22 (II-D-22) was placed at the north base of Mound 3, Pit 25 (II-D-25) at the east edge of Mound 5 (Gutiérrez 2003: 142–43; and see Kaplan et al. 2004: 212). In 2004, Operation 14 explored the cobble alignment in Mound 5; 13 features in the mound were noted and studied (Table 4.7), including the building’s corners. Although only two of the sides of the structure were excavated, we assume a nearly rectangular edifice, convexly slightly curving inward as a batter wall and with the corners recessed. The operation ultimately revealed the entire longer north wall and most of the east wall of the structure; the latter included an access facing east, with

Figure 4.20. Operation 14, Mound 5: a) topography of mound; b) profile detail, Structure 5-1 wall; c) Structure 5-1, plan view; d) digital elevation model of Mound 5. (PACH)

Figure 4.21. Operation 14: Mound 5 excavation grid. (PACH)

Archaeological Operations: Mounds, Plazas, and Features · 169

a stairway or ramp, and piers. Stairways are much more common in Maya architecture; ramps as access for ingress and egress are scarce, but are found at another site, Quelepa, in eastern El Salvador, and at other Mesoamerican centers, for example, Xochitécatl, in the Puebla-Tlaxcala Valley. From partial evidence it seems likely that a similar access once existed in the center of the north wall, and, by extrapolation, we tentatively suggest that the same piered accesses were on the other two walls, the west and south. Structure 5-1 is situated about 50 m from a stream to the west, a proximity leading us to speculate the structure was placed where it was in order to have, close at hand but not too close to be vulnerable to flooding, a ready source of water for craft activities, such as food processing and pottery (water needed to mold clay and to make slip, for example), and other craft workshops. The mound is also associated with two smaller mounds located nearby to the south, 3 and 4, with a formal plaza between Structure 5-1 and the other two structures within the mounds. In 2003, all three mounds were intact, with coffee planted on and around them. Until they can be further explored, we assume they are structures with roughly similar functions, namely, management of intensive agriculture. Table 4.7 lists the Mound 5 features we recorded. Feature 14-R-2 (Kaplan et al. 2004: 17, fig. 8–13) was notable because the position of the cobbles from which it had been constructed was not clearly defined as a sharp corner, but rather suggested a recessed corner, which is typical of some Preclassic Maya architecture, for example, at Takalik Abaj (Crasborn and Marroquín 2006: 54) and El Mirador (Hansen et al. 2005 61). Feature 14-R-4 is a possible pier framing the north side of a stairway (or ramp) proceeding to the top of the platform structure. The corner of the stairway was located in Pit 14-36 and is represented by a large stone 0.40 m high, possibly a support for the stairway. Feature 14-R-3 continued in Pits 14-76, 14-66, 14-56, 14-46, and 14-36. Feature 14-R-5, a quadrangular concentration of stones, constituted the uppermost part of the pier. Feature 14-R-9 represented the east side of the pier, Feature 14-R-10, located in the center of the east wall, the pier-framed access—the 4-by-8-m stairway—that faced the rising sun. Feature 14-R-13 was the western wall, which was partially excavated in order to determine the corner of Structure 5-1 and, therefore, to confirm the shape of the structure, rectangular but with slightly inwardly curving walls. Another feature of interest, 2004 test pit 14-R-6, represents a possible floor evidenced by a large amount of burned clay and taxcal found in two

Table 4.7. Features recorded for Operation 14, Mound 5, 2004 Feature Number

Description

Location

1

North wall

2

Piled stones as possible wall corner

Units 14-111-114, 14-314-116, 14-318-321, 14-369, 14-379-380, 14-578-580. Northeast corner of structure; unit 14-113.

3

Portion of east wall façade

6

Most northerly part of the east wall, units 14-76, 4-66, 14-56, 1446, and 14-36. This is where continuity is lost to the north. Bordered on the south by the north side of the ramp or stairway (Feature 4). Possible mascarón associated. North pier, east wall access (stair- Unit 14-84. way or ramp, Feature 14-R-10); Accompanies Feature 14-R-10 (access, stairway or ramp); east façade. Rectangular concentration of stones. Burned clay.

7

Taxcal floor.

8

Taxcal floor.

9

South pier, east façade.

10

Structure access, with piers. Extends 4 × 8 m from center of north wall. East wall façade.

4

5

11 13

West façade of structure (representing point most extended of excavations of Str. 5-1).

Source: PACH.

North wall of 5-1, in units 14-496 and 14-497.

Archaeological Operations: Mounds, Plazas, and Features · 171

pits, 14-235 and 236. This was found at 1.13–1.95 m below the modern surface on top of the platform, almost in the center of Structure 5-1 (Kaplan et al. 2004: 24–26, fig. 8–17a, b, c). The function or activity was ritual and/ or utilitarian, having to do with a craft activity employing burning, such as pottery manufacture. Construction and Shape The walls of Structure 5-1 were constructed of large (about 0.7 m) river cobbles set in nine courses rising in a batter or slightly inwardly slanting manner like a gravity retaining wall (Figure 4.22). The cobbles fit well together; many were reshaped to make for better fit. The abundance of taxcal as mortar suggests the walls originally were plastered to give them a smooth surface. From comparison with other Preclassic Southern Maya Region sites, such as Kaminaljuyu, wall surfaces would have been painted in bright colors. Remnant red paint on Monument 27 (see below and Chapter 6) reveals one color decision by the ancient Chocolenses for formal display, red at other Maya sites shown to have been one of the favored colors for many public buildings (for example, prominent parts of the Rosalila structure, Copan, Villaseñor 2010: 102, 155), and traces of red pigment and other colors is known from other carved and uncarved Southern Maya Region monuments. Like the other structures excavated (15-1, 6-1, and 7-1, see below), Structure 5-1 was oriented to the cardinal directions. This indicates an ideological motivation for its creation and meaning, in addition to its function to supervise intensive agriculture and serving, as well, as the locus of craft activities, such as pottery manufacture. Based on architecture elsewhere in the Maya world and a prevalent ancient Maya concern with bilateral architectural symmetry, it seems possible that the other two walls of the structure, south and west, had similar accesses. From comparison with other Maya structures it seems plausible, as well, that the number of steps in the stairways was determined by cosmological and/or specifically calendrical beliefs and calculations. However, in order to compare with other early Maya sites, this can only be confirmed by determining when certain elements of what became the Maya calendar, and of other aspects of Maya ideology known from Classic times, were first employed. In addition to a religious or sacred use and function, and secular or practical administration of the agricultural activities, we speculate the likelihood of water management engineered near the structure, but different in

172 · Water, Cacao, and the Early Maya of Chocolá

Figure 4.22. Structure 5-1 north wall excavation in progress, 2004. (PACH)

form and purpose from the intraedifice drains and conduits found in the North and Center sectors; perhaps here in the South Sector of the city they were in the form of irrigation canals, possibly similar to the large earthen canals found at Kaminaljuyu (Barrientos Q. 1997). We considered then, and continue to propose now, another water management feature: lagoon

Archaeological Operations: Mounds, Plazas, and Features · 173

reservoirs with conduits to provide water to crops throughout the sixmonth dry season. If cacao was, as we propose, a major surplus crop, such a non–rainy season water reserve would likely have been necessary, given the cacao tree’s high water demands; we discuss this more in Chapter 7. Supporting this hypothesis, and in addition to the cardinal orientation of Structure 5-1, evidence of a sacred meaning for the structure was the discovery of a small fragment of a stone cupule monument in the shape of a liquid receptacle, found near the south pier of the north wall, suggesting water veneration (Gutiérrez et al.: 215; see Chapter 6). This was not surprising, given the great volume of rain each year as well as the many rivers and streams flowing through the site, and the nine natural springs still providing potable water to the modern community today. The cupule monuments join other substantial evidence of water as an ideological or religious theme for the ancient community; these include, as described in our discussion of Structure 15-1, very large, boulder-size stones, as well as whole ceramic vessels buried at distinct junctures in the network of subterranean hydraulic conduits. Also, as mentioned in Mound 7’s east plaza, Monument 27 was found, containing a large perforated cupule surrounded by a carved toad or frog. Finally, the excavation report in the 2004 informe mentions a large stone (Feature 14-R-6-8) somewhat extended from the north wall, suggesting, to the 2003 excavators, a mascarón (mask), composed of rounded stones forming part of the east wall of the structure (Gutiérrez et al. 2004: 233). This identification could not be confirmed; however, the fact that it represented some kind of ornamental or aesthetic decision seems possible. Operation 16 Considered by use of masonry and cobblestones and by height, Structure 7-1, excavated in 2005 within the mound, was the largest building excavated by PACH. Figure 4.23 shows the relationship between its mound, Structure 6-1’s mound, and the adjoining plaza; Figure 24 shows the Operation 16 excavation grid. Table 4.8 lists the features we recorded for Operation 16 (Structure 7-1 and its eastern plaza). Before excavations, Mound 7 measured 60 m on its north-south and 55 m on its east-west axis. The mound rose 6 m from a 60 × 60 m plaza that lay directly east. The structure inside was tall and rectangular in shape; its southern end was eroded to a steep slope which descended sharply from the summit of the structure 12 m to a lower terrace.

Figure 4.23. Operation 16, Mound 7: a) topography of mound, b) eastern stairway, c) reconstructive drawing of Structure 7-1, 6-1, and plaza. (PACH)

Figure 4.24. Operation 16: excavation grid. (PACH)

Table 4.8. Features recorded for Operation 16 (Structure 7-1 and its eastern plaza) Feature number

Elevation (MAMSL)

Type/ description

Location

1

Floor and floor fill, east plaza center, abundant sherds and burnt bones

16-13-6 16-12-6

881.295

2

Floor, east plaza center

16-67-6

881.77

3

Floor, east plaza center

16-67-4

881.75

4 and 5

Floor, east plaza center

16-67-8

881.67

6

Stairs and wall, Structure 7-1 lower east façade

16-225-4

884.462–884.262

7

Floor, east plaza center

16-67-9

881.52

8

Floor, east plaza center

16-67-9

881.49

9

Fill above floor, east plaza southeast

16-12-6

881.415–881.295

10

16-12-6 Trash and construction debris, east plaza center; between E-II and E-III; Feature 10 was found on top of Feature 9 which sits on top of Feature 1

881.615–881.415

11

Floor, east plaza center

16-68-3 16-69-3

881.71

12

Floor, east plaza center

16-68-3 16-68-4

881.71–881.64

13

Floor, east plaza center

16-68-5 16-69-5

881.64

14

Trash on plaza, east plaza north, deposit on E-II which lies on top of Feature 15

16-133-5

881.63–881.29

15 and 16

Floor and floor fill, east plaza north; Monument 27 and lithic block associated with floor

16-133-5 16-132-4

881.29

17

Trash, east plaza north; greenstone and bead recovered

16-133-6

881.31–881.06

18

3 whole vessels: 1. Orange bowl. Round base, 2. Black cylinder vase, plain base, 3. Orange bowl, globular base, Cache, northeast corner of Structure 7-1

16-270-13

883.255–883.125

19

1 whole vessel: Orange bowl, straight 16-270-13 walls, plain base, circumferential incision below rim, cache, northeast corner of Structure 7-1

883.255–883.125

Feature number

Type/ description

Location

Elevation (MAMSL)

20

1 Whole vessel: Red open bowl with tall pedestal base, cache, northeast corner of Structure 7-1

16-269-11

881.885–881.385

21

Large fragment of Black incised bowl, round base, cache, northeast corner of Structure 7-1

16-269-11

881.885–881.385

22

Black incised-punctated bowl, round 16-269-11 base, cache, northeast corner of Structure 7-1

881.885–881.385

23

1 Tiquisate Orange bowl with everted straight walls, molded decoration, plain base; 1 fragment of Orange cylinder vase (Tiquisate ware), cache, northeast corner of Structure 7-1

16-269-11

881.885–881.385

24

Fill, east plaza center, zoomorphic support and 2 obsidian blades

16-73-6

881.415

25

Floor

16-118-6

881.63–881.17

26

3 whole vessels and 5 obsidian blades: 2 globular bowls, open mouth, round base with red painted motifs on orange; 1 orange bowl with everted straight walls and plain base; 5 laurel-leaf unused obsidian blades, cache, northeast corner of Structure 7-1

16-269-11

881.885–881.385

27

Construction debris within E-III, 16-527-4 inorganic materials and taxcal mixed into a sealant paste

881.83–881.63

28

Floor, east plaza/easternmost central 16-527-7 unit; this floor is older than the one supporting Monument 27

881.23–881.03

29

Vessel Shoe type

16-527-8

881.03–880.83

30

Floor

16-527-10

880.63–880.43

31

Floor, southeastern corner of Struc- 16-389-6 ture 7-1, burnt surface of taxcal and toba with sandy bottom, within E-IV, 40 cm lower than Feature 28

881.433

(continued)

Table 4.8—Continued

Feature number

Type/ description

Location

Elevation (MAMSL)

32

Water system conduit with flat laja capstones, north-south alignment, running parallel to the stairs of Structure 7-1

16-389-7

881.523

33

Floor, hardened surface by burning, 16-527-13 E-IV-E-V, excavated below waterbed

879.87

34

Floor, east plaza center, approaching Structure 7-1

16-65-3

883.523

35

Floor

16-63-5

881.743

36

Floor

16-63-5

881.723–881.673

37

Floor with abundant taxcal in E-III

16-62-6

879.47

38

Floor and fill; this feature was altered 16-62-7 by the construction of Structure 7-1, which rises on top of it

879.47–879.38

39

16-122-2 Large round and flat boulder (0.93 × 0.71 m) labeled Monument 31, within Feature 39, east plaza northwest, facing northeast façade of Structure 7-1

882.86–882.81

40 and 41

Floor and fill

16-400-1 16-401-1

884.952–884.382

42

Floor on second body of Structure 7-1

16-203-1

884.737

43

Plaza floor associated with Feature 39

16-136-5

881.28

44

Floor associated with Feature 39

16-136-5

881.13

45

Floor

16-416-3

881.65

46

Trash

16-93-3 16-93-4

882.46–882.26

47

Floor

16-67-3 16-67-4

882.57–882.37

48

Floor

16-67-3 16-67-4

882.73

Source: PACH.

Archaeological Operations: Mounds, Plazas, and Features · 179

Construction and Shape Working over several weeks, we exposed 26 m of the lower eastern façade: a clay fill covered with cobbles and masonry stones. Ten m wide and flanked by 2-m wide piers on each side and a talud wall, a central stairway divided the façade. Investigations on the upper part of the mound revealed at least two more building components, another talud wall, and a floor. Explorations on the southern side of the mound identified a retaining wall toward the southern end of the second body of the structure. Apparently, the eastern side of the second platform rose from the talud wall, which was topped by a burnt-clay surface that coincided with a stairway mounting toward the upper part of the structure. Stylistically, the whole vessels deposited in the cache at the northeast corner of the structure are Late Classic, indicating a later structure encasing the earlier one. As part of Suboperation 389, within the fill of Structure 7-1, on the eastern façade, Feature 32 was recorded, consisting of a 4-m-long section of a water conduit with lajas, created by the same technology used in Mound 15. This water conduit ran north-south, parallel to the east façade stairway; we believe that connected to this conduit was at least one other conduit that ran perpendicularly into the structure, serving either for intake or outflow of water. Two other operations, a very deep series of pits placed at the northeast corner of Structure 7-1 (Suboperation 269), and the excavation of what we first believed represented a temascal, or sweat house, were also undertaken. The first of these, the pits at the northeast corner of the structure, reached a depth of 4.2 m, locating, in the process, a rich cache of Late Classic whole vessels (Figure 4.27). We suspected more whole vessels would be found, were the pits to be extended farther west, that is, farther into the structure; from the wealth of the cache and the fairly loosely packed fill, the possibility also existed that a sacrificial victim lay in association with the ceramic cache (these whole vessels are discussed in Chapter 5, and shown in Figure 5.10). Digging was halted because seasonal heavy rains flooded the pit; because of the extraordinary ingress of water—greater than could be attributed to the rainfall—we suspected then and believe now that in digging these deep pits we had either broken into another conduit or reached the water table. It was our intention to return to this operation in 2006. The other operation, 16-122, in the east plaza near to Structure 7-1’s east façade, explored an accumulation of cobbles surrounding a very large cobble, the distribution forming a flattened oval seemingly representing a

Figure 4.25. Mound 7 topography, superimposing eastern façade of Structure 7-1 masonry edifice, with sloping talud walls and piered stairway, under which was placed another stone-encased water conduit. The rich cache of whole vessels at the northeast corner of the structure represents a (re) dedication ritual. (PACH)

Archaeological Operations: Mounds, Plazas, and Features · 181

Figure 4.26. a) Photo of Feature 32, eastern façade of Structure 7-1, 4-m-long section of a water conduit; b) drawing of same. (PACH)

stone foundation for a small structure of some kind (Figure 4.28), although this interpretation does not explain the presence of the very large cobble. After reevaluating the field data, we do not now believe, as we did at the time, that this structure was a sweathouse. What it was, originally, remains to us a mystery. Evidence of another conduit, also, was found here. See discussion below of Feature 39. Other Excavations in the Mound 7 East Plaza Six floors were recorded below the current plaza level, most of them well preserved and originally carefully smoothed (Figure 4.29). Cultural artifacts recovered range from the Middle Preclassic to the Postclassic. Diagnostic ceramics for the earliest occupation of the plaza include Feature

182 · Water, Cacao, and the Early Maya of Chocolá

Figure 4.27. Excavating cache, northeast corner, Structure 7-1, 2005. (PACH)

29, a vessel of the Zapato type, found in Unit 16-527-8, between 881.03 and 880.83 MAMSL. Feature 27 represents the deepest floor registered, at a depth of 2.56 m below the current surface. Floors consisted of hardened burnt-clay surfaces. Several garbage deposits were also recorded on the plaza at varying depths, some of them with domestic artifacts, and signs of burning activities, including burnt bones. Other deposits found consisted

Figure 4.28. Feature 39, excavations in the east plaza, 2005. (PACH)

184 · Water, Cacao, and the Early Maya of Chocolá

Figure 4.29. Operation 16, floors recorded in the east plaza, Unit 67. (PACH)

of construction debris. A basalt stone monument was found resting on its left side over a garbage deposit on top of a floor on the northern side of the plaza (Figure 4.30). Monument 27 has two deep basins or receptacles, presumably for liquids, and signs of red pigments on the surface (see Chapter 6); the frontal depression contains a hole at its bottom to allow liquid to flow, and a toad or frog is carved in low relief around the receptacles. Operation 16, Feature 39, Mound 7 East Plaza Found on the west side of the plaza, Feature 39 was located through nine excavation units. Constructed of cobblestones, below E-II, the platform was composed of a wall aligned north-south. At least three rows of overlapping cobbles were preserved to show the wall’s riser at a depth of 882.86 MAMSL. In addition, two parallel stone alignments running east-west, separated by a gap of 40 cm, were found in Unit 16-107-3 at a depth of 883.01 MAMSL. This feature was interpreted as an uncapped water conduit.

Figure 4.30. Monument 27 photos and drawing. (PACH)

Figure 4.31. Operation 17, Structure 6-1: a) topographic map of Structure 6-1, 7-1, and plaza; b) units 130, 221, and 120 plan view of Structure 6-1 southern stairway and associated monuments 29 and 30; c) Structure 6-1 excavation grid. (PACH)

Archaeological Operations: Mounds, Plazas, and Features · 187

The structure was found to have a stepped access toward the north; a corner was located through a perpendicular joint of an east-west and north-south cobble alignment in Unit 16-123-3b. Two floors and a large boulder were recorded as part of this singular structure. A fine black slip earplug with modeled decoration was recovered from the debris on top of the structure. Cobblestones used in this structure may have been reused from Structure 7-1. Because of the structure’s proximity to the modern ground surface and associated ceramic materials, and assuming prior structures within it, we propose that the outermost structure dates to the Late Classic (see Table 4.8). Operation 17 Structure 6-1 lay within Mound 6, which is located on a platform north of a plaza facing to the east of the larger Structure 7-1. Summit elevation for Mound 6 is 889.8531 MAMSL. Mound 6 measured 3.96 m in height; lateral walls at its base measured 20 m. Prior to the vertical excavation, a grid system was developed for a remote sensing survey, and topographic data was collected for the whole structure and a portion of the plaza surrounding it. Topographic data allowed us to produce a 0.5 m contour-line plot of the mound. A gradiometric remote sensing survey showed several anomalous concentrations at the base of the mound, especially at the north and south. The excavations were limited to nine 2-×-2-m units, which exposed a degraded portion of the southern access of the structure. A collapsed or debilitated stone boulder stairway was found on the southern access (Units 120, 221, 130, and 129). The excavations recovered Monuments 29 and 30, both deposited on this collapsed stairway (Figure 4.31b). The five other units were excavated in the southwestern part of the mound for the purpose of recording the construction system of the building and obtaining an idea of its shape. One of the ten sherds determined positive for cacao residues was retrieved immediately to the south of Structure 6-1’s southern stairway. Construction and Shape Structure 6-1 was a pyramidal structure built from a clay core and partly dressed with cobbles. Cobblestones and worked masonry stones created a stairway access which ran from the plaza level to the summit of the structure. Cobbles were also used to strengthen the corners and provide walls for the overlapping stories of the structure. Structure 6-1 consisted of three stepped risers or platforms and another stone staircase access, this one on the southern façade. Time constraints prevented us from exploring the

188 · Water, Cacao, and the Early Maya of Chocolá

Figure 4.32. Operation 17, Monument 30, at the moment of its discovery. (PACH)

remaining east, west, and northern façade of the building. Debris from the southwest corner of the structure was found in Units 125, 126, and 127. Unit 145 revealed the foundations of a wall. Excavation Highlights Monument 29, a large extended carved stone with a round receptacle on one end, presumably to hold liquids, resembles a large spoon (see Figure 6.7, center right); it was found upside down on top of the southern stairway, at a height of 886.95 MAMSL. Next to it, 50 cm east but higher, at 887.27 MAMSL, Monument 30, a slender potbelly, was recovered from the top of the stairway, the head oriented northeast (Figure 4.32; see Figure 6.3). Figure 4.32 shows the potbelly as excavation revealed it. At the mound base, where the debris met a horizontal surface, at 885.89 MAMSL, a floor was recorded within E-III. Associated ceramics on top of the floor included Smooth Red Paste, Cream Slip on Red, Orange Slip on

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Red, Black-Brown Coarse Incised, Pale Red and Dark Brown Slip. Ceramics recovered below the floor included Santa Marta Brown, Smooth Red Paste, and Salcajá. These types range in date from the Middle and Late Preclassic to the Early Classic. Vertical excavations were undertaken at the base of Structure 6-1 to determine earlier occupation phases on the plaza. At 885.30 MAMSL, an increase of ceramic materials was noted. Ceramic types with a predominance of red pastes included Smooth Brown Slip, Smooth Red, Pale Red, Smooth Orange Slip, Cream Slip, and Costeño. Below, at 884.70 MAMSL, two thinly carved pumice stones were recovered, one triangular and another squared. Another 30 cm down, a large fragment of a black bowl was found, with everted straight walls and incised geometric decoration with red post-fired cinnabar inside the grooves (see Chapter 5, Figure 5.14). Finally, at 883.70 MAMSL, a horizontal stone alignment was found at 3.2 m below the current surface. Based on this find, an earlier occupation floor that preceded Structure 6-1 was clearly noted. Associated ceramics include thick globular walls, tecomate-like, and other grayish-brown surface sherds with thick globular walls. Also encountered were plane bases with annular-conical supports. These findings represent the earliest ceramic materials recovered through controlled excavations at Chocolá, dating to Chocolá’s Ventana ceramic phase (see Figure 5.1). Operation 15: Rescue of Whole Pots in Burial Context During the 2004 field season, a fortuitous discovery was made at N1614491 E669680, in the southern group, not far from Mound 5. This find11 consisted of a group of vessels deposited in what appeared to be a burial setting, with the actual skeletal remains missing. The find was exposed by erosion of a road that cuts through a low mound. The rescue resulted in the retrieval of 11 whole vessels from a deposit that was set inside the mound at a depth of 1.60 m below the mound’s summit. The vessels had been placed on top of a paved surface of small stones 10–15 cm in diameter, and surrounded a hollowed space where the skeletal individual may have been placed. The vessels consisted of orange, red, and black-brown wares; 8 of 11 vessels have solid supports, a ninth has hollow mammiform supports. A 2-×-2-m excavation unit was set up to recover the vessels; adjacent explorations north and south found no archaeological material other than a fragment of a mammiform support. Stratigraphic analysis confirmed that the construction of the road had altered the original burial setting, destroying context. For a description of the vessels, see Chapter 5 (also Figure 5.11).

Figure 4.33. Operation 15 (rescue): a) plan view drawing; b and d) photos of whole vessels; c) photo of whole vessels in situ. (PACH)

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Interpretations of Structures 5-1, 6-1, 7-1, and 15-1 Structure 5-1, as we have suggested, may have functioned as a supervisory intensive agriculture station and as a craft workshop area. Its placement far to the south of the administrative Central Sector supports this interpretation. Ceramics recovered from excavations in that area tested positive for theobromine (see Appendix E). Structure 6-1, from its relatively small size, together with its elite construction—with at least one stairway giving out to the south and likely other stairways on the other sides, as well as large, well-carved monuments early in date (Middle to Late Middle Preclassic)— suggests its function was as a shrine or temple. The fact that sacred space in ancient Chocolá was built to the north of the clear administrative center suggests a well-planned spatial design, similar to Takalik Abaj, its near neighbor, planning that also included large sacred spaces.12 Structure 7-1, we believe, was an elite palace, fronted to the east by a large plaza. Added to Burkitt’s notes of several sculptures found in this part of Chocolá, this eastern orientation seems a particularly emphatic indication of sunrise associations with elite personages, or an elite class, which contributes to the sense of a sacred space at this juncture between the lower part of the North Sector and the upper part of the Central Sector. Very much like the positioning of monuments close to edifices at Takalik Abaj, placement of carved monuments may have been distinguishable functionally, to some degree, from the apparent placement of several monuments in the east plaza, in addition to Monument 27. In other words, some monuments were close to edifices, others placed in plazas. The cache discovered at Structure 7-1’s northeast corner was Late Classic in date, which supports a continued sacred valuation of the structure, or the likely structures within the latest or youngest edifice. The piers and stairway(s) of Structure 7-1 provide evidence of its once imposing appearance; similarly, the water conduit running beneath the east façade/stairway, with another conduit possibly extending west into the structure, provides evidence not only of privileged access to cleaner water, but of other elite comforts. As mentioned, careful, successively deeper stripping of the earth in Structure 7-1’s roughly 30-×-50-m east plaza revealed multiple floors, which indicated frequent cleaning, smoothing, and long use. Structure 15-1, itself, a springhouse or water shrine, may date between the Middle and Late Preclassic. The shallow depth of the large cobble foundation for this rectangular building at first suggested a later date, although the ceramics and 14C support the early dating. The water system, consisting

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of comparatively very complex arrangements of long conduits—subterranean ones with laja covering, ancient ground surface drains lacking lajas, all seemingly linked, directly or indirectly, to the caja (later, a well) below the center of Structure 15-1—displayed, in addition to the overall ingenuity and complexity of both its construction and functions, many other engineering touches that were quite remarkable for their design. They were so clearly intended to control the extremely copious amounts of water flowing through the conduits, both from natural springs and from the great amounts of rain that fell on Chocolá in ancient times, and still does so today. This ingenuity is further emphasized by the fact that the German managers of the plantation, and the current town managers, piggybacked their water conveyances (pipes, with breathers, allowing us to locate them) onto this system; the modern materials were not cobblestones and taxcal, but PVC, metal, and/or wood: the choices the ancient Chocolenses made could not be much improved upon except by modern material technology. Notes 1. http://ufdc.ufl.edu/AA00061833/00001/allvolumes. 2. Stephen Post and Steven Lakatos, from the Museum of New Mexico’s Office of Archaeological Studies. 3. For the 2003 season, we used an older model Trimble handheld unit; in 2004, the Trimble Corporation donated two GeoExplorer XT units, CE series, with Terrasync and Pathfinder Office (version 3.0), state of the art at the time, to replace these. 4. While the survey and excavations were taking place in 2003, interviews with town residents produced much interesting anecdotal information, including an account from one very elderly man, Francisco Guarchaj, who remembered working for Burkitt as a young laborer in digging the trench in Mound 2. 5. As noted previously (Chapter 2), taxcal, very abundant in the soils of Chocolá, is a waxy, iron-rich, impermeable, or almost impermeable agglutinated mineral paste which was employed by the ancient Chocolenses as a sealant in the conduits and also as interfacing between cobbles in architectural construction. 6. Before we could begin excavations in Mound 9, we were advised to invite xamanes to perform a ceremony in order for us to gain sanction from the earth because our picks, shovels, and spades would “injure her.” 7. In 2004 and 2005, gradiometric prospecting was employed. David Monsees conducted the prospection, and many loci of important possible or likely ancient deposition were identified. Unfortunately, time and budget constraints left these unexplored by the time the project was halted in 2006. Plans were to investigate these in 2006. More information is found in the PACH reports to IDAEH. 8. http://www.s21.com.gt/nacionales/2015/12/13/encuentran-cocinas-comunales-mayas -hace-2700-años.

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9. All radiocarbon dates use the calibration data set: intca113.14c (Reimer et al. 2013); all dates expressed in BC and AD are 2 sigma calibrated. See Appendix D. 10. Depth measured for the floor of feature 31, Unit 82. 11. The discovery occurred when Kaplan was driving on a “banana road” in the South Sector. He was distracted by the sight of a ceramic sticking conspicuously above the road surface and drove the project truck into a deep ditch. While waiting for another vehicle to pull the truck out of the ditch, and with Paredes Umaña’s assistance, he excavated and recorded the find. 12. A distinction between “administrative” and “sacred” spaces may be somewhat meaningless; the Central Sector, because of its pyramidal architecture, seems to have been administrative in function, while the North Sector contained elite residences as well as sacred spaces in the form of plazas with carved monuments expressing deity worship.

5 The Ceramics of Chocolá

Ceramics were collected during our initial surveys and from the project’s excavation program, which was conducted over three field seasons. In this chapter, we present summary information only from a restricted sampling of pits and levels. Publication of the full Chocolá ceramics analysis is planned for the future. Organized by period and ware, we discuss four categories: paste, surface, form, and decoration according to the Kidder ware method of ceramic analysis (compare Shepard 1956). If not all four are mentioned in the individual entries for the wares, information was not obtainable for the omitted ones. Based on diagnostic traits, the brief discussion is of manufacture technology as being related to either local or imported vessels, or to those derived by participation in stylistic spheres suggesting social and/or political interaction. Our information is based in part on Popenoe de Hatch’s helpful contributions to our field reports for the Guatemalan Ministry of Culture. In several publications as well as in our reports (Popenoe de Hatch 1991; 1997; 2002; 2005a, b; 2006; Popenoe de Hatch et al 2011), Popenoe de Hatch has defined various ceramic traditions, based on the identification of local domestic utilitarian wares and mostly delimited by major rivers. While she provided general outlines of ceramic patterns and variations, other southern area researchers have pursued different analyses and chronologies, which we also have taken into account (for example, Kosakowsky 2002). We adapt here some of Popenoe de Hatch’s proposals, most of which originally were outlined jointly with E. M. Shook (Figure 5.1), noting that we are generally in accord with Inomata et al.’s (2014) revision of dates for Kaminaljuyu’s ceramic phases, which pushes these phases as much as 300 years later. The Early Preclassic traditions, Ocos and Cuadros-Jocotal, are found on the Pacific littoral. Drawing from the publications we refer to, according

Figure 5.1. Ceramic chronology for selected sites in the Preclassic and Early Classic Maya Lowlands and Highlands, adapted from Inomata et al.’s revision of the long-standing Shook–Popenoe de Hatch chronology for Kaminaljuyu (Inomata et al. 2014, Figure 2).

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to Popenoe de Hatch, Middle and Late Preclassic traditions include the “Naranjo,” on the western part of the Pacific coastal plain, and “Achiguate” and “Ocosito” in the piedmont and on the eastern part of the coastal plain of Guatemala. In the highlands, the “Las Vacas” Tradition predominated in the Valley of Guatemala, notably at Kaminaljuyu, the “Rio Blanco” Tradition in the valley of the Chixoy River, and the Motagua Tradition in Baja Verapaz. At the beginning of the Early Classic period, she also asserts, the “Solano” Ceramic Tradition spread throughout the highlands of Guatemala. During her work for PACH, Popenoe de Hatch proposed a “Chocolá Ceramic Tradition” (Popenoe de Hatch et al. 2011: 206–211); she has now concluded that the ceramics of Chocolá fall completely within the Achiguate Ceramic Tradition. The Achiguate Ceramic Tradition was present from the Middle Preclassic Period up to the first part of the Early Classic Period, and extended between the rivers Samalá to the west and Maria Linda to the east. We note that, in general, Chocolá’s Preclassic ceramics bear close similarities to the pottery from San Andrés Semetabaj. In addition, similarities are found also to Preclassic wares from Kaminaljuyu, notably Las Charcas styles, as well as to various sites on the Pacific coast. The oldest vessels at Chocolá are represented by Early Preclassic Ocos-like sherds. Considering that Late Classic vessels also make an appearance, occupation of the site was very enduring, although interruptions, including possible abandonment at the end of the Early Classic, seem plausible. A Comment about “Wares” and “Types”

Like many if not most current research analyses of Maya and Southern Maya Region ceramics, we employ both a type-variety approach and an approach emphasizing wares. Problems with the type-variety method arise with possibly quite subjective characterizations of traits as finer and finer categories are asserted on the basis of combinations of variables, including paste, decorative treatment, surface finish, and location. More broadly, as Joseph Ball (2015) observed, “Analysts do not consistently select the same attributes (‘modes’; traits) of (surface) finish and (surface) manipulation/ decoration on which to establish their types (and varieties, and sometimes even groups), and there is no general or even broadly shared consensus as to which attributes should take precedence or consistently be recognized at the type and varietal levels.” This inconsistency has led to the same sherds being classified as “entirely and widely different types, sometimes falling

Figure 5.2. Proposed ceramic traditions in the Southern Maya Region with archaeological sites, large and small, including Chocolá (no. 18). Crosshatching indicates ware categories; dotted line indicates Ceramic Spheres proposed using the type-variety system. (Adapted from Popenoe de Hatch et al. 2011, Figure 8.13)

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into widely divergent type-classes” (Ball 2015). Moreover, it has contributed to inconsistent typologies “that not only mitigate against effective comparisons, but can actually result in serious misconstructions of local and regional ceramic and cultural histories and interaction interpretations,” with the result that “one analyst’s sequence may not be usable by other analysts for purposes of valid cross-comparison or sociocultural reconstructions, modeling, and interpretation” (2015). Despite these and other problems, we agree with Aimers that “the typevariety method works well at what it was originally intended to do” (Aimers 2013: 11). “Ware” refers to a class of pottery produced by shared technology, using similar materials and surface treatment; vessel form and paste are emphasized (2013: 19). As with type-variety, the ware method has some problems limiting its use; Aimers has asserted that the ware method should emphasize paste alone, and not paste plus slip, in part because slip colors “can vary enormously on individual vessels fired using bonfire-type techniques, as well as by conditions of use and depositional environment” (Aimers 2013: 19). One useful product of analysis by ware is a determination, assisted by neutron activation, of the potential production node of the pottery—where the clay was obtained. However, the ware approach has its own limitations of “inconsistency and [theoretical] inexplicitness” (Ball 2015; compare Rice 1976). Our own approach favors wares as opposed to type-variety, emphasizing paste and surface treatment, not only because of the theoretical problems with type-variety but also because our analysis of Chocolá’s ceramics is preliminary and ongoing. More fundamentally, we justify our approach because analysis based on wares has been utilized in the Guatemalan part of the Southern Maya Region, and, if we did not refer to wares, our colleagues would be less able to use our data in their own comparative research. For our purposes here, we mention broad classifications, with forms, whenever possible for each classification, but also pastes, slips, and surface decoration, if any. In addition, we mention whatever possible regional implications might exist from specific ceramic wares and types at Chocolá. Correlations between tentative Chocolá Ceramic Phases to those better established from Kaminaljuyu are given in Figure 5.1 and Tables 5.1 and 5.2. Preclassic Wares

Spread throughout the region of the Achiguate Ceramic Tradition, Early Preclassic types appear that come from the lower coastal littoral. These are

Table 5.1. Chocolá wares (after Popenoe de Hatch) correlated to Kaminaljuyu phases versus revised chronology by Inomata et al. (2014) Comment after Popenoe de Hatch

Kaminaljuyu ceramic phases

Proposed revision*

Balsamo Brown ware Chocolá Brown Utilitarian ware

Related to Coastal ware

Equivalent to Las Charcas Equivalent to Las Charcas

800 BC–350 BC

Monte Alto Red ware

Begins on the South Coast in the early Middle Preclassic; endures to the end of the Late Preclassic.

Equivalent to Las Charcas

800 BC–350 BC

Equivalent to Las Charcas Equivalent to Las Charcas

800 BC–350 BC

Chocolá wares

Glossy Orange ware Glossy Black ware

Begins in the equivalent to Las Charcas times; endures throughout the Late Preclassic.

Becomes popular at the end of the Late Preclassic.

800 BC–350 BC

800 BC–350 BC

Red Paste ware

Found in Middle and Late Preclassic times.

N/A

N/A

Rosada ware

Basic Utilitarian ware at Chocola; endures throughout from the Middle Preclassic to Late Classic times.

Equivalent to Providencia

350 BC–100 BC

Evolves into the Late Preclassic Equivalent to Arenate ware; does not continue Providencia into the Classic. Morfino ware Limited to Providencia. Equivalent to Providencia Semetabaj Brown Limited to Providencia; origiEquivalent to ware nated at Semetabaj. Providencia Utatlan ware Common in in the northwest- Equivalent to Providencia ern highlands of Guatemala and evolves into another type in Late Preclassic and Early Classic times.

350 BC–100 BC

Monte Alto Brown ware

Xuc ware

Limited to Providencia

Rofino ware

Limited to Verbena and Providencia

Source: PACH. *After Inomata et al. 2014: 378.

350 BC–100 BC 350 BC–100 BC 350 BC–100 BC

Equivalent to 350 BC–100 BC Providencia Equivalent to Ver- 100 BC–AD 50 bena and Arenal

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Table 5.2. Chocolá’s ceramic phases with corresponding wares Phases

Chocolá wares

Tarrales (Early Classic)

Yellow Paste, Red, Rosada, Santa Marta Café, Esperanza Flesh, Llanto and Streaky-Brown, Tiquisate

Camaché (equivalent to Santa Clara—Aurora)

Yellow Paste, Red, Rosada

Lolemí (equivalent to Verbena-Arenal)

Yellow Paste, Red, Rofino, Utatlan, Rosada

Nimá (equivalent to Providencia)

Yellow Paste, Red, Rosada, Rofino, Chocolá Brown, Glossy Black, Balsamo Brown, Monte Alto Red, Monte Alto Brown, Morfino, Semetabaj Brown, Utatlán, Xuc

Ixtacapa (equivalent to Las Charcas)

Yellow Paste, Red, Rosada, Chocolá Brown, Glossy Orange, Glossy Black, Balsamo Brown, Monte Alto Red

Ventana

Coastal Undifferentiated; includes Ocos-like, rocker-stamped surface treatment on tecomates

Source: PACH.

roughly similar to types of the Cuadros phase of Chiapas (1150–900 BC). Shook and Hatch (1978: 8–18) applied the name “Coastal Undifferentiated” to these types to indicate that they adhered temporally to Cuadros and Jocotal types, although they displayed some differences from them. They are characterized by very hard pastes, light beige to gray, and sandy in texture, with decoration by brushing, multiple punctates, and incising. The predominant forms are tecomates and open bowls. A number of these coastal sherds were recovered from the excavations at Chocolá. Local Wares Rosada Ware At Chocolá, Rosada is the local utilitarian ware and is the most commonly found at the site. Rosada is the basic category for definition of the Achiguate Tradition. It appears to have been produced locally, but is the analogue to Pink Paste Wares at Monte Alto. Stratigraphically, Rosada sherds appear in contexts relating to Providencia in the highlands and continues to be found in Early Classic contexts. Rosada Ware is rarely encountered at

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Takalik Abaj. In contrast, it is quite frequently found at the site of Semetabaj, Department of Sololá, roughly the same distance from Chocolá as Takalik Abaj but to the north instead of to the west. Some of the vessels found to contain residues of cacao appear to be Rosada ware vessels (see Appendix E). Paste. Color is dull pink, texture is homogenous, hard, and fine without noticeable presence of temper. Firing is medium hard. The paste is easily distinguishable from orange and red pastes. Surface. Surface finish varies, but usually lacks a thin slip or wash which, if present, may be of the color of the paste or whitish or brownish with a low polish. Decoration. Rare in Preclassic times, but occasionally vessels may bear modeling and grooving. Forms. Jars, tecomates, and plates Balsamo Brown Ware This type is very common in the Achiguate Ceramic Tradition and is related chronologically to Las Charcas in the highlands, or 800–350 BC, according to Inomata et al’s revised chronology (2014). It was first encountered at the sites of El Balsamo and Monte Alto (Figure 5.3a). Paste. Light to medium brown in color with medium to medium-coarse texture with pumice particles. Firing is medium hard. Surface. Vessels are usually unslipped but well smoothed, occasionally with polishing. Normally the surface is the same color as the paste, but firing differences occasionally leave coloration ranging from pinkish-brown to orange-red to dark brown. Decoration. Medium to coarse incising is common on the exterior of the vessels. Red or red and white painted decoration is sometimes present. Chocolá Brown Utilitarian Ware Based on present evidence, this utilitarian, locally manufactured ware consists of special jars, and is abundant at Chocolá. The ware is also found in small amounts at Takalik Abaj. Temporally, it persists from the equivalent of Las Charcas in highland chronology or from 800 BC, through to the end of the Preclassic (Figure 5.3b). Paste. Color is medium brown, texture is medium. Firing is medium to hard. Surface. Low- to well-polished medium to dark brown slip. Very commonly, a well-polished red slip is found on the surface of the rim.

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Figure 5.3. a) Balsamo Brown Ware; b) Chocolá Brown Utilitarian Ware. (PACH)

Forms. Some jars have a globular body that terminates abruptly with an everted rim. Others have a tear-shaped body with insloping neck to an abruptly everted rim. Both forms may have polished red slip on the rim. Chocolá Black-Brown Slipped and Polished Fine Ware Polished black-brown wares are common throughout the south coast and the Guatemalan Highlands from the Late Preclassic through at least the Early Classic, and most represent elite wares imported from other zones (Figure 5.4a). Paste. Pinkish to pink-brown, probably the same local clay as Rosada Ware, suggesting at least some of these are locally manufactured. Surface. Most vessels have a dark brown or red-brown polished slip. Decoration. Medium to coarse incised. Forms. There are many forms; further study is needed to separate into different types.

The Ceramics of Chocolá · 203

Figure 5.4. a) Chocolá Black-Brown Slipped and Polished; b) Glossy Orange Ware. (PACH)

Yellow Paste Yellow pastes are not normally found at Takalik Abaj, Semetabaj or Monte Alto, which suggests that it is a local type at Chocolá. Although not common, it is consistently a part of the ceramic record throughout all periods. There may be several divisions within the Yellow Paste Ware category because examples are found with and without slip; some slipped vessels are highly polished.

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Monte Alto Red Ware Monte Alto Red Ware was originally identified at the site of Monte Alto, where it is abundant. This ware is well represented at Chocolá. It has also been reported at Takalik Abaj and is found throughout the Guatemalan Highlands. Popenoe de Hatch has proposed that the jars may have been used to store cacao beans (1997). The ware does not seem to continue into the Classic Period. Paste. Color varies from pinkish-brick or salmon to pinkish-brown with a light to medium-gray interior. Texture is medium fine, very homogeneous, and hard. Surface. The exterior bears a polished red slip that covers the entire wall down to the base juncture which remains unslipped and unsmoothed. The interior of the vessel is rough and unsmoothed and often exhibits the horizontal strokes from the scraping with a tool that drags the particles of temper, leaving scars. A particular trait is the joint between the wall and base that is conspicuously joined together, leaving lumps of clay and an uneven surface on the joint. Decoration. Monte Alto Red jars usually have a tool-indented fillet around the base of the neck. On one side of the jar are two incised lines extending from the fillet to the unslipped base, and these frame one or two lines of punctates. Forms. A large jar with a vertical and narrow neck of low to medium height. The rim is everted and slightly thickened, with the lip rounded to sharp. Red Paste Ware At Chocolá, a Red Paste Ware is scarce, although red clay for pottery is abundant in the region and is used for slipped wares. At Takalik Abaj, Red Paste Wares predominate, but the slips are almost always completely eroded due to weathering. Red Paste vessels are rare in the Late Preclassic but appear again in the Early Classic. Middle and Late Preclassic Imported Wares Black-Brown Slipped Fine Wares with Pumice Temper This ware is widely distributed on the Guatemalan South Coast and in the Highlands, and likely is manufactured at many locations. At Chocolá, these vessels probably originated from various sites on the south coast.

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Paste. Color varies from light to dark brown or reddish- or yellowishbrown. Texture is medium to medium-fine, usually containing regularly distributed white pumice particles. Occasionally, but less noticeable, are rounded ferruginous particles. Surface. Most vessels are slipped and well polished. Surface color varies from dark reddish-brown to dark black-brown. Decoration. When present, decoration consists of incised, grooved, and modeled designs. Some areas may be rasped or scraped to expose paste color. Post-slip and polish incisions are medium to deep; after firing, the incisions may be filled with red paint, less frequently with white. Glossy Orange Ware Found at both Chocolá and Takalik Abaj, Glossy Orange vessels were imported during the Preclassic from Chiapas and from the western highlands of Guatemala (Figure 5.4b). Paste. The variation of pastes suggests more than one ware has been included in this category. Generally, texture varies from medium to fine. Temper includes white pumice and red ferruginous particles. Surface. Glossy Orange vessels range from pink to reddish-brown on both the interior and exterior; or to gray due to firing. All forms have a well smoothed and polished orange slip with a waxy texture and may have bluish or gray clouds due to firing. Decoration. Most commonly, decoration consists of incising or grooving. Forms. The vast majority of Glossy Orange forms are bowls with curved or straight-flaring walls. The rims may be direct-rounded or flat with sharp edges, or everted. Glossy Black Ware Glossy Black Ware is frequently encountered at Chocolá in contexts relating to Highlands Providencia (Late Preclassic), possibly imported from the Quetzaltenango area where it was common during this period. Paste. Color varies from light medium-brown, to reddish-brown, extending to gray and black. Texture varies from medium to medium-fine. Most examples have fine white particle or ferruginous inclusions. Surface. This ware resembles Glossy Orange in surface treatment but slip color varies from dark brown to reddish-brown to black, with occasional orange-firing clouds. These vessels are black-slipped with a highly polished or glossy finish.

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Figure 5.5. Orange Slipped Wares. (PACH)

Decoration. Pre-slip grooves and incisions with geometric designs and parallel lines are commonly present on the exterior and occasionally on the interior. Orange Slipped Wares Many and varied types of Orange Slipped Wares from many regions were imported to Chocolá and need to be classified and described. They include incised decoration and Usulatán clouds and lines. This task is pending more analysis. Black-Brown Slipped Fine Wares with Pumice Temper These wares have a wide distribution on the Guatemala South Coast and Highlands and are manufactured in many locales. The Chocolá vessels in this category probably originated from sites on the south coast. Paste. Paste color varies from light to dark brown or reddish- or yellowish-brown. Texture is medium to medium-fine, usually containing white pumice particles regularly distributed. Occasionally, but less noticeably, are rounded ferruginous particles. Surface. Most vessels are slipped and well polished. Surface color varies from dark reddish-brown to dark black-brown.

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Decoration. When present, decoration consists of incised, grooved, and modeled designs. Some areas may be rasped or scraped to expose to paste color. Post-slip and polish incisions are medium to deep and, after firing, the incisions may be filled with red paint, less frequently with white pigment. Monte Alto Brown Ware This fine ware is abundant at Monte Alto and is equivalent to the Providencia (Late Preclassic) phase at Kaminaljuyu. It was imported into Kaminaljuyu. Paste. Brown with pumice and ferruginous particles. Texture is medium and soft-fired. Surface. Medium chocolate to dark brown and low polished, sometimes with a soft, matte finish. Decoration. Incised lines and rows of punctates. Morfino Ware Paste. Similar to that of Rofino (below) which is closely related, paste is usually pale beige or beige, often with a dark gray core. Texture is very fine and firing is medium to hard. Surface. Vessels bear a polished orange to red-orange polish with decoration in purple or graphite paint, the latter rare at Chocolá (Figure 5.6a). Decoration. Grooving usually filled with purple or graphite paint. Rofino Ware This trade ware is scarce at Chocolá, but its presence is significant. It is one of the finest wares of the (Late Preclassic) Providencia phase at Kaminaljuyu, found in the Terminal Preclassic Verbena and Arenal phase burials of Mound E-III-3 at Kaminaljuyu, and also in Sacatepéquez and Chimaltenango (Shook and Kidder 1952). Paste. Color is yellow or beige to pale beige, usually with a dark gray core. Texture is fine, with very small white pumice particles, often visible only with magnification, uniformly distributed throughout the paste. Surface. A well-polished red or orange-red slip completely covers the vessel. Decoration. Generally by incisions, grooves, and modeling. Forms. Forms include plates and bowls—for example, a tripod bowl recovered from Operation 15 (see below).

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Semetabaj Brown Ware Semetebaj Brown, the principle utilitarian ware at Semetabaj in the Middle to Late Preclassic period (Shook et al. 1979: 25–29) frequently appears at Chocolá (Figure 5.6b). Paste. Color ranges from chocolate brown to reddish-brown to light brown. The texture is medium to medium-fine and is hard fired. Surface. Vessels bear a slip of the same color of the paste and is low to well polished. Decoration. Polished red paint is often applied to the rims and some other parts of the vessels and in addition there may be areas of multiple small punctates on the exterior. Forms. Bowls, small jars, and tecomates. Utatlán Ware Utatlán Ware was first reported and published by Gordon and Mason (1925–1943, pl. XIV). Because of its putative provenience, Lothrop republished it (1933: 112, fig. 69) under the name now used. Lothrop also noted its presence at the sites of Chukumuk and Zacualpa, as well as from sites in the departments of Quetzaltenango and Retalhuleu (Lothrop (1936: 21). Since these early reports, the ware has been assigned to the Preclassic, with distributions in the (Late Preclassic) Providencia and (Terminal Preclassic) Verbena phases at Kaminaljuyu and the Late Preclassic Central Highlands of Guatemala, and with continuing high frequency from sites in the Department of Quiché. This ware was probably imported to Chocolá from northwest Guatemala, where it is more common. Paste. Color is light brown, sometimes with a dark gray core. Texture is homogeneous, medium to medium-fine. Pumice particles are evenly distributed, more easily discerned in medium textures. Surface. Bowls are always smoothed. Slips are dark red, sometimes containing specular hematite, typically combined with areas of graphite or dark gray paint; absent only in distinct areas, the slips are applied on the edge from the inner lip to the break between wall and base. Decoration. Areas without the slip are bounded by incised or grooved lines or by modeling, which was subsequently painted with a black or black-graphite paint.

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Figure 5.6. a) Morfino Ware; b) Semetabaj Brown Ware. (PACH)

Xuc Ware Beginning in the Middle Preclassic, according to the traditional chronology (Shook and Popenoe de Hatch 1999, Shook et al. 1979), Xuc Ware from the Valley of Guatemala and specifically the Department of Sacatepéquez (Shook 1952, Shook and Popenoe de Hatch 1978, Shook and Popenoe de Hatch 1999, Shook et al. 1979), relates to the Providencia phase in both the traditional sequence and in the revision by Inomata et al (2014) to the Late Preclassic. Xuc Ware is well known from the many whole vessels found in burials and middens in Sacatepéquez and Chimaltenango, notably from the site of Zacat. Many of the most common forms are represented at Chocolá. Seemingly diagnostic, no basal supports are known for this ware. Xuc Ware appears broadly as an exchange ceramic; it disappears during the Terminal Preclassic. Some Xuc Ware sherds were excavated stratigraphically at Chocolá. Paste. Paste color is the same white observed on the surface, with a gray or black core, resulting from the firing process. Texture is medium-to-fine with occasional fine particles of mica. Surface. Vessel finish is grayish-white or cream, unslipped, and generally well smoothed and polished. Gray or black firing clouds may appear.

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Decoration. Decoration consists of incisions, grooves, and modeling, often accompanied by application of a red-purple or orange-red paint. Forms. A large inventory of this ware includes open bowls, jars, and vessels with restricted orifice. Early Classic Wares

During the Early Classic, the ceramic inventory at Chocolá continues with Rosada Ware in new forms and regional (coastal) types with both orange and black-brown slips. A new development is the incursion into the Guatemala Highlands by a population making ceramics belonging to Popenoe de Hatch’s Solano Ceramic Tradition; these were imported to Chocolá. The principal Solano wares found in Chocolá are Santa Marta Café, Esperanza Flesh, Llanto, and Streaky-Brown. The following descriptions can be found in Shook 1979, Popenoe de Hatch 1997: 153–174, and Popenoe de Hatch 2005b. Rosada Ware This ware continues from the Preclassic but forms are different. In stark contrast from Preclassic times, incensarios appear with Teotihuacan styles with intricate modeling or appliquéd decoration. Thus far, no threepronged incensarios have been recovered, although coarse-incised censer lids were found in abundance during Early Classic times. Santa Marta Café Ware Paste. Color is light reddish-brown to medium chocolate brown. Texture is medium to medium-coarse with abundant quartz, white pumice, and black particles. Firing is medium. Surface. Some vessels are unslipped but characteristically a thin orangebrown slip appears, which is well smoothed or occasionally with a low polish. Forms. Comales, shallow bowls, and jars. The jars are characterized by strip-shaped handles that extend from the lip of the rim to the shoulder of the vessel, with punctation or finger printing on the surface. Santa Marta Brown Ware This ware is described by Shook et al. (1979). Paste. Color is light reddish-brown to medium chocolate brown. Texture

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is medium to medium-coarse with abundant quartz, white pumice, and black particles. Firing is medium. Surface. The surface is often left unslipped but is well smoothed, with occasional low polishing. The pitchers generally have a thin orange-brown slip or wash on the outside of the neck and rim. The wide handles—from rim to shoulder—are punctated or finger punched. Forms. Comales, shallow bowls, and jars. Jars are characterized by stripshaped handles that extend from the lip of the rim to the shoulder of the vessel, with punctation or finger printing on the surface. Esperanza Flesh Ware Paste. Color varies from light pinkish-brown to apricot with gray fire clouds. Texture is medium-fine to medium-coarse. The ware is hard fired and rings when struck with the fingers. Surface. Most often, the surface is not slipped, but is well smoothed and occasionally polished. Frequently the vessels have a thin light orange or yellowish wash. For a description of Esperanza Flesh, see Kidder et al. (1946) and Popenoe de Hatch (2005a: 501). Llanto Ware Paste. Reddish to red-brown with medium texture. Firing is medium hard. Surface. Vessels bear a thick brownish dark orange or orange-red slip that is well polished. Decoration. Grooving, incising, and modeling. Forms. Typical Early Classic forms, including large mammiform, hollow supports on jars and bowls, tetrapod plates with long supports, and small pitchers. For more on Llanto Ware, see Popenoe Hatch (1997: 161). Streaky Brown Ware For a detailed description of Streaky Brown Ware, see Shook et al. (1979: 55). Streaky Brown is characterized by a striped finish and closely resembles Esperanza Flesh, with which it is often confused. Paste. Color is reddish-brown to yellowish-brown. Texture is mediumfine to medium-coarse, with thick pumice and quartz particle inclusions. One difference from Esperanza Flesh Ware vessels is that firing does not yield a hard texture. Surface. The surface is slipped and polished over the entire vessel. Polishing strokes tend to leave mild depressions which can be felt by the analyst’s

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fingers. A smooth finish, with high polishing, is occasionally found. Slip varies from reddish-brown to red, orange, or pink in the same vessel. Occasionally, burnishing strokes appear as dark stripes on the reddish-orange examples. Tiquisate Ware Tiquisate Ware, an important Early Classic trade ware from the Pacific coast, is cream-colored and appears as bowls and vases and with tripod supports; it also appears as figurines. Near Chocolá, at Bilbao (Cotzumalguapa—see Chapter 1), Tiquisate Ware appears with some frequency. The ware also appears in Tikal Manik Complex burials (compare Culbert 1993). Paste. At Chocolá the paste is pink with a medium texture. Firing is medium to medium hard. Surface. Vessels have a polished cream slip with areas of orange clouds. Decoration. Incising, grooving, and modeling. Forms. Bowls, some with supports, and tall cylinder vases. Figurines and Other Ceramic Forms

A number of figurines and stamps were recovered in our excavations and also gathered from surface collections and received via donations by the local population. Analysis of them is still pending, but illustrations are provided here. Whole Vessels

In this section, we focus on some of the whole vessels recovered from our excavations. Whole vessels recovered from Mound 15 (Operation 4), include an early Classic Teotihuacanoid tripod vessel deposited at a juncture in a water conduit (Figure 5.9h, and see Figure 4.19), a Middle or Late Preclassic black globular jar with asas deposited in the central well or near the caja or redistribution box below the center of Structure 15-1 (Figure 5.9i), a Middle Preclassic oversized red olla cached beneath smoothed cobbles representing the four directions plus the center (Figure 5.9f; see Figures 4.7 and 4.8), the large cooking vessels ritually cached near the “annex,” (Figure 5.9a, d, g). Several Early to Late Classic whole vessels were extracted from a cache deposit deep beneath the northeast corner of Structure 7-1 (Figure 5.10a–i, and Figure 5.11); see Figures 4.27 and 4.33).

Figure 5.7. Chocolá figurines. Operation 4: a, c, d, e, f, p, r; Operation 14: i, j, m; surface collection, Central Sector: g, k; donations to PACH from Chocolá residents: n, q. (PACH)

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Figure 5.8. Two sellos (stamping devices) from Chocolá. Donation to PACH from Chocolá residents. (PACH)

More whole vessels were obtained as a result of Operation 15 (see Figure 4.33), a fortuitous salvage effort in the southern sector of Chocolá. As mentioned in Chapter 4, the discovery was the result of a project truck accident on one of the large dirt roads threading through the coffee parcelas. The vessels were found as part of a ritually cached deposit; why such a highvalue cache was placed in what we have proposed was a part of Chocolá set aside for agricultural production, we cannot, at present, explain. Some Comments on the Cultural History and the Ceramics from Chocolá and Implications for the Chronology of the Guatemalan Piedmont

As noted, recently, Inomata et al. (2014) proposed a revision of the chronology of Kaminaljuyu and other Southern Maya Region sites based on a Bayesian statistical review of radiocarbon dates applied to long-accepted ceramic sequences. According to their revision, “the Providencia phase, currently placed in the Middle Preclassic period, should be moved to the Late Preclassic period” (2014: 392). They also assert that “the major development of political centralization with well-established rulership and the stela cult occurred roughly contemporaneously in the Southern Maya Area and in the Maya Lowlands after 100 BC” (2014: 402). Arguing against what Kaplan has called the Thermometer Theory, they suggest that “the

Figure 5.9 Whole vessels from Mound 15, Operation 4, structures and water conduits: a) Middle Preclassic (4-2283), Structure 15-1 “annex”; b) Middle Preclassic (4-243-3), Structure 15-1 “annex”; c) possibly Late Classic (4-245-3) Structure 15-1 “annex”; d) Late Preclassic (4-237-3), Structure 15-1 “annex”; e) Late Preclassic (4-6-3), outside Structure 15-1, south; f ) Late Preclassic/ Early Classic (4-91-5), below Structure 15-1 “special deposit”; g) Late Preclassic (4-237-3), Structure 15-1 “annex”; h) Early Classic (4-476-3), inside water conduit at juncture; i) probably Late Preclassic (4-82-11), inside a caja (redistribution box), or a well below Structure 15-1. (PACH)

Figure 5.10. Whole vessels from Operation 16 (Mound 7, Structure 7-1, and east plaza). Late Classic: a–b) red paint on orange slip bowls with globular thin walls and round base; c) orange slip bowl with round base and thick wall; d–e) black incised and punctated bowl with round base; f ) orange bowl, round base, medium wall; g) black incised punctated bowl with round base; h) orange slip bowl with globular base and medium-thick wall; i) red pedestal bowl; j) orange-black painted bowl with straight everted walls and molded decoration and plain base; k) orange slip bowl with everted straight walls and flat base; l) orange slip bowl with straight walls and flat base; m) black cylinder vase with plain base; n) orange slip cylinder vase (Tiquisate ware). (PACH)

Figure 5.11. Verbena-Arenal correlated whole vessels from Operation 15 (rescue operation): a) orange paste tripod bowl with conical supports, globular walls, and zonal painting delimited by fine incisions on the exterior; b) cream-on-orange tripod bowl with conical supports, double horizontal incisions on the exterior, and vertical line-resist decoration; c) red-orange slip tripod bowl with conical supports, globular walls, and incisions on the exterior; d) orange tripod bowl with hollow mammiform supports, decoration by appliqué; e) red tripod plate with slightly divergent straight walls and double grooving on flaring lip, with flat base and tetrapod button supports; f ) red-orange tripod plate with flat base button support and flaring lip; g) red-on-orange tripod bowl with conical supports, round base, and flaring walls; h) glossy orange slip bowl with divergent walls round base; i) brown tripod bowl with straight everted walls, button support, sublip flare, and exterior incised decoration. (PACH)

Figure 5.12. Surface treatment for Middle and Late Preclassic ceramics from Chocolá: a) 4-1-8; b) II-A-15-6-3; c) PACH 4-91-7; d) II-A-15-17-11; e) II-A-15-17-12; f ) II-A-16-2-11; g) 16-132-8; h) surface collection; i) PACH 4-91; j–n) surface collection.

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development of highly centralized polities in the Maya Lowlands cannot be explained in terms of one-directional influence from the south” (2014: 403). For the most part we accept this revision, which moves the Kaminaljuyu ceramic sequence some 300 years later in time. However, we do not see how their conclusion about the “stela cult,” or “stela-altar cult,” makes sense without a complete cross-regional compilation of stelae associated with altars; for example, while two stela-altar pairs were found at Chalcatzingo (Grove 1987: 138, 436; 2015) and stelae have been found at El Mirador and Nakbe, dating possibly to Late or Terminal Preclassic times, their assertion does not seem to take into account the very large number of stela-altar pairs from apparently earlier contexts in the Southern Maya Region, notably at Takalik Abaj. Our own discoveries at Chocolá of plain stelae and round altars (see Chapter 6) seem to add to this evidence of a Southern Maya Region development of the stela-altar pairing that occurred earlier than elsewhere in the Maya world. Inomata et al.’s revision is also used to argue in favor of a disruption in the social processes of the Southern Maya Region at the end of the Middle Preclassic period (2014: 402). This alleged turmoil—in effect, a Middle Preclassic collapse—is proposed for circa 400 BC. Monument erection at Takalik Abaj, Naranjo, and other centers in the Southern Maya Region prior to 400 BC is offered as evidence of elite interaction across wide areas, including the Gulf Coast center of La Venta, which is presumed to have fallen by this date. For us, it becomes apparent that a Middle Preclassic collapse should be noticeable in the archaeological record at Chocolá. We have not been able to establish clearly such a collapse, apart from a very limited but suggestive possibility of evidence in the form of a potbelly monument, stylistically dated to 400–100 BC and unearthed in situ, where it had fallen on top of a southern stairway of Structure 6-1. More research is needed to determine whether or not such a collapse occurred at Chocolá. As we are not ready to join these arguments, we limit ourselves to providing evidence of the ceramic modes and types recorded at Chocolá, following the Kaminaljuyu revised sequence and chronology. The Las Charcas phase at Kaminaljuyu is now proposed by Inomata et al. (2014) as having two phases, early and late. Early Las Charcas (800–600) aligns loosely with pre-Mamom in the lowlands, Late Tok and Colos at Chalchuapa, Chacte-Dyosan along the Upper Grijalva River region, and Ixchiya at Takalik Abaj. Diagnostic modes and types include post-slip incisions. Abundant evidence of post-slip incisions comes from Operations 4,

Figure 5.13. Surface treatment for more Preclassic ceramics from Chocolá: a) II-A-15-16-3; b) II-A15-6-3; c) II-A-16-2-10; d) II-A-16-2-12; e) II-A-16-2-12; f ) II-A-16-2-11; g) II-A-16-2-11; h) II-A-162-10; i) II-A-16-2-10; j) II-A-16-2-11; k) II-A-16-2-11; l) II-A-16-2-11; m) II-A-16-2-11; n) II-A-16-2-5; ñ, II-A-16-2-10; o) II-A-16-2-6; p) II-A-15-17-12; q) II-A-15-17-12; r) II-A-16-2-11; s) II-A-16-2-11; t) II-A-15-17-12. (PACH)

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Figure 5.14. Reconstructable vessel from Operation 17 (Mound 6 and Structure 6-1): black incised bowl with straight-everted walls and post-fired red pigment inside grooves. (PACH)

14, 15, 16, and 17, including arched band motifs, crosshatching, and vertical parallel lines. Specifically for the Late Las Charcas (600–350 BC, Mamom and Early Chicanel), diagnostic modes and types include a glossy or waxy slip and a blotchy or cloudy orange resist. While a cloudy orange resist is less frequent in our sample, glossy and waxy surfaces are fairly common at Chocolá. For the Providencia (350–100 BC) and the Providencia Ceramic Sphere (Chul complex at Chalchuapa, Tol at Salamá, Early Chicanel), diagnostic modes and types include Kaminaljuyu Brown-Black, Rofino Fine Red, Morfino Purple on Red, Olocuilta, and Jicalapa Usulatán. Glossy or waxy red and labial/medial flanges are common. At Chocolá, Kaminaljuyu Brown-Black, Rofino Fine red, Glossy Orange, and Glossy Black are well represented in the samples recovered from excavations in all three sectors of the city, north, central, and south. For the Verbena (100 BC–AD 50), Early Caynac at Chalchuapa, and Miraflores Ceramic Sphere, diagnostic modes and types include Kaminaljuyu Brown-Black with post-slip incisions, and Izalco Usulután. For the early Protoclassic period (after 100 BC), nubbin and conical feet are important markers. At Chocolá, these modes are well represented by the ceramic offering in the Southern Sector (Operation 15, see Figure 5.11), including globular bowls with conical feet, and Usulután/resist decoration consisting of parallel lines on the surface. Round appliqué on punched walls and mammiform supports are present in the offering as are red-orange plates with flaring lips and nubbing supports and a brown bowl with conical supports, post-slip incisions, and a sublabial flange. This combination

Figure 5.15. Common forms in Preclassic wares from Chocolá. (PACH)

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of attributes probably places the offering chronologically between the Terminal Preclassic Verbena and Arenal phases. For the Arenal (AD 50–150) as part of the Miraflores Ceramic Sphere, diagnostic modes and types include larger tetrapods, leading to the appearance of large mammiform supports in the ensuing Santa Clara phase. At Chocolá, mammiform supports were recovered from excavations at Mound 5, Mound 15, and Mound 6 (PACH 14-112-6; PACH 4-23-3; PACH 17-129-3). The fragment of a plate with hollow and rattled mammiform supports and black-brown slip was one of the vessels that tested positive for theobromine (see Appendix E). Inomata et al. (2014: 401) discuss a feature type distributed widely in highland and lowland Chiapas, the Maya Lowlands, the Guatemalan Highlands, and Takalik Abaj over a relatively short time span, during the Terminal Preclassic (after 100 BC), consisting of caches containing ceramic vessels and stone spheres, the latter common at Chocolá. At Chocolá, this pattern seems evident in the Structure 15-1 “annex” (Chapter 4), where a cache was found of likely utilitarian vessels deposited lip-to-lip in association with these stone spheres (Kaplan and Ugarte 2005: 143, fig. 6–45). Large stone spheres atop columns are known notably from Izapa (see Chapter 7). Santa Clara (AD 150–250) The appearance of Santa Clara at Chocolá remains undetermined because of the relatively small sample analyzed. Final Thoughts

If the proposed revision of Kaminaljuyu chronology stands, our data from Chocolá tentatively still fall within the time spans originally proposed in our previous publications and supported by seven radiocarbon dates. Middle to Late Preclassic sequences, beginning with Las Charcas equivalents— proposed now as from 800/700–350 BC (Inomata et al. 2014: 390)—are well represented at Chocolá. As mentioned, we have not been able to corroborate a proposed “Middle Preclassic collapse.” Chocolá seems to have been occupied also during the Late Classic, as surface collections as well as the rich cache at the northeast corner of Structure 7-1 indicate. The Early to Late Classic transition at Chocolá has not been adequately investigated.

6 The Monuments of Chocolá and Nearby Sites

With the exception of Kaminaljuyu, perhaps more than any other major Southern Maya Region site, Chocolá’s monumental corpus tells a tale of local destruction or diaspora, followed by complete disappearance. Before PACH’s investigations, Chocolá was known to archaeology almost entirely because of its extraordinary Miraflores-style1 Monument 1 (Figure 6.1a), only a fragment of which survives, transported out of Guatemala by Robert Burkitt for the museum of the University of Pennsylvania, where it has been on display for many years. Before our work began in 2003, nine monuments with provenienced information were referenced together with Monument 1 in a journal article drawing on Burkitt’s notes (C. Jones 1986); however, in addition to Monument 1 and the “Piedra Santa” at Palo Gordo (Termer 1973: 72), a third monument, known only by a photograph in a collection at Harvard’s Peabody Museum (Figure 6.1b), comprised the only sculptures attributed to the site at the time. Early in our work at Chocolá, we were shown an altar, later identified as Palo Gordo Monument 20, which, for reasons unknown to us, was moved to Chocolá, probably during the period of German ownership of the plantation. Movement of this monument and others in the Guatemalan piedmont from where they were created and first shown appears to represent a postcolonial pattern, during which curious plantation owners or managers found ad hoc or happenstance use of them for display around the casco; in Chocolá’s case, several sculptures were moved to a small park with a view to the east and south where, informants told us, the manager’s family and staff went for picnics. In 2003, informants also told us how, in 1980, the last government manager of the farm loaded the farm truck with monuments and drove to Poptun (Kaplan and Valdés 2004); later, it was rumored he was murdered, possibly because of involvement in illicit trade in pre-Columbian art and artifacts. We were also told that, at one time, several other

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Figure 6.1. Examples of Miraflores-style bas-relief sculpture: a) Chocolá Monument 1 (UPMA); b) Monument 22 (the Carnegie Institution of Washington, 1958 © President and Fellows of Harvard College, Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, PM#58-34-20/50513).

Chocolá sculptures were on display in the villa garden in Guatemala City of one of the country’s military rulers (1970–1974), General Carlos Arana Osorio; this and other rumors we have not investigated. The tale, and broken trails, of Chocolá’s monuments away from their origin are attested to further by the fact that sculptures from San Antonio

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Suchitepéquez—for example, the extraordinary, masterfully carved Shook Altar discussed in Chapter 7—along with other monuments, either were and are in, or rumored to be in, nearby towns and communities. One of these, Monument 16, Paredes Umaña did recover for PACH; this monument was found in the parque central of nearby Santo Tomas la Unión, reused, with a new head added by a local sculptor, adorning a modern sculptural arrangement honoring rural teachers. Given this history of loss of original provenience and damage or loss outright, it must be understood that any compilation of the Chocolá sculptural corpus, including the one presented in this chapter, is and likely will be very incomplete. The passing of so many southern area sculptures into private collections (probably far more numerous than those in the very large Lehman and Notteböhm collections), underscores how very selective is the record of the art of pre-Columbian southern Guatemala. Robert Burkitt’s assignment from the University of Pennsylvania Museum to obtain and then to smuggle out of Guatemala sculptures such as Monument 1 is only one example of a practice widely accepted in the past that is today unacceptable by countries or groups insisting on repatriation for national cultural patrimony reasons. Perhaps we should have been more greatly surprised that, despite the fact that undoubtedly many monuments have been lost, we did nevertheless discover many still at Chocolá. The corpus to date allows us to determine their membership in some of the broader sculptural categories employed in the Southern Maya Region. Monuments from sites near Chocolá are mentioned in order to situate the city’s corpus within its spatial and cultural context. Typical categories include bas-relief, carved-in-the-round, and altar and stelae pairs. The discussion of the categories into which Chocolá’s monuments may be placed is followed by a formal catalog of the 31 Chocolá monuments known thus far. Bas-relief

This category in the inventory equates with monuments belonging to a Miraflores art style or tradition, which notably includes stelae, thrones, and portable objects from Kaminaljuyu; as defined by Parsons (1986), the Miraflores principally includes monuments carved in low relief. Two of the most striking examples of the Maya bas-relief category are Chocolá Monument 1 and the so-called Shook Altar from San Antonio Suchitepéquez, the latter

Figure 6.2. Round altars: a–b) Chocolá Monuments 7 and 10 (PACH); c) the “Shook Altar” (Shook and Heizer 1976).

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9 km south of Chocolá; it was reported by Shook and Heizer (1976), and we tentatively assign it to Chocolá. A third is the lost Monument 22. Larger monuments in the category depict central characters standing, often in profile, dressed in elaborate costumes, many impersonating deities. In addition to a profusion of symbolic and/or iconographic elements—for example, finely incised scrolls—a fully framed composition is part of this tradition, as exhibited by the mat design shown as an iconic framing device on Kaminaljuyu Stela 10, an oversized throne (Kaplan 1995, 2002a). Principal figures or protagonists often appear barefoot or shown with sandals and ankles dressed with bracelets, wearing masks with avian iconography or motifs (Guernsey 2006: 104), including feathered wings, and wielding wounding tools or axes used on adversaries and/or sacrificial victims, as seen on Chocolá Monument 1 and its near twin, Kaminaljuyu Stela 10. On the Chocolá monument, the principal figure carries two detached human heads, one on each arm; on the latter, likewise a decapitation event is clear, representing one of the important ritual performances of rulers in the Preclassic Southern Maya Region; more on the Monument 1 narrative and iconographic meaning below. Because of the apparent loss of so many monuments, one cannot conclude that Chocolá’s bas-relief sculptures were not once as plentiful as they are at its neighbor, Takalik Abaj. For Kaminaljuyu, in addition to the Miraflores style, Parsons (1988: 6–43) proposed a slightly later Late Preclassic Arenal tradition, characterized by similar scenes, but with the addition of glyphs, or proto-glyphs, in cartouches, or longer texts—for example, on Kaminaljuyu Stela 10 and Kaminaljuyu Altar 1. Based on art historical seriation of motifs and themes and lacking confirming provenience and absolute dating, Parson’s chronological designations, including “Arenal,” remain uncertain. If Chocolá Monument 1 is Miraflores in style, assignment to the category of Monument 22, a smaller fragment of a probable ruler figure, is less secure but still plausible. In addition to these common characteristics, personages carved on sculptures in the bas-relief category are often, if not always, multiple—a principal, dominant figure paired with a subordinate or captive, at times along with a third person attendant on the ritual performance. Sometimes a circular element is placed between the principal figure’s nose and mouth, as seen with incised elements on the Chocolá Monument 22 personage, on the kneeling figures shown on Kaminaljuyu Stela 10 and Kaminaljuyu Altar 1, the throned rulers on Kaminaljuyu Monument 65, and also on the figure on La Mojarra Stela 1. C. Jones (1986: 9) suggested that a similar kneeling

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character, to the bottom right, originally was carved on Chocolá Monument 1 to accompany the principal figure; this would mirror the appearance of the secondary figure on Kaminaljuyu Stela 10. The circular element likely represents a jade bead, itself tokening the sacred breath of the ruler (Taube 2004: 71). In addition to the circular element appearing at or on the noses of the figures on Miraflores and Arenal monuments, the headdress of the protagonist usually, if not always, contains phytomorphic elements, for example—and very clearly—the headgear of the personages on Kaminaljuyu Monument 65, in which specific plants appear to be represented, including cacao and tobacco (Kaplan 2000), and also on Chocolá Monument 22. Chocolá Monument 22 shares other traits with the mural figures at the Preclassic Lowland site of San Bartolo, including almond-shaped eyes, faces crossed by straps that hold a headdress in place, and bulbous noses, this last trait Parsons assigned particularly to Arenal monuments. Therefore, a Kaminaljuyu and Chocolá association with San Bartolo art is possible; however, lacking other lines of evidence, it cannot be determined at present whether the association represents a specific diffusion of a set of traits or a regional or extraregional style, without clearly evidenced diffusion from the Southern Maya Region to San Bartolo, or vice versa. Another frequently appearing element is the “u”-shape seen, for example, on Chocolá Monument 1 and Kaminaljuyu Stela 10 as well as on many other monuments from Kaminaljuyu and Takalik Abaj; this element has been analyzed by Parsons (1986: 36), Guernsey (2006: 107), and others. In the Southern Maya Region, the “u” is also well known for its recurrence in bas-relief monuments, such as Palo Gordo Monument 1, and in sky and terrestrial bands on stelae at Izapa. The easternmost example known thus far is from a fragmentary stela from Ahuachapán, El Salvador, Ataco Monument 1; the figure stands on a cartouche above a terrestrial band (Paredes Umaña 2012: 127, fig. 19). This icon or symbol also is common on eyelids and chins on Late Preclassic masks (Schele and Freidel 1990; Estrada Belli 2006). According to most chronologies, Miraflores and Arenal monuments date from 200 BC to AD 200 (Parsons 1986: 120); sites include Kaminaljuyu, Takalik Abaj, Izapa, Chiapa de Corzo, El Baúl and Bilbao (Cotzumalguapa), and Chocolá, reaching western El Salvador, as just mentioned. Specific elements and depictions seem to have been shared across the lowlands and the Pacific coast and piedmont during the Late Preclassic and Early Classic, exemplified by the close resemblance between the mouth ring on the buckle head of the central character of Chocolá Monument

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1, and a similar face bearing the same ring element on its mouth emerging from the jaws of one of two birds with reptilian attributes framing the early frieze of Structure II Sub C, Calakmul (Martin 2004). The sharing of precise iconographic motifs testifies to the wide scope of symbolic references represented on Chocolá Monument 1, suggesting long-distance links. Whether these links were enduring, brief, or occasional only, we cannot determine. Stylistically, Parsons places Chocolá Monument 1 with Kaminaljuyu Stela 2, Takalik Abaj Stela 3, and Bilbao Monument 42 (Parsons 1988: 11–12). A very close partner, however, is Kaminaljuyu Stela 10, with which it shares virtually identical iconic details and probably overall narrative meaning (Parsons 1986; Jones 1986, Kaplan 1995, 2002a). Full-Round Sculptures: Bench Figures and Pedestal Monuments

Sculptures in this category present human figures in three dimensions and include Chocolá Monuments 11, 16, and 23. A fourth and fifth example from Chocolá are Monument 30, a potbelly monument, and Monument 31, a human head and neck fragment with mythological attributes. Figures seated on benches and pedestals are associated with flat bases, sometimes with four-legged thrones represented by squared shafts or scrolls (Paredes Umaña 2005: 166, fig. 33a). Both pedestal sculptures and bench figures represent two recurring, contrasting, rarely mixed themes, human and zoomorphic figures. Zoomorphs represent monkeys, jaguars, and pizotes in restful and serene attitudes, tails shown hanging from the back of the pedestal or freely waving. Anthropomorphic figures are shown resting on their knees or bent over on a four-legged bench. Some are handcuffed from behind, with ropes around their chest or neck and with one hand placed on the chest, in an attitude of submission; others are shown with no sculpturally iconic abuse or victimization, their hands simply resting on their knees. Takalik Abaj Monument 163, excavated by Beatriz Marroquín in a secondary context, where it was used to form part of a wall in a Late Classic water conduit, shows a clear link between the pedestal sculpture tradition and zoomorphic and human figures seated on flat bases. The figure on the Takalik Abaj example is shown with its male genitalia exposed; this choice is also seen on a bench sculpture from Patzún, Chimaltenango, as well as on a massive jaguar mounted on a vertical shaft excavated at Casa Blanca, Chalchuapa (Ohi 2000); on these sculptures the limbs are shown

Figure 6.3. Full-round sculptures, Chocolá: a–b) two views of Monument 30, Monte Alto– style potbelly; c–d) two views of Monument 31. (PACH)

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in low relief, close to the body—a trait seen on Chocolá Monument 12, a full-round example, but lacking a pedestal, depicting a monkey carrying a rectangular cartridge between its lower limbs that contains an eroded inscription. Both Miles (1965) and Parsons (1986) have linked these complexes with other sculptural varieties of seated zoomorphic and anthropomorphic figures wearing mushroom-like helmets. Navarrete (1972: 45–72) noted the probable Terminal Preclassic dating of these traditions based on a group of vessels with red-yellow slip and hollowed mammiform supports because of stratigraphic associations with a bench figure. Chocolá Monument 13 probably belongs to this tradition. Pedestal sculptures and bench figures are broadly distributed in the Southern Maya Region, encompassing the Chiapas and the Guatemalan Highlands and reaching southwestern Honduras and the Pacific coast from El Salvador to Tonalá (Hernández Juárez and Rocío 2002; Paredes Umaña 2005). Other examples are found in Tlapacoya and at Tres Zapotes in the Mexican Gulf Coast. The archaeological site known to have more representations is Kaminaljuyu, with at least a dozen examples (Miles 1965: 248). Anthropomorphic pedestal sculptures include, in addition to two from Chocolá: three from the southwest shore of the Bay of Santiago Atitlán (Lothrop 1933: 98, fig. 63); one from El Portón, Baja Verapaz (Parsons 1986: 158, fig. 40); one from Patzún, Chimaltenango; another pedestal with incised motifs from Jotaná, Chiapas (Termer 1973: 221, fig. 104); one from Palo Gordo (Termer 1973: 72); one without provenience in a museum at Estanzuela, Zacapa; and at least three from Kaminaljuyu in the collection of the National Museum in Guatemala City. Two of these sit with legs dangling in front of the bench, and one, the best preserved, wears a mushroom cap. Two more without provenience were noted in 2005 in the collection of the Museo Popol Vuh, Guatemala City. Zoomorphic pedestal representations include one from Ocotepéque, southwestern Honduras (Richardson 1940: 407, fig. 36) and another from the Salamá Basin in central Guatemala (Ricketson 1936: 22, fig. 4, cited in Termer 1973). At least six examples of jaguar figures on pedestals with very similar attributes are from the piedmont of Chiapas, encompassing Izapa, San Marcos, and Takalik Abaj (Miles 1965: 250), and extending toward Finca Las Conchas, in San José Pinula; most examples include a stylized face with exaggerated snouts and ears relative to body proportions, and rectangular jaws. A very distinctive and unusual feature is a squared and vertical motif emerging from the forehead, with either round or square modular volutes

Figure 6.4. Two pedestal monuments: a) San Francisco Zapotitlán jaguar-on-pedestal; b) Chocolá Monument 12. c–e) Three potbellies from San Antonio Suchitepéquez. (PACH)

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and, occasionally, with crosshatched incisions. At least one anthropomorphic sculpture with the same motif on the forehead is in the Museo Popol Vuh collection, original provenience unknown. Zoomorphic pedestal sculptures have been found at Pijijiapan, San José Metapa, Los Toros, and Tuxtla Chico in Chiapas (Navarrete 2015; Hernández Juárez and Rocío 2002). Another example, with a pisote figure on the pedestal, was found near Comitán. Three pedestal zoomorphic sculptures from Finca Las Conchas display, respectively, a bird, a monkey, and a jaguar (discerned in photographs donated to PACH by John Graham). Also, Guernsey (2012) reports two monkeys and one jaguar pedestal figures from Finca La Argelia, Guatemala. The Kaminaljuyu corpus includes at least five pedestals with pisote zoomorphs. Other portable zoomorphs on pedestals are known from Kaminaljuyu and at Takalik Abaj. In both cases, the sculptures are broken from the chest up but what remains are the torsos seated on benches with scrolled feet. A large, well-preserved example of the pedestal tradition, 1.40 m high, is a jaguar from San Francisco Zapotitlán, a site located fewer than 10 km west of Chocolá. At the National Museum of Guatemala, a large example of a rudimentary or somewhat crudely carved jaguar on a vertical pedestal comes from Quiriguá; another example is known from Chalchuapa (Ohi 2000). Another headless jaguar seated on a bench was found in the fill of Kaminaljuyu Mound E-III-3 (Miles 1965: 248). This type of sculpture is often located in secondary deposits; an example from Takalik Abaj (Monument 163) was used during the Late Classic period as a stone drainage wall together with a broken altar carved in bas-relief, stylistically related to the Late Preclassic. Parsons suggested the bench and pedestal tradition was a transitional substyle dating to circa 700–500 BC (Parsons 1986: 124). Shook excavated two fragmented examples standing alongside Kaminaljuyu Stela 9 on Mound C-III-6; stratigraphic analysis placed them chronologically at the beginning of the Providencia phase, which, according to the recent revision of radiocarbon dates at Kaminaljuyu by Inomata et al. (2014), would correspond to 350–100 BC. Human Figures Carved-in-the-Round

The three examples we discuss from this category do not seem related stylistically or even, perhaps, chronologically. Monument 16 is a large fragment showing a human torso, the head missing. Rigid arms held close to the body bend at the elbow, which projects out 90°. The figure wears disc

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bracelets formed by two bands and a necklace or pectoral incised with an eroded motif which resembles a reptilian eye. The larger-than-life size of this human figure is common in the building ornaments at Copan, but our example seems more rigid and coarse. While potbelly monuments are well known for the Pacific coast, Olmec full round sculptures of human figures, which the Chocolá figure resembles, are not. Monument 23 seems to be connected to the Huehueteotl cult, a deity better known for central Mexico; the personage often depicted is an old god wearing a box-shaped object on his head. The example from Chocolá adds to other examples of recurring figures of this deity in Guatemala. One example is found in the regional museum at Retalhuleu; two more without provenience were noted in 2005 and are in storage at the National Museum in Guatemala City. The Chocolá example displays two characteristics that define their similar seated posture, with arms resting on knees, and wearing earplugs. The sculptor deliberately arched the upper limbs to rest over the knees; this posture is recurrent in both stone and pottery at Teotihuacan. The example from Chocolá lacks the facial traits of an old person, as does an example from Retalhuleu. However, the similarity in the body’s posture and size suggests a link to those stored at the National Museum. Chocolá Monument 11 came to our attention in 2003. It was found in the possession of a family at Chocolá, who donated it to the Project; accordingly, while we can discuss its membership in a distinct sculptural tradition, we can attempt to date it only by recourse to its style, but narrowing it down temporally—even Preclassic as opposed to Classic—is daunting. Kaminaljuyu Monument 65, Altar or Throne 68, and Stela 67, all display captives, and Chocolá Monument 11 is a fragment of a captive with hands bound behind his back. The theme of bound captives became popular in the Maya Lowlands from Long Count 9.11.0.0.0 to 9.19.0.0.0. At least 44 different captive body postures have been recorded by Dillon (1982). Representation of prisoners is not limited to sculpture; the theme plays out in mural painting and on ceramics and other portable objects. While captive depiction constitute one of the most versatile representations in Maya art (1982), it is not restricted to the Maya world. For the Southern Maya Region, the low relief Izapa Stela 89, provenienced to the south bank of the B group at the base of Mound 50, a Late Preclassic architectural complex, also depicts a captive with hands tied behind his back (Norman 1973). During the Late Classic, in the Chiapas Highlands, full round figures depicted the human figure naturalistically, often with associated glyphs

Figure 6.5. Examples of human bodies in full-round sculpture, Chocolá: a) Monument 11, “capture” theme (PACH); b) Olmecoid Monument 16 (PACH/John Graham).

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identifying the captive by name and place of origin as well as how he was captured; a good example is a full-round monument from Poyom, Toniná (López Bravo and Bernal Romero 2003). Chocolá Monument 11 lacks glyphic elements, and although the naturalistic depiction may suggest a temporal link, seriation of the sculptures of the human body in the Southern Maya Region has not been undertaken in the manner, for example, of Tatiana Proskouriakoff ’s classic study (1950). As we noted, a frequent theme of Middle and Late Preclassic pedestal sculpture is bound captives. Monument 11 is too fragmentary to assign it to the pedestal category. Moreover, its naturalistic quality as well as the fact that its size exceeds the general range of dimensions of pedestal monuments, known elsewhere for the Southern Maya Region, such as those of Takalik Abaj’s undated Monument 44, raise some doubts. Further, although the Takalik Abaj monument is carved-in-the-round, its relief and stylistic position locate it closer to the pedestal carving tradition than Chocolá Monument 11. Nevertheless, the hips of the figure on Monument 11 are well formed and resemble those of captives carved on vertical shafts from San Marcos and the example from Patzun, Chimaltenango, and, possibly also the unsourced example from the Notteböhm collection (Paredes Umaña 2005: 168, fig. 34 a, b, c). Another carved in the full-round example in the regional museum at Retalhuleu, also undated, is of a figure which, oddly, is represented by a head but lacks lower limbs; the carving quality is cruder than our example from Chocolá. Full-round body representations appear from the Late Preclassic—circa the 1st century AD—in the central Maya Lowlands according to Valdés (1993, fig. 15), who referred to a carved example from Uaxactun Group H 22 representing a full human figure, although it is unclear whether or not this figure represents a captive. Considering all the evidence, we assign Chocolá Monument 11 tentatively to the Middle to Late Preclassic, given the more extended tradition of carved monuments depicting prisoners in the Southern Maya Region in those periods. Other Stelae and Altars

Thus far, this category includes, at a minimum, Monuments 2 and 3, a stela and altar pairing. The “stela-altar complex,” known extensively from Classic and Late Classic Lowland Maya dedicatory and other ritual performances, is a tradition extended throughout the Southern Maya Region, with early

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distributions from the Middle Preclassic site of Naranjo, within a few km from Kaminaljuyu in the Valley of Guatemala and likely later subsumed into the Late Preclassic Kaminaljuyu urban space (Kaplan 2011b: 247); Naranjo dates to as early as 700–540 BC (Arroyo 2010: 65). Comparisons of political representations between the central Lowland Maya area and the Southern Maya Region in the Late Preclassic form one of the bases for debates about sociopolitical evolution as autochthonous or diffused (Kaplan 2002a). In the Late Preclassic Maya Lowlands, gigantic masks dominated building façades, for example at Cival, Cuello, Lamanai, and Uaxactun, while, earlier, the stela-altar pairing is widespread in the Southern Maya Region. Because in general the Classic Maya adopted the stela sculptural form for calendrical and royal narratives, Kaplan has argued that, by Classic Maya times, the stela, as it represented the World Tree and history, or time as created by or initiated by the ruler, derives from the Southern Maya Region and hence may be construed as evidence of temporal priority for certain high sociopolitical innovations later influencing the Classic Maya (Kaplan 2002a). The earliest stela-altar cult predates hieroglyphic writing in the Maya area, including the Southern Maya Region (Lowe et al. 1982; Guernsey Kappelman 2001) where the cult first arose. At Chocolá, Burkitt reported that a plain stela paired with an altar was found at the southeast corner of Mound 8 Burkitt (n.d.[a]). Burkitt was informed by farm workers about this pairing of monuments during his stay in the village in the 1920s. He reported another carved stela-altar pair, which we call Monuments 1 and 10. Monument proveniences incorporating Burkitt’s with PACH’s discoveries from 2003 to 2006 are shown in Figure 6.6. During plowing activity at the German-owned plantation in the early 1920s, several monuments reportedly were found, and the larger stone blocks representing either altars or stelae were broken by farm workers; the pieces were then used to lay paths. Five round altars (7, 10, 19, 20, and 21) and three squared altars (3, 4, and 5) have been recorded at Chocolá; also, several large or tall flat stones possibly representing stelae were found during the 2003 reconnaissance of the site. Takalik Abaj counts 14 altars and 18 stelae, carved and plain, with pairings very clearly showing the ritual dynamic linking the two; from much evidence throughout the Maya area, rituals included burning of offerings on the altar in front of the stela, with, from the smoke and fumes, euhemerized ancestor figures or deities invoked and appearing. This led, later, in the evolution of the stela-altar cult, to the carving of figures on the stela and, in Classic times, of dynastic history in the form of lengthy texts; the very fragmentary Chocolá Monument

Figure 6.6. Early map of mounds, Chocolá’s Central Sector, showing location of several monuments, extrapolated from Burkitt’s archived material, University of Pennsylvania, with new data from PACH. (PACH)

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1, a mirror stylistically and narratively to Kaminaljuyu Stela 10, exemplifies these themes, and may also have displayed a glyphic text (Figure 6.2). At Chocolá, another kind of altar apparently was common, altars with depressions, called “cupules.” Monuments 3, 4, and 15 were found in plazas with close ritual and physical association with other monuments, perhaps in addition to stelae. Usually massive and round or square, they are carved with circular cupules of varying depth. Their distribution at Preclassic Southern Maya Region archaeological sites is well known among southern area scholars. However, the frequency with which they occur at Chocolá seems remarkable—they are associated not only with public spaces such as plazas, but also with water sources, found, for example, in rivers and streams and on river banks. PACH located so many of these we stopped counting. At Izapa, association of monuments having cupules as part of water management networks has been noted; they apparently served to hold water. At Takalik Abaj, also, concave depressions were drilled into several massive altars. At Chalchuapa (Sharer 1978: 170), Monument 10 is a squared, fragmented altar with concave depressions, similar to Chocolá Monuments 3 and 4. At Chalchuapa and Takalik Abaj, these monuments likely date to the Late Preclassic. Discussion of Chocolá’s Monuments: Some Implications, and More Questions

Analysis of the specific provenience of monuments, both those reported by Burkitt and those located by PACH, provides insights into ancient urban design. The sculptural arrangement formed by Monuments 7, 8, and 9 is unusual, although it may compare with that of Miscellaneous Monuments 5 and 6 of Izapa, which were given a privileged place in the B group central plaza. According to Burkitt, the context of where they were found was that of a privileged or sacred-space in a plaza surrounded by the mounds he called D, E, F, and G, and which we have renamed Mounds 11, 12, 38, and 53 (Figure 6.6). Such arrangements and placement are common in the sacred spaces of Maya and other ancient Mesoamerican cities. Certain local styles are notable, for example, cylindrical pedestals with incised lines, including Monuments 6 and 26. Monument 26, a cylindrical pedestal with incised lines scoring its sides vertically, is just one example of a fairly varied local stone carving tradition, Monument 6 another. Monument 6, a monolithic block of considerable height (the largest of all known

Figure 6.7. Cupule monuments, suggestive of a water cult at Chocolá: a) Monument 3; b) Monument 15; c) Monument 27; d) Monument 29; e–f ) two uncatalogued examples. See Figure 4.30, Monument 27, with low-relief carving of frog or toad, for another example of this category. (PACH)

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Chocolá monuments) as Burkitt noted, was carved with vertical incisions. As we describe below, only part of the block had been worked; the rest was unaltered. Monument 26 is a hollow cylinder bearing vertical incisions on its body; it also displays a rudimentary face. Rudimentary carvings on river cobbles like this are often found in controlled excavations and surface finds as well as in boulders reused in modern times and placed in the streets and walls of today’s Chocolá. Preclassic Sculpture from the Immediate Area

Sculptural expression from adjacent archaeological sites through time is both different and similar, monuments from one site sharing one trait from another and another trait from a third, as if drawing from a pool of possibilities but then making local choices from that pool. The body posture of Preclassic Palo Gordo Monument 1 is similar to the posture seen in Chocolá Monument 16, while the facial features of the Palo Gordo monument are very similar to those of Monte Alto Monument 3 (Parsons 1986, fig. 72). These Preclassic figures with facial characteristics linked to mythological creatures were widely distributed throughout the Southern Maya Region, developing a local expression in western El Salvador (Paredes Umaña 2012). The animals and zoomorphs are associated with sacred mountains, rain gods, and magical transformations, and are similar stylistically to Late Preclassic masks appearing on building façades in the Maya Lowlands, as mentioned. A monument that stands out even in the context of Mesoamerican sculpture in general is the circular so-called Shook Altar from San Antonio Suchitepéquez (Figure 6.1), discussed in detail in Chapter 7. It is very similar in size (0.81 m in diameter and 0.20 m thick) to other circular altars from Chocolá and represents a style and iconography which, according to Shook and Heizer (1976), indicate direct Olmec origins; Parsons (1986: 14–18) labeled the Shook Altar “Late Olmec,” and dated it to 900–700 BC, which may be too early. Nearby examples of this style include Takalik Abaj Monument 1, carved in low relief on a large rock in a river crossing on the outskirts of the site. Popenoe de Hatch has suggested that the location of Takalik Abaj Monument 1 indexes a river crossing point (1998: 97) as do other Takalik Abaj monuments ascribed to an Olmecoid tradition in the Southern Maya Region, which may also have functioned as markers for trade and traders. If she is correct, and we take into account that the original provenience of

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the Shook Altar was at or near San Antonio Suchitepéquez and thus no more than a few kilometers south of the limits of ancient Chocolá, also lying within the margins of the Nahualate tributaries, and furthermore, if we consider that no other archaeological site of the size of Chocolá was nearby, this important Olmec or Olmecoid monument supports our contention that Chocolá was a regional center of interaction and exchange for the Middle and Late Preclassic, just as Takalik Abaj Monument 1 suggests for Takalik Abaj. At Izapa, Stelae 3 and 60 show personages wearing bracelets identical to those on the central personage on the Shook Altar. Other iconographic similarities exist between other monuments from Izapa and the Shook Altar personage; however, these similarities transcend the carving style and are ideational in nature. For example, the headdress of the Shook Altar’s principal figure may be interpreted to represent the sculptural arrangement of a sphere mounted over a cylinder; Miscellaneous Monuments 5 and 6 from the B Group at Izapa are actual spheres or stone globes mounted over stone cylinders. Moreover, we suggest that the square at the bottom of the icon in the headdress of the Shook Altar figure also represents an altar, extending the theme of the throne form. The monumental corpi of Chocolá’s neighbors in Suchitepéquez provide further context for understanding the meanings and functions of Chocolá’s stone monuments. Based on PACH reconnaissance and on unpublished reports on file at IDAEH by Byron Lemus, the IDAEH regional inspector in charge of the local subregion around Chocolá, and drawing, as well, on Woolley et al. (2010), we now summarize some important Preclassic monuments from sites in Suchitepéquez. Located 10 km southwest of Chocolá at an elevation of 652 meters above sea level, San Francisco Zapotitlán is a site with no known Preclassic mounds. However, two pedestal sculptures first noted 30 years ago (Paredes Umaña 2005) belong to the full-round category, a zoomorphic jaguar and a fragment of a vertical pedestal with a kneeling human figure on a four-legged bench on top (see Figure 6.4). From Palo Gordo, 14 km southeast of Chocolá, several monuments are known; at least one, Monument 1, is Preclassic in style. Along with this monument, a massive altar (reported as Case 6.5.3 by Wooley et al. [2010]), with a central concave depression in its flat upper face, belongs to the Preclassic tradition of altars with water receptacles or cupules, widespread in the región and very numerous at Chocolá, as we noted. Adding to the cupule tradition, 26 monuments are known from Palo Gordo, including two

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shafted skulls related to Late Classic Cotzumalhuapa, reported by Termer (1973). From San José El Idolo, 17 km due south of Chocolá, three monuments are known, of which at least one, Monument 2, representing an unfinished carved-in-the-round human figure with phallic attributes, is Preclassic in style. At Santo Tomás la Unión, a modern town located across the Chocolá River 1 km northeast of Chocolá, and whose territory must have been part of ancient Chocolá’s hinterland, PACH reconnaissance discovered a low relief carving of a human face on a massive block of basalt; the original provenience remains uncertain. To our knowledge, no ancient mounds have been reported at Santo Tomás, although, as elsewhere in the populated piedmont locales, modern development may have completely erased whatever once might have existed. From Finca San Rafael (San Juan Bautista, Suchitepéquez), located 35 km southeast of Chocolá at 358 meters above sea level, two monuments are known. Monument 1 is carved on a natural rock outcrop, taking advantage of and modifying only slightly the natural shape of the rock to render a zoomorph wearing a rectangular headress. Monument 2 is another rock outcrop, spheroidal in shape, carved to produce several circles in bas-relief resembling the skin pattern of an amphibious creature. From Las Animas Melimer, in the jurisdiction of San Bernardino Suchitepéquez, 10 km due south of Chocolá, seven monuments are known. Monument 1 is a zoomorphic ovoidal altar of the full-round category, probably representing a turtle; the head has been broken off. Monument 2 is a badly eroded jaguar on a flat base. Monument 3 is a boulder carved with an incised petroglyph with a complex geometric design. Monument 4 is an elongated altar with circular depressions on its flat upper face; its two deep holes with vertical walls are similar to those on Chocolá Monument 3. Monuments 5 and 6 contain deep water receptacles, thereby further adding to the tradition in the subregion of monuments carved with water features. Monument 7’s size is similar to that of Chocolá Monument 29, discovered in association with Structure 6-1. Thirty-five km southeast of Chocolá, at 240 MAMSL, is Finca San Julián in Patulul, Suchitepéquez, a Late Preclassic site with mounds and associated monuments. Monument 1 is a potbelly missing its head; an inverted “u” symbol is carved on its chest (Woolley et al. 2010: 127–128). Monument 2 is an unfinished potbelly with four concave depressions on its chest (Wooley et al. 2010: 129–130).

Figure 6.8. Two views of the “Lovers’ Altar” Suchitepéquez monument showing two twined human bodies. (PACH)

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In addition to these sites and monuments are other sculptures presumably from unknown sites in or near San Antonio Suchitepéquez. Paredes Umaña recorded three miniature potbelly monuments in the private collection of Sr. Carlos Escobedo, who collected them after they were discovered when pastures at an unidentified site in the Pacific coastal plains of Suchitepéquez was plowed. Also from a private collection in Suchitepéquez is a very distinctive throne-like altar with a flat upper surface and doublethick horizontal bands, centrally incised at the circumference, which is perhaps unique for its theme and aesthetic appeal; the monument’s origin or original provenience is unknown. Published here for the first time, we refer to it as the “Lovers’ Altar.” The lower portion of this altar is a section of two twined human bodies from the waist down and ending just below the figures’ buttocks; the cleft is shown for both figures. Catalog of the Monuments of Chocolá

Monument 1 Class: Carved stela (fragment). Period: Late Preclassic. Height: 0.8 m. Width: 0.6 m. Depth: 0.3/0.6 m. Material: Basalt. Original location: Plaza in central group, 300 m east of Mound 12 (Burkitt’s Mound D). Present location: University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, Philadelphia. Description: Low relief Miraflores style carving on extremely hard basalt. As Paredes Umaña has noted (Paredes Umaña 2012: 49, figure 1.5), Monument 1 represents one of only nine carved monuments from the Southern Maya Region. Mirroring the depiction on Kaminaljuyu Stela 10, the carving is of a ruler who, in the guise of the Jaguar God of the Underworld/Nocturnal Sun, is engaged in an axe-decapitation rite. The decapitation themes suggest primordial Popol Vuh mythology, and the depiction, overall, seems to refer to the sacred ruler’s recapitulation of cosmogenesis and the origin of (Maya) humanity—the ruler as bringer of order, life, and society, universal themes in “kingship” ideology world-

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wide. For further discussion of the narrative and iconographic meaning of the carving, see Kaplan 2002a: 328–333. History: Robert Burkitt reported that the monument was found sometime in the years 1920–1924. Monument 1 was originally found in three fragments in association with a round altar (Chocolá Monument 10); Burkitt noted that a ceramic offering lay beneath the altar. He exported the fragments to the University of Pennsylvania Museum, breaking it into several fragments to fit in the shipping box. References: Proskouriakoff 1950: 177; Kidder and Samayoa Chinchilla 1959, fig. 91; Miles 1965: 255–256, fig. 3d; Morley et al. 1983, fig. 3.11; Parsons 1986: 70–71; 120, fig. 176; Jones 1986, figs. 1 and 2; Kaplan 2002a; Kaplan, Valdés, and Paredes Umaña 2004; Paredes Umaña 2005. Monument 2 Class: Plain stela. Period: Late Preclassic (?). Height: 2 m. Width: 1 m. Depth: Unknown. Original location: Plaza in central group, southeast of Mound 8 (Burkitt’s Mound H). Present location: Destroyed. Description: Plain rectangular block. History: Part of a stela-altar complex, as reported by informants to Robert Burkitt. References: Burkitt n.d.(a) Note: The photographs that acompanied Burkitt’s report were sent via mail in 1925 from Guatemala to Philadelphia, but were lost in transit (Paredes Umaña 2005). Monument 3 Class: Altar. Period: Probably Late Preclassic. Height: 1.1 m. Width: 1 m. Depth: 0.5 m. Material: Basalt. Original location: Plaza in central group, northwest of Mound 7, southeast of Mound 8 (Burkitt’s Mound H). Present location: ECA Chocolá, football field.

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Description: rectangular altar with 11 round depressions on the top surface, the deepest (12 cm) with vertical walls; the rest are shallow concavities. History: Burkitt reported that this and other monuments were removed from their original locations during the 1920s. Edwin Shook saw Monument 3 during his visit in 1943 and described it in notes he took at the time. References: Burkitt 1930; Shook 1943; Paredes Umaña 2005. Monument 4 Class: Altar. Period: Late Preclassic (?). Height: 1.1 m. Width 1 m. Depth: 0.5 m. Material: Unknown. Original location: Plaza in central group, east of Mound 12 (Burkitt’s Mound D). Present location: Unknown. Description: Rectangular altar with round depressions on top. History: Removed from original location during the 1920s and reset at the Chocolá Kiosko, an ornamented rest place with a vista of the volcanoes to the east. Shook noted it in 1943 but, according to Termer, this monument was removed from Chocolá by or before 1960. Local informants report the removal of sculptures from the Kiosko sometime between 1945 and 1981. References: Shook 1943; Paredes Umaña 2005. Monument 5 Class: Altar. Period: Late Preclassic (?). Height: 1.1 m. Width: 1 m. Depth: 0.5 m. Material: Unknown. Original location: Plaza in central group, east of Mound 12 (Burkitt’s Mound D). Present location: Destroyed. Description: Rectangular altar, similar to Monuments 3 and 4 but without round depressions on its top.

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History: Found during plowing for sugarcane. Monument 5 was fragmented and had been reused by the German finca circa 1920–1930. References: Burkitt 1930; Jones 1986; Paredes Umaña 2005. Monument 6 Class: Plain stela. Period: Late Preclassic (?). Height: 2.5 m. Width 1.5 m. Depth: Unknown. Material: Basalt. Original location: Plaza in central group, southeast of Mound 7 (Burkitt’s Mound E). Present location: Destroyed. Description: crudely worked or unworked on top but rendered on its lower end into a cylindrical form and decorated by diagonal lines. History: Found near Mound 7. According to Burkitt, this was by far the largest monument discovered by the plantation workers during the time he lived at Chocolá, more or less from 1920 to 1930. Monument 6 was fragmented and had been reused. References: Burkitt n.d.(a); Paredes Umaña 2005. Monument 7 Class: Altar. Period: Late Preclassic (?). Height: 0.25 m. Width 1 m. Depth: 1 m. Material: Basalt. Original location: East of Mound 7 (Burkitt’s Mound E) and south of Mound 6. Found in a land depression at a depth of 1 m. Reported in association with a stone arch (Chocolá Monument 9) and an irregular stone (Monument 8). Present location: ECA Chocolá, football field. Description: Round altar. Reported originally by Burkitt, it was removed from its original location sometime in the 1920s and reset at the Chocolá Kiosko. Shook noted it at the Kiosko in 1943. Present location: ECA Chocolá, football field. References: Burkitt n.d.(a); Paredes Umaña 2005.

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Monument 8 Class: Irregular uncarved stone. Period: ?. Height: 0.35 m. Width 0.3. m. Depth: ?. Material: Unknown. Original location: East of Mound 7 (Burkitt’s Mound E) and south of Mound 6. Found in a land depression at a depth of 1 m. Reportedly found on top of the round altar, Chocolá Monument 7, and in association with Chocolá Monument 9. Present location: Unknown. Description: Irregular uncarved stone. History: Reported by Burkitt, who found it as part of a sculptural arrangement. Burkitt’s informant referred to it as “eyes and ears.” References: Burkitt n.d.(a); Paredes Umaña 2005. Monument 9 Class: Large stone arch. Period: ?. Height: 1.5 m. Width: ?. Depth: ?. Material: Unknown. Original location: East of Mound 7 (Burkitt’s Mound E) and south of Mound 6. Found in a land depression during shallow plowing, which led to finding the associated monuments described above, reportedly on top of the round altar, Monument 7, with an irregular uncarved stone, Monument 8. Present location: Destroyed. Description: Unusual stone arch originally set on top of a round altar and framing an irregular, uncarved stone. History: Reported by Burkitt, who found it as part of a sculptural arrangement, and noted that his informants were attracted to it by “superstition” and its unusual form. Monument 9 was fragmented and had been reused by the finca workers sometime in the years between 1920 and 1930. References: Burkitt n.d.(a); in Paredes Umaña 2005.

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Monument 10 Class: Altar. Period: Late Preclassic (?). Height: 0.35 m. Width: 1 m. Depth: 1 m. Material: Basalt. Original location: East of Mound 12 (Burkitt’s Mound D). Present location: ECA Chocolá, football field. Description: Round altar. History: This round altar was found between 1924 and 1929 in association with Monument 1, 300 m east of Mound 12. After the removal of Monument 1, it was left adjacent to a field of sugarcane. Presently, it sits near the Chocolá football field. Burkitt reported a ceramic offering beneath it, but he did not describe the contents of this offering. References: Burkitt n.d.(a); Paredes Umaña 2005. Monument 11 Class: In-the-round carving (fragment). Period: Late Preclassic (?). Height: ?. Width: 0.3 m. Depth: 0.2 m. Material: Pyroclastic rock. Original location: Unknown. Present location: ECA Chocolá, near a house constructed during the German ownership of the plantation. Description: Human figure carved-in-the-round with bound arms crossed on its hips. Naturalistic treatment of the human body, including fingers and hands. Generally, the surface treatment is well finished. The thorax and abdomen arched back. The monument is fractured at the elbows. Most likely, the arms extended out of the torso and rejoined the body at the shoulder juncture. The junctures of the legs and abdomen are concave, of regular size, and coarsely finished. Genitalia are not represented. History: Donated to PACH by a local resident in 2003. No further information of its provenience could be determined (Paredes Umaña 2005).

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Monument 12 Class: In-the-round carving (fragment). Period: Late Preclassic (?). Height: 0.17 m. Width: 0.15 m. Depth: 0.17 m. Material: Basalt. Original location: Unknown. Present location: ECA Chocolá, near a house constructed during the German ownership of the plantation. Description: Portable carved-in-the-round zoomorphic figure seated on a legless bench. The depiction is probably of a monkey, fragmented from the chest up. The monkey’s tail and lower extremities are carved in low relief and wrap around the body. A rectangular plaque is carved between the legs and lower abdomen. History: Donated to PACH in 2003 by Helena Panquín, Chocolá. No further information of its provenience could be determined (Paredes Umaña 2005). Monument 13 Class: Carved anthropomorph (fragment). Period: Late Preclassic (?). Height: ?. Width: ?. Depth: ?. Material: Basalt. Original location: Northeast of Mound 51 (1616796N/669606E). Present location: ECA Chocolá, near a house constructed during the German ownership of the plantation. Description: Anthropomorphic arm and hand with five stylized fingers. Examination suggests it was part of a known type of portable sculpture depicting human figures seated on a bench and/or wearing mushroomshaped helmets. History: This fragment was encountered by residents of Chocolá while repairing a water conduit near Mound 51 in the northern sector of the ancient city (Paredes Umaña 2005).

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Monument 14 Class: In-the-round carving. Period: Unknown. Height: 1.1 m. Width: 0.3–0.70 m. Depth: 0.32 m. Material: Cream-colored soft metamorphic rock. Original location: On top of Mound 9. Present location: ECA Chocolá, near a house constructed during the German ownership of the plantation. Description: In-the-round sculpture roughly anthropomorphic in shape, lacking extremities. This monument probably went through several phases of use. A face is carved in a rudimentary manner, and vertical lines are incised in the upper portion, which may represent the head of a figure. Because it has a shallow concave depression on its broader portion, at some point in its history it may have been positioned lying flat on the round or on the floor of a structure. History: Chocolá resident Rafael Ajché guided PACH to reexcavate this monument from where he had reburied it, near the summit of Mound 9. According to informants, it had been used to practice costumbre, and was buried by Ajché when he underwent conversion to an evangelical Christian order some years prior to 2003. Julián (Cristóbal) Lacán Balux, an elder of the Chocolá community, told us that the monument was relocated to Mound 9 by Miguel Ajché (uncle of Rafael and reputedly a sajorín or sorcerer) from its original location, which, we were told, was at “El Socorro” in the southern locale of Chocolá, at or near Kilometer 151 on the road between Chocolá and San Antonio Suchitepéquez. According to Lacán Balux, Miguel Ajché brought the monument to the northern group using an oxen chariot circa 1938–1939 (Paredes Umaña 2005). Its history of being transported from place to place and its use and reuse, at least during modern times, perhaps with abusive treatment of it by traditional religious practitioners and/or by evangelical Christian devotees, may explain its much degraded condition. Monument 15 Class: Altar with water receptacle or cupule. Period: Late Preclassic (?). Height: 1.1 m.

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Width: 0.3–0.70 m. Depth: 0.32 m. Material: Basalt. Original location: Mound 53. Present location: ECA Chocolá, near a house constructed during the German ownership of the plantation. Description: A massive rock with concave depressions on one of its façades. A very deep depression 36 × 24 cm in diameter in the center reaches 20 cm; other depressions are shallower. History: Boanerges Zapeta, pastor of the Peñiel (Christian evangelical) church, reported finding the monument while the church was being constructed in 2002. According to Zapeta, it was found standing and was reburied by the workers by digging a pit below its eastern side and pushing it down. Kaplan found the monument with its carved side facing up and recorded a taxcal floor beneath it. Very likely this hardened surface was created by the workers who reburied the monument (Paredes Umaña 2005). Monument 16 Class: In-the-round carving (fragment). Period: Late Preclassic (?) Height: 0.37 m. Width: 0.65 m. Depth: 0.25 m. Material: Soft metamorphic rock. Original location: Old pathway north of Mound 1. Present location: ECA Chocolá, near a house constructed during the German ownership of the plantation. Description: A naturalistic human torso carved-in-the-round, the arms not detached from the body. In low relief, two bands of bracelets decorate the arms, and a low relief circle is inscribed on each forearm; the figure wears a pectoral or necklace. The badly eroded pectoral motif resembles a stylized Late Preclassic reptilian creature. History: First located and photographed by John Graham in 1978 while accompanying Edwin Shook to place a test trench in Mound 2. Graham found the monument on the surface of an old pathway north of Mound 1 and took four photographs of it. He then donated these photos to PACH in 2003. During the 2004 PACH season, Paredes Umaña located the torso in the municipal park of Santo Tomás la Unión, 1 km west of

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Chocolá. It had been reused as a public sculpture dedicated to a modern schoolteacher. The sculpture was given a new head by a local sculptor, Saúl Solares. In 2005, the park was demolished for renovation and the monument was rescued and stored at Chocolá (Paredes Umaña 2005). Monument 17 Class: Plain stela. Period: ?. Height: 0.5 m. Width: 0.20–0.35 m. Depth: 0.12 m. Material: Basalt. Original location: The North Sector or group of the ancient city and in the modern-day village cemetery. Present location: ECA Chocolá, near a house constructed during the German ownership of the plantation. Description: A fragmentary plain rectangular block. The rear was never modified; the frontal side was smoothed. The lateral side was carved with two 4 cm parallel bands. History: Recovered by PACH in the cemetery from modern water pipe works on a path connecting Chocolá with the aldeas, Xojolá and Chuajij (Paredes Umaña 2005). Monument 18 Class: Altar. Period: ?. Height: 1.45 m. Width: 1 m. Depth: 0.30–0.34 m. Material: Basalt. Original location: Unknown. Present location: ECA Chocolá, football field. Description: A nearly rectangular basalt block, with irregular carvings on the main surface. A figure carved on it is not clearly distinguishable. A pentagonal form has been shaped on one end of the block; also, shallow depressions or cupules and lines represent ancient reworking. History: No record of this monument exists previous to Paredes Umaña’s licenciatura thesis on the monuments of Chocolá (Paredes Umaña 2005).

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Monuments 19, 20, and 21 Class: Round altars. Period: ?. Height: ?. Width: ?. Depth: ?. Material: Basalt. Original location: North group. Present location: ECA Chocolá, on top of a twentieth-century water conduit. Description: Fragments of round altars. The modern drainage was built with fragments of at least three pre-Hispanic round altars. Judging from the fragments, the two altars may have been larger than the otherwise similar Chocolá Monuments 7 and 10. History: The reuse of pre-Hispanic monuments in twentieth-century drainages at Chocolá was or has been a common practice (Paredes Umaña 2005). Monument 22 Class: Carved stela (fragment). Period: Late Preclassic (?). Height: 0.35 m. Width: 0.2 m. Depth: ? m. Material: Basalt. Original location: North group. Present location: Unknown. Description: A low relief carving depicting a human face in profile facing to the right of the viewer. The face contains an almond eye and a round pupil. Two straps cross the face, one running from the chin to the temporal lobe and the other across the nose, below the eye, and toward the temporal lobe behind the ear. A round bead is placed outside the face, between the nose and upper lip. The bead carries three festooned threads facing toward the right. On the forehead, a band with vertical incisions presumably represents the hair of the individual. The headdress is composed of two feathers. History: A watercolor of the monument was found in Edwin Shook’s papers at Universidad Del Valle. A brief note by Shook attached to the

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watercolor indicated that the fragment was originally found by Franz Termer on a road at Chocolá and was given by Termer to the Notteböhm family in Guatemala City. However, the monument was apparently not part of the Notteböhm collection when the family was asked about it in 2005 (Paredes Umaña 2005). Monument 23 Class: In-the-round carving. Period: Late Classic/Post Classic (?). Height: 0.15 m. Width: 0.18 m. Depth: ? m. Material: Igneous rock. Original location: Chocolá. Present location: Unknown. Description: A portable-size, carved-in-the-round sculpture of a human figure. This stylized human figure has a large head, with ears and earplugs, upper and lower limbs not proportionate to the head size. Similar monuments are part of the collections in the Guatemalan National Museum and the regional museum at Retalhuleu where they are labeled as braseros because the human figure carries a receptacle on its head. The Chocolá example exhibits no such container. The arms are represented by thin vertical projections separated from the body by round carved circles. History: This monument was part of the Kummerfeldt collection. Kummerfeldt was one of the German administrators of the Chocolá plantation. Burkitt recorded the sculpture and photographed it between 1920 and 1930. References: Burkitt n.d.(c); Paredes Umaña 2005: 120. Monument 24 Class: Pedestal sculpture. Period: Middle to Late Preclassic. Height: ?. Width: ?. Depth: ?. Material: Unknown. Original location: Unknown. Present location: Unknown.

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Description: Well-carved human figure on a vertical shaft, depicted in a kneeling position with hands in a “praying attitude.” History: Probably found during agricultural works at the finca before 1943, when Shook records seeing it. References: Shook 1943; Paredes Umaña 2005. Monument 25 Class: Pedestal sculpture. Period: Middle to Late Preclassic. Height: ?. Width: ?. Depth: ?. Material: Unknown. Original location: Unknown. Present location: Unknown. Description: A coarsely or crudely carved human figure on a vertical shaft, showing the body and head of a human figure on a basal stand. History: Probably found during agricultural work at Chocolá before 1943 where Shook saw it. References: Shook 1943; Paredes Umaña 2005. Monument 26 Class: Cylinder. Period: Late Classic/Postclassic ?. Height: 0.5 m. Width: 0.45 m. Depth: 0.35 m. Material: Basalt. Original location: ECA La Ladrilleda (south sector or group, ancient Chocolá). Present location: In the collection of the Bautista family, ECA La Ladrillera, Chocolá. Description: An irregular cylinder with a concave depression on top. Decorated with incised vertical lines and a crude human face. History: Found nearly 45 years ago on a small pathway near the Bautista residence. The monument has been in the possession of the Bautista family ever since (Paredes Umaña 2005).

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Monument 27 Class: Altar. Period: Late Preclassic ?. Height: 0.37 m. Width: 0.51 m. Depth: 0.82 m. Material: Basalt. Original location (secondary context?): Plaza in the ancient city’s central group and east of Mound 7. Present location: ECA Chocolá, near a house constructed during the German ownership of the plantation. Description: Carved-in-the-round sculpture of a crude zoomorphic figure. The surface treatment is of partial and zonal carving. The natural shape of the rock has been exploited to suggest a toad or frog. Two large and deep depressions are the most prominent feature of the monument, the distal one with a perforation at the bottom. We observed traces of red pigment on the distal depression as well as elsewhere on the surface of the monument. History: Excavated in Pit 4, Operation 132, 2005, in a likely secondary context. Located resting on one side, a block of carved metamorphic rock was found close to it, together with ceramic fragments (a thick-paste zoomorphic support and an appliquéd-modeled-zoomorphic figure with orange paste). A probably plaza floor was found beneath it; its own stratigraphic context was disturbed (Kaplan and Ugarte 2005). Monument 28 Class: Altar. Period: Late Preclassic. Height: 0.89 m. Width: 0.77 m. Depth: 0.25 m. Material: Basalt. Original location: Plaza in central group, south façade of Mound 6; likely a secondary context. Present location: ECA Chocolá, near a house constructed during the German ownership of the plantation. Description: A polygonal altar with a concave depression measuring 25

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cm in diameter and 6 cm in depth. The top surface and two lateral sides were smoothed. History: Located by PACH in 2005 in a likely secondary deposit. It was found upside down near the southern access of Structure 6-1. Presumably, this monument was associated with Mound 6-1 and was discovered and thrown upside down in modern times during the construction of a pathway to the modern cemetery that cuts trough the southern slope of Mound 6 (Kaplan and Ugarte 2005). Monument 29 Class: Altar. Period: Late Preclassic. Height: 1.m. Width: 0.45 m. Depth: 0.28 m. Material: Basalt. Original location: Southern façade of Structure 6-1. Present location: ECA Chocolá, near a house constructed during the German ownership of the plantation. Description: A polygonal spoon-shaped altar, with a concave depression in its lateral end. History: Excavated by PACH in 2005. It was found in association with Monument 30. Both monuments were found on top of the lower stairs of Structure 6-1 (Paredes Umaña 2005). Monument 30 Class: Potbelly. Period: Late Preclassic. Height: 0.8 m. Width: 0.4 m. Depth: 0.25 m. Material: Basalt. Original location: Southern façade of Structure 6-1. Present location: ECA Chocolá, near a house constructed during the German ownership of the plantation. Description: A human figure carved on the round. By comparison with the Monte Alto potbelly type, Monument 30 is a slender version of the type, with arms crossed on the chest, heavy-lidded or closed eyes, fat cheeks, and no lower extremities; four fingers of the left hand and five of

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the right hand are finely carved. Arms and facial features are carved by incisions. The lower left end is exfoliated. History: Excavated by PACH in 2005, it was associated with Monument 29. Both monuments were found on top of the lower stairs of Mound 6 (Paredes Umaña 2005). Monument 31 Class: Carved-in-the-round. Period: Middle to Late Preclassic. Height: ? m. Width: ? m. Depth: ? m. Material: Basalt. Original location: Apex of Mound 6. Present location: ECA Chocolá, near a house constructed during the German ownership of the plantation. Description: A significantly eroded anthropomorphic or zoomorphic head with neck. This type of monument is not well known for the Guatemalan piedmont. It closely resembles examples from western El Salvador stylistically linked to the “jaguar head style” (Paredes Umaña 2012). History: Found by the owner of the mound during agricultural work on top of the structure while planting zacate for his cows. Recovered by PACH in 2005 (Paredes Umaña 2005). Concluding Thoughts: Future Research Directions

We suggest Chocolá should be viewed not only as a competing polity in the macroregional development of Kaminaljuyu and Takalik Abaj as prolific producers of sculpture, but as a stable polity that likely controlled a network of about 500 km2, including the piedmont and the Pacific coast between the Nahualate and the Chichoy rivers, and that very likely had a leading role in the erection of vertical pedestal sculptures at lesser polity settlements. Relying on previous studies of sculptural traditions (see Paredes Umaña 2012, 2015) to illuminate subregional sociopolitics, a model emerges where lesser polities abide by conventional rules of monument erection based on current political affairs. The Suchitepéquez piedmont and adjacent regions include coastal plains and a hilly landscape on the southwestern slopes of the Lago de Atitlán, a major resource of political significance and economic vitality. We still lack

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data to complete the picture of political competition over and in this extensive territory, but ceramic links (see Chapter 5) between Chocolá and sites on the Atitlán shore may enable testing this hypothesis. Human captives on shafted monuments also have been reported from the southern shores of the Lago de Atitlán; other shafted monuments have been reported as well (Lothrop 1933: 98, fig. 63). Lacking possibly a better explanation for their scattered distribution, we suggest that shafted monuments may have represented the then-current state of political affairs, with central sites commanding their erection in a way similar to those documented for the Jaguar Head Core Zone in western El Salvador (Paredes Umaña 2012), discussed in Chapter 1. Because they are either human captives or jaguars, at times interchangeable but never merging, we propose that these sculptural traditions functioned in sociopolitical terms depending on the message conveyed from the central place: peace or war. Note 1. For definition and discussion of the Miraflores style, see Parsons 1986 and Kaplan 2002a.

7 Materialist Factors Water and Cacao at Chocolá

On Kaplan’s first visit to Chocolá in 2000, watching the great rains fall on the town and the mounds, it seemed likely to him that water control had to be fundamental both to the ancient city’s initial settlement and its later complex developments. Moreover, in 2000, from the hundreds of cacao trees still cultivated in huertas around and behind the houses of the town, it was clear that Chocolá’s climate and soils were ideal for this tree, so waterthirsty and particular about the soil it grows in. It was tempting to speculate that, along with water control and management, intensive cultivation of cacao by the ancient Chocolenses for surplus production and trade could explain, at least in part, why Chocolá, with its reported 100 mounds or more, became the large city and regional polity we believe it grew to be in the Preclassic Southern Maya Region. The fourth test pit of the first field season revealed the first evidence of what was shown over the next few months and in subsequent seasons to form parts of a water management system extending south at least 1.5 km, with sections found throughout the northern and central sectors of the city. Charred material from another pit, in a level 40 cm above parts of the stone-encased drain system, Beta 198192, PACH 4-72-8, dated to 2210±110 BP, cal BC 540: cal AD 29 (0,996508). In 2015, in our first such test (N=150), cacao residue was found by the Hershey Laboratory in ten ceramic vessels, most of which are Middle or Late Preclassic wares (Kaplan et al. 2017); also, found among the archaeological plant remains at Chocolá by palaeobotanical research was evidence of many trees typically or traditionally serving to provide shade for cacao cultivation (see Appendices A and E). Accordingly, our initial suspicions that the ancient city must have exploited its water resources in some significant manner proved correct, and that cacao might be found archaeologically was substantiated; evidence

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possibly for ancient groves was also obtained. In this chapter, we discuss the implications of Chocolá’s water management within its Mesoamerican and Southern Maya Region context and history. We also present other evidence and arguments in support of our assertion that cacao was grown for surplus trade at Chocolá in the Preclassic.1 Ancient Mesoamerican and Maya Water Control and Management

A large literature exists on water control in Mesoamerica and among the Maya. Much of this literature has focused on use of chinampas (raised fields) and bajos (seasonal swamps or wetlands) for highly productive methods of ancient agriculture (see Davis-Salazar 2003: 279; also, R.E.W. Adams 1980; R.E.W. Adams and Jones 1981; Ashmore 1984; Denevan 1970; Harrison 1977; Harrison and Turner 1978; Matheny 1976, 1978; Matheny et al. 1983; Pope and Dahlin 1989; Siemens and Puleston 1972; Turner and Harrison 1981, 1983). In addition, water systems have long been theorized to have been exploited by elites for social power (Wittfogel 1957; for Mesoamerica and the Maya, Scarborough 1998, Davis-Salazar 2003: 275, Fowler 1991: 198, Lucero 2002). Water management is well documented archaeologically throughout ancient Mesoamerica, for example, for the Olmec (Coe and Diehl 1980: 30, 118–126; Cyphers 1997, 1999, Cyphers and Zurita Noguera 2006; Grove 1987, Matheny 1976: 639); Western Mexico (Beekman 2010, Di Peso et al. 1974; Teotihuacan (Angulo 2001; Nichols 1988; Nichols et al. 1991; Palerm 1955; Sanders 1968, 1981; Sanders et al. 1979); the Aztecs and the Valley of Mexico (Doolittle 1990; Wolf and Palerm 1955; Woodbury and Neely 1972); the Valley of Oaxaca (Blanton and Kowalewski 1981; Flannery and Marcus 1976; O’Brien et al. 1980); and the Northern and Central Maya Lowlands (Arnauld et al. 2004: 66–67; Ashmore 1984: 148; Benavidez Castillo 1997; French 2009; French et al. 2006: 147; Kunen 2001, 2004; Matheny 1976, 1978, 1980, 1982; McAnany 1990; Morales-Aguilar 2009; Nelson 1973: 34, 64–65; Scarborough 1998: 139–140; Schwarz 2009: 429). However, references for water management are relatively few for the Southern Maya Region and, in addition to Chocolá, limited to a very few sites: Kaminaljuyu (Alvarado and Díaz Garcia 2014; Barrientos Q. 1997; Martínez Hidalgo and Cabrera 1999; Navarrete and Luján Muñoz 1986; Popenoe de Hatch 1997; Valdés 2002), Takalik Abaj (Marroquín 2005), and Izapa (Gómez Rueda 1995).

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Recent analyses of water systems have tended to deemphasize Wittfogel, although not as pointedly as in the past. Wittfogel’s determinism was challenged by many in the decades after Oriental Despotism appeared (1957), for ignoring variability. Nevertheless, because of his influence, water control, by some still using the term “hydraulics,” continues to be linked to the formation of a bureaucracy supervising workers and, hence, with social classes or stratification and the rise of sociopolitical complexity (see Harrower 2009; specifically for Mesoamerica, Wells 2006: 269–270). Here we do not attempt to argue the question of water management2 as the cause or effect of increasing ancient sociopolitical complexity at Chocolá. Such discussions of causality often become, without very finegrained evidence and argumentation, a chicken-or-egg argument (see Kurtz’s [1987: 330] critique of Sanders). We have assumed that Chocolá’s water system represents an evolution from what initially was response to a negative—defensive measures taken against a great and potentially destructive overabundance of water than to a positive, that is, exploitation of an asset. We have hypothesized that the development of water control at Chocolá led to use of the same system of management for irrigation agriculture immediately to the south of the core of the ancient city, which, we also propose, trade surplus included cultivation of cacao groves. While we cannot yet prove these assertions, a research goal remains to determine appropriate evidence to test them; in the meantime, we present what we propose are plausible arguments to support it. Historical Categorization of Types of Water Management

Wittfogel’s analysis explicitly connected hydraulics with the origin of the “state,” namely, that “the Asiatic mode of production [could] account for the formation of pristine, nonfeudal, despotic states” (D. Price 1994: 187–188, and see D. Price 2013). Often criticized as deterministic or outright erroneous (for example, Offner 1981), Wittfogel’s theories, originally influenced by Marx, according to Price have been unfairly accused of oversimplifying the evidence in order to fit his “despotism” models (1994: 187; Scarborough 2003: 11, and Lees 1994: 362) on how technology of water management “can lead to bureaucratic abuse”). Price has pointed out that, contrary to general opinion, Wittfogel’s modeling was not simplistic. For example, Wittfogel distinguished between “hydraulic” and “hydroagricultural” systems. Of interest to our research, the latter model seems at least roughly applicable to Chocolá’s development of water control. Hydraulic systems, according to

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Wittfogel, developed in “massive riverine environments” such as in ancient Egypt and China; hydroagricultural systems, by contrast, developed “along smaller water sources in regions where geographical features compartmentalized the countryside” (D. Price 1994: 187). Among the many rivers flowing south and southwest through the piedmont and coastal plains of Guatemala—from west to east, the Suchiate, Naranjo, Ocosito, Samalá, Sis-Icán, Nahualate, Madre Vieja, Coyolate, Acomé, Achiguate, Maria Linda, Los Esclavos, Paz, and Lempa—the four larger rivers longitudinally straddle Chocolá, two to the west, two to the east, and stand relatively equidistant from each other. These are the Ocosito, Nahualate, Coyolate, and Achiguate, about 40 km separating one from the other. “Compartmentalization,” in the sense that water draw areas were both equidistantly adjacent to each other and quite similar in size and scale thus seems appropriate, as in ancient times the natural landscape may have been transformed into apparent jurisdictions. Navigable to the coastal lowlands from the piedmont and highlands, the rivers would have created north-south corridors for trade as well as boundaries for settlements, and may have kept political centralization to both a smaller-scale exploitative infrastructure and a smaller sociopolitical scale than that of Old World ancient hydraulic systems. At a smaller scale, Chocolá is located on a strip 7 km wide between the Ixtacapa and Nahualate rivers; within these natural divisions are the two high-discharge feeder rivers, Chichoy and Chocolá, immediately to either side of the site, running parallel to each other and separated increasingly as they flow south. We discuss the possible implications of this spacing below. Seeking to locate Chocolá’s water system among these various categories and types is possible only partially at present for lack of more, and more fine-grained, evidence. Nevertheless, given our hypothesized irrigation of cacao groves, if our snapshot of Chocolá is taken at 500–300 BC, usages of water, as we suggested, might be characterized by the term “compartmentalization”—both immediately in and around Chocolá and within the roughly evenly spaced rivers flowing south from the highland mountain chains—and also as hydroagricultural; this would tentatively include both wet and dry conservation and diversion, with some nonagricultural functions, both civic and ideological (compare O’Brien et al. 1980: 342). The term “compartmentalization” is meant to refer to a smaller-scale exploitative infrastructure than that of Old World hydraulic systems, one that would have ramifications for political organization in the subregion so characterized.

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Perhaps a final consideration is discussed by Davis-Salazar: control of water by the community as opposed to the polity (2003: 275–276). The distinction seems to us instructive because, in order to persuasively argue a link between water control and political centralization, evidence would have to support more than a loose collectivity of cooperative control distributed more or less equally among several groups. Davis-Salazar further distinguishes between “a separate, local water organization [that] coordinate[d] water management tasks and water access independently of higher levels of political authority (e.g., Coward 1979; Lansing 1991), [and an] organization [that] constitute[d], to varying degrees, an institution under the direct control of the state” (Davis-Salazar 2003: 279). The Context: Water Management Systems in Mesoamerica

Water management systems in Mesoamerica appeared early and were ubiquitous—from northern Mexico to the Southern Maya Region, and from western Chiapas to Yucatán. Olmec, Central Mexican, and Maya peoples built such systems to perform an array of functions, including irrigation for agriculture, storage for dry season use, conveyance of water into and out of administrative and residential buildings, and ideological display. Other functions apparently were defensive, such as the use of moats around cities, for example, Becan (Potter 1979) and Champotón (Van Tuerenhout 2001: 136); however, Webster determined that, at Becan, because of a porous limestone floor with no clay added as sealant, it was a dry moat—a ditch (Webster 1976). What follows is a selective survey of water systems in Mesoamerica intended to allow us to place our findings at Chocolá in a wider context and thus compare and contrast them for better elucidation. We mention only in brief some of the religious meanings or ideas associated with water in Mesoamerica; this is not only because the literature is too large to do justice to it but because our own data from Chocolá is insufficient at this point to speculate in detail on what must have been a highly important part of the ancient Chocolenses’ lives—in a holistic, ideological, and every-day sense. The Olmec Early Preclassic Olmec sites both in and outside of the Olmec Heartland employed water management in a number of ways. At San Lorenzo Tenochtitlan, “water was carried out by conduits from reservoirs lined with bentonite [porous volcanic clay ash]” (Matheny 1976: 639). Coe and Diehl (1980: 30,

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118–126) determined the apparently ceremonial diversion of water through drains and its collection in reservoirs in San Lorenzo. The reservoirs were filled from a nearby river and large, curved conduits ran through the site core (Cyphers 1997, 1999). Scarborough noted the role of reservoirs in storing water in proximity to the core area of some Olmec centers as part of a strategy by ruling elites to harness social power (Scarborough 1998: 149). Recent studies of Olmec art corroborate the manipulation of iconography and ritual practice toward political ends (Reilly 1995; Schele 1995; Tate 1995). The juxtaposition of sculpture, architecture, and water conduits at San Lorenzo illustrates the ideological means by which elites controlled the communication of politico-religious conceptions (Cyphers 1997, 1999; Pool 2006: 216). Carved stones at Takalik Abaj were positioned at loci along their drains or canals and, at Chocolá, as we described in Chapter 4 and discuss below, massive boulders seem similarly to have been placed at drain junctures, which we interpret had both a ritual purpose and marked the limits of lineage or family responsibility for construction and maintenance of a section of the system; for comparison, Cyphers and Zurita Noguera theorize that the placement of stone thrones at San Lorenzo were indicators of ruler lineage hierarchy selectively distributed “across a vast and difficult water-laden terrain” (2006: 43). Oaxaca and Central Mexico Water control systems have been found at many sites in Central Mexico, in addition to Teotihuacan, including Acolhuacan, Cuicuilco, Santa Clara Xalostoc, and also, early on, at Chalcatzingo, in Morelos. Large dams date to as early as 1600 BC in the Tehuacan Valley (MacNeish and Cook 1972). Canals employed in irrigation agriculture and, dating to the beginning of the Mexican Classic, have been found even in northwestern Mexico, a very large part of Mesoamerica studied less than other areas (Beekman 2010: 63). At Late Preclassic Tlalancaleca, Tlaxcala, ceremonial structures were so placed that water channeled from a spring could flow around and between them (García Cook 1981: 259–260). Late in pre-Hispanic times, the Aztecs built “sophisticated aqueducts” (M. Smith 1993: 7), relied on chinampas for much of their intensive agriculture, and employed large irrigation canals similar to those used at Teotihuacan.

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Monte Albán At Monte Albán, citing Blanton and Kowalewski (1976), Flannery and Marcus refer to “small gravity-flow canals” by 400 BC in a discussion of what they term, “the most spectacular example of Zapotec hydraulic expertise”; a prominent example of an extensive network of narrow water conduits exists at the site of Hierve el Agua, about 55 km east of the Valley of Oaxaca: “an artificially terraced hillside [was] served by a complex series of canals which led from a group of permanent springs” (Flannery and Marcus 1976: 378). Also at Monte Albán, describing an elaborate system also constructed in the Mexican Preclassic, O’Brien et al. (1980: 345) mapped 170 linear meters of drains consisting of “well fitted, cut limestone blocks ranging in size from 25 cm to 40 cm on a side” running beneath a cut-stone terrace wall in a major civic-ceremonial complex; the drains continued downhill to meet feeder channels entering at right angles from other terraces and residential areas. “Vertical shafts spaced every 30 m along the main and feeder channels facilitated cleaning silt and debris from the system [and] . . . small, primary collection drains . . . both in residential complexes at Monte Alban proper . . . and at outlying Atzompa” were laid in open patios and enclosed rooms (O’Brien et al. 1980: 345–347). These consisted of 8–10 cm square openings “connected diagonally or vertically to secondary drains serving several residential structures” (O’Brien et al. 1980: 345). Larger channels carried water from at least two residential complexes located in the corner of the North Platform of the site. Floors and roofs of channels were made of “large flat limestone slabs” (1980: 345). “Drainage channels are 40–50 cm square and run horizontally, usually 1 m below ground surface. At terrace edges, drain channels sloped from a relatively horizontal plane to a 45° orientation to accommodate drop in elevation. When a lower terrace was reached, channels resume a nearly level, horizontal plane” O’Brien et al. 1980). Another drainage system was found in the corner of a platform on another terrace, “presumably to collect water from primary drains in rooms and patios on the platform”; the sloped portion of the drain was corbel-vaulted and leveled off into a 1 × 1 m conduit emptying into the Cañada Norte (O’Brien et al. 1980: 347). Teotihuacan With both irrigation and ideology as motivations, undoubtedly the most direct links between water management and sociopolitical developments have been claimed for Teotihuacan, by most criteria—and certainly by its

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ancient impact ideologically and politically, with powerful and far-flung reverberations—the most significant center in all of ancient Mesoamerica. Nichols (1988: 597) asserts that “small floodwater irrigation” had developed in the northern semiarid Basin of Mexico by 900–725 BC. Nichols et al. also found “small floodwater irrigations canals . . . beneath a residential structure” in one of the barrios of the city, dated to before construction of the Tlamimilolpa phase architecture, AD 200–300 (2008: 119). At Teotihuacan, springs were the city’s principal source of potable water and a considerable amount of its agricultural supply (Sanders et al. 1979). “Urbanization” at Teotihuacan—again, in consideration of the problems of definition of the “city” and of “urban,” here we mean simply commoners and elites living year-round within likely formal boundaries of the ancient community—is considered to have begun by 300–100 BC (Kurtz 1987: 332). For the next 200 years, “Teotihuacan underwent explosive growth. . . . The temples of the Moon, the Sun, and Quetzalcoatl were being constructed; already that of the Sun had been enlarged twice” (Kurtz 1987: 333). Craft specialization greatly accelerated; irrigation agriculture probably was expanding. By AD 200, Teotihuacan had reached its maximum size or about 22.5 km2 and a population of at least 125,000 (Kurtz 1987: 333). From AD 200 to 500, large-scale, intensive irrigation systems were operating; during this time, “the city clearly exceeded the agricultural potential of the valley and was forced to exploit that of the rest of the basin and beyond” (Kurtz 1987: 336). As with the Olmec, Teotihuacan’s nonagricultural use of water can be linked to a profound ideological substrate (for example, von Winning 1981: 30 on Teotihuacan water iconography; and see, for example, Angulo 2001; Caso 1942b, 1966; González Quintero and Sánchez 1982; Kowalski 1999; Pasztory 1974 Séjourné 1956, 1994; Manzanilla 2000).3 Structures at Teotihuacan were planned in many ways around the concept of water as a cosmological fundamental. A deep subterranean drain connected the nearby river to the Ciudadela (Cabrera et al. 1982: 32), and the Pyramid of the Sun was built over a humanly created or enlarged cave (Heyden 1975, 1981), possibly engineered, as mentioned, to produce water from the river nearby; another such cave and tunnel has been discovered more recently beneath the Temple of Quetzalcoatl at the Ciadudela during ongoing research by Sergio Gómez and colleagues. Broda notes that the word in Nahuatl for community was altepetl, which she translates as “mountain of water” (Broda et al. 1983: 230), and see Karttunen 1983: 9). Scarborough, citing A. Stone (1995)

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and Taube (1983), refers to the Tlalocan mural in the Tepantitla compound as depicting such “water mountains” as the sources of springs, proposing that “the Pyramid of the Sun may have been the material, human-made symbol of these mountains” (Scarborough 1998: 149). Citing Coe’s suggestion that the Temple of Quetzalcoatl represents the “initial creation of the universe from a watery void through a series of dual oppositions” (1981: 168), and von Winning’s (1987) interpretation of chalchihuitl icons on the Temple of Quetzalcoatl as representing water, Coggins proposed that the architecture of the Ciudadela was engineered ritually to reenact creation (Coggins 1996: 25) and speculated that the structure was intended to be imagined as lying underwater. Northern and Central Lowland Maya Area Water Systems Beginning in the Preclassic, Maya water systems came to be at least as varied and widely used as those employed by the Olmec and at Teotihuacan, and included canal or drain conduits, reservoirs, cenotes, and other forms. “Floodwater canal irrigation [appeared] during the Middle Preclassic (ca. 1050–650 B.C.)” (Wells 2006: 270), and continued through into the Postclassic (see, for example, Schwarz 2009: 429), when water systems became more and more elaborate. We will only mention the most prominent types exemplified at some Northern and Central Lowland Maya sites. Particularly pertinent to our arguments about Chocolá, water, and cacao, Millon (1955: 702) cites Sauer’s reference (1950: 539) to irrigation specifically of cacao groves on the Pacific coast—hence, of both Maya and non-Maya peoples: [I]rrigation would unquestionably have been necessary for its cultivation in that area. . . . Cacao is the only crop grown between Peru and Sonora for which irrigation is certainly known to have been employed. The principal centers of cultivation lay on the Pacific slope, commonly in small valleys and on cones at the foot slopes of the mountains. Most of these old cacao areas have a limited period of summer rainfall, but the trees require wetting at intervals through most of the year. Characteristically, therefore, water was carried by small ditches through the groves. In general the stubby cacao trees were provided with a canopy of partial shade by interplanting a somewhat taller tree, usually a feathery leafed leguminous tree. . . .

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Yucatán Peninsula At Late Preclassic Edzna, “a huge hydraulic system . . . consist[ed] of more than 20 km of canals” (Matheny 1976: 640, see Matheny et al. 1983). These canals were 50 m wide and dug down to as much as three m, or until reaching a water-impermeable clay stratum. At least nine drains radiated from the center of the site “like the spokes of a wheel” (Matheny 1976: 640), several connecting to a moat. The system had the capacity to store over 2 million cubic meters of water. Multiple functions are ascribed to the system, including storage for the long dry season, and are associated with an increase in intensive agriculture during the Late Preclassic Period (Benavides Castillo 1997). Matheny characterizes the canal system as “show[ing] deliberate and precise planning,” and adds that the hydraulic system was designed to bring water into populated areas of the city, “[which] were laid out symmetrically, with the city center as the focal point” (Matheny 1976: 642). Matheny compares the labor investment as “more ambitious” than that required by the construction of the Pyramid of the Sun at Teotihuacan, with the amount of earth moved more than that of both the Pyramid of the Sun and the Pyramid of the Moon (1976: 642). Illustrating a multifaceted symbiotic exploitation, a “Late Preclassic farming population lived along the banks” of the canals (Matheny 1976: 641). Matheny notes further that Edzna’s Preclassic community apparently grew lettuce which, by providing shade, lowered the water temperature and thus prolonged high water levels otherwise lowered due to evaporation. . . . Insufficient water volume and very small gradients precluded irrigation into fields; gardens along the canal were probably handwatered; nevertheless, intensive agriculture, perhaps by pot irrigation [took place]. (Matheny 1976: 641) The multiple uses of the canal, by itself, included raising in it fish and edible water snails; edible fowl also were attracted to the water. He notes that two other large sites from Campeche, Acalan, and Becan had similar systems. At Uxul, a “medium-sized site” in Campeche, with earliest settlement dating to the Middle or Late Preclassic and continuing to the Terminal Postclassic, Seefeld (2013) describes three hydraulic features: two aguadas and a feeder channel extending from one of them. The Late Classic engineering of the aguadas, which were cut into bedrock, was quite sophisticated,

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according to Seefeld, because of its “careful leveling” of the bottom, its walls of “carefully cut limestone rocks,” and its use of ceramic sherds to make “a mosaic-like ceramic-layer with an even surface”: During the following construction stage, several thousand ceramic sherds of plates and shallow basins were . . . tightly bonded upon this finely leveled bedrock surface. These discarded vessels had obviously been collected during a long period and stored for this specific purpose since the constructors had evidently selected sherds of ceramic vessels with low heights and wide mouths . . . in order to assemble them into a mosaic-like ceramic-layer with an even surface. . . . The archaeological documentation process showed that each sherd had deliberately been placed upon the artificially leveled bedrock surface, since not a single fragment was superimposing each other. (Seefeld 2013: 68) Other carefully laid levels of limestone consisted of slabs cut to uniform sizes, with a hard stucco binder used to minimize seepage, constituting what Seefeld describes as a retaining wall feature or “filter wall” intended to filter rainwater and remove sediment and other impurities. As with other Maya cities, the aguada was connected to a sakbe (Seefeld 2013: 68), what he and other archaeologists (for example, Scarborough 1998 and DavisSalazar 2003) studying hydraulics in Mesoamerica propose had implications for elite power. Elsewhere in Yucatán, in the Postclassic, straight-shaft rock-lined wells were constructed at Dzibilnocac, Campeche (Nelson 1973: 34, 64–65, citing John Lloyd Stephens). Chultuns were employed at sites in the Puuc hills; the site of Ojo de Agua was built around a natural spring. Wells reaching depths of more than 22 m at sites in Quintana Roo employed mortared stones surrounding the well shafts. Aguadas used as reservoirs were built at many if not most sites. Lowland Maya In a recent dissertation, French (2009) summarized the different types of water control systems employed by the Central Lowland Maya. These include sloped roofs at Yaxchilan (and at Copan, in Northern Honduras), rainwater channeled to drainage stones, aguadas, and reservoirs large and small at Tikal, and dams at smaller sites, as well as “complex system[s] of canals” at Cerros, in Belize (French 2009: 30). Aguadas also were employed

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at many sites in the Classic Lowlands, for example, La Joyanca (Arnauld et al. 2004: 66–67), as well as El Mirador, Tikal, and Copan, as we now discuss. El Mirador Amplifying previous research on bajos at El Mirador (Matheny et al. 1980, see also Dahlin et al. 1980), Morales-Aguilar described the various water control features and devices at this great site, which, lacking river sources, also included “a complex system of aguadas” (Morales Aguilar 2009: 1) distributing water via surface canals and “more than five km of drains,” around and through the center of the site; he distinguished “canals” from “drains” by virtue of the latter being offshoots of the former. Specifically, he divided the hydraulic system of El Mirador into two types: “1) natural (bajos, arroyos y drenajes) y 2) artificial o cultural (canales, reservorios y aguadas)” (Morales-Aguilar 2009: 3). The largest and most important bajo was La Jarrilla, which measured about 16 km2 and conducted water toward the lake system 6 km west of the El Tigre mound (Morales-Aguilar 2009: 4). Tikal Lentz et al. (2015) contributed a major, highly detailed description and analysis of Tikal’s palaeoecology, including the great city’s water resources and systems. Before this, Scarborough (2003: 143–144) noted the “proximity of reservoirs to some of the largest and most complicated architecture at Tikal—all central-precinct reservoirs within 100 m of at least one major civic-ceremonial building complex—that helps link water to ritual,” and to the power wielded by the ruler or the elite class. Terming what the Maya conceived of the site as a whole in ideological terms also as a “water mountain” (Scarborough 1998: 139–140), Scarborough described liner-stone sealed reservoir “tanks” capable of holding 100,000–250,000 m3, which “allowed the planned release of water during the dry season through posited sluice gates located under the causeway system, especially well defined on the eastern margins of the site” (Scarborough 1998: 141). French notes that the six major reservoirs ranged in size from 6 to 92 ha and could hold 900 million liters of water. Another approximate 878 million liters of surplus water could be held for release to the downslope flanks and surrounding bajo margins for irrigation (French 2009: 27). A similar system, with dams, was employed at Caracol, in Campeche; La Milpa and Kinal, in Belize; and at Coba, Quintana Roo, where dikes surrounded a

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reservoir (2009: 29–30). Scarborough and Grazioso Sierra have described sand water filtration tanks at the great city (2015: 30) and “switching stations” (2015: 31) possibly comparable to the redistribution box or caja at Chocolá, although smaller in the latter case, and to the multiple, interlacing of conduits at Chocolá on Mound 15. Copan Supporting Scarborough’s linking of water storage loci with ruler power, Davis-Salazar (2003: 276) noted the presence of “lagoons in the geographic center of each ward” at Classic Period Copan, and she and Barbara Fash (B. Fash and Davis-Salazar 2006, B. Fash 2005) argue that the largest ruling groups administered the largest water resource systems. “Copan [also] represents another center with abundant and well-documented water symbolism” (Scarborough 1998: 153). Palenque Including aqueducts, pools, and drains, “Palenque, one of the best known Classic Maya centers, [had] what is arguably the most unique [sic] and intricate system of water management known anywhere in the Maya Lowlands” (French 2009: iii). Lacking reservoirs, the ancient Palencanos relied on rainfall from May to December and on at least 41 natural springs distributed via 9 “separate perennial watercourses (French et al. 2006: 147). One of the most impressive achievements was their understanding and adroit engineering of water pressure (French 2009: 159 passim), which could have been manipulated to create fountains (French et al. 2006: 148) for ideologically motivated display.4 Burying a conduit along an ephemeral channel passing through a residential group diverted upland springs to build pressure in the conduit and provide a dry-season supply of water, or for display during the rainy season, for example, as a fountain. As much as 6 m of hydraulic head5 might have been utilized to lift water from the pressurized conduit (French 2009: 159). What French calls “subterranean aqueducts, with flood and erosion control being two of their primary functions” seem to resemble the drains at Chocolá, at least with regard to their initial function. Quirigua A small localized or decentralized water system of completely different design was employed at Classic Period Quirigua. “[L]ocated in a water-rich,

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alluvial, and non-karstic setting,” in contrast with the karst limestone of the lowlands (Ashmore 1984: 148), the system at Quirigua dates to the eighth century AD. Wells tapping the water table consisted of “ceramic tubes . . . set in the ground over a flat-bottomed, jar-shaped cistern,” all dimensions less than 1 m. This “compound apparatus” connected to the subterranean water table “via five apertures, four (2.1–2.6 m in diameter) at or near the level of the greatest diameter of the cistern, and one (6.7–8.5 cm diameter) centered in its base”; use of “a gravel matrix around the cistern may have served as a water filter (Ricketson 1935)” (Ashmore 1984: 149). The Chiapas Highlands Matheny and Gurr describe water systems employed in the upper Grijalva River basin and the Comitan plain in southern Chiapas. At Late Classic Lagartero, situated on an island in the tributary system of the Grijalva River, the population built three dams “essential in maintaining [the ceremonial core of] Limonal as an island and in directing water to various parts of the site up stream” (Matheny and Gurr 1979: 444). The lowest dam downstream maintains water at the proper level below the dam, providing drainage to a low section of Limonal. Here a low drainage channel connects to the river immediately below the dam, which enabled the Classic Maya builders to use this area, perhaps for gardening. Without drainage, the land would have been useless. [The uppermost of the three dams] had the effect of pushing water past the upstream side of Limonal to the north, creating several lakes and peninsula-like fingers of land nearly surrounded by water. Evidence that the upper dam was man-made and part of a deliberate plan to back up water comes from a canal, now under water but still visible from the air on the north side of the island, which could have been cut only when water was below the dam level. (Matheny and Gurr 1979) The largest known fossilized channel at Lagartero was used to flume water from a branch of the river where a dam raised the water level to drive a flow toward other parts of the site. Several smaller channels branching from the large one brought water to various areas of the site (Matheny and Gurr 1979). Irrigation channels from 0.8–3 m wide and 30–40 cm deep also were employed at Lagartero. Gates controlled water flow. “Several small house

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mounds . . . near . . . branch canals yielded Late Classic period potsherds [and] may be interpreted as extended family residences on farmsteads not far from the ceremonial district, with running water practically at their doorsteps” (Matheny and Gurr 1979). Matheny and Gurr also describe walk-in wells used at Lagartero and other southern Chiapas Highlands sites, “strategically located downslope from the major concentration of mounds” (Matheny and Gurr 1979). Water Systems in the Southern Maya Region

Engineering and functions of water systems in the Preclassic Southern Maya Region were as elaborate and sophisticated and, apparently, as much relied-upon by the users of these systems, as any found elsewhere in early Mesoamerica. Kaminaljuyu At Kaminaljuyu, at least three distinct kinds of water control were employed, all from at least as early as Late Preclassic times: large-scale irrigation earth-walled canals, large-scale aqueducts, and smaller-scale or drains with lajas also found at Chocolá and Takalik Abaj. The irrigation canals drew on an ancient lake, which archaeologists have called the Lago de Miraflores, and which dried up probably at the end of the Late Preclassic (Popenoe de Hatch 1997, Barrientos Q. 1997; Valdés 2002). The engineering of this irrigation system was sufficiently versatile to include small falls or breaks to reduce the speed and force of the flow as dampers (Barrientos Q. 1997) as at Chocolá. First mentioned by Fuentes y Guzmán (1932, vol. I: 304–305, cited by Navarrete and Lujan Muñoz [1986: 18–19]), the Montículo de la Culebra is a massive 4.1-km-long ridge (Navarrete and Lujan Muñoz 1986: 69). It was built from mounds once nearby each other, the earthen fills of which were rearranged to form the ridge, and on which, by the late eighteenth century, a Roman-style aqueduct was built (1986: 75). Martínez Hidalgo and Cabrera 1999 confirmed Navarrete and Lujan Muñoz’s (1986) finding of stone drains. The implication is that such drains conveyed water over considerable distances within precincts of Late Preclassic Kaminaljuyu that extended well beyond the limits indicated by the Shook map of the city. Navarrete and Lujan Muñoz (1986: 35–74) surveyed the ridge, the remains of which extended from El Cambray in the southeast, to the Tecun Uman monument in the northwest; whole sections of the Montículo de la Culebra

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were destroyed by earthquakes, for example, the severe quake in 1917; accordingly, it is difficult if not impossible to know with any certainty its original length or scale. At all three Preclassic Southern Maya Region sites, Takalik Abaj, Chocolá, and Kaminaljuyu, stone-encased drains seem to have served the civic purpose of connecting the northern and central precincts of the city core, as well as delivering and evacuating water from individual buildings. While the Palangana drains are presumed to date from the Classic Period, their similarity to those found at Chocolá and Takalik Abaj suggests Kaminaljuyu used the same design in the Preclassic. At Kaminaljuyu, most recently Alvarado and Díaz García (2014) reported finding Late or Terminal Preclassic canals near Mound C-IV-4, a Classic period mound; evidence of an obsidian workshop and domestic household artifacts was recovered from the pits. The canals were first encountered about 3 m below modern ground surface, with an orientation of 22° northwest and dimensions 1 m wide by 1.10 m deep from top surface to bottom. Substantiating a ritual or ideological function and meaning, 3.5 m below surface, 12 human skulls were found inside the canal together with a whole pot of Providencia date and an obsidian blade showing no signs of use; the authors refer to similar finds “in other sectors of Kaminaljuyu” (Alvarado and Díaz García 2014: 4). Other associated artifacts also indicated ritual activities, including evidence of burning and a vessel containing red pigment, “possibly cinnabar,” and mica (Alvarado and Díaz García 2014: 5–6). Lajas were found measuring on average 35 × 40 × 10 cm; these ritual deposits closed the canal at that part of the plaza (2014: 5–6). Excavation determined one channel extended at least 32 m, a length comparable to what we excavated in Mound 15, Chocolá; in both cases the drains continued beyond where exploration by excavation halted. Likely built during the beginning of the Providencia (according to Inomata et al.’s 2014 chronology, 350–100 BC), it was filled and sealed during the Arenal (AD 1–150) (Inomata et al. 2014: 379). The ceramic material recovered included vessels found at the union of both channels. Takalik Abaj The remains of 25 stone canals or drains have been found at Takalik Abaj (Marroquín 2005); the larger measure about 0.25 wide by 0.30 m high, dimensions very similar to Chocolá’s conduits. Research conducted to the north and south of El Escondite, an Early Preclassic occupation locus west of the Central Group (Terraces 1–5) found a drain at least 60 m long,

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running in a general direction 17° north, with stone lids still in place, corresponding to a decline of approximately 4 m along its course, and 3.87°. The course winds and eventually levels, which the Takalik Abaj researchers suggest may indicate the intention to reduce the strength of the flow. Attempting to clean and restore flow, the researchers determined that the conduit carries a flow of 19 liters per 20 seconds, reaching almost 30 m in 3 minutes 40 seconds, and that the drain was fed with groundwater. Remaining undetermined thus far is whether this system of channels would have run throughout the year (Schieber de Lavarreda 1998: 474). Marroquín attributes two functions to the water system at Takalik Abaj: “1) provision of potable water to habitation areas, exemplifying distinct methods in the control of this resource, for example, little steep slopes, elevations or hydraulic jumps within a certain distance to slow water, branches and sediment; 2) drains to evacuate water; these are attached to the plazas, terraces and structures, which have steep slopes, suggesting constructive variants such as the use of rocks both vertically and horizontally, using wedges and stones that served as bedding” (Marroquín 2005: 10006). Marroquín describes two construction types for Takalik Abaj’s drains: “1) in the form of a square (by the decline of soil in this area), in which one short vertical wall substitutes for the lateral stone; and 2) in the form of a ‘U,’ placed and supported against the lateral stone walls in a vertical, above which is placed the lid stone or tapa, with a water-repellant seal of powdered or granular taxcal, which protected the canal, where running water has the same taxcal bed” (2005: 1000). Both of these drain construction types are found also at Chocolá, along with a third, which originally may have lain on the ground surface and had two vertical stone walls plus a stone or taxcal bed. Takalik Abaj archaeologists dated the hydraulic technology of the site based on ceramic seriations and architectural phases (Schieber de Lavarreda and Pérez 2004: 413, Marroquín 2005: 10.7 The closer resemblance between the Chocolá channels and those at Takalik Abaj are those of Late Preclassic and Early Classic date. Differences in the size of the stones used in the water channels are correlated to different occupation phases. During the Middle Preclassic, water conduits were carved into bedrock, with no use of cobblestones. During the Late Preclassic and Early Classic, mediumsized cobbles are employed in the conduits, with preference for large, flat laja stones used as lids (Schieber 1998: 490, Figure 13). Moreover, at Takalik Abaj, very large rocks, some massive in size, are associated with Late Classic drainages constructed for water discharge from terraces. A possible

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typological difference can be discerned between the Preclassic channels from Takalik Abaj and Chocolá; flat laja lids or capstones for encased channels are more common at Chocolá, a characteristic also observed at Kaminaljuyu. As mentioned earlier, some of these conduits at Takalik Abaj contained small boulders, both shaped and reshaped, some of them carved with iconography, which were placed at distinct junctures in the network. Prominently, at El Escondite, Stela 56 (plain) and Altar 29 were placed near a massive boulder at a location where water from an underground channel feeding from the waterbed emerges at the surface (Schieber 1998: 473–474). Similar boulders associated with the canals are found at Chocolá (for example, Mound 15, Feature 66); Monuments 3, 27, 30, and many more uncatalogued were designed in part as water receptacles. Direct association of carved monuments with the water conduits has not been observed, perhaps as the result of a sampling problem. As we have mentioned (Chapter 4), other ritually deposited objects such as ceramics and figurines were found at junctures in Chocolá’s water system (see Figure 4.19 for an example), as well as evidence of deliberate burning (for example, Feature 64, Mound 15; see Figure 4.18). Izapa At Izapa, Preclassic dams, drains, and lagunas were placed at the center of the site (Lowe et al. 1982: 133, 167–173, 263). Gómez Rueda refers to channels, branches, valves, and tanks for capturing water (1995); “a subterranean, stone-lined channel enters a boulder-faced buried reservoir near the largest mound, Mound 60 . . . and effigy and plain troughs and basins occur in some numbers, some placed to catch or direct spring water” (Stark 1999: 308–309). Chiapa de Corzo By the Early Middle Preclassic, “a ceremonial pond with drainage system [is] associated with the earliest pyramidal constructions at Chiapa de Corzo.”8 Lowe (1962: 1) referred to the “possibility that the springs forming the small Río Nandalumi on the east were utilized anciently, as they are today,” and notes that the likely “importance of these headwaters even in early archaeological times . . . [is] indicated by the four or more mounds located in the Mango Seco zone” (1962: 61). These mounds, dating to the Late Preclassic Francesa phase (450–250 BC) may represent earthen architecture; a burial was found in one of them. More recent investigations have

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documented “civic pools” similar to those found at Olmec sites (Bachand 2013: 20). These include “a two m deep aquatic element, most likely a pool or swamp, of Middle Formative Dili and Escalera phase age” (Bachand et al. 2009: 2) and “aquatic pools on the southern end of the plateau” filled in during Late Preclassic times (2009: 5). Chocolá In Chapter 4, we described our excavations of Chocolá’s laja-topped conduit system. At least eight different branches of this water management system were excavated in Mound 15. More than 35 meters of conduits were exposed, of which 18 meters run north-south, two southwest, and 14 southeast, with 1 additional meter east-west. Other sections of the system were recorded in Mounds 7 and 9; in addition, several sections of a conduit were recorded in the central group of the site during repair of the modern water infrastructure in 2004 and also during postseason archaeological clearance efforts near two smaller Mounds 11 and 23, and the large mound, 12. Based on this evidence, the water management system at Chocolá must be described as sophisticated and ingenious, extending across the site from north to south with a verified extension of at least 1.5 km underground, with redistribution boxes for intake of natural springs; in addition, we found surface sections, jointed connections between different conduits, and overlaps of at least two conduits, which do not necessarily represent different temporal phases but, rather, functional complexity, or repetition of the same system. Evidence gathered also indicates facilitation of repair and/or maintenance by means of access from the ancient surface. In addition to the conduit system, built for the overabundance of water from the punishing wet season at Chocolá, which alternated with a long, hot, dry winter, and the modern-era existence of reservoirs—at least one large pond constructed during German ownership of the finca—we suggest that other kinds of water management existed at the ancient city. We believe this included reservoirs, perhaps located near some of the rivers and many streams flowing in and through the city; Mound 5, for example, a stone-walled platform, is located 50 m from a riachuelo to the west and 230 m from another to the east, and forms, together with other platform structures (Mounds 47 and 50) and two pyramidal mounds (Structures 3 and 4), a southern group employed, we suggest, for administration of intensive agriculture. The three very similar systems at Kaminaljuyu, Takalik Abaj, and Chocolá, and to which Monte Alto can be added (see Chapter 1), in some

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ways also resemble the drain or canal systems at sites in other regions of Mesoamerica, although these other centers constructed their drains using different methods and different materials—for example, San Lorenzo Tenochtitlan and Monte Albán. One possible difference between the systems at Chocolá, Takalik Abaj, and Kaminaljuyu is that, although all were gravity-flow, such was the volume of water coursing through the conduits of these cities in the Southern Maya Region, that water pressure might also have been engineered as it was at Classic Period Palenque; this leaves open the possibility, in theory, that they added force to the flow so that the water might rise against gravity (French 2015). Takalik Abaj’s system might also have had such capability, although the volume of water available was perhaps not as great as the volume at Chocolá. Schieber de Lavarreda (1998: 474) reports a water channel system of 60 m in extension and a height gradient of 4 m with a capacity to move at a rate of 19 1⁄20 seconds. From the great similarity of the systems at Chocolá, Kaminaljuyu, and Takalik Abaj, it seems plausible to conclude that the construction technique, engineering design, and functions of these systems were well known throughout the Southern Maya Region. This sharing of technology, in turn, supports evidence of close contacts indicated by ceramics. A different technology was introduced during the Late Classic in Escuintla; in 2000, at an archaeological field project house at La Democracia, Paredes Umaña was shown examples of a system consisting of connecting cylindrical ceramic tubes. Nevertheless, as Guernsey has pointed out in several publications (for example, Guernsey 2004, 2011), ideological links also are clear from overlaps of iconography and ideology not only at the three major centers but throughout much of the Preclassic Southern Maya Region. No doubt at some point distant enough in the past, distinctness of class—elites and commoners—was only beginning to emerge. The clear appearance of hereditary privilege in the Southern Maya Region, however, was represented, in part, by size of structures. Also, an Early Preclassic “chief ’s residence on an elevated platform” at Paso de la Amada (Clark and Pye 2011: 31), by “the oldest elite burial . . . known for Mesoamerica” of a child surrounded by 15 polished axes at Canton Corralito (Clark and Hodgson 2004), and, more clearly, by a female’s richly furnished burial at Chiapa de Corzo that was radiocarbon-dated to 750 BC (Clark and Pye 2011: 36), tell us that, in the Southern Maya Region, as in the Olmec heartland, goods were unequally accessed and formal class division had appeared by the Middle Preclassic. Because of the scale and comparative sophistication of the water system, by about 500 BC at Chocolá, it seems clear that

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managers were directing laborers. Also, the tripartite division of the site into northern, central, and southern sectors suggests an elite vs. commoner distinction. The water system and site spatial divisions suggesting privileges accorded to the elites by the end of the Middle Preclassic Period at Chocolá compares with Takalik Abaj, 30 km to the west. Also, that a royal or chiefly role was distinct by the Late Preclassic is evidenced at Takalik Abaj by a rich tomb,9 and at Chocolá by Monument 1, the near mirror stylistically of Kaminaljuyu Stela 10, a giant throne, in many ways the most impressive carved monument known thus far from Kaminaljuyu. This sculptural evidence must be taken to mean a rulership institutionalized ideologically in the manner of comparative “kingships” worldwide had crystallized, by Inomata et al.’s revised Southern Maya Region chronology, by 100 BC (2014: 379). Based on our evidence, we assume the water system extended at least from Mound 15 south to the environs of Mound 1, and represented centralized planning with a substantial investment of labor. The fact is that almost wherever we dug, we found the conduits, for example, the one running beneath the eastern stairway at Mound 7, and others indicated in test pits just north of Mound 9 and south of Mound 12 (see Chapter 4). Accordingly, we believe it likely that we would find the same water system linked to many mounds throughout the ancient city. In sum, even before the first field season, observing the great bounty of the rains at Chocolá and wondering how the ancient Chocolenses handled the great volume of water, then discovering a comparatively extensive water system dating to as early as the Late Middle Preclassic, at the risk of oversimplification we see Chocolá as having been a city that owed its initial existence and some of its later complex social structure and economy to water. Positioned on or among a dense web of water arteries and near natural springs, the city itself, we believe, was built and maintained by the same energy of the collective labor that constructed the water system, and the society was organized in many ways by this labor; included in this work was, we believe, intensive cacao agriculture, which we discuss below. Our belief is that initial settlement took into account the physical geography we describe in Chapter 2, based on: (1) the fact that the core edifices of ancient Chocolá, as well as at least some of its presumed southern agricultural support area, lie closely within the narrowly expanding north-south angle of the two rivers, Chichoy and Chocolá; (2) many smaller streams and riachuelos trace a finer network of arteries through the site; and (3)

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caves and natural springs, as part of the upper piedmont volcanic montane tableland, are distributed throughout the terrain immediately around the site, for example, the cave known by locals as La Ventana (Guerra and Ishihara in Kaplan and Ugarte 2005). Along with the copious rains, the rivers and springs combine to make Chocolá one of a very few such sites in the Maya world with this triad of very rich water resources. Many ancient centers in Mesoamerica and the Maya area built and maintained a wide variety of water systems to perform a variety of functions, including irrigation agriculture, delivery of potable water, removal of gray water, display for religious or ideological purposes, and defense (moats). To appreciate the achievement of constructing Chocolá’s Late Middle Preclassic water system, we must consider how the ancient city planners and engineers seem to have had considerable empirical understanding of the principles of water transfer, gained perhaps at the expanse of costly and time-consuming research and testing, or acquired possibly as a result of generations of water control specialists building and maintaining such systems. This understanding clearly included an appreciation of the need to experiment with and compromise in canal and other infrastructural design between a number of variable elements such as canal size, flow velocity, scouring, canal slope, and silting, in essentially the same ways as presentday irrigation engineers (see Park 1983: 161). Ingenuity, for example, was required to understand the utility of breakwaters and to place these where they were best deployed to retard the strong, heavy rush of waters during the rainy season; to understand and leverage flows not only south from the springs and catchments but laterally east and west throughout the system; to create repair methods for subsystems that were deep below ground surface; and to use construction materials best suited for sealants and scouring, sufficient airway ventilation, and conservation for the dry season, to name just a few considerations taken into account by the ancient builders. One of the principal problems remaining in the way of a fuller understanding of Chocolá’s water system is that theoretical models of the harnessing of water are oriented basically to either riverine systems or rainfall agricultural systems. With its extraordinary oversupply of water, Chocolá represents both and includes a third—an abundance of natural springs. While riverine systems tend to be large and centrally managed, rainfall agricultural systems tend to be “dispersed multicentered forms of production” (D. Price 1994: 201). However, natural divisions of the terrain—by topography and/or by rivers—can work against the formation of large centralized water systems. B. Price (1971) contrasted hydraulic with rainfall

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agriculture in the Basin of Mexico. It may be that further consideration of the notion of “compartmentalization,” discussed earlier as part of a wider but more detailed survey of the upper piedmont in which Chocolá lies, may tell us much more about the ancient city’s water management system and answer some of these questions. The specific topography of Chocolá may have lent itself to humans making a more or less natural division or compartmentalization of the ancient city; what we call the southern sector is quite flat by contrast with the central and northern sectors, and the distance between the two rivers, Chichoy and Chocolá, widens to the south, leaving a flat space more conducive to intensive agriculture than the central and north sectors. As we mentioned in Chapter 2, near the northern limit to the area of PACH’s site map, the distance between the two is 400 m; at the southernmost point where they sharply diverge—the Chichoy to the west, ultimately emptying into the Ixtacapa, the Chocolá into the Nahualate—the distance is 950 m (see Figure 2.6). Finally, as we have observed, there has been much debate about water management, or “hydraulics,” particularly as a cause for sociopolitical complexity (for example, Wells 2006: 269–270, Lees 1994: 361–363). As suggested above, we follow researchers studying Classic Maya hydraulics—for example, Dunning (1995), Lucero (1999, 2002), Scarborough (1998), and Lentz (Lentz et al. 2015)—who specifically assert a causal link between water control and “a centralized source of political authority for Classic Maya elites” (Davis-Salazar 2003: 275). While Chocolá’s water management may have predated conventionally defined higher-scale social complexity, once we add our arguments for a proposed subsequent intensive cultivation of cacao, a fuller picture emerges of a Middle to Late Preclassic regional polity. Many other questions remain about Chocolá’s water management. How was the labor organized to locate, convey, and reshape the cobblestones used for the drains? What other roles in the community did the supervisors or overseers of the water system play, and how did class distinctions arise in the context of water management? As we noted earlier, certain details of the features, we believe, shed light on the possible organization of labor for the construction of the system. A feature of the drains on Mound 15 that puzzled us was the very large boulder placed during the construction of a conduit on Mound 15, located immediately at a locus of joints or shunts. We theorize this boulder and others like it, as well as whole vessel deposition (Figure 4.18), marked spans of the system whose construction and

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maintenance belonged to distinct lineages or households; Matheny (1978, 1982) described the construction of a water system by multiple households. Cacao in Mesoamerica and among the Maya

In Chapter 1 we described the research background of the Southern Maya Region and the Cacao Heartland within the Southern Maya Region (Figure 1.6), in which lies Chocolá. In Chapter 3, we presented ethnohistorical information about cacao from pre-Hispanic and early post-Conquest times in the Southern Maya Region and the Chocolá vicinity, confirming that in this subregion a substantial cacao industry, with heredades or “estates” of cacao, existed at least as early as the Conquest (compare Millon 1955: 130, citing the 1571 Indios de Atitlán10 specifically at “towns south of Lake Atitlan”—which could refer to Chocolá, 17 km west-southwest of the lake). The Cacao Heartland comprises that part of Mesoamerica with the wet climatological and edaphic characteristics necessary for cacao to be cultivated and in a subregion large enough to grow it intensively and trade it in comparatively great quantity (compare James 1950: 532, cited in Millon 1955: 72–73). It is specifically to be distinguished from wet “gullies” (compare Muhs et al. 1985: 124–125) and small, adventitious, or opportunistic cultivation elsewhere in the Maya world. A second fundamental hypothesis in our research to date is that as early as the Late Middle Preclassic, or circa 500 BC, Chocolá was growing and trading surplus cacao. The specific cultivar grown by the Maya was criollo, as forastero and trinitario are modern hybrids (see Coe and Coe 2013: 63 for etymological discussion of the modern terms “cacao,” “chocolate,” and “cocoa”). If we are correct, the implication is that, along with water control, a cacao industry provided a substantial material basis for the Preclassic emergence of complex social organization at the city. A large literature exists on the link between both hydraulics or water management on the one hand, and long-distance trade on the other, and social complexity; Gasco cites several writers on the debate about how “increased ties with the larger economic system affect levels of inequality within modern peasant communities” (1996a: 385). Whatever the specific theorized dynamic, “economic anthropologists disagree regarding how cash-crop production, petty (or simple) commodity production, and participation in a market economy will affect economic differentiation within and among peasant communities” (Gasco 1996a: 388). Although Gasco was speaking

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about ethnohistorical and modern societies, the same may be said of preConquest ones, and the cause-or-effect, chicken-or-egg question seems to remain. Employing recently improved laboratory techniques, cacao residues in ten ceramic vessels, whose provenience was distributed throughout the three sectors of the site, all dating stylistically to the Late Preclassic, provide evidence that cacao was consumed at Chocolá (Paredes Umaña et al. 2016, Kaplan et al. 2017; and see Appendix E). Another kind of evidence is palaeobotanical; from ambient flora often associated with cacao, our study concludes that cacao could have been grown at the city (Appendix A). In addition, a ceramic support in the form of a cacao pod (Figure 3.3) suggests not only use of but aesthetic and ideological abstractions of cacao. These three kinds of findings do not constitute either direct or sufficient evidence for surplus agriculture and trade; to accept that assertion, more as well as different kinds of evidence are needed. Our hypothesis that Chocolá was growing cacao groves for surplus trade would be advanced by evidence of contact with other sites, such as sculptural depictions and the finding of artifacts from Chocolá at sites in a presumed network of trade. The best evidence would be some kind of written accounting such as at late fourth and third millennium Sumer for agricultural and manufactured goods, or the tribute lists in Central Mexican codices, linked with finding, in some manner, the archaeological correlates of long-distance trade at other centers near and far outside of the cacaogrowing subregion. Because we do not have written records to support the hypothesis directly, nor other kinds of plausible, but still indirect, evidence, we must rely on other arguments.11 Sourcing from distant sites is accepted as evidence of probable trade of obsidian; even if we somehow had the means to source cacao, the tree, pod, or bean are highly perishable and usually disappear quickly from the archaeological record. Macroremains of parts of the tree and trace residues of cacao chemical constituents in vessels provide direct evidence only of consumption. Another kind of evidence is Late Postclassic, Conquest- and colonial-era ethnohistory; the direct historical approach, however, so extends time as to reduce greatly any credibility we might attach to phenomena from 500 years ago that is offered as evidence of phenomena 2,500 years ago. Nevertheless, what might support this great extension back in time of surplus trade are: (1) the archaeological identification of cacao residues in pottery

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from the Southern Maya Region as early as 1900–1500 BC at Paso de la Amada (Powis et al. 2007), (2) the fact that what constitutes our proposed Cacao Heartland in which sits Chocolá, is located in the upper coastal plains and piedmonts of southeastern Mexico, Guatemala, and El Salvador, (3) and the fact that this Heartland provided the greatest amounts of cacao to Central Mexico in Late Postclassic times. In addition, the appearance at Late Classic Cotzumalguapa of cacao iconography associated with what may be interpreted as war and death motifs we interpret as evidence not only of mythological meanings of cacao but also of competition over cacao production and trade. Below we consider archaeology and art history, the former from a series of Preclassic sites from Soconusco to Veracruz, Belize, and Petén, which demonstrate that cacao was grown and consumed by Southern Maya Region groups, including Maya speakers in the Preclassic. Employing art historical analysis, we discuss the Shook Altar (Figure 6.2c), a carved monument stylistically Preclassic in date which we propose originated from Chocolá (Chapter 6). To interpret the iconography and narrative detail of this monument, we draw on Late Preclassic and Classic Period depictions of deities associated with trade and of other sculptural representations of mythology and cosmology, which we propose as possible evidence for the existence of long-distance trade operations. The fact that our proposed Cacao Heartland could exist must be considered by itself to provide a basis on which to begin to mount the hypothesis of a Preclassic Southern Maya Region cacao industry. In the same way that essential elements of the Maya calendar likely were invented in the Southern Maya Region because it is only there where the latitude exists for the crucial eastern horizon alignments essential to the Maya calendar to appear, this great cacao-growing subregion, as mentioned, possesses the necessary soil characteristics as well as the copious water resources necessary for cacao: one cannot have the latter without the other two. The native habitat for cacao falls within the range of 20° south and 20° north of the equator. Larger, denser groves most likely would have been where ethnohistory reports the largest trade activity, namely, in the Soconusco-Suchitepéquez subregion. Few researchers would claim that the ancient equivalent of a monopoly existed; cacao is now and/or was grown, perhaps to some degree characterizable as “intensively,” in clumps or small patches along rivers in the Baja Verapaz, near the Lago de Izabal in eastern Guatemala, in Belize (north, Colha [Powis et al. 2002]; possibly south, Lubaantun [Hammond 1978]; and west [Thompson 1930]), in

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northern Yucatán (collapsed sinkholes or rejolladas: Gómez-Pompa et al. 1990), probably in small riverine loci in the Petén, as well as in the Chontalpa, Tabasco, and the Sula Valley in northwest Honduras (Aliphat 2009: 267). Thompson (1930: 186), citing the Relación de Motul, Torquemada, and Landa, also proposed a substantial trade in cacao from “Tabasco, Ulua, and Honduras” into Yucatán. As we have seen (Chapter 3), the ethnohistory of the Southern Maya Region describes a surplus cacao agriculture on a scale large enough to cause violent competition between different groups or polities, in a subregion about 300 km2 in which many heredades were maintained. Clear archaeological evidence of ancient conflict is difficult to obtain (Inomata 2014); nevertheless, as mentioned, we interpret scenes and motifs from Cotzumalguapa sculpture as evidence of such competitive conflict over a Late Classic cacao industry. These accounts also document the great reach cacao had economically and ideologically among the Maya and elsewhere in Mesoamerica, as distant from the Southern Maya Region as Teotihuacan in the Early Classic and Tenochtitlan for the Late Postclassic and Conquest period (Powis et al. 2002: 99, citing Ball 1983; Bove 1991; W. Coe 1972; Coggins 1983; Sanders and Michels 1977; Sanders and B. Price 1968; and Stuart 2000 on trade and contact between the Maya and Teotihuacan). Until recently, archaeology was limited in what it could determine about ancient cacao use because the cacao tree flower has no odor and little pollen is retrieved (compare Muhs et al., 1985, citing Hammond 1978) and, as we mentioned, because of its particular taphonomy, the wood and other parts of the tree usually disappear rapidly from the archaeological record. Until new laboratory techniques were developed identifying cacao residue in vessels, archaeological evidence consisted of whole cacao beans recovered archaeologically from Uaxactun, Guatemala (Kidder 1947: 71); from northern Belize (macroremains from flotations at Kokeal, near Pulltrouser Swamp, Turner and Harrison 1981: 403; Turner and Miksicek 1984; Cuello, K’axob, Hammond and Miksicek 1981; compare Muhs et al. 1985, on suitable soil constituents for cacao) and from the Late Classic village of Cerén in El Salvador (Lentz et al. 1996). Thus far the earliest laboratory-confirmed cacao use in Mesoamerica (and the world) is from the Southern Maya Region and consists of a neckless jar, or tecomate, as mentioned, from the Mokaya site of Paso de la Amada, dated to 1900–1500 BC, and from 27 vessels from San Lorenzo Tenochtitlan ranging in date from 1800 to 1000 BC (Powis et al. 2011). From the spouted pouring vessel from Colha (Powis et al. 2002) and, likely, from

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cups and bowls (Powis et al. 2011: 8596), and from spouted, flaring neck bottles (Joyce and J. Henderson (2010: 166), we know cacao was consumed as a liquid in early times in the Preclassic. Tabasco lies due north of Chiapas near the narrowest part of southern Mexico—no more than 250 km coastto-coast. The plant and its usages theoretically were brought by or from the Mokaya, a presumed pre-Olmec Mixe-Zoque speaking people, to the likely Mixe-Zoque-speaking Gulf Coast Olmec, at San Lorenzo, some 400 km northwest from Paso de la Amada. This is not an impossible distance for ancient peoples; conceivably an individual could walk this in as little as eight days (compare Adams 1985: 27), although from the “Greater Mokaya Zone” (Pye et al. 2011: 211) he would have to climb from coastal elevations to as high as 1600 MAMSL and then down again to reach San Lorenzo. Accordingly, a trade route would have been broken into smaller segments and the cacao conveyed by different porters. Before the discoveries of cacao at Mokaya sites and at San Lorenzo, analysis of residues from ceramic vessels identified traces of theobromine and caffeine, two of the methylxanthines in cacao, in jars, bottles, and spouted vessels from Puerto Escondido, Honduras, later in the Early Preclassic (1100–900 BC, Henderson et al., 2007). The first identification of cacao residue in pottery using the HPLC method was reported a few years before these studies, dating to circa AD 400 (the Rio Azul “screwtop vase,” Hall et al. 199012). Since the Paso de la Amada finding, cacao residue has also been detected from two sherds from Paso del Macho, Yucatán, that date to 600–500 BC.13 From our own HPLC studies (Appendix E), cacao residue in Preclassic pottery from Chocolá confirms that cacao was introduced to other Preclassic peoples and communities in the Guatemalan piedmont. Given that the Cacao Heartland in the Southern Maya Region—from Soconusco in the west, through the departments of Escuintla, Santa Rosa, Jutiapa, and possibly also in Ahuachapan and Sonsonate (Izalcos, Fowler 2006, Tous 2011) in El Salvador, in the east—was from all evidence the largest part of Mesoamerica most conducive to cacao, and given that the admittedly much-later ethnohistory attests to a significant cacao enterprise around the time of the Conquest, it seems plausible to assume that cacao was cultivated intensively for surplus trade anywhere in this cacao subregion early in pre-Hispanic times. In addition to the well-attested Postclassic trade from Soconusco, cacao could just as well have been intensively cultivated in many locales in the Guatemalan upper coastal plains and piedmont of Retalhuleu and Suchitepéquez (Fowler 2006; Bergmann 1969b, fig. 1). Possibly relevant is

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L. Campbell’s assertion (1988: 350, cited in Gasco 1996a: 389) that a MixeZoque language was spoken in Soconusco, which, if true, might indicate an ethnic and cultural boundary between Soconusco and the cacao-producing lands to the east, hence a possible delay in the diffusion of cacao from the former to the latter. These possibilities touch on other unanswered questions having to do with the language(s) spoken in these territories east of Soconusco, including at Chocolá, and on the causal power of aspects of a group’s self-considered identity to determine other matters. As many have pointed out, trade pays little or no attention to linguistic boundaries, and Guernsey (2011) documents how elite ideology was shared throughout much of the Preclassic south. Although many of our ceramics and figurines stylistically suggest “ethnically” Maya manufacture, we cannot be completely sure that the ancient Chocolenses—at any time up until ethnohistory attests to K’iche’ and other Maya speakers around Chocolá—spoke a Mayan language. Just as at Miraflores Kaminaljuyu, even though not only a Cholan but also an Isthmian or “epi-Olmec” language is represented on Kaminaljuyu Stela 10 (Kaplan 1999: 337–339), all assertions about the probable linguistic affiliation remain questionable because of a paucity of data (Kaplan 2011b: 278–280). PACH has recovered artifacts seeming to bear a Maya stamp or style, for example, the presumably Late Preclassic or Terminal Preclassic Monument 1 and Monument 11 as well as some figurines (see, for example, Figure 5.6g), but the number of these possibly “Maya” objects is small. Popenoe de Hatch asserts she can identify utilitarian “Maya ceramics” at Chocolá and other southern sites. The ethnic boundary issue also touches on the question of how contact and trade commence and then impact each partner; a large and growing literature has focused on these questions (see papers in Love and Kaplan 2011, particularly Love’s Chapter Three). With regard to the problems attendant on identifying an ethnic group by ceramics, much literature exists, for example, critical of reconstructions of “pots as people” (Bove et al. 1992). Contact initiates and continues to define and refine the identity of each group (Barth 1969, Cohen 2000: 1); trade, later, serves “personal”/individual or “house” asset accumulation instead of wealth-sharing or redistribution, and a new class can arise, the Pochteca, for example, among the Mexica. Another qualification is that ethnic groups may include different language speakers; if not necessarily a “cacao-grower ethnicity,” an “ethnicity of traders” might be plausible for the Preclassic Southern Maya Region.

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The Meaning and Importance of Cacao to the Ancient Maya: Epigraphic Evidence Overwhelming evidence from archaeology, epigraphy, ethnohistory, and art history emphasizes that cacao had great meaning not only for the Maya but throughout Mesoamerica.14 Beginning here with epigraphic evidence, we briefly review some of the ancient meanings cacao had for the Maya. Then, in our analysis of a remarkable Preclassic carved monument provenienced from or near Chocolá, we attempt to identify certain of these meanings. Classic Maya writing is found on carved monuments and on ceramic vessels. On the latter, texts appear (1) in what Coe called the Primary Standard Sequence, or PSS (Coe 1973: 13; Coe and Kerr 1997: 60, 61; Coe and Van Stone 2005; MacLeod and Reents-Budet 1994); and (2) alone or independent of the PSS. The PSS is a sequence of glyphs appearing around the outside of the rim of many elite or fine wares, polychrome, carved or incised, or highly crafted otherwise, from the Late Classic period. Stuart’s identification of the cacao glyph in a text on the Rio Azul “screwtop vase” (Stuart 1988), in which cacao residue was found, permitted its identification in the PSS. The frequent inclusion of the cacao glyph in the PSS has come to be understood to indicate the particular form associated with drinking cacao as that of a tall-sided vessel intended ritually or for sumptuary use to hold a cacao beverage (Rice 2009; see LeCount 2001 and Callaghan 2008: 56, 57, on vessels conspicuously displayed in royal “diacritical” feasts [compare Dietler 1996]). While the length of the PSS and the particular glyph (allomorphic or allographic) choices vary, a full text might be elided as: “it came into being, was presented/blessed, its writing/painting, his [drinking] vessel [for cacao].”15 This was followed by the name and title(s) of the owner or patron of the ceramic maker and the name of the artist. “The text may also include terms for different vessel shapes, decorative surface treatment, and uses or contents” (Rice 2009: 124). Iconography and Narrative Scenes on Sculpture and on Classic Maya Ceramics In our description of a context in which a cacao industry at Late Middle Preclassic Chocolá could have existed, in Chapter 3 we reviewed indirect evidence from ethnohistory and in this chapter from archaeology. Because of the synergistic scholarly relationship between epigraphic decipherment,

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iconography, and analysis of Maya and Mesoamerican narrative depictions on objects, non-epigraphic references to cacao have become better understood. We now consider this evidence for how it may provide more pointed, although still indirect, evidence in support of our Preclassic cultivation and trade hypothesis. Before the breakthroughs in Classic Maya epigraphy, information contained in narrative depictions about cacao also came from scenes accompanying texts in the Maya and other Mesoamerican codices, including the Dresden, Madrid, Magliabechiano, Tudela, and Nuttall codices. For example, the Dresden Codex includes scenes of deity figures holding cacao pods or standing or sitting near bowls and plates containing cacao beans. The Late Postclassic Madrid Codex illustrates deity figures tilling cacao fields, birds eating cacao pods, and fertilizing cacao fields with the blood of these deities. Multiple examples exist seemingly detailing cacao commerce: in the Madrid Codex, a large tied bag containing cacao beans sits in front of Ixchel, the moon goddess, and Chaakh, the rain god. For the Classic period, in the mural in Room 1, Structure 1, Bonampak, five 8,000-bean bundles of cacao are identified by glyphs (M. Miller and O’Neil 2014: 219). Inferable from this image alone, there can be little doubt that a cacao industry existed in Classic times, although its size and scale can only be guessed—perhaps by assuming an equivalence of cacao use with percentages of elites vs. commoners and taking amounts of cacao from Aztec tribute lists. From the online Kerr database,16 it is clear from many depictions on Classic Maya pottery that cacao was drunk presumably as a sumptuary for elites, as is depicted, for example, in the scene on the Princeton Vase, and on the “Jauncy Vase” (Taschek and Ball 1992). Such scenes include those, for example, as described by Justin Kerr’s commentary, also, on K631, a “palace scene with cacao tree [with an] individual using the metate . . . probably grinding chocolate pods into powder or paste”17; K5615, “[a]fter his beheading by the Lords of the Otherworld, Hun Hunaphu’s head is hung in a cacao tree”18; K6312, “showing a monkey holding cacao pod, with text”19; and K8234, which may show cacao beans as a repeating motif.20 Another example from the Kerr database is K1941, with “[a] rough translation of the rim text: Here is dedicated his writing on a vessel for fresh cacao, the precious Lady of Tikal, Bacab.”21 Later, we discuss the particular iconography of scenes on Maya ceramics, attempting to apply insights from these to a monument, the so-called Shook Altar, that we surmise was carved at Chocolá and dates stylistically to the Middle Preclassic period.

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Cacao in the Popol Vuh and Other Mythology The mythological narrative in the Popol Vuh (Tedlock 1996) is cosmological, cosmogenic, and mytho-heroic, as it recounts the sacred origins of the K’iche’ Maya. It has been interpreted to represent a fragment of a much larger pan-Maya mythology (Coe 1978: 21), other parts of which can be tentatively pieced together from scenes on many Classic Maya vessels (M. Coe in many publications, for example, 1973, 1977a, 1989: 69; and see Stuart and Stuart 1993: 171; Taube 1992: 88; and many references in Miller and Taube 1993. Thus, what is represented in the Popol Vuh is part of a larger body of mythology that was current at some primordial time in Maya civilization, that is, when such mythology was being conceptualized, told, retold, augmented, and elaborated, until, presumably, it formed some kind of conscious referent for the Maya elite of Classic times, and presumably also for the general population to a varying degree of familiarity; many apparent references to this primordial mythology appear on Preclassic Izapa monuments and at Miraflores Kaminaljuyu (Kaplan 1995, 1999: 439 passim, 2002).22 Many Classic Maya ceramics are painted or carved with scenes identifiable as belonging to the mythology partially recorded in the Popol Vuh, for example, the Blom Plate. An example of a fragment one might consider missing from the Popol Vuh would relate how monkeys are part of a/the Maya origin myth, as many scenes on Maya pottery, and many other threedimensional artifacts, including figurines and vessels lids, thematically conjoin cacao with this animal; one example, K4691, is a “spider monkey with cacao pod”23 which appears to refer to a missing episode in which Jun Chouen, a spider monkey, has climbed down from a cacao tree after collecting a pod. If Junajpu, father of the Twins, was a cacao tree before he was transformed into maize, the humor of the reference might lie in an ironical mimicry by discredited sons of Junajpu of the rescue of Junajpu, and/or of Jun Chouen’s sole interest as being in the fruit and not in the rescue of his father (Martin 2006, 2012: 117). In this universal creation and people-origin myth, a pairing of maize with cacao appears to have been central, at least by Classic times. As Simon Martin observes, “Cacao, the most coveted product of the mortal orchard, was emblematic of all prized and sustaining vegetal growth—with the exception of maize—and the myth served to explain how it and other foodstuffs came into being” (Martin 2006: 178). Threading together speculated

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parts of the Maya-origin mythology omitted from the Popol Vuh, Martin describes a “cacao-maize narrative” (2012: 118), in which Jun Junajpu, the primordial progenitor of the Maya, proceeds through the underworld, where he is a “cacao avatar, shedding these attributes when he is born or emerges from the underworld, as maize” (2012: 118). He speculates, for example, that the mural on the east wall of the Red Temple mural at Cacaxtla “portrays a metaphysical journey from the netherworld to the surface of the earth, with the divine essence of fecundity . . . first realized as cacao and then as corn,” and refers to a clay whistle figurine in the Museo Popol Vuh that, he asserts, shows “the maize god entwined in the branches of a fruiting cacao tree,” interpreting this latter depiction as showing a “divine emergence,” the maize god emerging from creation/re birth iconography, a turtle carapace and a “personified water-lily” (2012: 118). Another mythological entity associated with the Twins, and with ancient Maya rulership, is a jaguar complex, a syncretism with elements from the Olmec. The representation—figural and iconographic—of a jaguar, both adult and baby (see Martin 2002), being decapitated makes a fairly common appearance on Classic Maya elite pottery.24 One of the identifications from the Popol Vuh mythology is of Jun Junajpu as the maize deity (Taube 1985), decapitated by the Lords of Death after being defeated in a ballgame contest. Jun Junajpu’s brother, Wucub’ Junajpu, is identified as both a jaguar25 and the cacao deity. One of the former’s twin sons, Xbalanque, was conceived of as a baby jaguar, and possibly both were associated with the “waterlily jaguar”26; in the papers cited here, Martin has identified the cacao god as the brother of the maize god. A relationship might be seen also, on the one hand, between Xbalanque and/or Wucub’ Junajpu, his uncle, in addition to representing cacao, and the sun at night or in the underworld— the “Jaguar God of the Underworld” (J. Eric S. Thompson’s phrase for a frequently depicted sacrificial figure found notably at Tikal and Palenque)— and, on the other, Junajpu, and his father, Jun Junajpu, representing maize, the diurnal sun.27 Kaplan (1999: 301 passim, 380, 440), in a comparative analysis of “kingship” and twinship, metaphorically, symbolically, mythologically, and conceptually as intimately linked, has suggested that in Popol Vuh mythology there are at least two effective sets of twins—the first set, Jun Junajpu and Wucub’ Junajpu, and the second set, the “Hero Twins,” Junajpu and Xbalanque.28 We discuss Martin’s interpretation, linked with other iconography and scenes on Classic Maya vessels below, in our analysis of the Shook

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Altar, as support of our hypothesis of a Chocolá cacao trade in the Late Middle Preclassic. Preliminary Thoughts on Cacao Trade among the Maya In our discussion below, we explain how carvings on the Shook Altar relate the origins of trade with “kingship,” and with the well-known comparative anthropological construct of the magic of the foreign (Kaplan 1999: 227228; and see, for example, Sahlins 1981, 1985: 73). Some larger issues must be discussed first. Perhaps ever since scholars first took note of the encounter off the Honduran coast between Columbus and his crewmen and the canoe manned by Yucatec Maya conveying cacao beans, and also of the tribute lists in Central Mexican codices mentioning the substantial quantities of beans received by Motecuhzoma, a Maya trade in cacao has been assumed. This assumption carries with it at least a few large unanswered questions that have salience for our hypothesis of a cacao agriculture and trade at Chocolá; these include when but also how surplus agriculture appeared and was then traded to others, in the process of which wealth was amassed and other assumed concomitants of complex society occurred. These questions relate to categories in economic anthropology and transitions or transformations between them, here, most pertinently, between “horticulturalism,” “peasant agriculture,” and “agrarian states” (Johnson 1989: 49–53). Millon (1955b) discussed these issues well before other scholars began discussing trade and other aspects of ancient economy among the Maya and other Mesoamerican peoples and cultures of Mesoamerica. Drawing on ethnohistory (including Gaspar Antonio Chi in Tozzer 1941: 230), he described how in pre-Conquest Yucatán, trees—cacao trees, as well as other fruit trees—were owned by individuals even as communal land was still generally the case. Roys (1943: 28) confirms this by stating that a son inherited from his father “improvements to the land” which consisted of houses and trees, both individual trees and groves of trees. Land itself was not inherited, but what man put on the land or caused to grow on it was. Cogolludo (Tozzer 1941: 96) speaks of the “sale of slaves or . . . cacao plantations” (Millon 1955b: 700). For some time, scholars working in the Southern Maya Region have taken for granted that long-distance trade existed, for example, Lowe (1962: 1), for Chiapa de Corzo, without perhaps taking into consideration certain implications biasing analysis of non-Western, ancient processes (Marcus

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1983: 479); others reject these concerns and reiterate the causal power of long-distance trade, for example, among the Classic Maya, to entail as both cause and effect other markers of social, political, and cultural complexity (A. Andrews [1984], in reply to Marcus). Whether or not long-distance trade has been overemphasized in these processes, it seems to us that the question may only be answered by looking at larger patterns of evidence. Furthermore, if Marcus’s question can be raised for the Classic Maya, it can certainly be raised for the Preclassic. We think the question also relates to how the product or good is considered, for example, as a “gift” or as a “commodity” (Spence 1996), or, to use other similar terminology, as a “preciosity,” or “elite” or “exotic good,” as opposed to a “staple”; this last term is also contrasted with “prestige good” (Johnson and Earle 2000: 257). Although we cannot resolve these terminological questions, nor will we seek to redefine the terms, we propose the relevance of the discussions for Preclassic Chocolá. For some time, anthropologists, archaeologists, historians, and prehistorians have also been accustomed to speak of prehistory and precapitalist processes with reference to the pre-Columbian New World (for example, Blanton and Feinman 1984, Blanton et al. 1992, on a “Mesoamerican worldsystem”). In addition to the question of the specific amassing of wealth by individuals, regional economic systems in which dominant cores exploited sites as peripheries are assumed for precapitalist developments underlying the development of social complexity; we have argued that such a development is plausible for Preclassic Chocolá. Similarly, use of the term “commodity” for ancient contexts is problematical, although writers have applied it for ancient Mesoamerica, for example, Spence (1996), who draws a distinction between Pachuca obsidian as commodity and “gift” among the Classic Maya. Whether “commodity” can be used meaningfully for ancient trade goods has been debated by both sociocultural anthropologists and world-systems sociologists and anthropologists, for example, as part of the formalist-substantivist debates by economic anthropologists. Here, we use it with the caution that many of its modern implications and connotations, obviously, cannot apply to ancient trade contexts. Nevertheless, that sometime in the ancient Mesoamerican world, markets existed where varieties of goods were exchanged implies axiomatically some kind of potentially unequal exchange, and therefore that some kind of amassing of goods—primitive capital accumulation—also became possible. From ethnohistoric accounts we know that the pochteca of Tenochtitlan were regarded as having greater

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wealth than other Mexica, such that they had to return stealthily to Tenochtitlan at night to avoid being seen and thus provoke envy (Sahagún 1959, vol. 9: 18). Also, as we discuss below, during Classic Maya times, it is clear that comparatively large quantities of cacao beans—undoubtedly among other ancient trade goods—were acquired in bulk by non–cacao-producing communities or polities from probably quite distant cacao producers. The transformation from prestige goods to staples traded long distance would be dependent on many overlapping factors; these include time of development from simple to complex, in a cultural historical and/or neoevolutionary sense, local or idiosyncratic factors of commodity choice or preference, and periphery to core relations in an ancient world system. Arguing, therefore, the fact that it was important in several spheres of life—not simply as a food plant—leads us to examine how this meaning was constituted. By examining these different meanings of cacao to the Maya, we are prompted to look for where in Mesoamerica surplus cultivation for trade was sourced. Inductively—based on substantial evidence of what we call a Cacao Heartland in Classic times and, indeed, much earlier—we can approach the question of surplus cultivation at and trade from Chocolá as the basis for our examination. World-Systems Approaches We have mentioned world-systems approaches to understanding precapitalist economies.29 How would the cacao industry in the Cacao Heartland, and at Chocolá, have developed? Blake et al. (1992: 92) describe a process of increasing economic specialization that eventually becomes involved in, and further evolves as part of, more encompassing “interregional spheres”: By late times in Chiapas (post-Middle Formative), communities in different zones along the coast may have developed regionally specialized economies . . . and this may have provided the basis for both local and nonlocal exchange. The pattern by later times may have been similar to that observed in other coastal settings such as the coastal Andean region, where some coastal villages specialized in fishing and nonagricultural production and were eventually brought into large interregional spheres on the periphery of empires. Thus, a world-system incorporates hitherto locally specialized commodity producers. Again, however, further complicating the picture would seem to be drawing the distinction synchronically between staple or bulk

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good and luxury or prestige good (compare what Wallerstein [1979] called “preciosity”), although this fundamental dichotomy may not be as useful as it seems. As we just indicated, cacao could or would have been both bulk good and luxury or sumptuary good, simultaneously, suggestive of Simmel (Kaplan and Valdés 2004: 86), given the nature of its production as an agricultural good grown in quantity, and considering the great elaboration of it ideologically by the Classic Maya. Nevertheless, we believe both a dynamic by which wealth is amassed and held by the few as opposed to communally, and economic systems of core and periphery existed in Preclassic Mesoamerica, and at Chocolá. In an essay world-systems theorists regard as somewhat of a necessary adjustment to Wallerstein, Jane Schneider suggested extending time and the map for circumstances Wallerstein’s theory might productively be applied to, making the point that cores and peripheries certainly existed in precapitalist contexts as well as in those subsequent to the fifteenth century. The general, abstract utility of the theory, Schneider explains, is that its framework enables broadly applicable and yet penetrating insights into the dynamic causes of large-scale historical social action and change (1977). Because the patterns were weak and intermittent, Blanton et al. asserted some time ago that “Mesoamerica never had a simple structure of core, semi-periphery and periphery” (1992: 419, and see Blanton and Feinman 1984), but these researchers did identify cores and peripheries in various parts of it, beginning in the Late Preclassic (1992: 421). Our proposal has been that, at least by the Late Preclassic, Kaminaljuyu constituted a core, relationships existed with periphery centers, as well as, possibly, other cores (Kaplan and Valdés 2004: 78, Kaplan 2011b: 273–275). Our suggestion that Chocolá by the Late Middle Preclassic was engaged in cultivation and trade of cacao as part of a Southern Preclassic world system is not the first theorized world-system trade in cacao by the Maya. McAnany et al. (2002: 134) speculate that cacao was grown and traded as part of a world system at Classic and Postclassic sites in the Sibun River valley, Belize (and see McAnany and Murata 2006). Evidence for Cacao in the Preclassic Southern Maya Region and at Chocolá The positive as opposed to negative and circumstantial evidence of cacao from the Preclassic Southern Maya Region is limited. From Chocolá, a cacao pod-like ceramic support was found during the 2003 survey (Figure

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3.3). This single find, of course, would be insufficient to conclude cacao was consumed at Chocolá were it not for the Hershey Laboratory’s identification of cacao residues in ten Preclassic vessels from Chocolá (Appendix E). At Terminal Preclassic/Early Classic Balberta, ceramic effigies of cacao beans were recovered from caches (Bove 1993: 187, 189), along with Pachuca obsidian, interpreted to represent trade sending cacao north to Teotihuacan (Bove and Medrano Busto 2003: 50–51). Parsons found “anthropomorphic cacao pods” at Late Classic Bilbao (Parsons 1969a: 225) and he mentions (1967: 17) that at Bilbao (Cotzumalguapa), “a large plot immediately east of the site is still planted with cacao trees. . . .” However, it would seem that none of this art historical evidence necessarily implicates Preclassic consumption, cultivation, and trade. Yet it does seem reasonable to assume these developments, for why else would the important part of the tree be iconized or otherwise visually emphasized? We now examine art historical evidence to see if a tighter correlation can be made. An Art Historical and Comparative Religious Argument for a Preclassic Cacao Industry at Chocolá The circular Shook Altar and its carving are remarkable for several reasons. These include: its clear Olmec or Olmecoid style; its complex and sophisticated narrative, iconographic, and/or symbolic meanings, in addition to long-distance trade of itinerance and “kingship”; and its modern discovery 9 km south of Chocolá—far from the Olmec Heartland in Tabasco and Veracruz, Mexico. We hasten to state that our argument is based on three large, unproven assumptions: (1) the original site for the creation and display of the socalled Shook Altar (Figure 6.2c) was determined by the people of ancient Chocolá; (2) this monument’s long-distance trade theme or meaning—indicated by the long encircling limb or limbs and the two footprints—may be referenced to a cacao trade; and (3) such a cacao trade relates to the organization of labor necessary for communal or corvée/tax labor that was necessary for the construction and maintenance of the water management system at Chocolá circa 500 BC. Other assumptions seem to us less uncertain: that stylistically the monument is Middle Preclassic in date, that the principal figure on the monument represents a merchant version of God L, and that the iconography on the monument does relate to long-distance trade of some kind.

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A Mystery Tale In 1973, in Antigua, Guatemala, E. M. Shook was shown what he later described as a “technically and aesthetically most remarkable low relief sculpture” (Shook and Heizer 1976: 1). Since then referred to as the Shook Altar, the monument is a flat, round, andesitic boulder stone, 0.81 m in diameter and 0.20 m high, carved on one side only, once probably part of a stela-altar pair (Paredes Umaña 2005: 579). Round altars are well represented in the Southern Maya Region from the Middle Preclassic through the Late Preclassic; several early circular altar stones are found at Chocolá (Monuments 7, 10, 19, 20, 21, and, if it can be attributed to Chocolá, the Shook Altar) and Takalik Abaj (Altars 3, 5, 8, and 28). Supporting a Middle Preclassic date, Shook and Heizer noted the monument’s “distinctly and indubitably Olmec” carving style (1976: 1), comparable to other carved monuments at Takalik Abaj (for example, Takalik Abaj Monument 1) (Shook and Heizer 1976: 2). We accept Shook and Heizer’s identification of the monument as Olmec, because it displays characteristic Olmec motifs and iconography, including the “St. Andrews” crossed bands, which appear on top of the elaborate “helmet,” the “were-jaguar” jawline, and the “sprouting maize seed or vegetation symbol” (Shook and Heizer 1976: 4). Shook and Heizer compare the profile faces to the profile on the well-known Olmec or “Olmecoid” Takalik Abaj Monument 1. Purely from the perspective of the plastic characteristics of the lines, Shook and Heizer (1976) mention as stylistically Olmec the sensitively modeled facial planes that appear also on the Olmec colossal heads, citing, in particular, San Lorenzo Monument 1. Stylistically closest to the facial profiles on the monument, they asserted, was the relief from Takalik Abaj. Shook was told the monument came from San Antonio Suchitepéquez, which lies 9.5 km south of Chocolá. As is often the case with Southern Maya Region monuments such as Chocolá Monument 1, he concluded it was found by accident during “routine agricultural activities and surreptitiously removed” (Shook and Heizer 1976: 1).30 Lost proveniences of many sculptures, not just from Chocolá but other sites, as well, contribute to the picture of a confused diaspora of ancient art and artifacts from the Southern Maya Region, not least reflected by the shadowy anecdotal hearsay about the last state manager of the finca in 1982 absconding with several Chocolá monuments.

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Figure 7.1. Shook ficha (identification ticket) accompanying sherds in the Shook archives, Universidad Del Valle, Guatemala city. (PACH)

In 2004, while conducting a search for Chocolá monuments that disappeared from the site, Paredes Umaña found a ficha in the Shook Archives at Universidad Del Valle (see Barrientos Q. 2010) that triggered our speculation the Shook Altar was carved at Chocolá. On the ficha, which is accompanied by several sherds, is penciled, “surface material around Olmec sculpture.” While the ficha bears no date, Shook told Kaplan that he had been to Chocolá several times—at least as early as 1945, when he formally registered the site with the Guatemalan Cultural Ministry; he accompanied Graham, as mentioned, to Chocolá in 1978. We believe the monument had been carved at Chocolá because it was found reasonably near the ancient city; moreover, Chocolá-like ceramics were found under and around it. The question arises as to the purpose of such an Olmec or Olmecoid carved monument found so far from the great Olmec centers: Was it

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political, commemorating a visit by Olmec elites and/or as a kind of sphere of interest boundary marking? And/or was it economic, commemorating or marking a trade route or network? Or did it serve as a historical marker of migration? A large arc through the Southern Maya Zone of Olmec of Olmecoid carved monuments—including Takalik Abaj, Amatitlán, and even further east (Clark and Pye 2011: 35–36) might support one or both of the latter two possibilities. Although he says nothing in the 1972 paper about returning to San Antonio Suchitepéquez, before his death in 1998 Shook told Kaplan he was in the habit of returning to locations to try to track down the original proveniences of monuments lacking them. If on the ficha, as seems extremely likely, Shook does refer to the Shook Altar, one assumption is that while in San Antonio, he retrieved the sherds that accompany the ficha. In support of our assertion that the monument was carved by artisans from Chocolá, at Takalik Abaj, Monuments 1 and 2 are carved in low relief Olmec style on boulders outside of the center’s main architecture. They have also remained in what must be their original positions because they are too large to have been moved. This implies that Olmec carved monuments are usually found outside the city center; many Olmec or Olmecoid monuments Clark and Pye (2011) describe, likewise, were found not at or in ancient habitation sites but rather, as mentioned, as what are speculated to be markers for migration or for trade routes. Accordingly, it would not be surprising to see this same pattern at Chocolá and the Shook Altar having originally been displayed not in but near Chocolá. Art History, Narrative Depiction, and Iconography We will now discuss the principle ideological themes on the monument. Shook and Heizer identified two personages. That a single figure is depicted is also possible; what Shook and Heizer interpreted as the second figure, a head like that of the principal figure shown in left-profile, may be more abstractly iconic than narrative, or having a nonhuman referent—a deity agent or actor. However, whether the carving depicts one figure or two is not critical to our argument. The principal figure is a ruler, interpretable by iconography or abstract symbols we recognize as conventions of Maya rulership. Below the column is a ka’an sky motif, and below that is a helmet circled by a knotted headband of rulership. The principal figure wears a jade earplug, the second figure—the disembodied head—a jade earspool. Both figures wear helmets,

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seen on many if not most of the colossal stone heads from San Lorenzo Tenochtitlán, La Venta, and Tres Zapotes, which represent rulers (Coe and Diehl 1980). Among its other functions, the monument must have been employed as an altar on which sacrificial rituals were performed. A link between altars and thrones likely represents an evolutionary step, one to the other in ancient Mesoamerica as hereditary rulers came to supplant elected ones. Autosacrifice by the ruler took the place of sacrificial ritual performed on the altar in front of the stela, the stela evolving by Classic times to include hieroglyphic texts recording personal and dynastic histories of the ruler as his history conflated with cosmic history and the beginning of time. If there are two figures, the principal one occupies the central position in the carving and is body-front to view; both face left or “outward” (Shook and Heizer 1976: 2). Acknowledging Shook and Heizer’s difference from us on such a seemingly simple problem—whether one or two figures are depicted—and in addition to the problem of correctly interpreting the iconography, other difficulties arise. The anatomy(ies) is(are) highly unusual because of the distortion of a pair of greatly lengthened limbs belonging apparently to what Shook and Heizer identify as the principal figure. According to Shook and Heizer, the visible limbs represent, left, an arm, the right a leg. What Shook and Heizer interpret as the principal figure’s legs—one visible, the other implied—may not be legs at all. Where at least one of the two limbs terminates, above the head of the principal figure, is a hand with palm toward the viewer; this appears to grasp the other encircling limb’s (arm’s?) end—hand clasping hand. However, the long encircling limbs appear to emerge below the waist of the principal figure. Further complicating interpretation, the portion of the extended limbs in the upper half of the depiction appears to be divided more or less equally by the scoring of a line—does this division mean to depict both arms and legs? That legs are depicted in some way may be reinforced by the soles of two disembodied feet positioned by themselves below the grasped encirclement and to either side of the upper elements of the principal figure’s crown, helmet or headdress. Shook and Heizer characterized the two figures as “contortionists” or acrobats (1976: 1–2), citing other examples in Olmec art. But to which figure—accepting there are two for the moment—do the leg and arm belong? If these are legs, do they belong to the principal figure and extend up, around, and over his head? Shook and Heizer assert they do not belong to the principal figure, but instead to the (otherwise) disembodied head,

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“whose torso proceeds in a circle running counterclockwise around the perimeter of the stone,” and that “Person 2’s chest areas lies [sic] behind the lower waist of Person 1” (Shook and Heizer 1976: 2). A third possibility is that the left “leg” belongs to one of the figures, the right “arm” to the other; “the two men have themselves into two interlocked circles” (1976). Why such contortion would be depicted, or what it means, Shook and Heizer do not venture to explain; we offer our analysis here, in which not so much the contortion but simply the great elongation of the legs thematically signifies long-distance travel—giant legs capable of taking giant steps. Perhaps in support of Shook and Heizer’s interpretation of the anatomies, the sculptor seems to have sought to create, in a more purely stylistic way, a kind of trompe l’oeil. We propose this because what otherwise would represent the waist line for the principal figure’s waist appears either to superimpose the encircling limbs over the principal figure, occupying a different spatial plane, or to be an overlapping ornamental cinch or buckle of the principal figure’s belt, indicating that the limbs belong to this figure. If the former, a compression of space may be rendered; this in itself lends the depiction a hallucinatory effect, an effect also derived from the bilateral symmetry of the limbs. More or less standard in art historical analysis is the observation that any work designed to produce among other reactions a response to aesthetic elements—what we call “art” and which has as its intent the appreciation of form in and of itself—isolates, either by the delimitation of a physical frame around the depiction, or as a full-round object in space. The intention is to accomplish a standing out, in the mind of the viewer, a kind of pointing to the representation. The effect of this ekstasis and deixis, together with whatever may be its narrative and/or iconographic content, is to universalize its particularity or particularities: the specific becomes a statement about the universal. This interpretation would fit with a depiction of a deity or a ruler with deity aspects. In addition, the aesthetic framing of the carving can be dictated by the natural physical limits of the medium, in this case, a probably naturally flat or partially reshaped boulder stone of circular shape that required the sculptor to fit his statement or message within the shape. This exploitation of the limits of at most a partially reshaped natural shape we also find to be one of the stylistic characteristics of the Preclassic art of Kaminaljuyu, that is, obeying a horror vacui (Parsons 1986: 48, describing Kaminaljuyu Stela 4). A boldly imaginative use of the circular space of the stone’s surface

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seems in contrast with the subtlety of the low relief. The sophistication of this contrast is further advanced by the near symmetry of the design, left half to right half, suggesting the bilateral symmetry in the art of Chavín de Huántar, Peru—an Early Horizon art style and site coincidentally correlating temporally with the Maya Early and Middle Preclassic—because of how it distorts the perspective to suggest greater depth than the low relief permits.31 As mentioned, the kind of double take by the mind’s eye lends a hallucinatory immediacy to the design. Whatever the energized, immanent power of the depiction, it appears to constitute an emblematic statement replete with what undoubtedly were icons or symbols with immediate and concrete power, but also which must have been well-established conventions by this time in Olmec civilization. Considering further the round form of the monument, which thematically is mimed by the encircling limbs in the depiction, the monument and its message may represent a claim of totality of reference or inference symbolically and ideologically. The world is the orbit, or ambit, of the figure or figures depicted, or the world that is referred to their frame of reference, in a sense, belongs to them: the world of the figures is as far as the feet will carry them and their power or influence, distances that are great. If the anatomy of the figure(s) is intentionally startling and not simple to take in at first glance, interpreting the iconic elements is perhaps less difficult, as they include conventions employed by the Late Preclassic and Classic Maya. As noted in Chapter 6, the principal figure’s headdress includes, emblematically, a sphere mounted over a column or cylinder, suggesting the three large stone spheres atop columns in front of Izapa Mound 30a, Group B Plaza, and Izapa Miscellaneous Monuments 5 and 6, from Group B. Interpretation of these spheres ranges from representing ballgame markers (Parsons 1986: 64) to “hearthstones of creation” (Laughton 1997: 216 and Taube 1998: 439); they may also represent astronomical phenomena—solar, for example—and thereby possibly have solstitial or equinoctial connotations. Itinerancy For the purposes of our proposition of intensive cultivation of cacao for trade, among the iconic elements on the Shook Altar, we focus specifically on those representing the theme of travel, movement, or itinerancy, and of merchant activity. The previous analysis seems to fit with an interpretation

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of itinerancy and such commerce on the monument. Shook and Heizer comment: .

Monument 13 La Venta (Drucker 1952: Pl. 63) bears on its flat surface four “glyphs,” one of which is a single left footprint. There could be some symbolism involved in this glyph which has nothing to do with contortionists. However, in the Guatemalan sculpture we have two footprints in anatomically correct right and left positions. (Shook and Heizer 1976:2) In a paper on “deity relationships in Mesoamerican cosmologies,” drawing on epigraphy, linguistics, and iconography, Gillespie and Joyce (1998) proposed a link between God L, or Itzamnaaj, described as the principal god of the underworld for the Classic Maya, and the itinerancy of commerce (Miller and O’Neil 2014: 139), war, and a “center-and-periphery cosmology” for rulership (Gillespie and Joyce 1998: 280). Specifically, they link three gods or deity entities, Chaakh, Ek Chuah, the god of trade and the underworld, and Hobnil—the latter two known from the Postclassic—to cacao (1998: 284). The argument Gillespie and Joyce make is suggestive with regard to the existence of a cacao industry at Chocolá, permitted by our interpretation of the Shook Altar. They propose that God L’s associations include “itinerancy,” suggested to us in particular by the long encircling limb(s) and the footprints, representing the “walking” of merchant travel or commerce. They also argue that the Maya ruler was conceived of as being both stationary or fixed and in motion through surrogates, merchant tradesmen. Their argument is explicitly comparative. Like Kaplan’s 2000 paper on Kaminaljuyu Monument 65 (and like his 1999 doctoral dissertation), Gillespie and Joyce’s reasoning, at times, reaches completely outside the Maya and Mesoamerica for some of its argument, drawing explicitly on research and data from Africa, Asia, and Europe. Anticipating criticism from some, does this detract from the value of their, and our, interpretations and conclusions? An art historian criticizes Kaplan’s analyses of Kaminaljuyu sculpture for containing a great deal of “speculation . . . based on sweeping cross-cultural comparisons and assumptions” (L. Henderson 2013: 12); “speculation,” however, seems more appropriate to art history, whereas comparison goes to the root of the anthropological project, that is, seeking to determine cross-cultural explanation. Specifically, cores and peripheries, to the Maya, may plausibly be

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understood to pertain to a cosmological theme. Although Gillespie and Joyce do not specifically mention this, such an ambit of the ruler has many examples and much support, comparatively, as Kaplan’s 1999 doctoral dissertation explored and analyzed in a systematic review. The relevance of this we now discuss. If God L represents, in some form, the Postclassic merchant god Ek Chuah, he was also the principal god of the underworld, whose customary depiction in Classic Maya times shows him within a cave representing the underworld (or access to it). By situating the principal figure on the Shook Altar in the center of the monument and within a set of completely encircling limbs, a cave may be suggested. The dark-complexioned Ek Chuah closely resembles Yacatecuhtli, the tutelary deity of the pochteca, whose staff, made of bamboo and with paper ornament, cut to the four corners and spattered with rubber, was the pochteca’s great ritual implement (compare Kaplan 1999: 417). Landa (1941: 164) identified Ek Chuah as a god of cacao. Accordingly, if we can extend backward in time these various deities, functions, and meanings, cacao as a surplus crop grown for trade may be evidenced by this carved Olmec or Olmecoid monument that we attribute to Chocolá. But certainly more and stronger support for this interpretation is called for. Comparative Mythology: “Kings,” Merchants, and Commerce Although our arguments are based on many assumptions—many, at present, tenuous—the Shook Altar may serve as a demonstration of Gillespie and Joyce’s argument, and specifically within the context of Chocolá and cacao; it also seems to fit well with analyses of the relationship between long-distance trade and world-systems core-periphery dynamics of precapitalist political power and economic accumulation. Before explaining what we mean by this, a brief discussion of the comparative phenomenon of “kingship” is necessary. From the very large comparative literature on “kingship” worldwide, two very specific themes emerge clearly: twinship and Hocartian “life” (Kaplan 1999). A fitting example of rites associated with Indo-European “kingship” themes is the ashvamedha, the Vedic horse-sacrifice ceremony. This extraordinary ritual distills many of the most essential elements of a worldwide ideology of “kingship,” based on ethnography, history, ethnohistory, archaeology, comparative mythology, and comparative religion (Kaplan 1999). In this ceremony, once a year, a horse—symbol in comparative IndoEuropean mythology of both the “king” and of expansion of the “king’s”

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body, the realm, the nation, or the land—is set free to roam freely wherever it wishes, at the end of which time it is killed by decapitation; the roaming of the horse determined ideologically if not also practically or geographically the ever-expanding boundaries of the nation. The “king’s” ambit, discussed by Gillespie and Joyce (1998), might also be related to the pochteca of Mexica society, or to the oztomeca, traveling merchants accompanied by military, underscoring the fact that commerce was forced on other groups as part of Aztec expansion. Symbolically, and in their belief systems as well as comparatively among many other groups, wealth comes from the underworld, and is related to fertility and “life,” in the sense that British anthropologist Hocart, author of an early and influential theoretical and comparative account of “kingship” (1927), intended it. Hocart identified the “king” with “life” in the sense of existential continuation and expansion. Frazer’s nineteenth-century study, The Golden Bough, determined that the union in “kingship” into one entity is of a priest/ administrator and sacrificer, on the one hand, and a dying god of fertility, on the other. Even more specifically, in several studies (for Indo-European cultures, for example, by Dumézil, for example, 1996, and by Lincoln, for Africa, for example, 1981) the comparative mythology of the “king” as dualnatured, sacral and civil, identifies a mythological twinship, embodied very often in cultures throughout space and time, in twin beings or personages. For the Maya, the “Hero Twins” of Junajpu and Xbalanque provide, in this analysis, a partial example as they are, in the Popol Vuh, “first kings” (Coe 1989) and progenitors of the “people of blood and maize”: Xbalanque, a sacrificial victim depicted as a decapitated jaguar, and Junajpu, a slayer of underworld lords, could correspond, in some ways, to the “dying god of fertility” and the priestly administrator, respectively. Similar recourse to comparative accounts of “kingship” around the world finds descriptions of the royal ambit. In medieval English kingship, for example, the king is almost always in motion—visiting vassals and not only affirming loyalty but ideologically revivifying, and bringing fertility to, different parts of the realm. It thus becomes evident how Gillespie and Joyce’s proposal (1998) of the ruler figure “in motion,” albeit by surrogates (in their argument, merchants), can explain this “motion” as a part of an inherent action and idea of “kingship,” namely, expansion of the realm as the process of continuing “life,” in Hocart’s sense (compare Beidelman 1966). The Shook Altar’s depiction of figures, and the particular iconography employed, seem to us as both having essentially to do with expressing themes

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of Hocartian “life” as ever-continuing expansion, and, also, of highly organized trade. Given the cosmological implications of cacao both in Maya cosmology and in elite and, specifically, ruler worldviews and ideology, Martin’s (2010: 162) reference to the “ambivalence” directed toward “trade and traders” is relevant because of the suggestion that foreign travel, not merely contact, has its own implications. For one, this suspicion is extended, in Martin’s theory, to the underworld as both a place of wealth and as a place of “otherness.” “Otherness,” the alien, also is attached to foreign places in general, and thus also to the preciousness of the foreign, explicitly, for example, in notions of the “stranger-king” (Sahlins 1981, 1985). Sahagún’s informants stated that there were two kinds of merchants among the Aztec, “principal”/“vanguard” and “spying” (Sahagún 1959, vol. 9: 3 passim). Significantly, both kinds of merchants departed at night from their homes in Tenochtitlan in boats on Lake Texcoco. Since they traveled only by night (Sahagún 1959, vol. 9: 18), departing and returning unseen to conceal their hoards and avoid accusations of social pretensions beyond their class, it is understandable why their special gods were underworld deities, who are otherwise associated with great riches (Kaplan 1999: 417). Again, even without supportive physical evidence of the kind described in Appendix E, a circumstantial case can be made for an early cacao commerce at Chocolá based, first, simply on the emphasis and importance of cacao to the ancient Maya and, second, on Chocolá’s location in the prime cacao-growing area of Mesoamerica. Accepting these circumstantial indications, and the fact that the Shook Altar is Olmec or Olmecoid, as Shook and Heizer (1976) describe, and, further, taking into consideration the other possibilities just discussed, we can now summarize our larger claim. Summary In sum, we suggest the existence of surplus agriculture and trade in cacao at Preclassic Chocolá not only because (1) the ficha refers to the Shook Altar, (2) the Shook Altar is Olmecoid, (3) the depiction of leg(s) and footprint represent Itzamnaaj/Ek Chuah as merchant deities, but also because, (4) the sculpture may have been carved at Chocolá, and (5) as we noted above, placement of the Shook Altar outside of but near to Chocolá may have served as a marker as part of an organized system of trade in the same way theorized for Takalik Abaj Monument 1. We would be devoid of humility if we failed to acknowledge that even if our analysis of the Shook Altar is unfettered by questions of its precise

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provenience—where it was first carved and displayed—the monument itself might appear as a prop in a Sherlock Holmes tale. Our mysterious clue is a torn scrap of paper bearing a tantalizingly perfunctory message on which Ed Shook scrawled in pencil, “surface material around Olmec sculpture.” The fact is, we do not know if the “Olmec sculpture” Shook refers to is the Shook Altar. He might just as well have been referring to another Chocolá sculpture, although the only other possibility we can think of, for now, is Monument 13, the headless torso that Paredes Umaña also found, removed from Chocolá where Shook and John Graham had first encountered it—a better authenticated provenience because of photos Graham took during his few days, in 1987, digging an exploratory trench into Mound 2. This latter monument (Figure 6.5b), also tossed by the chaotic gusts of time and happenstance, is the one Paredes Umaña stumbled on in 2003 in the municipal park in Santo Tomás, the slightly larger modern town 2 km northnortheast of Chocolá, where someone had taken it sometime after Shook and Graham encountered it in Chocolá, and then, fashioning a new head and shoulders for it, used it as display. Even that the Shook Altar was from San Antonio Suchitepéquez is second- or third-hand hearsay; Shook writes he was “told this,” surmising workers found it in “agricultural fields like other” Southern Maya Region monuments. Yet the distinctive low-relief style does closely resemble Takalik Abaj Monument 1, a nonportable boulder with its clearly Olmec or Olmecoid figure found in situ, or where it had been carved, in the riverbed of the Nil River outside the architectural precincts of Takalik Abaj. However, from other comments Shook makes in his paper with Heizer, the Altar might come from Takalik Abaj itself, although how it got to either San Antonio Suchitepéquez, or to Chocolá, is just another part of the jigsaw puzzle created by the unraveling of the evidence of distinct moments and events in the past. In the end, it does not matter for our purposes here whether or not the Shook Altar was carved at Chocolá, because the analysis we make of it, if correct, would still support the proposition that a Preclassic trade existed in the Southern Maya Region, where Chocolá is located epicentrally. Once again, the other elements of the assertion—that there was a Cacao Heartland that included the piedmont of Suchitepequez, that Chocolá grows cacao today and also lies in the center of that Heartland, that the ancient city had harnessed coordinated labor power to build and maintain a sophisticated water management system by as early as 500 BC, and that, our first

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test for cacao residues in Chocolá vessels, from a very limited sampling universe testing a handful of sherds from tens of thousands located, gave positive results for ten vessels—all, to us, provide indirect but highly plausible support. Many Questions Remain Obviously, and despite our archaeological findings and whatever plausible assumptions we can make from art history and ethnohistory, more must be determined in order to make a firmer case for our proposition of a Late Middle Preclassic cacao trade at or from Chocolá. If we temporally bookend our research target—Chocolá in the Preclassic—with, early, the first appearance of domesticated cacao by circa 1900 BC, and, late, Classic Maya use of and ideology surrounding cacao, followed by Late Postclassic ethnohistory and post-Conquest accounts, a distinct trajectory was followed, with a speculated particular development along that trajectory at Chocolá. Clocking forward from first domestication, more than a thousand years pass from first evidence of cacao consumption before the first archaeological clues of cultivation of cacao groves or orchards appear. By circa 600 BC, spouted vessels in Belize were used to pour cacao beverages; Powis and colleagues propose essentially that relatively very small clusters of trees were grown and tended in warm, wet gullies (Powis et al. 2002), roughly coeval with our proposed groves at Chocolá, in the Cacao Heartland, by 500 BC. Mesoamericanists have assumed that a comparatively very large trade and commerce in cacao existed in Classic Maya times (most recently, for example, Tokovinine and Beliaev 2013). Our next fairly clear evidence comes 3,300–3,500 years from first domestication, with apparently endemic fighting among rivals and claimants for the cacao trade in Suchitepéquez and Escuintla, indicated for the Late Classic by scenes and iconography at Cotzumalguapa, and by ethnohistorical accounts from shortly before the Spanish Conquest. In 1502, Columbus encountered the canoe carrying cacao beans, and Aztec tribute lists and a wealth of colonial documents attest to the importance of cacao in the Mexica tribute empire. In reprise, the idea of a cacao heartland is supported by colonial documents attesting that “ . . . cacao cultivation and commerce were the dominant economic activities for both Indians and Spaniards (and other non-Indians) in colonial Soconusco” (Gasco 1996a: 390); the Soconusco subregion was controlled by the Aztecs for at least 40 years before Alvarado arrived to conquer Guatemala (Gasco and Voorhies 1989), which

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we can interpret at least in part as reflecting great Mexica interest in this great cacao source subregion. Because of archaeological discoveries it is clear, accordingly, that (1) cultivation and cultural elaboration of cacao were far earlier, and (2) distribution was likely even more extensive in Mesoamerica than what ethnohistory indicates. Ethnohistory and iconography and narrative scenes on different media make clear how much importance the Classic Maya attached to cacao, so much, indeed, that structures of trade and commerce had to have been built over the course of many centuries in Mesoamerica and certainly by Classic times. Certain questions arise from world-systems theorists who extend the notion of cores and peripheries to precapitalist societies and cultures (see also papers in Chase-Dunn and Hall 1991a). If cores and peripheries do represent a workable model anciently, were the cacao sources necessarily peripheries, as suppliers of the raw good? Or, because of the lack of a strong core elsewhere, were they themselves cores because of the wealth they gained from trade? How, over time, did these apparent disproportions develop out of an initial equilibrium or fundamentally equal disposition of energy, and what kind of detail would be observable at Chocolá in the Late Middle Preclassic? Can we assume that a disproportionately large amount of the energy—labor, hydraulic, and otherwise—available at a source like Chocolá was devoted to a cacao industry, and how would this manifest archaeologically? Still other questions remain. If cacao was widespread in Late Middle Preclassic Suchitepéquez, how did indigenous perspectives change? Commodity producers’ communities, or cities, are seemingly different from cities or places stimulating religious pilgrimage, as they are from “ports-of-trade” or centers of a significant redistributive enterprise, as they are from political capitals;32 some cities seem to have combined many of these regional, or extraregional, functions, such as Kaminaljuyu, but, for our purposes, how would a smaller center in the Guatemalan piedmont function? Were the relationships between elites and commoners somehow different from these relationships in other, non-resource-rich centers? And did Chocolá form alliances with other communities and centers to protect the trade routes for the cacao? Was cacao trade from Chocolá early on trade in a prestige or a staple good (see Johnson and Earle 2000: 257 on the dichotomy between “wealth” and “staple finance”)? When might the barter or goods-in-kind trade be considered to have become “commodity” trade, and what was the

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nature of the surplus benefit or profit? What part of this profit belonged to the individual, or household, what part to the community? Absent other data, if surplus cacao was grown for trade, can we assume some intermediate model between horticulturalist economics and commodity trade (for the latter, using ethnohistorically described Central Mexican merchant trade—the pochteca—and/or Maya, ppolom), hence, less centralized (Berdan 1989: 99)? Notes 1. In this volume we discuss the theoretical implications of these discoveries. Readers can find most of the raw archaeological data in our reports to IDAEH, accessible online from UPF. 2. Davis-Salazar (2003: 279) prefers the term “water management” to “hydraulics” because it is more inclusive of the variety of water management by the Maya than is the latter. 3. The literature on Teotihuacan’s ideology is very large. We limit ourselves to citing only a few of the sources on the ideology linked to water. James Brady (1997, Brady et al. 1997 and other publications) has revealed how caves, natural or humanly extended or made, throughout the lowland area were fundamental to city design and ideology, for example, as links to the underworld. See also: http://arqueologiamexicana.mx. 4. The literature on the ideology of water among the ancient Maya is also too large for us to summarize except to mention, in addition to French et al., a substantial early contribution by Hellmuth (1987), discussions in Schele and Miller’s (1986) volume, and later papers by B. Fash (2005) for Copan; for a recent paper, see Coltman (2015). 5. “Hydraulic head” is the force exerted by a column of liquid expressed by the height of the liquid above the point at which the pressure is measured (http://www.engineeringdictionary.org/HYDRAULIC_HEAD). 6. Our translation from the Spanish. 7. Electronic document, published online at http://www.famsi.org/reports/03101es/94 marroquin/94marroquin.pdf. 8. http://chiapadecorzo.byu.edu. 9. See: https://www.archaeology.org/issues/102-1309/features/1145-maya-king-burial -guatemala-takalik-abaj. 10. We rely on Millon for excerpts from this manuscript, a source Millon cites frequently and extensively and describes as “a letter written . . . by the descendants of those who headed the aboriginal hierarchy at Atitlan at the time of the Conquest” (1955a: 183). 11. We are by no means the first to propose a cacao industry in the area—precisely in Soconusco, which is near Chocolá—in ancient times. Citing McBryde (1947: 33–34) and Thompson (1948), and referring also to Chapman (1975: 140) that the Soconusco area became an Aztec tribute province, using similarly indirect arguments, Lowe et al. (1982: 42-54) assumed a cacao industry existed at ancient Izapa and in the Soconusco area, in general. 12. Another cacao pot employs a “locking lid” with a cavity in the rim to catch a protuberance or hook. (http://research.mayavase.com/kerrmaya_hires.php?vase=4124).

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13. http://www.Yucatáncompass.com/article/69/2500-year-old-cacao-residue-discov ered-in-the-maya-puuc-region-of-Yucatán. 14. We are indebted to epigraphers, prominently including David Stuart (see, for example, Stuart 2005 and Stuart 2006), for much of our understanding of Maya writing. 15. See: https://decipherment.files.wordpress.com/2013/09/stuartceramictexts.pdf. 16. http://research.mayavase.com/kerrmaya.html. 17. http://research.mayavase.com/kerrmaya_hires.php?vase=631. 18. http://research.mayavase.com/kerrmaya_hires.php?vase=5615. 19. http://research.mayavase.com/kerrmaya_hires.php?vase=6312. 20. http://research.mayavase.com/kerrmaya_hires.php?vase=8234. 21. http://research.mayavase.com/kerrmaya_hires.php?vase=1941. 22. Chinchilla Mazariegos (2017) has reexamined what the seventeenth-century Popol Vuh means for interpretation of ancient Maya art and ideology. 23. http://research.mayavase.com/kerrmaya_hires.php?vase=4691. 24. “The “Jaguar God of the Underworld” remains an amorphous and still unclearly identified entity, associated by some scholars with Xbalanque (for example, Reents-Budet et al. 1994: 206); he also might represent aspects of a “Chaak-Xib-Chaak” sacrificing god (compare Taube 1992: 24; Schele and Miller 1986: 215). 25. Mathews first suggested that a jaguar-marked figure depicted on Classic period ceramics represented Xbalanque (cited in Coe 1978: 58, 60); and see Lounsbury 1985: 53. 26. A waterlily jaguar is depicted on many Classic Maya vessels. See, for example: http://research.mayavase.com/kerrmaya_hires.php?vase=5070. The waterlily, floating on the watery surface between the middle world and the underworld, is associated with sacrifice (Hellmuth 1987: 160-165, Martin 2002: 19). 27. Although without ethnohistorical support, Green (2014) suggestively notes the possible importance of the sun at nadir, exactly opposed to the sun at noon, in archaeoastronomical alignments. 28. A third set would be Jun Batz’s and Jun Chouen. 29. See, for example, Wallerstein 1974, 1979, 1980, 1989. 30. Currently, the Shook Altar is in the possession of the Museo de Arte Precolombino y Vidrio Moderno (VIGUA), in Antigua, Guatemala. 31. For both of these representational devices, compare http://www.lib.berkeley.edu/ ANTH/emeritus/rowe/pub/chavin/index.html. 32. Fox (1977) usefully formalized types of ancient population centers.

8 Conclusions

In conclusion, we suggest that three general reminders can be taken into account about what we describe in this monograph. The first is that the Southern Maya Region is a category that has provided a much-needed name to a poorly known part of Mesoamerica, but it is where a diversity of human groups once lived. In that sense the name “Maya” may be misleading. Nevertheless, we have used it throughout this book, following previous efforts and discussions regarding its powers as a bridging effort to both past and future research (Love and Kaplan 2011). The Maya constitute a cultural category as much as a research field, which was defined and configured through substantial efforts beginning in the nineteenth century and continued in the twentieth, predominantly by researchers foreign to the region; we discuss this in Chapter 1. Substantial funding was devoted to explore the Maya area and to define what it was and what it was not; those efforts brought great light but also some shadows to the way scholars think about the past, and with implications for the present. Our focus on Chocolá as an ancient settlement has been justified, in part, by the relative scarcity of archaeological projects on the Pacific coast, in the piedmont, and in the adjacent highlands of southeastern Mesoamerica. A second reminder is that this focus has also been supported by the long-held but, ironically, little-investigated assumption that these subregions played an important if not vital role in early developments to high culture in Mesoamerica, and particularly in Maya civilization. Considerations about how scholars thought and in some ways still think about this region are provided in Chapter 1, which also sets the context of Chocolá in the Southern Maya Region. Chocolá is one of nine Preclassic sites in the region known thus far with carved stelae representing ruler portraits. The recognition of the regional process behind this fact has taken too long for Maya and Mesoamerican archaeologists to allow for in actual research. We can now say that a regional development leading to the emergence

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of city-states in the Middle to Late Preclassic transition took place in three distinct regions in the south: (1) the Mexican Gulf Coast, (2) the Pacific piedmont of Guatemala and the Chiapas Highlands, and (3) the Pacific coast and adjacent valleys and highlands of western El Salvador. Using but one criterion—the early calendric inscriptions from Tres Zapotes, the Tuxtla statuette, and stelae from Chiapa de Corzo, Takalik Abaj, El Baúl, as well as some unprovenienced inscriptions—this process took place over a period of some 240 years (Macri 2011: 179). Chocolá took part in this regional process as evidenced not only by Monument 1, but also by the Middle-to-Late Preclassic development of a particular manifestation of social complexity; we have sought to explain this through the documentation of some of Chocolá’s Middle and Late Preclassic architecture, through the ancient city’s Late Middle Preclassic sophisticated water management system, and through our finding of direct evidence of cacao consumption in Middle and Late Preclassic ceramic vessels—the first archaeological evidence of cacao consumption in the southern piedmont of Guatemala—and indirect evidence of a cacao industry at the ancient site. Cacao residues were found in ten samples from Preclassic contexts: five bowls, three jars, and two plates (Appendix E), which we suggest is further, albeit highly tentative, support for our theory of intensive Preclassic cacao arboriculture in a southern piedmont Cacao Heartland and, accordingly, of a specific material basis, long-distance trade of a highly valued commodity, which could explain not only Chocolá’s rise to wealth and power but that of other early large Southern Maya Region centers such as Takalik Abaj, Izapa, and Chiapa de Corzo. More and better sampling should help to better understand cacao-use patterns in the Suchitepéquez, Guatemala piedmont and its original presence there, beginning likely in the Early Preclassic. Finally, together with the research from other cacao investigators cited in this paper, our cacao findings are helping to build a picture of the antecedent processes and patterns leading to the powerful role cacao played materially and ideologically in later Lowlands Classic Maya civilization, and elsewhere in later Mesoamerica. The third reminder: the living context of Chocolá today in the Guatemalan south, where modern development intertwined with most of the death squad activities and resulted, finally, with genocide, also calls for reemphasis. As we have suggested, we question the “ethics of no intervention” of past archaeologies, as these have never occurred in political vacuums, and both epistemology and ethics become involved. In partial response to these

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concerns, for our work to extract information about the past, we assume the current inhabitants of Chocolá are as much our moral and civil peers as our hosts, as we continue to work at Chocolá only as long as they find that arrangement to be beneficial to their interests. Indeed, in as best a manner as we could devise, we sought, often to explain to our hosts and partners our scientific interests in Chocolá. One large reason, we explained to them in non-specialist terms they could understand, is that we archaeologists work in a region where early developments in many ways prefigured what has come to be accepted as canonical for the ancient speakers of Maya: early hieroglyphic writing, a particularly influential form of a rulership cult, long-distance trade, distinct social hierarchies, and technological achievements such as water management systems. It is likely, also, we explained, that the extraordinary Maya Long Count calendar originated in the Southern Maya Region. Hearkening back to the second reminder, the recognition of these features by the scholarly community has been slower than the evidence merits. Possible reasons for this also are discussed in Chapter 1, where some space is given to explain the thermometer theory, a heating up of the sophisticated traits of high culture in the south, progressively moving north. This theory, while needing further verification, seems to us productive and congruent with much of the evidence; however, it continues to be insufficient to explain the development of the Preclassic world in its interregional complexity. New information from deep strata in the Maya Central and Northern Lowlands points to at least coeval developments north and south, a claim that in no way derails the need for more research in the south. About the Lowland Maya and putative relationships and influences back and forth with the Southern Maya Region, Inomata et al. (2014: 403) declare: Debates on Preclassic social processes in Mesoamerica have always oscillated between two poles: one arguing for one-directional influence from precocious political centers or regions (Clark and Pye 2000; Diehl 2004; Gifford 1976; Kaplan 2011a) and the other proposing mutual stimuli, or lattices of interaction, among multiple entities (Demarest 1986, 1989; Hammond 1989; Love 2011a). Our position is that no single model adequately describes the entirety of Preclassic social processes. Instead of assuming an overarching pattern, we need to carefully trace everchanging social dynamics. In some periods,

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differences in political power among regions may have shaped social processes significantly, whereas in other cases, lattice patterns of interaction or local factors may have predominated. (Inomata et al. 2014: 403) By contrast, we assume that sociopolitical and cultural innovations— for example, writing and “kingship”—must be distinguished among themselves. We certainly agree that no single model is likely to account for “the entirety of Preclassic social processes”; we do not assert this nor have we ever done so. Instead, we suggest that certain specific processes and events may be unique to a place and time. All available evidence worldwide supports the theory that the pristine invention of writing was very rare; accordingly, it seems to us that writing would have been invented singly and individually, and then diffused. If the Olmecs are to be ascribed this pristine invention, Maya writing, quite different graphically or orthographically from Olmec texts, similarly would not have taken place according to a lattice model, but rather at distinct places and times. “Kingship,” defined as a comparative phenomenon throughout time and space in human history (Kaplan 1999, 2000), is another matter; several elements contributing to the Classic Maya model of rulership seem clearly to have originated in the lowlands. However, in reply to Inomata’s proposition, we reiterate that the particular Southern Maya Region traits of “kingship,” represented signally by the stela-altar cult, would have occurred at distinct places and times. The point we make is that with inventions or innovations that are specific to a significant degree, a similarly distinct and specific origin must be assumed. What We Have Learned about Chocolá

Following a pattern discerned elsewhere in the ancient Maya world, it seems clear that Chocolá was built as a sacred cosmic center. Situated between naturally occurring ravines produced by fast-flowing rivers and near similar feeders to high discharge rivers running south, and on a single great plateau at roughly 500–950 MAMSL, the people of the ancient city gazed up to volcanoes and down to the lower piedmont and plains and, in clear weather, to the estuaries and beaches of the Pacific Ocean. In addition to providing a first map of the ancient city core, encompassing at least 1 × 4.15 km and comprising at least 59 remnant formal structures spread throughout the artificially modified natural terrain—reportedly

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out of at least 100 such structures originally, large and small—we have come to understand how significant corporate labor must have created terraces for the city. We have identified three distinct areas in the ancient Preclassic layout of the site: an elite sector to the north which would have benefited from access to the cleanest water; a central sector which, because of its large or very large structures, clearly was administrative in function; and a southern sector, on flatter terrain, which would have contained commoner dwellings and, based on proveniences of vessels with cacao residues near the large low Structure 5-1, which we believe functioned to oversee intensive agriculture, possibly cacao arboriculture, for long-distance trade (see below). We excavated in all three of the sectors we identified, recovering extensive data on ancient Chocolense construction techniques, in which adobe and cobblestones were used as fill for massive pyramidal buildings reaching over 20 meters in height. Some of the largest structures from Chocolá were built using almost no stone and very little ceramic debris; Structure 2-1, excavated originally by Robert Burkitt in the early twentieth century and reexcavated by us in 2003, provides a case in point. We interpret the structure inside Mound 2 as a prime example of the first massive constructions in the piedmont during the Middle Preclassic period. Other structures we excavated, such as Structure 7-1 and, perhaps even more notably, the structure or structures within Mound 9, did employ abundant ceramic debris within the fill, indicating that by the time of construction, the community was home to a much larger population. These data, together with other evidence from our ceramics, have permitted us to propose a long time span for settlements at Chocolá. Evidence of the Middle and Late Preclassic periods was obtained in almost every test pit and grid excavation operation throughout the site, and Ocos-like ceramics, dating conceivably to 1200 BC also were found; ceramic fragments from the excavations weigh more than a ton. The retrieval, in situ, of the potbelly Monument 30, found broken and abandoned on the stairway mounting to the southern façade of Structure 6-1, adds to the strong case of Late Middle-Late Preclassic developments at the site, as do the radiocarbon dates (see Appendix D) discussed in Chapters 4 and 5. Analysis of obsidian collected from all three sectors of the city and from different stratigraphic levels (Appendix C) reveals that the favorite source at Chocolá throughout the centuries was one located 70 km to the northeast; fully 82.64 percent of our obsidian sample came from San Martín Jilotepeque, followed by El Chayal (15.76%), 100 km to the northeast,

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and 1.29 percent from Ixtepeque, 200 km to the east. What this shows for Chocolá is that distance-to-source was a clear criterion for the provision of raw materials, but it also shows relatively few samples from unidentified sources, ruling out the importance for Chocolá, to the west, of Tajumulco which also is only 70 km away. Accordingly, we can now include Chocolá as a participant in the San Martín Jilotepeque exchange system, which, according to Love (2011: 71–72) also includes San Andrés Semetabaj, Takalik Abaj, Izapa, and Chiapa de Corzo. Chocolá thus would have participated in some way in an Olmec-influenced region, as evidenced by the Shook Altar, which we suggest, in the absence of another large site nearby, belonged to Chocolá’s monumental corpus. The vegetation of Chocolá corresponds to a subtropical wet forest, and its life zone, by the Holdridge classification, corresponds to a Warm Subtropical Wet Forest of the south. As demonstrated by our fieldwork, a Subtropical Montane Wet Forest ecosystem appears at Chocolá, that is, 900 m above sea level. This ecozone is characterized by the presence of cypress (Cupressus lusitanica), pino blanco (Pinus ayacahuite), pino triste (Pinus pseudostrobus), pino de ocote or rojo (P. hartwegii, P. montezumae) and pino hembra (P. maximinoi), aliso (Alnus spp.), several oaks (Quercus spp.) and manita canac (Chiranthodendron pentadactylon), traditionally used in Guatemala as a flavor supplement in cacao beverages. Paleoenvironmental data recovered from excavations in all three areas of the site (see Appendix A) has identified Terminalia and Pinus, evidence that the ancient people of Chocolá were using firewood from two ecosystems. The Terminalia morphotype is the key marker for the Humid Subtropical Low Forest; likewise, the Pinus morphotype points to the Montane Subtropical Wet Forest. From this evidence, we speculate Chocolá had access to resources bridging into at least two distinctly different ecosystems. Crops grown at Chocolá included corn (Zea mays), beans (Phaseolus sp.), squash (Cucurbita spp.), and—notably as our palaeobotanical study has obtained the first evidence of its use in the Pacific coast of Mesoamerica—the manioc or yuca root crop (Manihot esculenta). Evidence of fruit trees recovered from controlled excavations suggests a fit with the orchard model seen at Cerén, Tikal, and Chinikihá, with palms (Arecacea), anonas (Annona sp.), sapotes (Pouteria sapota), jocote (Spondias mombin), nance (Byrsonima crassifolia), and avocado (Persea americana); our theory of intensive cacao cultivation and/or pataxte (Type Malvaceae) has received strong support from our identification of cacao residues in Chocolá pottery. Cacao production and consumption in the coastal and piedmont areas

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of southern Guatemala has been known for quite some time, specifically from evidence presented by iconography carved on monuments at Late Classic Cotzumalguapa, and by early colonial documents, including descriptions of native tribute. With our evidence thus far, the question for us at Chocolá and for the Southern Maya Region as a whole is not if, but when, intensive cultivation of this crop fueled advances to complexity economically and culturally at Chocolá as well as at other early polities in the region. Identification of Early Preclassic cacao consumption in coastal Chiapas (Powis et al. 2007) is the oldest evidence we have thus far of this pattern, which appears to represent the beginning of a production model that developed sufficiently to support coastal and piedmont societies rising to their Middle and Late Preclassic period heights. Sixteenth-century colonial documents about cacao production attest to the growth of the cacao industry in which ancient knowledge, fertile lands, and a new tributary system were combined. The most productive cacao-growing region in colonial times was located in the Pacific coast and piedmont of the modern territories of western Chiapas, Mexico; Soconusco, Suchitepéquez, and Escuintla, Guatemala; and Izalcos, El Salvador (Figure 1.6), which has led us to speculate that 2,000 years earlier, this region saw the first intensive cacao production in Southern Mesoamerica, taking place in this proposed Cacao Heartland, and at Chocolá. At Chocolá, placed centrally in this heartland, our evidence of food consumption through organic residues in archaeological ceramics provides a stronger case for discussing ancient human patterns and behaviors than those provided by archaeological identification of seeds and other plant remains in the archaeological record. If this contextual evidence does not, of course, by itself make the case for complex Preclassic developments based significantly on cacao cultivation, we maintain that it adds strongly to their plausibility. To our knowledge, cacao art historical motifs and iconography—including the Chocolá vessel support in the form of a cacao pod—are very scarce in the coastal and piedmont Preclassic archaeological record; however, increasing archaeological evidence of cacao use as food overcomes this seeming opacity, and seems to reinforce our hypothesis of an early cacao production subregion in the Pacific coastal and piedmont areas. The lack of depictions of cacao on sculpture or other media may also simply be a consequence of a tendency, which we might call a “progenitor-inheritor” dynamic, by which source communities of commodities— “progenitors”—would not ideologically elaborate the product as much as recipient communities—“inheritors”—this elaboration caused by distance,

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the magic of the foreign, and privileged access by foreign elites, the makers of public ideology. Much ethnographic and ethnohistoric literature attests to such processes around the world, for example, in many studies of “kingship” in Africa. As discussed in Chapter 7, we have assumed that Chocolá’s water system represents an evolution from a defensive measure, taken against a great and potentially destructive overabundance of water, to exploitation of an asset. We have hypothesized that the development of water control at Chocolá, with its corollary of development of a bureaucracy-laborer social stratification, led to irrigation agriculture immediately to the south of the core of the ancient city, including the possibility, as we argue, of the cultivation of cacao groves. While we have not proven this latter hypothesis, our research goals have been directed toward determining appropriate evidence to test it. We also provide in this monograph the first catalog of Chocolá’s monuments. This effort, we hope, will someday be found very inadequate when at least some of the undoubtedly many more monuments that Chocolá’s artists and artisans produced and that may still exist, might be located. The sad state of affairs of the ancient city’s sculptural art, a tattered tale of diaspora and destruction, greatly hinders any fair reconstruction of the ancient city and its achievements. But even with the catalog we now have, we have provided further evidence of the Southern Maya Region’s importance in sculptural traditions, although greater scrutiny of the political meaning of these sculptures is needed, perhaps as their display played a role in a regional hierarchy of centers, and which represented Preclassic politico-religious institutions. The most prominent example of the latter is the magnificent Chocolá Monument 1, a portrait of a powerful ruler, and a mirror in carving style and meaning to the carving on Stela 10, the great throne from Kaminaljuyu, the greatest political and economic entity in the Late Preclassic Southern Maya Region. Final Thoughts

This monograph is a much-needed closure for a research process that commenced sometime before 2003 with Kaplan’s efforts to secure a field project to explore the ancient site of Chocolá; these efforts led to our first field season, and, with the support of the University of San Carlos of Guatemala and a number of international colleagues, two more long seasons and a fourth that was just beginning. What was to be the fourth was aborted after a few weeks in 2006 because of threats to our volunteers largely instigated

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by evangelical preachers wanting to build large churches where important mounds lie. We can call ourselves sugar cane and coffee plantation archaeologists, not because of our focus on sugar or coffee, but because the ancient sites we work at are often covered by these crops, introduced as part of Spanish colonialism and the postindependence liberal reforms. They are now part of a long tradition that has transformed the way humans interact with the landscape, shaping the economy of southern Guatemala, bringing people from the highlands to work in the fincas and ingenios, where they eventually settled. Because much of what we end up doing as archaeologists involves thinking and acting in response to this historical reality, we usually go out and dig during our field seasons under the eyes of many people not participating in the dig itself, but inspecting our pits, and commenting on what comes out of them. In this work environment, we have access to toilets and houses to live in for four and more months at a time, and we can go to the market in town or to a shopping mall just a few km away by project truck. As opposed to that more often romanticized lowland jungle archaeology, which takes place in the rainforests of the Maya Lowlands, “coffee and sugar plantation archaeology” takes place in areas where, in addition to these great export crops, large settlements have developed. The Pacific coast of Guatemala is connected to the piedmont and Pacific coasts of Chiapas to the west and El Salvador to the east. Where our coffee and sugar cane plantation archaeology takes place, modern pressures over land use are reflected in accelerated urbanization, which is an everyday and constant threat to the ancient sites of the Southern Maya Region. The result is that people from different villages, hometowns, or indigenous enclaves end up living side by side with ancient remains, whether or not they know about this or can appreciate the fact. Taking into account our experiences in 2006, what it means to undertake archaeology in the 21st century in the Southern Maya Region, we have learned, is—obviously—not without its fairly large share of excitement, frustration, and even fear. The adventurous enterprise of discovery and theoretically oriented research designed by foreign anthropologists meets, in southern Guatemala, social dynamics common to, but worse than in, other Latin American countries. The particularly dramatic context of Guatemala after the 1954 CIA-inspired coup d’état, and state violence continuing in the postconflict era, specifically, we believe absolutely needs to be taken more into account by those doing archaeology there, with the aim of including the Maya and Ladino campesinos

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who live on or near archaeological sites as equals in a joint effort as part of “community archaeology.” Also, with regard both to Kaplan’s and other American archaeologists’ consciousnesses as such, all of us must take into account as much as possible the culpability we have, if no more than by having contributed our tax dollars to the U.S. government’s actions that have left such a heavy legacy of blood and death among Guatemala’s Maya; also, we feel it incumbent on ourselves to reject collusions with any Guatemalans identified as having participated in the death squads and genocide. The impact of social science research on indigenous peoples and cultures that are the subject of the research we and others do has, for many years now, been a matter of vigorous discussion (see, for example, C. Smith and Wobst 2005, and Coburn et al. 2013). Obviously, an archaeological project can have a very significant effect on a local, living indigenous community. Our project intended to have a beneficial impact on the people of Chocolá because we believed we had a responsibility to give back to the townspeople some kind of return for what we were taking from, and doing to, them—the latter, for example, in a most concrete way, removing the coffee plants on mounds where we were going to dig. In a more general sense, we impacted their cultural and historical identity by exposing them to our modes of life and behavior and, also, by constructing an ancient history that is very different from how they had constructed this history. Candidly, we also wanted to make our impact as positive as possible for practical reasons—if the villagers were happy with us, they would cooperate and support our work not only for one or a few seasons but, as we anticipated, based on the size and complexity of the ancient city, for many seasons to come. Archaeologists of the Maya, in doing their work, may be seen to be “collaborating with the status quo” by continuing to reify an oppressed people and culture and, in consequence, directly or indirectly, continuing to support the individual agents, groups, and systems that for so long have acted against the Maya with enormous violence up to and including genocide. By making this point and by seeking to separate ourselves and our project as much as possible from such collaboration, we do not mean merely to appear politically correct. We do not assert that, in modern times, political ideas and standards must pertain, going back in time—that researchers and museums in America and Europe earlier could have been expected to include the local people in the research, by, for example, not merely employing them but also by offering to work in partnership with them in the reconstruction, or construction, of history.

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Some of our peers continue to assert that archaeology is a nomological science engaged in the collection of objective data uncompromised by observer bias—that this, indeed, is the task of archaeology because, alone among the social sciences, archaeology relies on physical evidence. The epistemology of archaeology, almost if not entirely regardless of the kind of data sought, contains presuppositions the archaeologists—and we include ourselves!—often may be unaware of and that, directly or indirectly, construct the data as well as the theories. Most of the time, these presuppositions are best discerned when data are assimilated to a theory, or interpreted to mean something in the framework of “discovery of the human past.” An obvious case in point, to us, concerns the presuppositions inescapably accompanying Maya archaeology that focuses on elites—“kings” and the ancient Maya nobility—that, directly or indirectly, tend to attribute to elites greater causality to the making of history than to what are usually lumped together as “Marxist” processes. That for so long curricula in America with courses on Mesoamerica and the Maya were mostly found only at Ivy League universities, and that no African-American Mayanists exist, as far as we know (nor ethnically Maya ones!), both support the notion that contemporary elites in America for so long reserved the right to study Maya “kings.” Paper or discussion sessions that have occurred at the American Anthropological Association that are restricted to a very few Maya specialists, and not even open to those who wish simply to listen in, tend to confirm this continuation of the historically privileged elite serving themselves exclusively, even as the topic or topics have to do with an entirely different group and its history, the Maya, already one of the most profoundly exploited and victimized peoples in the world. By what we like to think of as a different kind of collaboration we mean, for one, the fact that our work at Chocolá helps to build tourism to Chocolá for the benefit of the Chocolenses, although we acknowledge that most tourism to Guatemala is largely motivated by innocent but crude objectifying desires to “see the Maya ruins” and the “colorful” Maya living today. The Maya tourism industry has indeed worked to fix in place the Maya of the past and to reify them, today, as objects rather than subjects. This, in turn, has influenced the economic structures in Guatemala such that, for example, the political regimes in power in the country since the coup d’état that removed Arbenz have prevented indigenous Maya (as well as ladinoized Maya speakers) from becoming agents with control over their own lives. Maya tourism is different, for example, from tourism to Europe,

Conclusions · 327

because the Europeans, individualized by philosophy and economics from the Renaissance and Enlightenment, are citizens of the First World and capable of defending themselves against objectification and exploitation. It is, however, not only these matters that lead us to speak of “collaboration with the status quo.” The intention of the Chocolá project, again, was to develop a different kind of collaboration with a different “status quo,” the villagers themselves on at least an equal basis to the research. Our project sought, and brought, new sources of income for the town residents (for example, and principally, archaeotourism and a cacao farm), along with better waste management, cleaner water, and assistance to the schools. In addition to these efforts, and perhaps more fundamental, were our attempts to invite the Chocolenses into the project’s work not only as paid laborers but as coequal decision makers and interpreters of the data—as writers and custodians of the modern town’s and the ancient site’s history. We were still in the beginning stages of many of these efforts when we were forced to halt work in 2006. The local expression of the conflicts at large in Guatemala impinging on, and then halting, our work, we feel, must be learned from. What we learned was that the present population of Chocolá, living in and around the ancient site, once envisioned a long-term relationship with archaeologists as part of an outreach process of their own, seeking economic opportunities for their community. One of Kaplan’s failures as director of the project was not being able to bring tangible benefits quickly enough to enough of the villagers to provide a wall of resistance to the evangelical preachers and the wealthier homeowners seeking to destroy mounds. These groups threatened violence against our volunteers—and also against those villagers who did defend the project—because cultural patrimony laws were seen as preventing their own projects to construct ever-larger church buildings or to construct new, larger houses that would damage or destroy ancient edifices. Before PACH left, we secured the archaeological materials recovered from excavations, moving most of them (ceramics and small lithic fragments) to Guatemala City, where they are stored at the Instituto de Antropología e Historia, in the Cultural Ministry; some Chocolenses believed that the project’s bags of sherds contained “gold” that we were stealing from the town. The larger monumental corpus was left for the community to keep and manage. And this is how the situation stands today. As a major site, Chocolá requires much more long-term investigation; Kaplan assumed he would

328 · Water, Cacao, and the Early Maya of Chocolá

be working there for many years. In 2004 we provided the Guatemalan Ministry of Culture a GIS-plotted map showing as best as we could determine the precise area in which lay the remains of the core and important outliers of the ancient city, and which should be protected from harm (for this map, see our informes for 2004 and 2005 online). That “Protected Area” status has not yet been granted and is, in fact, stymied due to the conflicted status of archaeology in Guatemala, was and is exemplified by the tensions we encountered in Chocolá; it seems clear to us that the Cultural Ministry has been apprehensive lest this declaration exacerbate those tensions. We believe protected area status should, nevertheless, be granted as soon as possible to the ancient remains, because without such a formal declaration major degradation of the remains is likelier. With the project’s successes, and despite our own difficulties in 2006, to reference Kaplan’s comment in the concluding chapter summarizing the recent Love and Kaplan volume on the Southern Maya Region, we still urge enterprising investigators to press on with specialist inquiry, in this case, still to “look south.” While impediments, generally, may be all too predictable for any substantial archaeology undertaken in this part of Mesoamerica long the locus of great economic transformations and Third World devolutions, we emphatically encourage our younger colleagues to mount research projects in the southern Guatemalan piedmont. Much of great importance remains to be discovered in this hitherto, and still, quite neglected part of Mesoamerica and the Maya world. This encouragement comes with no hesitation and, indeed, with thanks, because for over three years of lengthy field seasons and during many preand postseason visits during the years of fieldwork and after, the great bulk of our experience with the people of the community has been marked by the warmth of their welcome and the value of their insights about all manner of things. In all, Chocolá has seemed to us a center in a cosmological sense, gifted with great water wealth and rich soils, dotted with caves imbued with beliefs still manifest in ritual practices, and, for want of a better phrase, vivid with an intensity of life—a central place that peers up at volcanoes looming above just as it affords vistas of the Pacific coastal plains and ocean below. Despite the residents’ long debasement by a seemingly irremediable poverty, despite the struggles in Chocolá to survive against a historical backdrop of great violence and victimization by both the state and by entrenched reaction, despite, now, the overwhelming odds against both the modern community and the ancient city to survive as globalized

Conclusions · 329

economics destroys local ways of life, Chocolá remains such a central place—but probably not for too much longer. We hope, in this book, to have gone at least some way toward giving both the modern community and the ancient site the attention they deserve by both scholars and by sustainable development experts, and by salvaging for study what is left of a great ancient city before its remains have vanished forever.

Appendix A Chocolá Archaeobotanical Remains

Archaeological Wood and Paleoenvironment at Chocolá

This report presents the findings of archaeobotanical remains recovered by controlled grid excavations at Chocolá (Operations 4, 14, 16, and 17). Studies of archaeological wood charcoal help understanding landscape change, and ecological and cultural interaction (Hastorf et al. 2005). In recent years, Maya paleoethnobotanical research with a focus on charcoal has been conducted at Paynes Creek Salt Works, Belize, Tikal in Guatemala, and Palenque’s hinterland (Chinikihá and Santa Isabel) in Mexico (Trabanino 2012, Robinson and McKillop 2013, Lentz et al. 2014). Until now, no remains from the Southern Maya Region have been collected and analyzed, resulting in a scarcity of information on the interaction between people and plants in this part of Mesoamerica. New archaeobotanical data from the Pacific slopes can help illuminate plant migrations, ancient agricultural practices, botanical knowledge, trade in agricultural goods, and connectivity between sites in the SMR, in wider Mesoamerica, and potentially even as far as the Caribbean and the Intermediate Area. The Modern Flora of Chocolá: Botanical Survey

To understand changes in vegetation and landscape, a survey was undertaken at Chocolá in September 2014. Several transects conducted at altitudes ranging from 500 to 900 meters above sea level collected samples of vegetation from Chocolá, which corresponds to a Subtropical Wet Forest according to the ecological classification of tropical forests in Guatemala

332 · Felipe Trabanino

(Holdrige 1982, De la Cruz 1983). Chocolá’s life zone, under the Holdridge classification, corresponds to a Warm Subtropical Wet Forest of the South. The forest of Chocolá is dominated by palo volador (Terminalia oblongata). Other species can be found, like cacao (Theobroma cacao), pataxte (Theobroma bicolor), palo blanco (Cybistax donnell-smithii), chaperno (Andira inermis), yuca (Manihot esculenta), and the climbing plant melocotón (Sicana odorifera). Some species not observed during the 2014 survey but seemingly present, according to Holdridge’s classification for Guatemala, are: conacaste (Enterolobium), puntero (Sickingia), mulato (Triplaris), and the corozo palm (Attalea). The identification of the current flora was possible through by reference to specialized literature on Central American Pacific flora (Witsberger et al. 1982). The natural forest of Chocolá anciently was dominated by the tall tree palo volador, (Terminalia oblongata), which occurs naturally and has not been eradicated, even after the arrival of coffee and coffee plantations. Similarly, the area of Palenque, Chiapas, is dominated by the canxan (Terminalia amazonia) tall tree, also used as a source of firewood. At Chocolá, modern agriculture has included sugar cane and coffee, changing the undergrowth (trees and and shrubs less than 5 m tall). Trees above 15 m tall were usually left to provide shade for the coffee plants, for cacao and for banana plantations; for example, Leguminosae: Caesalpinia yucatanensis (taa k’in che’), Lonchocarpus xuul (balché), from the Moraceae family: Brosimum alicastrum (ramón, or ox), Ficus sp. (amate), Annonaceae: Annona reticulata (oop, anona colorada), Annona muricata; Sapotaceae: Manikara achras (chak ya’/chicozapote), Pouteria campechiana (caniste), Pouteria mammosa (mamey/zapote mamey), Chrysophyllum cainito (caimito); Malvaceae: Quararibea guatemalensis (molinillo), Sapindaceae: Melicoccus bijugatus (mamoncillo/guaya); Burseraceae: Bursera simaruba (chacaj, palo mulato), Caricaceae: Carica papaya (papaya), Arecaceae Palms: Sabal yapa (guano). A Subtropical Montane Wet Forest ecosystem appears 900 m above sea level, characterized by the presence of cypress (Cupressus lusitanica), pino blanco (Pinus ayacahuite), pino triste (Pinus pseudostrobus), pino de ocote or rojo (P. hartwegii, P. montezumae) and pino hembra (P. maximinoi), aliso (Alnus spp.), several oaks (Quercus spp.), and manita canac (Chiranthodendron pentadactylon) used as a flavor complement to cacao beverages in Guatemala.

Appendix A. Chocolá Archaeobotanical Remains · 333

Identification of Archaeobotanical Remains at Chocolá

One-hundred twelve samples were analyzed from four operations ranging from north to south. The method for identifying archaeological wood is described by Adriano-Morán and McClung de Tapia (2008) and Martín Seijoet al. (2010). Chosen fragments were examined at 10 x and 40 x magnification. Transverse, radial, and tangential planes were observed with their anatomical characteristics noted. These fragments were classified into morphotypes (Aguilar et al. 2000), and an online database, “InsideWood” (Wheeler 2011). Archaeological morphotypes were identified by comparison with the “Atlas de Microfotografía de carbones arqueológicos y colección de referencia de maderas actuales carbonizadas,” which is an extensive reference collection for Guatemalan and Mexican carbonized woods and seeds in the author’s possession (Trabanino 2014: 230). Identification of the archaeological wood samples was not always possible. In these cases, the charcoal fragments were only described to the morphotype level. Other samples were identified as “not charcoal,” in the case of a nonwood structure, corresponding to burnt clay or bones. Positive identifications were described to the family level (shared characteristics for many genera of the same family). Description of the Morphotypes Used in This Study

Type Spondias (cf. Spondias mombin, Anacardiaceae) Grow Ring Patterns: Growth ring boundaries indistinct or absent. Diffuse porous. Vessel Arrangements: Solitary vessel outline angular, wood not ring-porous. Mean tangential diameter of vessel lumina 100 µm. Longitudinal Parenchyma: absent or extremely rare, scanty paratracheal. Rays: Larger rays commonly 4 to 10 seriate Miscellaneous: Prismatic crystals present. Septate fibers present. Radial canals. Intervessel pits alternate, large >10 µm. Fibers very thin-walled and fibers very thick-walled 23 µm. Type H (Unidentified family and genus), Angiosperm Grow Ring Patterns: Diffuse porous. Vessels Arrangements: Pores small, high number of vessels per mm2 (more than 20 vessels per mm2). Mean tangential diameter of vessel lumina 30 µm.

334 · Felipe Trabanino

Longitudinal Parenchyma: absent or extremely rare, scanty paratracheal. Rays: All ray cells procumbent, 13 cells high, 2,3-seriate. Miscellaneous: We have been unable to identify to a family or a genus level, but it is surely a flowering-plant tree, an Angiosperm. Type Sapotaceae (Unidentified genus) Grow Ring Patterns: Growth ring boundaries indistinct or absent. Wood diffuse-porous. Vessels Arrangements: Vessels in diagonal and/or radial pattern. Vessels in radial multiples of 4 or more common. Tangential diameter of vessel lumina 50 µm. Longitudinal Parenchyma: Axial parenchyma diffuse. Banded parenchyma in narrow bands or lines, up to 3 cells wide; bands reticulate, axial parenchyma 4-6-8 cells per parenchyma strand. Rays: Heterocellular, 2–4 rows of upright square cells to heterocellular, more than 4 rows of upright square cells (mostly 2-5-8 rows; mostly 10–13 per mm, 2-3-4 cells wide; 400–600 µm in height. Miscellaneous: Crystals absent. Silica in the rays cells. It could be any genus of the Sapotaceae family, Pouteria, Chryosophyllum, Manilkara. Type Pouteria (cf. Pouteria sapota Sapotaceae) Grow Ring Patterns: Growth ring boundaries indistinct or absent. Wood diffuse-porous. Vessels Arrangements: Vessels of two distinct diameter classes, wood not ring-porous. Gums and other deposits in heartwood vessels. Intervessel pits alternate. Shape of alternate pits polygonal. Longitudinal Parenchyma: Axial parenchyma in narrow bands or lines up to 3 cells wide. Eight (5–8) cells per parenchyma strand. More than 8 cells per parenchyma strand. Rays: Uniseriate. Miscellaneous: Fibers very thick-walled. Type Sapotaceae/Annonaceae (Unidentified Genus and Family) Grow Ring Patterns: Growth ring boundaries indistinct or absent. Wood diffuse-porous. Vessels Arrangements: Radial. Mean vessel element diameter 120 µm. Longitudinal Parenchyma: Axial parenchyma in narrow bands or lines. Reticulate. Rays: Bi-seriate. 26 cells high.

Appendix A. Chocolá Archaeobotanical Remains · 335

Miscellaneous: Reticulate. Those specimens could correspond to a Sapotaceae or a Annonaceae family. There are no more characteristics than can help to distinguish one from another. Type Reticulate: Annonaceae Grow Ring Patterns: Growth ring boundaries indistinct or absent. Diffuse porous. Vessels Arrangements: Solitary vessel outline angular. Mean tangential diameter of vessel lumina 100 µm. Shape of alternate pits polygonal, big 2,3 µm. Longitudinal Parenchyma: Axial parenchyma reticulate. Rays: Larger rays commonly 3 to 4 seriate. 12 cells high. Miscellaneous: Reticulate. Type Aliform: Genus Not Identified, Leguminosae Grow Ring Patterns: Growth ring boundaries indistinct or absent. Diffuse porous. Vessels Arrangements: Diameter of vessel lumina 100 µm. Longitudina Parenchyma: aliform. Paratracheal axial parenchyma. Axial vasicentric parenchyma. Axial lozenge-aliform parenchyma. Axial parenchyma winged-aliform. Banded parenchyma. Rays: Ray width 1 to 3 cells. Larger rays commonly 4 to 10 seriate. Miscellaneous: Axial parenchyma aliform is a characteristic of the Leguminosae family. This could be any of the shade trees use for the cacao fields. Type Erythrina (cf. Erythrina americana, Leguminosae) Grow Ring Patterns: Growth ring boundaries indistinct or absent. Diffuse porous. Vessels Arrangements: Diameter of vessel lumina 50 µm. Longitudinal Parenchyma: Axial parenchyma bands more than 3 cells wide. Axial parenchyma in marginal or in seemingly marginal bands. Rays: Larger rays commonly 7 to 10 seriate. 20 cells high. Miscellaneous: Axial parenchyma and/or vessel elements storied. Fibers with simple to minutely bordered pits. Type Inga-Cuje (cf. Inga sp., Leguminosae) Grow Ring Patterns: Diffuse porous. Vessels Arrangements: Diameter of vessel lumina 80–100 µm.

336 · Felipe Trabanino

Longitudinal Parenchyma: Axial parenchyma vasicentric, aliform, confluent. 2-3-4 cells per parenchyma strand. Rays: uniseriate. All ray cells procumbent. Miscellaneous: Septate fibers present. Fibers thin- to thick-walled. Type Lonchocarpus (cf. Lonchocarpus spp., Leguminosea): Grow Ring Patterns: Diffuse porous. Vessels Arrangements: Diameter of vessel lumina 80 µm. Longitudinal Parenchyma: aliform. Rays: 4 seriate. Miscellaneous: Axial parenchyma and/or vessel elements storied. Type Terminalia (cf. Terminalia oblongata, Combretaceae) Grow Ring Patterns: Diffuse porous. Vessels Arrangements: Vessels in diagonal and/or radial pattern. Solitary vessels. Diameter of vessel lumina 80 µm. Longitudinal Parenchyma: Reticulate. 1 cell per strand of parenchyma. Rays: Uniseriate. All cells procumbent. Type Scalarariform (Unidentified Family) Grow Ring Patterns: Diffuse porous. Diameter of vessel lumina 120 µm. Vessel Arrangements: Diameter of vessel lumina 120 µm. Longitudinal Parenchyma: Scanty vasicentric. Rays: 4-seriate. 6 cells high. All cells procumbent. Miscellaneous: Scalariform perforation plates. Scalariform perforation plates with >= 40 bars. Montane species; Cleyera, Ternstroemia, Tilia, Meliosma, Ardisia, Garrya. Clethra, Cornus, Saurauia, Alnus, Oreopanax ? Canella, cf. winterana, Symplocos, Clusia ? Type Byrsonima (cf. Byrsonima crassifolia, Malpighiaceae) Grow Ring Patterns: Diffuse porous. Vessels Arrangements: Diameter of vessel lumina 120 µm. Vessels in diagonal pattern. Longitudinal Parenchyma: Axial parenchyma in marginal or in seemingly marginal bands. Rays: Uniseriate.

Appendix A. Chocolá Archaeobotanical Remains · 337

Type 88 Grow Ring Patterns: Diffuse porous. Vessels Arrangements: Big pores. Tangential diameter of vessel lumina >120 µm Longitudinal Parenchyma: Rare. Rays: 3–4 seriate. 15 cells high. Miscellaneous: No information. Type Vasicentric: Unidentified Grow Ring Patterns: Diffuse porous. Vessels Arrangements: Vessels in diagonal and/or radial pattern. Vessels in radial multiples of 4 or more common. Vessel clusters common. Tangential diameter of vessel lumina >120 µm. Longitudinal Parenchyma: Axial parenchyma scanty paratracheal. Rays: Ray width 1 to 3 cells. Miscellaneous: Crystals in tyloses. Intervessel pits alternate, Large >= 5 µm. Type Fibrotracheid: Unidentified Grow Ring Patterns: Diffuse porous. Vessels Arrangements: In radial multiples of 2. Tangential diameter of vessel lumina 60 µm. Longitudinal Parenchyma: Axial parenchyma scanty paratracheal. Rays: Ray width 4 to 5 cells. Miscellaneous: Tracheids and fibers. Vascular/vasicentric tracheids present. Type Vitis (cf. Vitis tiliifolia, Vitaceae) Grow Ring Patterns: Diffuse porous. Vessels Arrangements: Tangential diameter of vessel lumina 100 µm. Longitudinal Parenchyma: 8 (5–8) cells per parenchyma strand. Rays: Larger rays commonly >10-seriate. Larger rays commonly 4 to 10 seriate. Miscellaneous: Bejuco, Vine/liana, Shrub. Other Charcoal Remains (Palms, Guaduas, Pines, Seeds and Roots) Type Pinus: Pinus spp. Pinaceae Gymnosperm Grow Ring Patterns: Distinguishable. Heteroxylous wood: Tracheids. No pores. Cells of the xylem are characteristics of conifers or Gymnosperms in a large sense.

338 · Felipe Trabanino

Longitudinal Parenchyma: Not distinguishable. Rays: Uni and biseriates. 4–15 cells high. Miscellaneous: The Type Pinus could not been identified at a genus level. In the zone there are many species of coniferous, pinabete or Abies guatemalensis, cypress or Cupressus lusitanica, and Pinus species. In northern Suchitepéquez and southern Atitlán provinces, the forest is represented by pino triste (Pinus pseudostrobus), pino blanco (P. ayacahuite), pino de ocote o rojo (P. hartwegii, P. montezumae), and pino hembra (P. maximinoi). There are still pine communities at Chocolá, used for torches and for rituals in cemeteries and other ceremonies, and as firewood. Type Palm Stem (cf. Areaceae) Miscellaneous: Palm fibrovascular bundle characteristic of the Arecaceae family. Type Guadua—Chusquea culm: Poaceae Bambusoideae Miscellaneous: Vasculars bundles show two large metaxylem vessels opposed, and one protoxylem opposed to another phloem characteristic. Type Manihot Root (cf. Manihot esculenta Euphorbia) Miscellaneous: Cortex, storage parenchyma characteristic. Type Cucurbita Seed, cf. Cucurbita spp. Cucurbitaceae Miscellaneous: Seed ovoid to obvoid, marginate, compressed, furface glabrous. Type Zea mays, Poaceae Miscellaneous: Kernel and granule. Type Phaseolus Seed (cf. Phaseolus vulgaris, Leguminosae) Miscellaneous: Seed reniform, compressed, surface glabrous. Type Avocado Seed (cf. Persea americana, Lauraceae) Miscellaneous: seed ovoid, 5 cm, 3 in diameter. No appendages.

Figure A.1. Morphotypes of archaeobotanical remains from Chocolá: a) Pinus spp.; b) Terminalia sp.; c) Poaceae Bambusoideae; d) Manihot esculenta; e) Malvaceae; f ) Erythrina sp. (PACH/Felipe Trabanino)

Table A.1. Archaeobotanical remains from Operation 4 Botanical identification of the archaeobotanical remains at Family (Genus) level Common names

Uses

Anacardiaceae (Spondias)

Hogplum, ciruela, Jocote

Edible fruit, firewood, softwood

2

Annonaceae

Anona

1

Areaceae Palmae

Palms, palmas

Cannelaceae

Cinnamomum, Canela

Edible fruit, firewood, shade tree for cacao plantation Construction, firewood, shade tree for cacao plantation Spice for cocoa beverage

2

Combretaceae (Terminalia)

Palo volador

Firewood

3

Cucurbitaceae

Squash, pumpkin, calabaza seeds

Edible fruit and seed

2

Euphorbiaceae (Manihot)

Yuca

Edible root

2

Leguminosae (Lonchocarpus)

Balché

Firewood, ritual, intoxicating beverage, for cocoa beverage Edible seeds, construction, ritual, shade tree for cacao plantation Light, firewood, ritual, economic good

2

Malvaceae Ceiba, majahua, (Unidentified genus Ceiba, Cacao Trichospermum, Theoboroma) Pinaceae Pine, ocote (Pinus)

1

2

6

Poaceae (Zea)

Corn, maíz

Poaceae Bambusoideae (Guadua, Chusquea)

Bamboo, caña, tarro Construction, firewood

1

Sapotaceae

Zapote

3

Sapotaceae/Annonaceae Vitaceae Unidentified Angiosperm Unidentified seed Source: PACH.

Vine, bejuco

Edible, medicinal

No. of samples

Edible fruit, firewood, shade tree for cacao plantation Edible fruit and seed, firewood, shade tree Edible fruit, ritual, vinager, oil

3

1 2 23 2

Table A.2. Archaeobotanical remains from Operation 14 Botanical identification of the archaeobotanical remains at Family (Genus) level Common names

Uses

No. of samples

Combretaceae (Terminalia) Leguminosae (Lonchocarpus)

Palo volador

Firewood

1

Balché

Firewood, ritual, intoxicating beverage, for cocoa beverage

5

Pinaceae (Pinus)

Pino, pine

Light, firewood, ritual, economic good

1

Edible fruit, firewood, shade tree for cacao plantation Edible fruit, firewood, shade tree for cacao plantation

1

Sapotaceae/Annonaceae

Sapotaceae

Unidentified Angiosperm Source: PACH.

Zapote

1

2

Table A.3. Archaeobotanical remains from Operation 16 Botanical identification of the archaeobotanical remains at Family (Genus) level Common names Anacardiaceae (Spondias) Arecaceae

Hogplum, ciruela, jocote Palms, palmas

Combretaceae (Terminalia) Cucurbitaceae (Cucurbita) Leguminosae (Lonchocarpus, Inga)

Palo volador

Malpighiaceae (Byrsonima) Malvaceae

Moraceae (Ficus) Pinaceae (Pinus) Sapotaceae

Unidentified Angiosperm Source: PACH.

Uses

No. of samples

Edible fruit, firewood, softwood Construction, firewood, shade tree for cacao plantation Firewood

1

Edible fruit and seed

2

Firewood, ritual, intoxicating beverage, for cocoa beverage, edible fruit

6

nance

Firewood, edible fruit

2

Ceiba, majahua, Trema, cacao Sterculiaceae trees Amate

Construction

1

Shade tree for cacao plantation Light, firewood, ritual, economic good

2

Edible fruit, firewood, shade tree for cacao plantation

5

Squash, pumpkin, calabaza seeds balché, cuje, Madrecacao

Pine, ocote Zapotes

1

1

5

5

Table A.4. Archaeobotanical remains from Operation 17 Botanical identification of the archaeobotanical remains at Family (Genus) level Common names

Uses

No. of samples

Combretaceae (Terminalia) Lauraceae (Persea) Leguminosae (Lonchocarpus, Inga)

Palo volador

Firewood

1

Avocado, aguacate

Edible fruit

1

balché, cuje, Madrecacao

Firewood, ritual, intoxicating beverage, for cocoa beverage, edible fruit

3

Malvaceae

Ceiba, majahua, Trema, cacao trees tribe family Amate

Construction

2

Shade tree for cacao plantation Light, firewood, ritual, economic good Construction, firewood, Edible fruit, firewood, shade tree for cacao plantation Edible fruit, firewood, shade tree for cacao plantation

1

Moraceae (Ficus) Pinaceae (Pinus) Poaceae Bambusoideae (Guadua, Chusquea) Sapotaceae

Sapotaceae/Annonaceae

Unidentified Angiosperm Source: PACH.

Pine, ocote

Bamboo, caña, tarro Zapotes

3

1 1

1

9

Table A.5. Ancient plant remains identified at Chocolá Sample

Op.

Code

Identification at Genus level

Identification at Family level

1 2

16 16

401-1 254-2

Type H Pinus

3

16

62-6

Unidentified

Unidentified Pinaceae Gymnosperm Sapotaceae

4

14

66-6

Not charcoal

Nd

5

14

44-4

Inga-Cuje

Leguminosae

6

14

569-5

Terminalia

Combretaceae

7

14

76-6

Pinus

8

14

45-4

Type aliform

Pinaceae Gymnosperm Leguminosae

9

14

321-5

Not charcoal

Nd

10

14

496-2

Unidentified

Leguminosae

11

14

496-4

Type scalariform

Unidentified

12

14

111-4

Unidentified

13

14

112-4

Lonchocarpus

Sapotaceae/ Annonaceae Leguminosae

14

14

315-4

Unidentified

Sapotaceae

15

14

86-4

Unidentified

Leguminosae

16

14

497-3

Unidentified

Unidentified

17

16

388-1

Burned bone

Nd

18

16

489-7

Byrsonima

Malpighiaceae

19

16

164-2

Pinus

20

16

389-8

Pinus

21

16

270-12

Pinus

21

16

270-12

Ficus

Pinaceae Gymnosperm Pinaceae Gymnosperm Pinaceae Gymnosperm Moraceae

21

16

270-12

Palm stem

Arecaceae

22

16

527-8

Type aliform

Leguminosae

23

16

289-2

Unidentified

Malvaceae

23

16

289-2

Unidentified root

Unidentified

23

16

289-2

Cucurbita seed

Cucurbitaceae

Sample

Op.

Code

Identification at Genus level

Identification at Family level

23

16

289-2

Cucurbita seed

Cucurbitaceae

24

16

108-1

Inga-Cuje

Leguminosae

25

16

62-5

Lonchocarpus

Leguminosae

26

16

374-4

Unidentified

Sapotaceae

27

16

527-9

Unidentified

Sapotaceae

28

16

374-3

Type 88

Unidentified

28

16

374-3

Pinus

29

16

123-2

Lonchocarpus

Pinaceae Gymnosperm Leguminosae

30

16

136-2-1

Lonchocarpus

Leguminosae

30

16

136-2-2

Erythrina

Leguminosae

31

16

389-6

Unidentified

Sapotaceae

31

16

389-6

Unidentified

Unidentified

31

16

389-6

Type Byrsonima

Malpighiaceae

32

16

390-5

Spondias

Anacardiaceae

33

16

389-5

Type Terminalia

Combretaceae

33

16

389-5

Unidentified

Sapotaceae

33

16

389-5

Type scalariform

Unidentified

33

16

389-5

Unidentified

Moraceae

34

4

228-3 y 4

Palm leaf

Arecaceae

35

4

285-3

Vitis

Vitaceae

35

4

285-3

Guadua-Chusquea

35

4

285-3

Manihot

Poaceae bambusoideae Euphorbiaceae

35

4

285-3

Erythrina

Leguminosae

36

4

3-6 h

Not charcoal

Nd

37

4

24-7 h

Pinus

38

4

24-8 h

Unidentified

Pinaceae Gymnosperm Sapotaceae

39

4

1-10 h

Not charcoal

Nd

40

4

3-3 h

Type scalariform

Cannelaceae ? (continued)

Table A.5—Continued

Op.

Code

Identification at Genus level

Identification at Family level

41

4

227-4

Not charcoal

Nd

42

4

110-8

Spondias

Anacardiaceae

43

4

491-6

Unidentified

Malvaceae

44

4

228-3

Cucurbita seed

Cucurbitaceae

45

4

3-4 h

Type 88

Unidentified

46

4

285-4

Unidentified

Unidentified

47

4

243-6

Type aliform

Unidentified

48

4

32-4

Type aliform

Unidentified

49

4

41-3

Type aliform

Unidentified

49

4

41-3

Type leaf

Unidentified

50

4

272-4

Type aliform

Unidentified

51

4

43-2

Type 88

Unidentified

52

4

491-3

Type 88

Unidentified

53

4

491-4

Not charcoal

Nd

54

4

110-10

Type 88

Unidentified

55

4

12-3 h

Type 88

Unidentified

56

4

12-5 h

Reticulate

Type Annonaceae

57

4

1-11 h

Terminalia

Combretaceae

58

4

277-2

Inga-Cuje

Leguminosae

59

4

1-8 h

Terminalia

Combretaceae

60

4

110-4

Type 88 scalariform Unidentified

61

4

31-6

Vitis

Vitaceae

62

4

33-8

Zea mays

Poaceae

63

4

110-5

Not charcoal

Nd

64

4

1-5 h

Type 88

Unidentified

65

4

276-4

Zea maiz Kernel

Poaceae

65

4

276-4

Type scalariform

Cannelaceae ?

66

4

13-8 h

Unidentified

Unidentified

Sample

Identification at Genus level

Identification at Family level

12-7 h

Type 88

Unidentified

4

12-6 h

Pinus

69

4

4-5 h

Zea mays

Pinaceae Gymnosperm Poaceae

70

4

491-5

Terminalia

Combretaceae

71

4

25-6 h

Unidentified

72

4

410-6

Unidentified seed

Sapotaceae/ Anonaceae Unidentified

72

4

410-6

Pinus

73

4

43-3

Type aliform

Pinaceae Gymnosperm Unidentified

74

4

31-5 h

Type 88

Unidentified

75

4

42-4

Type 88

Unidentified

76

4

277-3

Type aliform

Unidentified

77

4

238-4

Unidentified

Malvaceae

78

4

110-7

Pinus

79

4

491-7

Spondias

Pinaceae Gymnosperm Anacardiaceae

80

4

110-3

Pouteria

Sapotaceae

81

4

82-12

Unidentified seed

Unidentified

81

4

82-12

Pinus

82

4

1-3 h

Type 88

Pinaceae Gymnosperm Unidentified

82

4

1-3 h

Cucurbita seed

Cucurbitaceae

83

4

1-4 h

Pinus

83

4

1-4 h

Type 88

Pinaceae Gymnosperm Unidentified

84

4

14-5 h

Type aliform

Unidentified

85

4

31-3 h

Type aliform

Unidentified

86

4

12-8 h

Unidentified

Sapotaceae

87

4

1-6 h

Unidentified

Annonaceae

88

4

110-9 h

Type vasicentric

Unidentified

Sample

Op.

Code

67

4

68

(continued)

Table A.5—Continued

Op.

Code

Identification at Genus level

Identification at Family level

89

4

1-7 h

Manihot root

Euphorbiaceae

90

4

43-4 h

Not charcoal

Nd

91

17

120-13

Unidentified

Malvaceae

92

17

147-6

Not charcoal

Nd

93

17

120-11

Phaseolus seed

Leguminosae

94

17

126b-2

Terminalia

Combretaceae

95

17

147-6

Unidentified

Unidentified

96

17

125-6

Ficus

Moraceae

97

17

147-4

Unidentified

Unidentified

98

17

129-5

Unidentified

Malvaceae

98

17

129-5

Pinus

99

17

120-6

Pinaceae Gymnosperm Type fibrotracheids Unidentified

100

17

221-2

Unidentified seed

Unidentified

101

17

129-3

Unidentified

Unidentified

102

17

125-5

Unidentified

Sapotaceae

103

17

221-3

Lonchocarpus

Leguminosae

104

17

221-4

Unidentified seed

Unidentified

105

17

147-3

Pinus

106

17

125-3

Guadua

107

17

120-12

Unidentified

Pinaceae Gymnosperm Poaceae bambusoideae Unidentified

108

17

125-4

Unidentified

109

17

120-15

Pinus

110 111

17 17

120-2 147-5

Type H Unidentified

Sapotaceae/ Annonaceae Pinaceae Gymnosperm Unidentified Unidentified

111

17

147-5

Persea seed

Lauraceae

112

17

120-5

Lonchocarpus

Leguminosae

Sample

Source: PACH. Nd = No data.

Appendix A. Chocolá Archaeobotanical Remains · 349

The Use of Ancient Forests: Exploitation of Two Ecosystems at Ancient Chocolá

Archaeobotanical remains identified as Terminalia and Pinus provide evidence that the ancient people of Chocolá were using firewood from two ecosystems. The Terminalia morphotype is the key marker for the Humid Subtropical Low Forest; likewise, the Pinus morphotype points to the Montane Subtropical Wet Forest. From this evidence, we may infer that there was either trade between inhabitants from two different ecosystems or that the hinterland of Chocolá included lands in both ecosystems. Another possibility is that the climate of ancient Chocolá at 700 MAMSL was much colder than it is today, allowing the presence of a Montane forest type at lower altitudes. Ancient Landscapes and Prehispanic Agroforestry

Crops grown at Chocolá included corn (Zea mays), beans (Phaseolus sp.), squash (Cucurbita spp.), and the manioc or yuca root crop (Manihot esculenta). Remains of fruit trees from Chocolá also parallel the orchards model (seen at Cerén, Tikal, and Chinikihá), with palms (Arecacea), anonas (Annona sp.), sapotes (Pouteria sapota), jocote (Spondias mombin), nance (Byrsonima crassifolia), avocado (Persea americana), and, perhaps (relying on identification of cacao residues in pottery), cacao and/or pataxte (Type Malvaceae). Many shade trees (Leguminosae such as pito (Erythrina americana), Inga spp. (for example, cushín, guapinol, guamo, paterna, chalum, cuje, guaba, pepeto, and others) were also found among the archaeological plant remains at Chocolá. These trees would have served as shade trees for cacao cultivation, since they are are leguminous symbionts bearing the nitrogenfixing bacteria in their root nodules that help in soil fertilizing (Lentz et al. 2014). The use of native species (legumes) for shade represents excellent environmental management by farmers. This practice may well be compared to the prehispanic management of the milpa, an agroforestal management of the forest. The evidence presented here abounds in new data for the Southern Maya Region. It can now be proposed that Chocolá, together with other important sites such as Tikal, but also with small sites like Cerén in El Salvador and Chinikihá in the Palenque hinterland, intensively managed fields of maize, edible fruit trees, and root crops. In addition, we propose

350 · Felipe Trabanino

that Chocolá probably was producing cacao through the extensive use of leguminous shade trees. Felipe Trabanino, UNAM, Programa de Becas Posdoctorales en la UNAM. Becario del Centro Peninsular en Humanidades y Ciencias Sociales (CEPHCIS) UNAM sede Mérida, Yucatán. Acknowledgments

We are grateful to the following people and institutions for their assistance: Programa de Becas Posdocorales de la UNAM, Centro Peninsular en Humanidades y Ciencias Sociales CEPHCIS-UNAM Yucatán, Emily McClung de Tapia, for laboratory assistance, Laboratorio de Paleoetnobotánica y Paleoambiente, Instituto de Investigaciones Antropológicas. References Adriano-Morán, C. C., and E. McClung de Tapia 2008 Trees and Shrubs: The Use of Wood in Prehispanic Teotihuacan. Journal of Archaeological Science 35: 2927–2936. Aguilar, S., J. Barajas-Morales, and J.D. Tejedo-Díez 2000 Anatomía de maderas de México: Especies de un bosque mesófilo de montaña. Instituto de Biología. Publicaciones especiales 17. Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, México. De la Cruz, J. R. 1983 Clasificación de las zonas de vida a nivel de reconocimiento. 42 pp. Guatemala, DIGESA-INAFOR. Hastorf, C., W. T. Whitehead, and S. Johannessen 2005. Late Prehistoric Wood Use in an Andean Intermontane Valley. Economic Botany, 59(4): 337–355. Holdrige, L. R. 1982 Ecología basada en zonas de vida. IICA, San José Costa Rica. Inside Wood. http://insidewood.lib.ncsu.edu/search. Accessed January 2015. Wheeler, E.A 2011 InsideWood: A Web Resource for Hardwood Anatomy. IAWA Journal 32 (2): 199–211. Lentz, David L., Nicholas P. Dunning, Vernon L. Scarborough, Kevin S. Magee, Kim M. Thompson, Eric Weaver, Christopher Carr, Richard E. Terry, Gerald Islebe, Kenneth B. Tankersley, Liwy Grazioso Sierra, John G. Jones, Palma Buttles, Fred Valdez, and Carmen E. Ramos Hernandez 2014 Forests, Fields, and the Edge of Sustainability at the Ancient Maya City of Tikal. PNAS 2014 111: 18513–18518.

Appendix A. Chocolá Archaeobotanical Remains · 351

Martín Seijo, M., A. Rico Rey, A. Teira Brión, I. Picón Platas, I. García González, and E. Abad Vidal 2010 Guía de Arqueobotánica. Xunta de Galicia. Consellería de Cultura e Turismo. Dirección Xeral do Patrimonio Cultural. Robinson, M. E., and H. I. McKillop 2013 Ancient Maya Wood Selection and Forest Exploitation: A View from the Paynes Creek Salt Works, Belize. Journal of Archaeological Science 40 (10): 3584–3595. Trabanino, F. 2012 Sistema de manejo del bosque tropical en Chinikihá a través de la etnoecología y la paleoetnobotánica. In XXV Simposio de Investigaciones Arqueológicas en Guatemala, 2011, B. Arroyo, L. Paiz, and H. Mejía, eds., 798–804. Ministerio de Cultura y Deportes, Instituto de Antropología e Historia/Asociación Tikal, Guatemala. 2014 Atlas microfotografías de carbones arqueológicos y colección de referencia de maderas actuales carbonizadas. In El Uso de las plantas y el manejo de la selva por los antiguos mayas de Chinikihá. Interacciones sociedad y medio ambiente a través de la paleoetnobotánica y de la antracología. http://www.iia.unam.mx/ investigacion/proyectos/sitios/RLiendo/material/tesis/El_USO_DE_PLANTASDoctoral-FTrabanino.pdf. Witsberger, D., D. Current, and E. Archer 1982 Árboles del Parque Deininger. Ministerio de Educación, Dirección de Publicaciones, El Salvador.

Appendix B Global Positioning System Survey: Chocolá Archaeological Site

Objectives

The objective of the GPS survey project for 20031 was to define the locations of 12 concrete markers placed as mapping and survey control points throughout the archaeological site of Chocolá for the Proyecto Arqueológico Chocolá (PACH), a long-term research project in the Guatemalan piedmont which is directed by Dr. Jonathan Kaplan of the University of New Mexico. Grid Data

The maps most commonly used by archaeologists in Guatemala are the 1:50,000 Universal Transverse Mercator Grid series prepared by the Instituto Geográfico Militar (IGM) Guatemala, with the collaboration of the Defense Mapping Agency Inter American Geodetic Survey. These maps use the 1927 North American Datum (NAD27) as the horizontal datum and Mean Sea Level (MSL) as the vertical datum. These conventions provide a strong argument for reporting data in these same systems. However, there are even stronger reasons for favoring the current WGS84 datum with Height Above Ellipsoid (HAE) as the vertical reference. WGS84 is the native system for GPS receivers and the receivers compute the UTM coordinates and the HAE directly from the WGS84 Cartesian Geocentric Coordinates. GPS receivers and postprocessing software translate from WGS84 to NAD27 as well as to other coordinate systems, and refer to a database to convert from HAE to MSL or to a Geoid model to convert to Orthometric height. Not all equipment and software support these legacy systems well. The greatest consistency given a variety of equipment and software is obtained by adhering to the WGS84 datum. The grounds of consistency and

354 · William Clay Poe

Figure B.1. Chocolá control points. (PACH/W. Poe)

equipment capacity are compelling for reporting the data in WGS84 datum with HAE as the vertical datum. Instrumentation and Methodology

The instrumentation and methodology for gathering field data in this project is based upon and consistent with the guidelines of a number of publications listed in the bibliography below. The controlling documents have been the Federal Geodetic Control Subcommittee, Federal Geographic Data Committee (USA), Geospatial Positioning Accuracy Standards, Part 2:

Appendix B. Global Positioning System Survey: Chocolá Archaeological Site · 355

Standards for Geodetic Networks, FGDC-STD-007.2–1998; the Intergovernmental Committee on Surveying and Mapping (ICSM), (Australia), Best Practice Guidelines, Use of the Global Positioning System (GPS) for Surveying Applications, Version 2.0—November 1, 1997; and The National Geodetic Survey, (USA), Guidelines for Geodetic Network Surveys Using GPS, Draft 4, May 15, 2000. These documents are current, are detailed in their description of appropriate field methods, and are appropriate to the equipment used in this survey project. Instrumentation Three GPS receivers were used to collect the data for the control point survey. Two of the receivers are Trimble 4000SSE Geodetic Surveyors. These are dual frequency L1/L2 receivers configured in this survey with geodetic antennas equipped with ground planes. Trimble specifies a horizontal accuracy of 5 mm + 1 ppm times the baseline length and a vertical accuracy of 10 mm + 1 ppm times the baseline length. The third receiver is a 4000SE GIS Surveyor. For this receiver Trimble specifies an accuracy of ± 1 cm + 2 ppm times the baseline length.2 The antennas were mounted on fixed length GPS rover poles stabilized with bipods. Field Methods

The field survey was conducted on August 4, 2003. The object of the field method was to establish for each of the 12 control points a minimum of 2 local baselines to other points among the 12. Each of the 12 control points would also have a baseline to the CORS (Continuously Operating Reference Stations) in Guatemala City. Time and transport of equipment constraints required a single occupation of each control point and propagation of the network through occupation of proximate control points. Requirements of moving the equipment from point to point combined with local environmental conditions precluded kinematic techniques. A static survey was recorded on each of the 12 control points. Ten of the control points were occupied for 1 to 2 hours. Point 50 was occupied for 21 minutes and point 19 for 33 minutes. The three receivers were moved one at a time in a pattern so as to produce a minimum of two local baselines per control point. The pattern of propagation resulted in times of common occupation of local baselines of between 6.75 minutes and 71.42 minutes with an average of 32.52 minutes. The local receivers were set to record at 5-second

356 · William Clay Poe

intervals. Thus there were between 81 and 857 common epochs of data recorded with an average of 390. There were a total of 20 baselines recorded among the 12 Chocolá control points. Data Processing and Analysis

All of the GPS data were postprocessed using the program GeoGenius™ by Spectra Precision Terrasat GmbH, Hoehenkirchen, Germany. This program is designed to integrate terrestrial and satellite data and produces a number of reports permitting evaluation of the quality of the data and providing for the transfer of the data to the GIS system.3 The Guatemala City CORS records at 30-second intervals. Data downloaded from the CORS site produced 11 usable baselines between Chocolá control points and the Guatemala City CORS with between 42 and 246 common epochs of data with an average of 156 common epochs. The GeoGenius™ GPS postprocessing software computes the carrier phase solution to the baseline vector. The carrier signal from the satellite to the receiver consists of an integer number of complete cycles plus a fraction of a cycle. The GPS receiver can measure the time elapsed since the last phase shift in the carrier signal to about 1/100 of a cycle, that is, near 2 mm for the 19 cm Ll carrier and the 23 cm L2 carrier. The unknown number of complete cycles between the satellite and the receiver is known as the integer ambiguity. Carrier-phase processing software attempts to resolve this integer ambiguity. The principal sources of possible error in GPS positioning are ionospheric delay of the GPS signal and errors in the satellite and the receiver clocks. The amount of delay in the ionosphere is a function of the frequency of the signal. Using dual frequency receivers in conjunction with a model of the ionosphere effectively eliminates the error due to the ionosphere. Clock errors are eliminated by phase differencing techniques. Single differences are the differences between the carrier-phase observations of two receivers of the same satellite at the same epoch. Since the differences involve the same satellite, the satellite clock error is canceled. Double differences are the differences of two single differences of the same epoch that refer to two different satellites. Since double differences are from the same receiver, the receiver clock error is canceled. The triple difference is the difference between the double differences at two receivers, that is, the carrier-phase observations between two receivers, two satellites, and two epochs. Because the integer ambiguity is a constant in time, the triple difference does not

Appendix B. Global Positioning System Survey: Chocolá Archaeological Site · 357

depend on this variable. The integer ambiguity only depends on the initial observation. The receiver keeps track of the number of whole cycles that it has received since first acquisition of the signal. The triple difference is used to detect and recover from cycle slips in the count. It also provides a first solution to the receiver position. With confidence in the cycle count, the program computes a double difference float solution. It is called a float solution because the integer ambiguities are permitted to float, that is, the algorithm does not force them to be integers. The double difference solution allows processing-correlated double difference carrier phase data. With dual-frequency data, additional baseline solutions will be provided for the various combinations of L1 and L2 known as Lw, Lc, and Ln. A search for a more accurate solution is conducted within a window that is defined as 20 times the sigma value of the double difference float solution. The algorithm constrains the ambiguity to integers and searches the volume for the solution with the smallest sum of squares residual error. Statistical testing is used to verify the correctness of the ambiguity resolution. First a Fisher test is performed with the ratios of the variances of the second to the best fitting solution with a reliability requirement of 99.99%. Then a Chi-square test is performed on the a posteriori variance of the residuals with a default of a 95% minimum probability. If this process is successful, the solution is said to be a fixed solution; if it is not successful, the solution is said to be a float solution. Sixteen of the 20 local baselines at Chocolá and 4 of the 10 baselines at Guatemala City CORS are fixed solutions. Because of the degree of redundancy in the network, all of the control points are points on at least 1 fixed baseline. Two have 1 fixed local baseline and 1 of those has a fixed solution to Guatemala City CORS. Four of the control points have 2 local fixed baselines; 2 have 3 fixed baselines and 4 have 4 fixed baselines. This provides for a high degree of confidence in the accuracy and the precision of the network. ArchMapBZ Control Point Network Accuracy and Precision

When used in the context of GPS mapping, the accuracy refers to the confidence with which the absolute location of the receiver is known and the term precision refers to the confidence with which the base line between the base station and the rover is known.

358 · William Clay Poe

Network Accuracy

The network accuracy of the Chocolá control point network was determined by a least squares adjustment of baselines among the control points and the Guatemala City CORS. Ten of the control points within the survey fall within the Federal Geographic Data Committee4 5 cm horizontal classification. The degree of error in this adjustment is displayed in Table B.1 below. The postprocessing program, GeoGenius, reports the adjustment error as error ellipses. The FGDC classification is based on a 95% Confidence Error Circle. This figure is computed as the mean between the two values of the error ellipse.5 It is this figure that is the basis for the assignment of the accuracy of a station to an FGDC horizontal classification. The vertical classification is based upon the height error reported. These data are within the Network Accuracy Standards minimally acceptable levels of differential relative positional accuracy required of a U.S. government cadastral survey6 (Tables B.2, B.3, B.4, B.5, and Table B.6). William Clay Poe, PhD, RPA, Professor of Archaeology, Sonoma State University Notes 1. Undertaken November 17, 2003. 2. The GPS receivers were provided by Trimble Navigation Ltd, Sunnyvale, Calif. 3. The GeoGenius™ program was provided by Spectra Precision. 4. Federal Geographic Data Committee, Federal Geodetic Control Subcommittee, Geospatial Positioning Accuracy Standards, Part 2: Standards for Geodetic Networks, Table 2-1, Accuracy Standards, p. 2–3. The Federal Geographic Data Committee is established by Office of Management and Budget Circular A-16. The Federal Geographic Data Committee (FGDC) promotes the coordinated development, use, sharing, and dissemination of geographic data. The FGDC is composed of representatives from the Departments of Agriculture, Commerce, Defense, Energy, Housing and Urban Development, the Interior, State, and Transportation; the Environmental Protection Agency; the Federal Emergency Management Agency; the Library of Congress; the National Aeronautics and Space Administration; the National Archives and Records Administration; and the Tennessee Valley Authority. Additional Federal agencies participate on FGDC subcommittees and working groups. The Department of the Interior chairs the committee. FGDC subcommittees work on issues related to data categories coordinated under the circular. Subcommittees establish and implement standards for data content, quality, and transfer; encourage the exchange of information and the transfer of data; and organize the collection of geographic data to reduce duplication of effort. Working groups are established for issues that transcend data categories.

Table B.1. Network accuracy, adjustment biased by CORS 2 sigma error, mm. Control Point

North

East

1 6 10 17 19 21 25 36 46 47 48 50 GUAT

66.7 49.9 38.0 37.5 35.7 24.9 30.3 28.6 27.8 29.6 34.9 42.4 68.0

84.5 62.7 46.9 52.6 37.8 34.3 41.9 39.2 38.2 40.0 43.5 49.0 111.3

Height

95% circle

FGDC H Class

FGDC V Class

197.6 165.4 124.9 120.1 96.1 86.3 116.2 100.6 96.3 103.5 113.7 124.4 174.0

75.6 56.3 42.5 45.1 36.8 29.6 36.1 33.9 33.0 34.8 39.2 45.7 89.7

1-Decimeter 1-Decimeter 5-Centimeter 5-Centimeter 5-Centimeter 5-Centimeter 5-Centimeter 5-Centimeter 5-Centimeter 5-Centimeter 5-Centimeter 5-Centimeter 1-Decimeter

2-Decimeter 2-Decimeter 2-Decimeter 2-Decimeter 1-Decimeter 1-Decimeter 2-Decimeter 2-Decimeter 1-Decimeter 2-Decimeter 2-Decimeter 2-Decimeter 2-Decimeter

Source: PACH.

Table B.2. ArchMapBZ Control Point Coordinate Values, Control Point WGS84 Coordinates Point Number 1 6 10 17 19 21 25 36 46 47 48 50 GUAT Source: PACH.

X[m]

Y[m]

-154108.070 -153946.352 -153991.873 -153730.608 -153688.485 -153885.308 -154212.436 -153870.771 -154248.757 -153386.706 -153706.620 -153732.105 -56062.996

-6171630.157 -6171710.835 -6171749.464 -6171762.635 -6171782.943 -6171794.963 -6171770.002 -6171883.238 -6171870.408 -6171967.489 -6172074.446 -6172232.012 -6174980.368

Z[m] 1600741.029 1600324.559 1600108.722 1600049.989 1599972.674 1599904.016 1599958.785 1599406.108 1599430.753 1599069.374 1598430.012 1597661.624 1596665.507

Source: PACH.

1 6 10 17 19 21 25 36 46 47 48 50 GUAT

Point. Number

1617973.581 1617552.483 1617333.339 1617276.653 1617197.294 1617125.241 1617180.196 1616621.490 1616643.574 1616280.877 1615631.138 1614847.696 1614480.619

North[m]

HAE

669048.916 923.002 669215.485 891.961 669172.466 875.928 669434.329 867.540 669477.489 866.650 669281.556 865.688 668953.578 863.268 669301.775 825.053 668923.492 827.989 669790.076 809.925 669477.474 759.801 669461.348 719.089 767173.488 1521.572

East[m] 923.542 892.511 876.491 868.098 867.209 866.255 863.841 825.636 828.581 810.506 760.412 719.725 1519.880

Orthom Height[m] N 14°37'47.53206" N 14°37'33.79321" N 14°37'26.67259" N 14°37'24.76914" N 14°37'22.17728" N 14°37'19.87709" N 14°37'21.73902" N 14°37'03.48189" N 14°37'04.28557" N 14°36'52.28914" N 14°36'31.21902" N 14°36'05.73166" N 14°35'25.44851"

Latitude

Table B.3. Control Point UTM Coordinates, Latitude and Longitude, WGS84, UTM W 91°25'49.44451" W 91°25'43.97581" W 91°25'45.46404" W 91°25'36.72681" W 91°25'35.30301" W 91°25'41.86687" W 91°25'52.81370" W 91°25'41.30784" W 91°25'53.94298" W 91°25'25.07043" W 91°25'35.66624" W 91°25'36.38635" W 90°31'12.63839"

Longitude

Table B.4. Conversions from WGS84 to NAD27 BM 1: 1617773.583N 669067.092E HAE 946.200 BM 6: 1617352.486N 669233.660E HAE 915.166 BM 10: 1617133.343N 669190.641E HAE 899.137 BM 17: 1617076.657N 669452.503E HAE 890.750 BM 19: 1616997.298N 669495.663E HAE 889.861 BM 21: 1616925.245N 669299.731E HAE 888.900 BM 25: 1616980.200N 668971.754E HAE 886.478 BM 36: 1616421.496N 669319.949E HAE 848.273 BM 46: 1616443.580N 668941.668E HAE 851.208 BM 47: 1616080.883N 669808.249E HAE 833.152 BM 48: 1615431.146N 669495.648E HAE 783.037 BM 50: 1614647.706N 669479.521E HAE 742.338 Source: PACH.

Table B.5. Geodetic surveyors GPS receiver

Trimble

GPS antenna

Trimble

Model Part no. Serial no. Firmware

4000SSE Geodetic Surveyor 18292-01 3610A14748 7.29

Model Part no. Serial no.

Geodetic with ground plane 14177-00 3017A00164

Model Part no. Serial no. Firmware

4000SSE Geodetic Surveyor 18292-01 3244A01763 7.29

Model Part no. Serial no.

Geodetic with ground plane 14177-00

Model Part no. Serial no. Firmware

4000SE GIS Surveyor 18292-01 3301A02301 7.23

Model Part no. Serial no.

Compact L1

Source: PACH.

Table B.6. NGS Data Sheet for Guatemala City CORS ***ITRF 00*** GUATEMALA CITY (GUAT), UNIDENTIFIED DEPARTMENT OF GUATEMALA Retrieved from NGS DataBase on 10/29/02 at 15:50:01. _____________________________________________________________________ || | Antenna Reference Point (ARP): GUATEMALA CITY CORS ARP | | ——————————————————————————- | | PID = AI7441 | || || | ITRF00 POSITION (EPOCH 1997.0) | | Computed in Aug. 2001 using every third day of data through 2000. | | X = -56063.630 m latitude = 14 35 25.45425 N | | Y = -6174978.670 m longitude = 090 31 12.66007 W | | Z = 1596665.249 m ellipsoid height = 1519.869 m | || | ITRF00 VELOCITY | | Predicted with HTDP_2.5 in Aug. 2001. | | VX = 0.0036 m/yr northward = -0.0012 m/yr | | VY = -0.0003 m/yr eastward = 0.0036 m/yr | | VZ = -0.0012 m/yr upward = 0.0000 m/yr | || || | NAD_83 POSITION (EPOCH 2002.0) | | Transformed from ITRF00 (epoch 1997.0) position in Mar. 2002. | | X = -56062.996 m latitude = 14 35 25.44852 N | | Y = -6174980.368 m longitude = 090 31 12.63838 W | | Z = 1596665.507 m ellipsoid height = 1521.572 m | || | NAD_83 VELOCITY | | Transformed from ITRF00 velocity in Mar. 2002. | | VX = 0.0117 m/yr northward = 0.0013 m/yr | | VY = 0.0006 m/yr eastward = 0.0117 m/yr | | VZ = 0.0012 m/yr upward = -0.0004 m/yr | |____________________________________________________________________________| || | L1 Phase Center of the current GPS antenna: GUATEMALA CITY CORS L1 PC C | | ———————————————————————————————————- | | The D/M element, chokerings, -radome antenna | | (Antenna Code = TRM29659.00) was installed on 07/28/00. | | The L2 phase center is 0.018 m above the L1 phase center. | | PID = AI7442 | || ||

| ITRF00 POSITION (EPOCH 1997.0) | | Computed in Aug. 2001 using every third day of data through 2000. | | X = -56063.630 m latitude = 14 35 25.45429 N | | Y = -6174978.776 m longitude = 090 31 12.66005 W | | Z = 1596665.278 m ellipsoid height = 1519.979 m | || | The ITRF00 VELOCITY of the L1 PC is the same as that for the ARP. | || || | NAD_83 POSITION (EPOCH 2002.0) | | Transformed from ITRF00 (epoch 1997.0) position in Mar. 2002. | | X = -56062.996 m latitude = 14 35 25.44856 N | | Y = -6174980.474 m longitude = 090 31 12.63836 W | | Z = 1596665.536 m ellipsoid height = 1521.682 m | || | The NAD_83 VELOCITY of the L1 PC is the same as that for the ARP. | |____________________________________________________________________________| * Latitude, longitude and ellipsoid height are computed from their corresponding cartesian coordinates using dimensions for the GRS 80 ellipsoid: semi-major axis = 6,378,137.0 meters flattening = 1/298.257222101...\other relevant points at the site and on GPS equipment, consult the link ftp:// www.ngs.noaa.gov/cors/.html/guat.log.txt * The NAD_83 position & velocity were revised in Mar. 2002. Source: PACH.

364 · William Clay Poe

5. Federal Geographic Data Committee, Federal Geodetic Control Subcommittee, Geospatial Positioning Accuracy Standards, Part 3: National Standard for Spatial Data Accuracy, p. 3–6. 6. U.S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service, U.S. Department of the Interior, Bureau of Land Management, Standards and Guidelines for Cadastral Surveys Using Global Positioning System Methods, March 21, 2001, p. 6.

References Birchall, C. J., and R. N. Jenkin 1979 The Soils of the Belize Valley, Belize, Vol. 1 and 2. Land Resources Development Centre, Supplementary Report 15. Intergovernmental Committee on Surveying and Mapping (ICSM), Australia 1997 Best Practice Guidelines, Use of the Global Positioning System (GPS) for Surveying Applications. Version 2.0 (1 November). National Geodetic Survey 2000 Guidelines for Geodetic Network Surveys Using GPS, including Federal & Cooperative Base Network Surveys, User Densification Network Surveys, GPS Orthometric Height Surveys, DRAFT 4 (May 15), email: [email protected] or steve@ ngs.noaa.gov. U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Engineering and Design 1996 NAVSTAR Global Positioning System Surveying Engineer Manual, EM 1110-1-1003 (August 1). U.S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service, U.S. Department of the Interior, Bureau of Land Management 2001 Standards and Guidelines for Cadastral Surveys Using Global Positioning System Methods (March 21).

Appendix C Origin of Chocolá Obsidian from X-Ray Fluorescence

For most Mesoamerican peoples, obsidian was the principal raw material from which knives, arrowheads, scrapers, and other household items were produced. Obsidian artifacts having other functions were also often imbued with great symbolic meaning. Thus, identification of the sources of raw material of this particular city or settlement is of the utmost importance to understand access to and political control of sources, patterns of exploitation, and trade routes via which the raw material and the crafted obsidian goods were disseminated. For the Southern Maya Region, trade networks may illuminate or provide at least partial answers to questions about the inclusion of smaller polities on the piedmont and Pacific coast possibly, or not, within the hegemony of Kaminaljuyu, a question long debated but, currently, with no final answers. Nevertheless, most obsidian analyses used to build models of distribution and exchange systems have relied on macroscopic methods, which have proved faulty, by comparison with microscopic, e.g., x-ray fluorescence spectrometry, or XRF. In his discussion of exchange systems across city-states during the Late Preclassic, Love (2011: 71–72) proposed three primary systems of obsidian exchange linked to the best known sources. The first includes sites whose obsidian assemblage consists of approximately 80% of materials originating from El Chayal (CHY), the source reputedly in control of Kaminaljuyu by the Late Preclassic. According to Love, in this group one encounters sites of the Pacific Coast of Escuintla, Suchitepéquez, and Retalhuleu. A second system of exchange includes sites whose obsidian consists of 80% of materials originating from San Martín Jilotepeque (SMJ); this system may include San Andrés Semetabaj, Takalik Abaj, Izapa, and Chiapa de Corzo. A third system may include sites where Ixtepeque (IXT) is the major source, such as Chalchuapa, Santa Leticia and Ataco (at this site Paredes Umaña [2012] reports XRF sourcing with over 92% of obsidian materials originating from

366 · J. Alvarado H., G. Acosta Ochoa, V. Garcia Gómez, F. Paredes Umaña & J. Kaplan

Ixtepeque), and Cara Sucia. Francisco Estrada-Belli (1999) and Federico Paredes Umaña (2011), report that the southeastern Guatemalan sites of Santa Rosa and Jutiapa may have shifted in their obsidian sources between the Middle and Late Preclassic periods from El Chayal to Ixtepeque. As much as these proposed exchange systems seem plausible and generate theories about networks and social relations which precluded some sites from obtaining their needed raw materials from closer sources, seemingly for economic and or political reasons, a word of caution must be expressed because most of the obsidian analysis on which these systems depend, including Love’s region-wide model, originate from studies undertaken when macroscopic inspection had not been challenged. Based on experimental analysis that contrasted macroscopic identification of obsidian sources with later XRF analysis on the same sample (Cossich 2006), we consider macroscopic inspections unreliable due to the significant errors introduced by subjective comparison, that is, with the bare eye, of and between samples. In 2014, in preparation for the present analysis, Paredes Umaña, Kaplan, Corado, and García recovered obsidian samples from a field trip to Ixtepeque (Agua Blanca, Jutiapa) that exhibited a wide range of different macroscopic characteristics, including red core with black chunks, light transparent, light grainy, and dark black properties, some of the latter often used as macroscopic indicators of El Chayal and San Martín Jilotepeque. To avoid subjective identification of sources, we argue that a new comparative database for the Southern Maya Region should be built using new analysis that greatly reduces subjective errors due to macroscopic observations. Our XRF analysis of 311 obsidian samples from Chocolá, intended to add new data to such a database, is presented here.1 The location of Chocolá, in the Guatemalan Bocacosta, appears to offer nearly ideal grounds as a control site, as it is “almost equidistant between Takalik Abaj to the west and El Baúl to the east, two sites with some of the monuments bearing the earliest Maya Long Count dates [and is,] similarly, equidistant between Kaminaljuyu, the Southeast Maya area’s largest city, and Izapa, a non-Maya to the west” (Kaplan 2005: 1). Also, two large obsidian sources are located almost equidistantly from the site, both about 70 km, Tajamulco to the west, and San Martín Jilotepeque to the east. A little farther is the Chayal site, 100 km, and Ixtepeque, almost 200 km away (Figure C.1).

Figure C.1. Location of Chocolá in the Southern Maya Region, with other important archaeological sites and major obsidian sources in the Preclassic Period. (PACH)

368 · J. Alvarado H., G. Acosta Ochoa, V. Garcia Gómez, F. Paredes Umaña & J. Kaplan

Methodology

XRF analysis is based on the principle established by Moseley who, in the early 20th century, realized that X-rays characteristic of a certain number of atoms are directly proportional to the number of protons in the element such that the elements contained in any type of material can be identified by the photon energy emitted from the element. The concentrations of these elements are determined from the intensities of the spectral lines (Musílek, et al. 2012: 1193). Hand-operated devices typically use a miniature X-ray tube of up to about 40–50 kV of intensity as a primary radiation source. This particular method is sensitive to most elements in the periodic system, excluding the lightest (2012: 1194). XRF archaeometry has become increasingly utilized by archaeologists because it has certain advantages compared with other methods. For example, most units are now portable, it can be applied to a variety of materials, including, in addition to obsidian, ceramics, glass, stone, and paint; when used for obsidian, and it is a nondestructive technique (Neff et al. 2012). For the present study, the team used a Bruker Tracer III-SD Hand-held XRF Analyzer equipped with an Rh target X-ray tube. All samples were measured employing the follow parameters: an intensity of 40 keV voltage and an electric current of 25 µA, with a 12 mil Al, 1 mil Ti, 6 mil Cu filter placed in the X-ray path for a 200-second live-time count. Intensities for the Kα peaks of Mn, Fe, Zn, Ga, Rb, Sr, Y, Zr, Nb, and Lα peak of Th were calculated as ratios to the Compton peak of rhodium and converted to parts-per-million (ppm) using Bruker’s factory-installed calibration for obsidian (Speakman 2012). A total of 311 samples originating from Operations 4, 14, and 17 excavated during the 2004 and 2005 seasons were analyzed. After exposing the samples to radiation, results were statistically evaluated, in order to achieve optimal readings. Geological samples of the three main obsidian sources from Guatemala were measured following the same parameters. These samples were obtained by sampling obsidian sources trying to register the greater variability in the optical characteristics of the materials and the higher spatial extension of each site. In order to statistically compare the geological samples (from the known sources) with archaeological samples, Duran et al. demonstrated that five

Appendix C. Origin of Chocolá Obsidian from X-Ray Fluorescence · 369

elements (Nb, Y, Zr, Rb, and Sr) are sufficient to define the areas of origin due to its sensitivity to differentiate between different magmatic processes (2012). Similarly, for evaluation of results, it has been determined that, in many cases, performing a bivariate analysis, plotting relationships between two of the five trace elements, is sufficient for the same purpose. In the case of Guatemalan obsidian, the elements Strontium (Sr), rubidium (Rb), and zirconium (Zr) permit defining confidence ellipses clearly separating (identifying) each source. For this study, Sr and Rb were considered. Results

From a previous characterization of obsidian from the three major sources (SMJ, CHY, and IXT), we proceeded to the assignment of each sample to its original source, provided that the source was characterizable from among the three. Bivariate graphs show the relationship of Sr and Zr in the Chocolá samples, according to their provenience as ascertained from grid excavation. Operation 4 is located in the northern group, Operation 14 in the southern group, and Operation 17 in the central group. Operation 4, with the highest number of obsidian fragments recovered during excavations, is also the best represented in the sample, with 160 cases, followed by 76 cases in Operation 17, and 75 cases for Operation 14. As shown in the graphics below, all results obtained overlapped at least partially with the reference geological samples from SMJ, CHY, and IXT (Figures C.2, C.3, and C.4), which means that all three sources are present in the Chocolá sample, but also that more distant sources are not represented at the site. In order to validate our assignments to each specific source, and to contrast the possibility that one sample came from an unidentified source, a cluster analysis was performed (Figure C.5). The resulting dendrogram corroborated the assignment to the three principal sources (SMJ, CHY, IXT), and indicates that the atypical sample is assigned to IXT. Table C.1 lists the sources of Chocolá Obsidian (CHY: El Chayal; SMJ: San Martín Jilotepeque; IX: Ixtepeque).

Figure C.2. Scatter plot of the concentrations of strontium (Sr) and zirconium (Zr) in samples from Chocolá Operation 4, compared with the geological samples from CHY, IXT, and SMJ. Confidence ellipses represent 90 percent; data in parts per million (ppm) are plotted on a logarithmic scale; an arrow points to a possible outlier. (PACH/ Julio Alvarado)

Figure C.3. Scatter plot of the concentrations of strontium (Sr) and zirconium (Zr) in samples from Chocolá Operation 14, compared with the geological samples from CHY, IXT, and SMJ. Confidence ellipses represent 90 percent; data in parts per million (ppm) are plotted on a logarithmic scale. (PACH/Julio Alvarado)

Figure C.4. Scatter plot of the concentrations of strontium (Sr) and zirconium (Zr) in samples from Chocolá Operation 17, compared with the geological samples from Chayal (CHY), Ixtepeque (IXT), and San Martin Jilotepeque (SMJ). Confidence ellipses represent 90 percent; data in parts per million (ppm) are plotted on a logarithmic scale. (PACH/Julio Alvarado)

Figure C.5. a) Dendrogram result of the cluster analysis, and b) obsidian sources assigned to each cluster. (PACH/Guillermo Acosta)

Table C.1. X-ray fluorescence applied to obsidian samples from Chocolá Lab_Code Exc_Code

MnKa1

FeKa1

ZnKa1

GaKa1

ThLa1

Choc1

4-65

699.7958

8,081.49

34.06377

24.09154

16.05876

Choc2

4-65

703.0565

8,547.13

49.59072

25.8475

10.88767

Choc3

4-65

592.1923

6,231.64

35.30561

15.03257

7.836414

Choc4

4-65

730.6347

6,823.44

42.49369

21.74185

14.37548

Choc5

4-65

616.746

6,742.24

31.70132

20.41047

9.898315

Choc6

4-65

478.3486

6,144.23

30.60926

16.97874

8.244749

Choc7

4-65

676.361

7,164.49

36.00246

20.12395

6.321209

Choc8

4-65

538.4582

7,644.90

33.53976

19.77

9.19059

Choc9

4-65

649.8448

7,349.16

42.40984

23.82772

9.768209

Choc10

4-65

632.798

7,457.17

41.71322

20.39716

11.90846

Choc11

4-65

576.0399

7,188.16

38.91628

22.9288

8.161334

Choc12

4-65

626.8544

7,041.94

33.98604

20.86388

10.53868

Choc13

4-65

611.4628

7,304.13

35.55109

22.96301

8.687871

Choc14

4-65

523.8428

6,956.93

27.10792

18.30347

9.092711

Choc15

4-65

648.0272

8,548.80

42.12236

24.75132

11.38918

Choc16

4-65

538.4313

6,932.15

39.59064

19.50437

10.65328

Choc17

4-65

589.0215

7,308.02

32.07329

22.15963

12.76306

Choc18

4-65

597.9267

6,782.47

35.97418

21.71433

10.36522

Choc19

4-65

646.7505

7,455.91

42.22418

19.5133

14.0905

Choc20

4-65

668.9271

7,987.44

43.91251

23.93486

9.351681

Choc21

4-65

637.8841

7,618.52

42.34084

24.67014

9.923761

Choc22

4-65

609.9843

7,051.25

36.75237

22.14486

9.040697

Choc23

4-65

578.2196

7,522.45

33.26498

22.59532

9.238529

Choc24

4-65

571.628

7,226.22

38.37708

21.05801

8.902106

Choc25

4-65

711.3156

7,869.65

49.51098

23.57275

8.902908

Choc26

4-65

707.6458

7,667.58

29.24622

22.26871

11.37369

Choc27

4-65

684.3802

6,957.98

45.00481

19.48903

10.30076

Choc28

4-65

670.2761

7,526.89

44.22167

23.64788

7.310209

Choc29

4-65

656.3372

7,376.19

36.19131

24.24171

12.07536

Choc30

4-65

541.9466

6,657.35

41.25259

15.79928

10.32048

Choc31

4-65

601.4252

7,207.26

30.80116

23.40747

10.10814

Choc32

4-65

599.8297

7,131.34

34.33087

21.05064

10.56444

Choc33

4-65

625.3835

6,599.41

39.54983

18.3519

10.14714

Choc34

4-65

567.917

6,535.76

32.1263

16.15096

10.95435

RbKa1

SrKa1

Y Ka1

ZrKa1

NbKa1

RhKa1

139.1846

215.3765

18.37918

124.613

9.74943

0

136.6831

220.9563

17.25163

120.9394

12.54815

0

105.3828

168.5746

16.75914

104.2091

7.487078

0

155.1123

152.7908

22.94704

115.0099

10.64722

0

113.4134

173.5448

15.37537

108.3631

9.714812

0

113.5775

171.9578

14.11769

100.7923

8.727668

0

119.6417

189.9518

14.63461

119.8962

10.46816

0

127.5301

197.6699

18.96528

118.2798

9.803951

0

123.5451

199.4764

16.44461

121.8674

8.75784

0

125.0883

204.1594

18.67938

118.3729

7.439548

0

120.8529

182.3398

15.71806

115.7502

7.909391

0

120.3131

186.5099

17.22093

110.4007

9.091774

0

122.9614

188.7432

17.25189

112.9105

8.359967

0

117.453

173.9033

16.42166

109.212

8.2124

0

132.3033

230.7538

20.59286

129.702

9.6326

0

120.1077

190.5762

17.32799

108.8124

9.440707

0

123.9248

187.6636

15.48298

115.2285

8.042972

0

146.7459

147.5106

20.66701

114.4196

11.95582

0

123.5047

206.601

18.19043

115.2495

10.52828

0

142.0701

210.4204

18.25253

122.0359

10.09424

0

122.5831

203.9368

16.16891

120.5302

10.94638

0

122.4091

193.1945

16.77133

115.4505

10.01279

0

120.9482

209.8445

17.1027

121.5288

10.36805

0

116.2333

183.6643

15.50311

114.8266

8.861704

0

133.9455

204.0371

16.58888

115.4383

10.06361

0

122.3261

204.5594

17.65059

115.8884

10.73756

0

156.1452

151.9195

21.38154

114.6183

10.68903

0

126.7921

200.4577

17.36666

113.0094

8.785227

0

124.9792

192.2825

17.9314

113.8606

10.36813

0

122.8172

176.2944

14.49452

106.6675

8.921136

0

121.9943

191.196

18.71035

112.2604

8.604357

0

121.3167

187.4423

17.43188

109.8601

10.70617

0

152.0305

148.2751

20.60323

110.5316

10.61871

0

102.7244

171.1988

15.72286

108.5931

6.577948

0

(continued)

Table C.1—Continued

Lab_Code Exc_Code

MnKa1

FeKa1

ZnKa1

GaKa1

ThLa1

Choc35

4-65

520.0139

7,281.14

38.24929

24.02293

10.96372

Choc36

4-65

541.0517

6,952.37

32.09324

17.27861

7.774136

Choc37

4-65

542.5031

7,506.51

44.02786

22.65732

8.014333

Choc38

4-65

846.8171

8,119.02

48.6747

26.74034

14.97782

Choc39

4-65

570.3988

7,044.97

38.05252

20.01465

7.607933

Choc40

4-65

653.1726

7,622.34

38.20007

22.4038

9.964996

Choc41

4-65

714.399

8,184.27

45.219

26.57993

7.923422

Choc42

4-65

712.3522

8,305.74

45.48532

25.76442

8.999373

Choc43

4-65

564.5561

6,716.98

35.91471

13.6266

11.12455

Choc44

4-65

543.7193

7,039.75

42.57933

16.47058

7.871671

Choc45

4-65

689.4701

8,063.91

42.36098

22.76332

9.921939

Choc46

4-227

577.8908

7,427.19

42.1641

23.67916

12.2594

Choc47

4-227

662.9831

7,429.88

40.08142

22.28335

8.231871

Choc48

4-227

542.072

7,283.53

37.73284

21.58869

12.55868

Choc49

4-227

624.68

6,786.68

28.11022

19.1605

8.441009

Choc50

4-227

577.8912

7,262.61

41.14111

22.40172

12.4136

Choc51

4-1

627.3992

7,527.43

40.14214

24.66802

11.73718

Choc52

4-1

615.1662

7,441.43

33.8009

21.1667

8.48643

Choc53

4-1

662.5859

8,627.90

45.39416

28.00326

9.563141

Choc54

4-1

704.2422

7,096.81

39.11174

22.55748

11.97591

Choc55

4-1

742.5468

8,342.11

46.63772

27.54674

8.778272

Choc56

4-1

632.2947

7,864.41

43.7612

22.86715

9.266219

Choc57

4-1

599.3354

7,943.67

41.48756

25.87177

8.523326

Choc58

4-1

547.4026

7,087.64

42.48244

22.62509

9.2552

Choc59

4-1

604.5892

7,639.24

38.26869

26.86044

11.30914

Choc60

4-1

576.4949

7,030.80

37.98548

18.72457

9.054892

Choc61

4-1

592.2738

6,992.59

44.19679

18.23393

8.704687

Choc62

4-1

619.9445

7,916.80

42.76281

26.20061

12.43548

Choc63

4-1

628.3589

7,796.96

37.97308

24.45676

12.50434

Choc64

4-1

607.5527

7,933.42

40.05391

25.26827

12.80331

Choc65

4-1

641.4853

8,040.65

43.06352

28.36552

11.50926

Choc66

4-1

763.7224

9,325.75

52.62476

27.42808

14.13857

Choc67

4-1

708.458

7,628.07

40.31835

25.17584

9.811727

Choc68

4-1

603.8732

6,888.90

32.24205

19.2115

11.28466

Choc69

4-1

716.2439

7,473.26

46.21686

24.74653

11.40574

RbKa1

SrKa1

Y Ka1

ZrKa1

NbKa1

RhKa1

119.8658

192.6039

17.49079

114.7474

7.553586

0

113.6035

191.7431

13.99017

112.3341

8.208968

0

130.8221

195.6394

16.19938

111.486

8.55838

0

178.5335

174.5383

22.44921

126.2152

13.32173

0

122.2609

186.2773

16.82736

112.47

8.429167

0

128.4685

203.7112

17.16578

123.4052

10.4362

0

136.8165

207.0611

18.42424

118.6053

13.81359

0

131.3103

223.6774

21.2064

124.5277

11.96833

0

103.5948

169.3552

14.97495

110.0775

7.796187

0

114.486

182.5517

16.37012

104.9768

10.45238

0

135.996

209.3316

16.44669

117.8438

11.05237

0

129.8788

199.4542

15.78529

117.8278

9.995496

0

122.1522

194.8955

16.93862

118.1152

9.003284

0

123.1948

193.693

17.87703

117.9918

8.827002

0

117.4945

181.7964

16.95422

108.0931

11.26951

0

123.5677

196.4303

17.08695

114.2067

10.4901

0

128.6916

199.2214

15.59116

112.58

10.12163

0

120.9588

195.9386

16.35808

119.0208

9.422213

0

134.0333

223.8502

18.27457

124.2743

10.5034

0

158.4794

156.5076

22.27885

120.9395

11.34381

0

136.633

216.3337

18.07028

121.6602

10.04215

0

125.9625

208.7196

18.03929

121.9396

9.418674

0

124.982

207.2498

16.34732

118.2394

9.751886

0

118.4597

195.1161

16.82962

114.8129

8.823502

0

125.0596

206.2942

17.5763

119.3377

9.888763

0

115.4664

187.4776

16.76718

113.3109

8.661365

0

112.0269

184.8155

15.92043

111.6519

9.085788

0

130.281

208.726

17.43573

118.09

10.38324

0

127.2415

208.5196

16.82779

119.5699

9.925234

0

124.4401

204.8491

18.54353

120.6937

9.538635

0

132.7188

210.4758

17.81842

117.79

11.29425

0

150.1906

231.4702

18.99377

127.602

10.93928

0

127.4467

200.6654

17.46942

114.7077

11.33757

0

115.8192

187.4332

17.21336

110.3388

9.043665

0

163.1741

163.0281

23.25712

115.3509

13.0203

0

(continued)

Table C.1—Continued

Lab_Code Exc_Code

MnKa1

FeKa1

ZnKa1

GaKa1

ThLa1

Choc70

4-1

591.6431

6,481.34

34.97656

15.26047

9.837242

Choc71

4-1

572.2781

6,690.52

40.52399

20.9701

8.444901

Choc72

4-35

587.0439

7,515.66

38.98431

20.04662

10.68211

Choc73

4-35

655.0333

7,598.27

36.26604

24.48483

10.60502

Choc74

4-35

660.5228

7,345.41

37.33488

22.12173

10.56576

Choc75

4-35

567.0186

7,342.68

43.01868

19.32096

10.08771

Choc76

4-35

582.157

7,351.87

40.45232

20.05823

9.487444

Choc77

4-35

701.3791

6,938.50

45.79196

19.64259

11.13642

Choc78

4-35

575.9819

7,067.26

39.23374

23.07353

9.113309

Choc79

4-35

548.3447

6,899.10

34.05501

18.06844

8.196144

Choc80

4-35

568.3696

6,736.78

32.5829

15.54832

8.698567

Choc81

4-35

576.8494

6,696.47

37.23188

18.34608

9.591775

Choc82

4-35

649.0381

7,429.02

38.69937

19.26591

8.884227

Choc83

4-225

567.8037

6,975.46

41.11371

16.32434

7.839574

Choc84

4-225

674.6789

7,817.20

51.01755

21.90105

9.864294

Choc85

4-225

580.9157

7,501.91

41.38401

19.66073

10.09024

Choc86

4-225

921.7057

9,537.04

62.99842

29.41672

15.91844

Choc87

4-225

531.9926

7,109.66

43.36829

18.88762

10.59884

Choc88

4-225

706.3171

8,110.99

50.49121

24.48084

9.355965

Choc89

4-225

627.9041

7,686.57

46.43436

20.71885

9.300342

Choc90

4-42

594.023

7,413.41

44.65497

20.85991

8.641117

Choc91

4-42

595.9457

7,311.65

38.15177

21.44411

10.19694

Choc92

4-42

658.7177

8,336.33

42.62517

25.3788

10.56456

Choc93

4-42

553.2558

7,438.83

38.03504

21.85801

8.753746

Choc94

4-42

570.6305

6,694.75

37.84946

20.16631

9.748112

Choc95

4-42

613.8101

7,723.42

44.52834

26.05134

7.581716

Choc96

4-42

725.2971

6,836.04

36.97518

20.96041

10.30243

Choc97

4-42

566.7581

6,536.42

36.63538

18.80171

10.31724

Choc98

4-42

633.1174

8,811.54

40.17048

27.6672

11.20012

Choc99

4-42

604.853

7,514.79

39.23936

20.95552

9.210982

Choc100

4-495

703.1547

6,753.54

35.10418

18.81822

11.75437

Choc101

4-495

589.9284

7,624.75

37.97221

23.83857

9.723258

Choc102

4-495

573.4057

6,930.99

33.69115

21.41259

10.52662

Choc103

4-495

547.8918

6,752.33

35.63945

12.61084

10.24539

Choc104

4-495

773.4917

7,114.93

41.08723

23.71234

11.50314

RbKa1

SrKa1

Y Ka1

ZrKa1

NbKa1

RhKa1

110.901

169.1023

14.48859

106.9822

8.580704

0

115.8863

180.0187

17.3571

109.0059

8.692527

0

125.5898

200.2579

15.06396

117.9328

9.133978

0

129.3662

198.251

17.82795

119.7833

8.896817

0

126.9823

192.3524

18.94854

116.5072

9.89974

0

115.0903

188.1238

16.72743

115.4671

8.758931

0

119.8546

192.2533

16.32123

116.8485

9.329754

0

152.8035

149.5913

21.4612

112.4962

10.96476

0

119.3953

186.4724

16.5091

113.2827

9.177269

0

118.1899

183.7335

15.79493

107.8432

7.420972

0

105.658

178.4514

15.32133

106.8614

7.725282

0

115.0921

183.8748

16.4614

109.1388

8.290342

0

119.3007

198.9262

18.67473

116.9368

9.543554

0

111.257

180.227

14.97311

110.9479

8.906009

0

125.9438

202.6218

17.2279

115.491

9.981058

0

117.9066

201.5818

16.13991

113.376

7.8231

0

196.9574

190.811

24.08103

130.2238

12.94908

0

116.8091

188.9739

18.00626

112.0857

9.357589

0

130.0574

217.0118

20.41788

121.362

10.95452

0

123.3703

202.4724

18.34625

117.4949

10.52143

0

116.0886

196.6524

16.78701

117.7453

8.583928

0

123.6231

194.2139

16.54214

116.7849

9.576951

0

132.5691

210.5117

20.05452

124.1804

9.751925

0

119.1052

195.7038

18.04928

114.7297

9.366692

0

114.0421

177.2001

15.00794

105.6342

8.955653

0

126.3672

201.2553

17.80648

117.5869

10.40921

0

147.9402

152.1773

23.20911

113.7026

10.43559

0

113.4488

179.5495

15.3837

106.0745

7.829044

0

143.8516

224.9634

17.06494

124.7182

10.73853

0

121.8716

195.4832

17.73615

115.3579

9.086846

0

147.2448

144.156

20.10587

110.855

10.61619

0

123.3458

202.8275

16.43899

118.6114

9.767245

0

122.8269

185.9118

14.76982

109.8934

10.37605

0

109.5178

178.935

15.8706

109.5121

9.118405

0

159.0881

148.2481

20.33082

116.6693

10.55996

0

(continued)

Table C.1—Continued

Lab_Code Exc_Code

MnKa1

FeKa1

ZnKa1

GaKa1

ThLa1

Choc105

4-495

748.8271

7,323.11

42.8736

21.35629

11.2375

Choc106

4-228

581.5615

7,213.37

38.98559

22.02964

9.601199

Choc107

4-228

558.3027

6,872.96

38.3238

20.15265

8.125066

Choc108

4-228

538.8365

7,312.85

42.82883

18.68669

10.35703

Choc109

4-228

541.9574

7,391.46

41.45723

21.42048

9.932397

Choc110

4-228

626.935

7,558.40

38.28967

22.21212

10.6892

Choc111

4-228

525.9224

6,510.57

35.09686

15.40761

8.231662

Choc112

4-228

587.2122

7,879.45

37.8008

25.94454

11.52895

Choc113

4-276

708.909

6,702.22

40.20273

18.94202

10.86765

Choc114

4-276

582.5737

6,950.34

43.32078

16.43207

8.899867

Choc115

4-276

589.0378

7,824.04

41.21227

25.42276

10.13768

Choc116

4-276

664.2658

6,570.94

41.21251

18.1223

10.44528

Choc117

4-276

622.3915

7,251.54

30.71366

19.91201

9.649978

Choc118

4-276

578.2197

7,506.82

41.55557

19.16852

8.104603

Choc119

4-276

612.935

7,527.04

38.12623

20.97814

8.802416

Choc120

4-276

564.4602

7,097.52

39.7172

21.11111

10.66437

Choc121

4-276

569.3785

7,344.22

39.93219

18.16238

7.015307

Choc122

4-276

631.5825

7,746.79

40.47069

21.27621

11.04845

Choc123

4-276

612.354

7,982.00

41.46034

24.37486

9.439073

Choc124

4-276

683.1724

8,003.21

45.93005

22.83442

11.72771

Choc125

4-14

584.98

7,198.04

33.58579

20.87078

7.490197

Choc126

4-14

642.2208

7,350.37

39.80896

17.2386

9.953163

Choc127

4-14

688.8268

6,855.54

42.39777

18.00777

10.5511

Choc128

4-14

655.8773

7,928.71

35.77253

21.59745

7.742305

Choc129

4-14

605.1123

7,463.12

38.16353

21.32295

8.821423

Choc130

4-32

543.575

7,136.20

36.39837

18.88717

8.772855

Choc131

4-32

811.9549

9,160.53

51.25258

26.23348

11.71814

Choc132

4-32

716.9359

9,514.34

45.6085

22.2866

10.39293

Choc133

4-32

551.1232

6,779.15

37.75421

18.38586

9.947161

Choc134

4-32

701.006

10,155.12

60.27556

32.15086

14.42491

Choc135

4-32

758.5391

7,057.18

42.68266

20.77776

9.387918

Choc136

4-32

625.9388

7,503.00

37.39154

24.31984

9.510903

Choc137

4-32

511.958

6,946.16

28.53073

18.91256

8.732611

Choc138

4-32

602.5563

7,379.52

43.16725

17.21448

9.810109

Choc139

4-32

638.8553

7,486.89

35.81726

21.78811

10.54

RbKa1

SrKa1

Y Ka1

ZrKa1

NbKa1

RhKa1

158.7672

154.4779

22.1234

112.4842

11.56647

0

120.8394

189.8926

17.15125

115.7954

10.34136

0

117.5844

181.3329

15.54842

110.213

9.385861

0

119.6387

192.9264

17.20454

114.7892

8.022603

0

118.4947

194.561

15.60199

114.2517

10.00579

0

126.2218

197.6116

17.6082

112.7793

10.57926

0

104.0906

164.0712

14.98037

105.2072

7.915459

0

125.5467

206.919

17.01898

116.667

9.074969

0

146.6769

146.3839

21.88714

111.3783

10.97687

0

112.9125

186.095

16.84906

110.9025

8.221616

0

133.5168

209.5165

17.87812

122.0059

11.02523

0

142.234

140.3534

20.60032

108.1059

10.96138

0

118.8517

189.3301

14.59322

111.9571

9.615388

0

120.9903

197.0277

17.56099

118.0661

8.730447

0

130.6178

206.9487

16.20005

118.896

9.517629

0

120.3443

189.9307

15.81683

108.9231

9.027682

0

120.715

198.1997

17.32838

116.4429

9.403353

0

124.843

203.4138

18.50043

120.5992

9.94699

0

126.7279

209.5143

16.12055

120.5536

10.02405

0

128.6953

205.6277

18.49286

117.4155

10.55196

0

115.65

186.6732

15.44169

109.6773

8.811637

0

118.929

192.7313

16.60721

114.1413

9.041122

0

147.3529

143.6496

20.92771

108.3261

10.56452

0

122.2653

206.8287

17.50331

118.3466

9.678391

0

122.2955

197.6302

14.83982

117.6857

8.57764

0

116.6931

183.2733

15.97236

111.3923

9.16252

0

140.8871

232.1114

18.00733

129.1871

11.10807

0

130.8804

215.7635

16.37781

118.4934

10.26695

0

116.8296

180.7455

15.7128

111.0552

8.56842

0

160.6207

243.0919

16.88659

128.0419

12.05221

0

156.6567

152.5206

21.28508

114.8319

10.23806

0

120.2215

199.3569

17.505

115.5109

9.000187

0

127.6337

175.6425

16.49209

89.31364

8.497232

0

123.0098

197.2767

16.82032

115.4678

9.532556

0

122.3632

193.6469

15.72188

116.8086

10.30619

0

(continued)

Table C.1—Continued

Lab_Code Exc_Code

MnKa1

FeKa1

ZnKa1

GaKa1

ThLa1

Choc140

4-32

558.469

7,967.28

41.44585

23.7379

11.52477

Choc141

4-24

582.9983

7,203.55

40.47666

18.48664

9.382994

Choc142

4-24

590.0059

8,107.02

41.37642

28.589

8.560364

Choc143

4-24

508.3448

9,572.82

29.21186

20.75312

6.762022

Choc144

4-24

590.4198

6,583.91

31.2025

17.68494

7.566712

Choc145

4-24

562.5454

6,759.63

38.15287

17.06628

10.32261

Choc146

4-32

541.8928

7,406.03

30.35349

23.9152

11.32309

Choc147

4-32

556.8848

7,161.65

35.05671

22.00896

10.01058

Choc148

4-32

721.3147

6,954.88

37.4656

20.78998

12.85947

Choc149

4-32

600.0017

7,305.24

38.95546

20.30608

9.110497

Choc150

4-32

547.6318

7,285.40

37.65638

20.3491

9.212486

Choc151

4-32

507.9445

7,157.88

35.64957

19.3745

10.30809

Choc152

4-32

808.9822

6,890.79

45.65546

21.77948

11.7858

Choc153

4-32

623.5174

7,491.49

40.74381

23.75671

9.92619

Choc154

4-32

603.4714

7,580.28

33.07997

20.00508

8.363651

Choc155

4-32

782.9856

7,772.06

45.14742

24.97028

11.51187

Choc156

4-32

577.1858

7,389.61

41.8329

20.31477

9.515594

Choc157

4-32

711.7393

8,337.19

43.95869

23.46384

10.80457

Choc158

4-32

698.5627

8,078.60

45.35214

24.72702

8.929574

Choc159

4-32

554.73

6,739.12

38.41365

19.02885

8.134017

Choc160

4-32

512.7943

7,459.21

39.7805

20.88026

8.179236

Choc161

14-45

619.319

7,432.23

41.1365

21.52892

10.11132

Choc162

14-45

591.5782

7,785.45

44.98309

20.99943

9.393943

Choc163

14-45

539.8439

6,706.07

55.5016

19.82697

9.702033

Choc164

14-45

739.155

9,253.31

50.37343

28.3611

11.98184

Choc165

14-45

618.6954

8,050.88

36.84121

21.92289

11.83226

Choc166

14-45

550.0901

6,580.95

60.95077

16.03921

6.60321

Choc167

14-45

564.2998

6,608.20

39.84193

12.50101

7.430915

Choc168

14-45

771.1441

7,439.23

53.52054

23.67158

13.03449

Choc169

14-45

624.7765

7,921.19

44.96313

23.84713

11.7651

Choc170

14-45

618.9462

10,778.90

54.05668

19.18599

11.45777

Choc171

14-56

564.0592

6,939.38

38.98009

15.22239

9.931069

Choc172

14-56

604.4963

7,920.33

47.99229

24.10061

11.74532

Choc173

14-56

641.8576

7,922.44

45.18325

25.62506

10.11657

Choc174

14-56

619.4187

7,610.56

42.18265

21.84881

8.945756

RbKa1

SrKa1

Y Ka1

ZrKa1

NbKa1

RhKa1

129.1917

203.5726

18.03037

116.9802

10.68439

0

116.1236

192.8511

16.52367

115.9217

8.726101

0

128.462

210.3701

15.81964

119.181

10.24581

0

102.4631

149.6607

17.28047

163.7489

10.26764

0

111.1798

169.0914

15.9883

103.7604

7.993867

0

114.149

175.7205

15.72737

107.8284

8.435464

0

118.8981

190.4171

14.56811

113.4456

8.83285

0

118.0815

186.6652

16.16126

111.2268

8.654838

0

157.9083

152.6247

22.39174

116.2887

12.05708

0

117.4016

189.2621

18.1998

115.3236

8.468941

0

113.5461

188.9336

16.72885

115.1441

9.498852

0

122.8207

193.2294

17.54768

116.0985

10.58023

0

155.2613

151.5998

21.36562

112.7879

11.91135

0

125.9869

196.3558

16.93302

113.0941

9.148923

0

122.8399

202.7579

17.81781

118.2047

8.940617

0

170.4344

165.56

22.39143

119.951

12.96739

0

117.8399

195.0174

16.04394

113.9702

9.312993

0

136.8403

218.9122

18.81984

125.0254

11.59515

0

134.0798

212.13

17.76409

120.9804

10.75545

0

111.5994

180.608

16.53081

107.2539

8.900559

0

118.2805

196.8018

16.00329

114.3496

9.999069

0

129.9565

203.408

14.70831

121.2243

9.744489

0

124.2247

200.8346

15.91522

115.2561

10.8149

0

108.8185

177.0743

16.3514

106.8179

8.959911

0

146.9514

227.1746

18.0519

127.4882

10.86172

0

141.393

220.8522

17.60437

126.5929

10.18826

0

106.9977

172.3905

16.68142

106.2766

9.033187

0

105.7396

174.0567

17.68763

109.7002

7.542439

0

164.1884

157.534

23.54526

120.7731

12.07011

0

129.1503

213.7385

16.60472

123.1038

11.2828

0

97.06475

166.0774

17.66403

163.9603

8.282099

0

111.2006

183.2939

16.15436

109.7639

8.783734

0

125.4285

210.3303

15.85303

121.5625

9.098377

0

139.4762

217.6731

19.39708

119.322

10.00792

0

119.0584

197.3146

17.87882

117.551

10.26889

0

(continued)

Table C.1—Continued

Lab_Code Exc_Code

MnKa1

FeKa1

ZnKa1

GaKa1

ThLa1

Choc175

14-56

732.2702

7,281.38

50.20385

24.81479

11.86419

Choc176

14-56

535.7856

6,592.73

34.35868

18.22135

10.63471

Choc177

14-56

637.9247

7,749.19

51.08314

23.09799

10.23154

Choc178

14-56

810.3992

13,813.05

91.04873

27.56441

15.17275

Choc179

14-56

786.4098

9,069.26

61.70152

27.59306

10.99109

Choc180

14-103

544.4102

6,976.05

34.7421

20.33789

6.732048

Choc181

14-103

810.0144

9,631.94

60.57192

31.60581

11.43077

Choc182

14-103

579.7124

7,802.32

39.51215

21.15295

12.12027

Choc183

14-103

614.9018

7,723.59

36.68827

22.3882

10.06614

Choc184

14-103

542.0595

6,826.55

36.33806

15.13724

8.286715

Choc185

14-103

628.5671

7,810.11

43.57447

22.18595

10.37467

Choc186

14-103

565.6071

7,546.12

47.62851

19.06929

9.132319

Choc187

14-103

592.8572

7,481.63

40.23032

20.09489

8.480101

Choc188

14-103

547.993

6,708.62

38.52552

16.65336

11.07272

Choc189

14-103

630.0204

7,555.19

40.17658

22.41022

9.712512

Choc190

14-103

602.7655

7,506.80

38.22524

19.51392

9.24287

Choc191

14-103

686.7225

8,978.75

44.29194

26.0818

12.03125

Choc192

14-103

630.5018

6,341.29

42.73682

16.91103

10.26892

Choc193

14-103

682.9775

7,632.09

47.40376

22.75233

10.93174

Choc194

14-127

665.5264

8,841.52

44.54223

25.91433

9.840787

Choc195

14-127

586.407

7,883.17

42.56685

24.76346

9.497288

Choc196

14-127

578.6026

7,419.21

44.28778

23.51952

8.596104

Choc197

14-127

790.6576

6,779.30

43.9591

18.71319

11.81079

Choc198

14-127

642.5505

7,746.82

43.95093

21.30299

11.74739

Choc199

14-316

586.871

7,619.72

42.13472

20.18323

11.99905

Choc200

14-316

714.959

6,819.74

43.33517

23.25796

11.18543

Choc201

14-316

591.1446

7,459.12

43.9945

22.627

10.02808

Choc202

14-316

810.6783

9,764.08

49.67449

27.03858

11.61638

Choc203

14-316

541.6354

7,649.62

40.83121

22.77638

11.69534

Choc204

14-316

633.1336

8,120.14

46.52681

24.45

10.62939

Choc205

14-316

567.8274

7,338.56

41.79069

17.80366

10.04109

Choc206

14-316

717.8044

8,491.93

47.47959

25.71737

9.039563

Choc207

14-316

655.5307

6,637.09

45.41029

23.32788

10.33245

Choc208

14-316

697.8735

6,435.68

40.75462

16.84854

10.49405

Choc209

14-316

631.1256

8,658.17

49.27458

20.77815

9.908839

RbKa1

SrKa1

Y Ka1

ZrKa1

NbKa1

RhKa1

152.1216

152.3011

20.39534

116.6349

11.49132

0

108.8572

175.3426

15.97918

106.9497

7.95212

0

122.7047

197.6505

17.00508

114.6509

10.25597

0

130.4044

210.6427

19.16414

206.946

10.738

0

138.5055

223.9902

18.6694

127.8925

10.13203

0

110.0569

183.1378

15.92439

111.2383

9.882783

0

145.7634

235.4978

18.42162

132.4613

12.52732

0

127.0349

207.1714

17.0716

117.4218

11.17143

0

124.0927

206.7443

19.26107

118.9259

10.21272

0

113.2835

176.4599

15.36281

105.6969

8.479596

0

122.428

199.2095

17.11559

117.4502

9.330899

0

126.5526

201.3079

17.12669

118.5867

9.005092

0

118.4633

193.6934

15.96731

115.6669

9.317315

0

109.9318

172.8206

15.68709

108.3316

7.607912

0

118.1733

190.7539

16.65058

112.1005

10.25905

0

117.3601

179.7657

15.55917

108.339

8.474099

0

140.5084

223.7104

19.42316

124.4266

10.33662

0

138.1979

135.4523

20.00399

107.6436

10.14171

0

129.351

200.4471

16.60358

116.8652

10.59365

0

136.7929

218.2832

16.45605

122.6787

11.09042

0

127.6941

209.8788

18.92599

118.3834

9.466691

0

126.0321

197.1724

17.43981

116.547

10.54598

0

154.089

147.0116

20.2395

111.5592

10.68147

0

123.8479

202.539

17.08184

117.9182

8.86326

0

121.1751

197.2024

17.80695

116.7278

9.183602

0

150.0159

146.4583

20.41714

113.6174

10.61819

0

127.0288

195.2373

17.65963

115.7164

9.589256

0

150.8931

240.6178

19.65184

129.4548

9.761125

0

125.4843

204.7003

18.17297

119.7534

9.848675

0

135.2405

210.9202

17.95679

119.7799

9.331582

0

117.0783

191.9524

17.08285

114.0526

7.916749

0

132.1579

215.7101

19.14688

123.4009

10.23948

0

149.6322

145.0104

20.94252

112.56

10.68258

0

143.3396

142.1333

18.82282

104.9538

9.524916

0

126.1315

203.4351

18.61989

120.0501

10.19748

0

(continued)

Table C.1—Continued

Lab_Code Exc_Code

MnKa1

FeKa1

ZnKa1

GaKa1

ThLa1

Choc210

14-316

882.153

8,959.90

73.63711

27.61648

13.22143

Choc211

14-316

582.9983

6,998.57

41.08547

18.31553

8.51903

Choc212

14-316

626.0458

7,093.01

47.77487

21.75154

9.390463

Choc213

14-316

620.5025

8,171.27

58.26695

24.63126

10.65615

Choc214

14-316

612.3753

7,462.39

44.46199

22.96209

10.40739

Choc215

14-316

679.4908

6,514.79

35.83772

19.47657

10.34551

Choc216

14-329

644.658

11,553.55

67.24664

21.5914

9.149129

Choc217

14-329

711.7881

7,968.77

50.3142

23.58997

13.71892

Choc218

14-329

608.7948

7,293.93

39.92134

19.16484

11.16294

Choc219

14-329

671.4828

8,788.74

34.14064

23.28253

8.533829

Choc220

14-329

577.1117

7,427.98

40.75398

18.71269

9.630964

Choc221

14-329

676.1002

8,670.46

56.84877

23.47442

9.942993

Choc222

14-329

654.0174

7,865.23

40.94427

22.6921

10.46702

Choc223

14-329

759.434

10,358.94

112.6386

30.86193

13.1255

Choc224

14-329

637.5861

8,368.10

60.01634

23.96872

11.66334

Choc225

14-329

759.182

7,056.81

47.68385

17.65016

10.62575

Choc226

14-329

675.1191

8,653.25

56.20003

24.45057

11.27907

Choc227

17-147

612.8745

7,614.08

40.8365

19.27776

10.0976

Choc228

17-147

624.3579

7,402.74

35.76528

15.69748

8.154511

Choc229

17-147

591.3006

7,623.70

39.68183

21.3131

9.392333

Choc230

17-147

559.3203

7,377.18

37.65214

21.63034

9.367093

Choc231

17-147

532.0076

6,776.50

32.71777

17.86465

10.89211

Choc232

17-147

677.8007

6,665.43

35.82966

16.38108

10.32498

Choc233

17-147

790.3056

7,460.91

43.49947

23.69653

11.36655

Choc234

17-125

549.7014

7,115.78

35.3129

22.20335

10.44356

Choc235

17-125

502.1533

7,199.45

39.92991

20.02641

10.09939

Choc236

17-125

721.5448

6,907.58

43.1099

21.6186

10.61716

Choc237

17-125

633.4513

6,920.71

36.66561

18.74518

7.303826

Choc238

17-125

573.54

7,016.49

39.54088

18.47198

9.395351

Choc239

17-125

572.579

8,039.48

46.89385

23.29173

10.07928

Choc240

17-125

659.6217

7,433.08

41.27885

20.28938

9.920827

Choc241

17-125

630.6739

7,489.55

40.07385

19.99585

9.734025

Choc242

17-125

609.2702

8,116.56

46.10422

24.97762

10.34517

Choc243

17-125

562.2906

6,904.12

36.61277

19.81488

10.66755

Choc244

17-125

518.7968

6,945.26

42.80321

17.60175

9.350932

RbKa1

SrKa1

Y Ka1

ZrKa1

NbKa1

RhKa1

186.5381

183.9116

22.9778

125.7584

11.99117

0

113.0417

181.5646

15.12273

112.893

8.450381

0

114.7822

179.181

16.85714

106.5482

8.531023

0

135.2646

205.1784

17.47156

117.4113

9.586081

0

125.6092

200.6065

17.05914

116.2953

9.410375

0

146.219

145.6609

20.22283

108.1594

10.71395

0

106.7271

178.1594

18.80674

177.7314

9.254326

0

172.5445

167.448

22.30851

119.6348

12.54438

0

119.745

191.3115

19.35634

115.521

9.12538

0

124.035

199.6398

17.64487

119.6033

10.98275

0

124.7104

191.7993

16.4172

112.0938

10.21116

0

137.6398

212.1592

17.61538

123.7871

9.906529

0

126.7255

213.3654

17.28874

123.3

9.378618

0

134.9107

231.7746

20.73242

123.8018

10.6077

0

133.7476

201.4046

17.91152

119.732

10.98271

0

144.6885

141.093

20.17383

108.5719

10.33149

0

137.5157

222.1043

17.34676

124.5944

11.24324

0

121.2988

197.1245

18.16675

115.5926

9.045517

0

121.7748

187.7152

17.72506

110.2485

9.169407

0

122.3315

202.0674

16.09809

120.7735

10.23178

0

118.3651

195.6028

15.90441

116.419

8.651976

0

109.1886

173.699

17.60935

105.0866

8.861376

0

141.719

137.1919

18.40399

106.5944

10.46925

0

167.502

159.0043

18.84161

117.7924

12.00617

0

120.5303

193.5709

18.62846

117.8504

8.735898

0

120.3308

190.871

15.26944

111.4885

10.16269

0

154.4083

148.6948

20.73989

112.6368

9.884651

0

117.323

184.0842

16.86633

110.6234

7.852856

0

118.8608

183.2099

16.25169

111.3019

8.454118

0

132.0325

202.5117

16.75981

123.3569

9.66226

0

127.7705

201.5936

17.31719

114.5432

10.20042

0

125.7202

197.1377

16.59986

113.9745

9.640011

0

128.7528

209.5261

16.24524

119.7909

9.613544

0

113.2062

174.4315

17.73544

110.3505

8.016066

0

116.7768

180.4954

16.29676

107.6884

9.563521

0

(continued)

Table C.1—Continued

Lab_Code Exc_Code

MnKa1

FeKa1

ZnKa1

GaKa1

ThLa1

Choc245

17-125

533.4945

6,841.16

34.61084

19.34103

10.48907

Choc246

17-125

782.9493

6,826.70

42.99543

19.81445

11.37725

Choc247

17-125

953.5785

9,286.99

58.24435

28.53597

15.89209

Choc248

17-147

498.4836

6,991.15

37.51726

20.45575

9.832677

Choc249

17-147

633.0575

7,992.03

46.11134

25.15105

10.81305

Choc250

17-147

584.7466

6,600.28

32.42599

17.45002

8.832208

Choc251

17-147

529.8404

7,089.68

41.72257

17.89385

9.370588

Choc252

17-147

735.6355

8,059.87

59.26842

22.41225

13.68691

Choc253

17-129

697.2726

7,607.20

42.95634

19.45404

10.445

Choc254

17-129

553.8672

6,835.17

36.69471

18.61909

8.599434

Choc255

17-129

666.1348

6,886.17

48.31227

19.87692

10.60639

Choc256

17-129

590.6021

7,035.81

37.25767

22.39441

8.419699

Choc257

17-129

559.3037

6,649.17

32.55142

19.33705

7.879589

Choc258

17-129

650.1713

6,498.41

37.93431

17.41935

10.90391

Choc259

17-129

601.4117

6,445.05

35.69936

16.53231

8.408275

Choc260

17-129

641.3795

6,941.28

36.17807

18.30619

8.50888

Choc261

17-129

645.45

6,447.50

49.60916

18.99304

11.60478

Choc262

17-129

720.269

6,724.94

37.00286

19.32669

11.50583

Choc263

17-129

635.0772

7,474.24

37.73183

22.24351

9.400475

Choc264

17-129

704.8738

8,065.74

38.40183

24.79477

11.50602

Choc265

17-129

667.6193

7,221.34

47.71463

23.15977

12.79951

Choc266

17-129

592.1039

7,343.80

36.14734

24.58923

8.671114

Choc267

17-129

764.7299

7,289.10

43.94042

24.57569

11.52108

Choc268

17-125

607.5677

7,546.58

37.97097

20.00579

9.841896

Choc269

17-125

543.4364

6,720.98

32.09669

17.62414

8.354776

Choc270

17-125

550.5945

7,279.30

40.39194

21.11801

9.956686

Choc271

17-125

560.2095

6,918.32

42.3383

19.87238

9.585549

Choc272

17-125

599.1202

7,052.48

37.19116

20.91361

8.480807

Choc273

17-125

584.684

7,393.37

37.20603

19.98686

11.07953

Choc274

17-125

604.5819

7,147.10

38.4858

20.85886

10.23791

Choc275

17-125

608.3935

7,427.77

38.88065

22.70951

9.943561

Choc276

17-125

579.9623

7,462.11

32.47627

22.1214

11.28479

Choc277

17-125

614.369

7,150.99

37.55347

22.43704

6.910834

Choc278

17-125

634.4381

8,016.11

36.83711

21.84042

11.68178

Choc279

17-125

539.5378

7,096.52

36.4996

24.58682

10.57634

RbKa1

SrKa1

Y Ka1

ZrKa1

NbKa1

RhKa1

122.113

185.047

15.69349

108.9227

9.050991

0

151.2672

145.5536

22.87943

111.947

10.52338

0

196.8659

189.3065

22.92308

130.8818

12.99275

0

120.8585

184.5265

15.82405

111.9584

9.338696

0

126.0602

210.3647

19.5404

123.4709

10.35104

0

114.4973

176.5463

14.81283

107.8194

8.534203

0

114.4309

186.0524

16.97681

113.8176

8.692795

0

167.9633

166.1074

22.49941

117.8426

11.23037

0

148.2407

140.8138

20.31008

112.3241

11.24955

0

116.1104

181.3416

15.8883

110.1412

8.578486

0

141.5536

143.7681

18.4375

109.8363

9.767866

0

119.8637

188.6886

16.43121

112.9922

10.28762

0

114.3154

175.6372

17.66369

105.7473

8.884262

0

143.9155

138.1068

19.49062

108.0243

10.35002

0

115.0122

170.2398

17.03977

105.3474

7.724784

0

117.8205

184.1178

15.96055

110.2758

8.302271

0

143.3195

141.7986

21.5663

107.3798

9.818566

0

146.5247

144.8275

22.23818

112.0179

11.34566

0

129.8538

195.5425

18.50962

114.377

9.77991

0

134.3365

205.7861

17.78275

116.7667

10.42493

0

164.3981

158.4867

20.31691

116.9973

11.83113

0

129.6344

196.2777

17.97424

116.8435

8.841592

0

161.5959

155.9505

22.42696

118.5192

10.76835

0

128.4537

200.6768

16.42799

117.6429

10.80532

0

110.8574

179.2083

16.79041

108.3915

8.525496

0

122.9843

191.1717

18.87819

115.175

9.363547

0

117.6764

182.7184

15.85967

107.748

9.098555

0

121.0064

189.6171

15.717

112.3889

9.099458

0

124.2339

194.3941

17.53227

112.8905

9.950043

0

115.2401

193.5849

17.06185

113.6921

9.025954

0

125.6668

197.2908

18.99085

118.5844

9.205828

0

125.0082

195.4013

16.63092

115.5402

8.828261

0

122.4161

187.8118

15.28961

109.6448

8.225131

0

132.3795

220.3802

19.70721

124.6927

10.37772

0

124.914

194.0979

17.50678

115.4162

9.984422

0

(continued)

Table C.1—Continued

Lab_Code Exc_Code

MnKa1

FeKa1

ZnKa1

GaKa1

ThLa1

Choc280

17-125

571.021

7,242.35

43.9239

19.48829

8.99177

Choc281

17-125

602.4856

7,124.23

42.82139

21.94477

11.50261

Choc282

17-125

559.509

7,011.92

31.01203

17.7683

11.35281

Choc283

17-125

620.063

8,006.60

34.4571

24.48235

9.957022

Choc284

17-125

657.4663

8,017.14

42.46381

24.53185

11.02619

Choc285

17-125

615.982

7,932.94

42.64281

24.24033

10.88141

Choc286

17-125

617.9245

7,254.67

44.69399

17.96152

10.60667

Choc287

17-125

680.9104

8,008.04

49.87703

24.94353

11.75805

Choc288

17-125

596.6336

7,087.02

32.21027

24.19476

8.85763

Choc289

17-125

688.0562

6,767.98

43.13547

19.24779

11.14162

Choc290

17-125

898.2209

7,967.67

50.03768

28.62351

13.67743

Choc291

17-125

622.0495

6,955.66

33.94181

17.12757

9.101129

Choc292

17-125

562.0995

6,955.39

37.14024

18.15495

11.00731

Choc293

14-570

788.8944

8,804.60

51.7637

28.61784

13.61351

Choc294

14-570

591.5561

7,850.90

45.58242

24.96644

9.444451

Choc295

14-570

648.3416

6,610.95

41.19478

17.20299

11.0661

Choc296

14-570

532.955

7,383.73

43.78671

21.61697

8.229197

Choc297

14-570

540.5884

6,625.35

40.48843

19.35665

10.08229

Choc298

14-579

528.8462

7,414.59

42.90333

20.45243

10.16378

Choc299

14-579

666.0907

8,167.46

47.94094

23.71593

10.49346

Choc300

14-579

547.4977

6,638.09

35.91926

16.19517

7.677555

Choc301

14-579

595.7915

7,281.88

45.49948

21.48952

7.564879

Choc302

17-125

581.8251

7,036.91

37.64174

20.39211

9.716361

Choc303

17-125

717.1845

7,406.44

46.44691

21.67464

10.67927

Choc304

17-125

646.4879

7,400.30

40.61968

17.98296

10.15599

Choc305

17-125

550.2453

7,296.03

33.70096

18.7193

9.602225

Choc306

17-125

651.932

6,674.08

44.32958

19.92604

11.61026

Choc307

17-125

898.9737

10,569.55

60.90209

33.82786

14.11904

Choc308

17-125

595.9469

6,441.41

34.06174

20.3092

9.766314

Choc309

17-125

566.671

8,025.60

46.92309

22.40672

11.08229

Choc310

17-125

683.4745

8,316.08

42.06552

27.29781

12.02766

Choc311

17-125

606.9173

7,253.24

40.1473

18.31633

9.574508

Source: PACH.

RbKa1

SrKa1

Y Ka1

ZrKa1

NbKa1

RhKa1

116.8728

197.0523

16.86323

115.6918

9.516927

0

124.1735

192.8901

18.18976

113.4577

9.942265

0

113.9147

183.7376

16.13281

109.2714

8.847493

0

128.9719

205.9258

16.72557

118.9809

10.45742

0

131.8862

211.1889

16.17639

124.494

9.715105

0

134.7756

211.1539

17.85712

120.4205

11.01712

0

111.5869

188.2043

18.5446

112.3336

9.320672

0

127.4399

205.1653

18.22868

120.3507

9.23501

0

120.8598

184.7802

15.96129

111.9085

9.358067

0

149.1901

151.3846

20.87954

113.1655

11.98617

0

174.5166

172.0149

21.53413

121.5434

12.43707

0

112.3566

183.2309

15.8123

111.5931

9.166413

0

116.8164

188.9913

16.34237

112.2295

8.599774

0

141.1318

220.0432

18.87585

127.844

11.55158

0

123.2681

203.4314

17.60933

117.6449

10.12349

0

147.547

147.5613

19.36123

110.7659

11.76976

0

119.4508

192.657

16.54326

119.6442

8.408755

0

112.8205

181.513

15.5074

108.9914

9.003474

0

122.3369

197.5469

17.83977

118.1184

9.790787

0

133.2799

211.6045

17.59672

123.7735

9.330607

0

103.2189

173.8739

15.42406

103.7285

7.810237

0

123.616

192.7955

17.73271

115.0667

8.758069

0

112.2733

176.0745

16.51372

107.5768

8.034999

0

155.1821

152.0849

20.08926

115.4638

11.18635

0

120.1955

199.6625

15.55371

116.4681

10.25371

0

120.6533

191.8309

15.99601

115.8974

8.697327

0

149.6183

141.0694

19.23163

109.1674

10.11234

0

157.6212

254.8646

20.02722

135.2935

11.67525

0

113.1099

167.6738

15.05444

106.7642

7.900143

0

129.6571

206.0141

18.16522

123.4401

9.770342

0

136.8988

221.4048

16.88544

120.1587

11.92499

0

119.4956

200.0214

15.50021

114.7053

9.83359

0

392 · J. Alvarado H., G. Acosta Ochoa, V. Garcia Gómez, F. Paredes Umaña & J. Kaplan

Conclusion

Results of the analysis show that from the total sample of 311, 82.64% of obsidian fragments originated from SMJ, 15.76% came from CHY, and a small amount, about 1.29%, came from IXT. For Operation 4, 86.87% of the obsidian was identified as sourced from SMJ, 11.87% from CHY, one sample originated from IXT, and one outlier sample was recovered. For Operation 14, 81.30% derived from SMJ, 14.70% from CHY, and 4% from IXT, represented by three cases, only. Finally, from Operation 17, 78.95% was sourced from SMJ, and 21.05% from CHY; no sample from IXT was identified. According to the analysis performed on sample origin through XRF, it appears that Chocolá derived most of its obsidian from San Martín Jilotepeque, with a modest, but not negligible, percentage obtained from El Chayal. In addition, as our sample comes from all loci at the site, from different strata, and from superficial to deep levels, we tentatively conclude that the percentages offered here represent a general pattern of the favored sources throughout the pre-Hispanic era, and do not represent one single or particular period of occupation. Julio Cesar Alvarado H., Technological University of El Salvador and Secretariat of Culture of the Presidency of El Salvador Guillermo Acosta Ochoa, Department of Prehistory and Evolution Institute of Anthropological Research at the National Autonomous University of Mexico Victor Garcia Gómez, Department of Prehistory and Evolution Institute of Anthropological Research at the National Autonomous University of Mexico Federico Paredes Umaña, Autonomas University of Mexico and the Proyecto Arqueológico Chocolá Jonathan Kaplan, Institute of Technology, Daxing, Beijing and the Proyecto Arqueológico Chocolá

Appendix C. Origin of Chocolá Obsidian from X-Ray Fluorescence · 393

Note 1. We note that the laboratory where the XRF equipment was used to perform this analysis was provided by the Department of Prehistory and Evolution at the Institute of Anthropological Research, UNAM, led by Dr. Guillermo Acosta Ochoa. ENAH archaeologist Victor Manuel Garcia, a member of the Department of Prehistory and Human Evolution of the Institute of Anthropological Research of the UNAM team facilitated geological deposits samples for comparison with samples from Chocolá, including samples from Ixtepeque in eastern Guatemala, recovered during a field trip led by Federico Paredes Umaña, Jonathan Kaplan, and Marielos Corado in June 2014.

References Cossich, Margarita 2006 Personal communication. Duran, Víctor, Anna Maria De Francesco, Valeria Cortegoso, Gustavo Neme, Luis Cornejo, and Marco Bocci 2012 Caracterización y procedencia de obsidianas de sitios arqueológicos del Centro Oeste de Argentina y Centro de Chile con metodología no destructiva por fluorescencia de Rayos X (XRF). Intersecciones antropológicas 13: 423–437. 1999 Archaeology of Complex Societies in Southeastern Pacific Coastal Guatemala: A Regional GIS Approach. British Archaeological Reports, International Series 820. Hadrian Books, Oxford. Francisco, Estrada-Belli 1999 The Archaeology of Complex Societies in Southeastern Pacific Coastal Guatemala: A Regional GIS Approach. British Archaeological Report, Oxford. Kaplan, Jonathan 2005 Métodos, teorías, y avances del Proyecto Arqueológico Chocolá en la Bocacosta de Guatemala. Retrieved from www.famsi.org/reports/03101es/90kaplan/90kapl an.pdf. Musílek, Ladislav, Tomás Cechák, and Tomás Trojék 2011 X Ray Fluorescence in Investigations of Cultural Relics and Archaeological Finds. Applied Radiation and Isotopes 70: 1193–1202. Love, Michael 2011 Cities, States, and City-state Culture in the Late Preclassic Southern Maya Region. In The Southern Maya in the Late Preclassic: The Rise and Fall of an Early Mesoamerican Civilization, Michael Love and Jonathan Kaplan, eds., 47–76. University Press of Colorado, Boulder. Neff, Hector, Barbara Voorhies, and Federico Paredes Umaña 2012 “Handheld XRF Elemental Analysis of Archaeological Sediments: Some Examples from Mesoamerica.” In Studies in Archaeological Sciences. Handheld XRF for Art and Archaeology, Aaron N. Shugar and Jennifer L. Mass, eds., 379–400. Leuven University Press, Leuven, Belgium.

394 · J. Alvarado H., G. Acosta Ochoa, V. Garcia Gómez, F. Paredes Umaña & J. Kaplan

Paredes Umaña, Federico 2005 Las esculturas de Chocolá, Suchitepéquez. Unpublished thesis for the licenciatura in Archaeology. Universidad de San Carlos, Guatemala. 2011 Personal communication. 2012 Local Symbols and Regional Dynamics: The Jaguar Head Core Zone in Southeastern Mesoamerica during the Late Preclassic Period. Unpublished doctoral diss., University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia. Speakman, Robert J. 2012 Evaluation of Bruker’s Tracer Family Factory Obsidian Calibration for Handheld Portable XRF Studies of Obsidian. University of Georgia, Athens.

Appendix D Radiocarbon Dates for Chocolá Operation 4 (North Sector)

Seven carbon samples were analyzed from Operation 4 by Beta Analytic, Inc., in 2004. The resultant dates are for samples recovered from the following excavation units: 1) 4-72-4 (211), 2) 4-72-5 (258), 3) 4-72-6 (260), 4) 4-72-7 (262), 5) 4-72-8 (264), 6) 4-91-6 (231), 7) 4-91-8 (235). Two sigma Calibration is given using the updated calibration curve and software intcal13.1 See Table D.1 and Figures D.1. to D8. Federico Paredes Umaña and Jonathan Kaplan Note 1. Paula J. Reimer, Edouard Bard, Alex Bayliss, J. Warren Beck, Paul G. Blackwell, Christopher Bronk Ramsey, Caitlin E. Buck, Hai Cheng, R. Lawrence Edwards, Michael Friedrich, Pieter M. Grootes, Thomas P. Guilderson, Haflidi Haflidason, Irka Hajdas, Christine Hatté, Timothy J. Heaton, Dirk L. Hoffmann, Alan G. Hogg, Konrad A. Hughen, K. Felix Kaiser, Bernd Kromer, Sturt W. Manning, Mu Niu, Ron W. Reimer, David A. Richards, E. Marian Scott, John R. Southon, Richard A. Staff, Christian S. M. Turney, and Johannes van der Plicht, Intca113 and Marine13 Radiocarbon Age Calibration Curves 0–50,000 Years CAL BP, Radiocarbon 55(2013): 1869–1887.

Table D.1. Calibration data set: intca113.14c Id

Beta Lab number Type and provenience

Radiocarbon age

Two sigma ranges

1

Beta 198188

2230±40 BP

2

Beta 198189

3

Beta 198190

4

Beta 198191

Charred material from PACH 4-72-4 Charred material from PACH 4-72-5 Charred material from PACH 4-72-6 Charred material from PACH 4-72-7

5

Beta 198192

2210±110 BP

6

Beta 198194

Charred material from PACH 4-72-8 Charred material from PACH 4-91-6

7

Beta 198196

Charred material from PACH 4-91-8

2120±40 BP

cal BC 387: cal BC 202 cal BC 394: cal BC 107 cal BC 379: cal BC 172 cal BC 371: cal BC 151 (0,966985) cal BC 540: cal AD 29 (0,996508) cal BC 379: cal BC 162 (0,991824) cal BC 212: cal BC 43 (0,882591)

2200±60 BP 2200±40 BP 2180±40 BP

2190±40 BP

Source: PACH/Reimer et al. 2013 IntCa113. Note: All dates expressed in BC and AD are 2 sigma calibrated.

Figure D.1. Calibration of radiocarbon age to calendar years for sample 198188. (PACH)

Figure D.2. Calibration of radiocarbon age to calendar years for sample 198189. (PACH)

Figure D.3. Calibration of radiocarbon age to calendar years for sample 198190. (PACH)

Figure D.4. Calibration of radiocarbon age to calendar years for sample 198191. (PACH)

Figure D.5. Calibration of radiocarbon age to calendar years for sample 198192. (PACH)

Figure D.6. Calibration of radiocarbon age to calendar years for sample 198194. (PACH)

Figure D.7. Calibration of radiocarbon age to calendar years for sample 198196. (PACH)

Figure D.8. Chocolá calibrated ages according to the intcal 13 database. Mean pooled Radiocarbon age: 2185.892. Square root of variance of pooled mean age: 16.9384. Samples are statistically the same at 95 percent. Test statistic T 4.189507 Xi2 (.05) 12.6. Degrees of freedom 6 (Reimer et al. 2013, Radiocarbon 55: 1869–1887). (PACH)

Appendix E Theobromine, Fatty Acids, and Carbohydrates in Ceramic Samples from Chocolá

High-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) has been used successfully to detect the presence of cacao in archaeological ceramics from ancient Mesoamerica (Henderson et al. 2007, Hurst et al. 1989, Hurst 2006, Powis et al. 2002, Powis et al. 2007, Powis et al. 2011). Due to the high cost of the procedure, usually only small samples are analyzed. To reduce these costs, relatively inexpensive semi-quantitative testing (SQT) of prospective samples for HPLC analysis, undertaken at first-stage facilities such as a field laboratory, identifies plant residues of fatty acids and carbohydrates in or on ceramic fragments in order to reduce the sample of candidates for HPLC otherwise determined by vessel provenience and shape and possible function. SQT pretesting undertaken for samples retrieved from different loci at Chocolá reduced the original sample of 150 sherds to 43—a reduction to 28.67% of the original sample—by removing those sherds not positive for fatty acids and carbohydrates and thus those for which HPLC, in theory, would be useless.1 The smaller batch of samples was delivered to the Hershey Laboratory, where HPLC analysis focused on detection of two markers: methylxanthines (following Hurst et al. 1989, Hurst et al. 2002, and Hurst 2006) and fermentation.2 From the 40 ceramic samples identified by SQT for fatty acids (FA) and carbohydrates (C), identification by HPLC of remnant methylxanthines—caffeine, theobromine, and theophylline—was made for ten vessels, five bowls, three jars, and two plates, as having once contained cacao.

406 · Mauricio Obregón Cardona et al.

SQT as a Preliminary Step to HPLC

Drawing on original work by Roberto Rodriguez of the University of Havana, the particular SQT procedures for identification of FA and C were developed by the Laboratory of Archaeological Survey in the Institute of Anthropological Research of the National Autonomous University of Mexico. These procedures have been applied to a large number of samples from a variety of archaeological contexts in Mesoamerica and elsewhere (Barba et al. 2013), and detailed descriptions have been published beginning in 1991 (e.g., Barba et al. 1991, Barba 2007, Barba et al. 2013). Results employ a number scale, 0 to 4, representing absence to strong presence of these substances. Criteria Used for Selection of Sherds

Various steps were taken progressively to reduce the sample to a highly stratified sample set. First, particular sherds were selected that had a physical profile complete enough to determine from its likely whole shape its function in food preparation and/or service. For each selected sample, a control log sheet was prepared which included detailed descriptions of vessel form and paste along with drawings, photographs, and other information about excavation context. Among the 150 sherds initially selected and that corresponded to various types of containers, three forms constituted 81% of the sample (Table E.1). Bowls predominated (47%), with open-mouth jars next (19%), and plates, third (15%). For control purposes, a small sample (2%) related to ritual use, such as incense burners, was also included.3 All samples selected for SQT originated from 2 × 2 m excavation units. These units were located in gridded squares associated with or near structures and architectural facades. Labeled Operations 4, 14, 16, and 17, the grids corresponded to the north, central, and south architectural sectors of the site. Stratigraphic or chronological control of the sample, obtained from Operation 17, Unit 120b, also was taken into consideration, which consisted of a unit excavated 3 m below the floor of the structure associated with Mound 6, where excavations recovered a potbelly monument, Monument 30 (Paredes Umaña 2006). The sample sherds represented different wares found in the archaeological record of Chocolá, and included red, orange, and pink pastes, some

Appendix E. Theobromine, Fatty Acids, and Carbohydrates in Ceramic Samples · 407

Table E.1. Quantity and percentages of vessel forms identified from sherds selected for SQT pretesting Vessel shape

Quantity

Bowl Open-mouth jar Plate High-neck jar Vase Censer Tecomate/neckless jar Pan Unidentified Total

70 28 22 12 6 3 2 2 5 150

Percentage 47 19 15 8 4 2 1 1 3 100

Source: PACH.

of these with post-slip incisions. Surface treatment was representative of black, black-brown, glossy orange, polished red, and pale red slips; unslipped surfaces also were well represented. The sample encompassed wares from the Middle and Late Preclassic periods and also from the Late Classic period, as determined by comparison with ceramics from other Southern Maya Region sites. Several examples of locally produced vessels include those with surfaces with a treatment very similar to a type named Tiquisate, known from the south coast of Guatemala. For control purposes, a spout and a censer handle were included in the sample. Units from which sherds were selected for the SQT of fatty acids and carbohydrates were as follows: Operation 4: 1, 13, 14, 23, 24, 32, 33, 36, 45, 53, 62, 63, 91, 82, 72, 228, 238, 243, 245, 272, 276, 277, 285, and 456; Operation 14: 17, 27, 112, 121, 236, 239, 318, 325, 329, and 476; Operation 16: 11, 13, 61, 121, 132, 239, 269, 400, and 527; Operation 17: 22, 120a/b; 129, and 147. Registration and Preparation

The samples from Chocolá were obtained by drilling the shoulder and base of the vessel, loci where the heating of liquid deposited material that penetrated or coated the pores of the clay.4 As mentioned, for each sherd a log sheet with detailed documentation, registry and description of form, paste, attributes, photographs, and drawings was prepared to ensure that the samples’ identifications were not lost during transport and processing

408 · Mauricio Obregón Cardona et al.

in Mexico and then at Hershey. In the field lab and in preparation for SQT, from each sherd a small subsample was taken (average, 5.7 grams), in most cases from the lower part of the vessel. In all, 150 subsamples (weight, 883 grams) were ground in a porcelain mortar. The remnant part of the sherd was retained and stored in Guatemala for future analysis. Tables E.2, E3, E4, and E5 compile ceramic fragments with positive readings of fatty acids and carbohydrates according to operation.

Table E.2. Ceramic fragments from Operation 4 with positive readings of fatty acids and/or carbohydrates according to operation Operation 4

Sample Provenience

Vessel part

Shape

Weight (g)

FA

C

PACH

59

4-45-1

Rim-wall

Bowl

3.0

1

3

PACH

65

4-62-4

Rim-wall

7.9

1

1

PACH

72

4-1-8

Wall-base

Open-mouth jar Bowl

8.2

1

1

PACH

73

4-1-4

Base

Bowl

9.2

1

1

PACH

75

4-1-7

Base

Bowl

7.5

1

1

PACH

81

4-91-6

Wall-base

Bowl

4.4

3

3

PACH

85

4-1-10

Wall-base

Bowl

11.6

2

3

PACH

89

4-91-5

Wall-lip

7.7

1

3

PACH

92

4-1-8

Wall-base

High-neck jar Bowl

5.9

1

3

PACH

99

4-23-2

Rim-wall-base

Bowl

3.4

1

3

PACH

100

4-23-3

Base

Bowl

3.1

2

4

PACH

102

4-23-2

Wall-base

Bowl

4.8

2

4

PACH

103

4-14-2

Rim-wall-base

Bowl

3.4

1

3

PACH

121

4-276-3

Rim

Bowl

6.5

1

4

PACH

124

4-243-5

Base

Bowl

4.9

1

3

PACH

131

4-285-1

Base

Jar

8.3

1

4

PACH

135

4-23-3

Base

Jar

4.2

1

3

PACH

147

4-24-6

Shoulder

Jar

4.6

1

4

Source: PACH.

Table E.3. Ceramic fragments from Operation 14 with positive readings of fatty acids and/or carbohydrates according to operation Operation 14

Code

PACH

Part

PACH PACH PACH PACH PACH PACH

054 056 091 096 097 098

14-17-2 14-318-2 14-329-4 14-236-6 14-325-7 14-326-4

Wall-base Wall Rim-wall Rim-wall Rim-wall-base Rim-neck-wall

PACH

125

14-112-6

Form

Bowl Jar Bowl Bowl Bowl High-neck Jar Base-w/ support Bowl

Weight g.

FA

C

8.7 3.2 3.6 4.0 2.4 4.7

1 1 1 1 1 1

4 3 2 3 3 4

1.9

1

2

Source: PACH.

Table E.4. Ceramic fragments from Operation 16 with positive readings of fatty acids and/or carbohydrates according to operation Operation 16

Sample

PACH

Vessel part

Shape

Weight (g)

FA

C

PACH

36

16-132-10

Rim-wall-base

Bowl

5.2

2

2

PACH

39

16-61-8

Rim-wall-base

Bowl

3.6

2

1

PACH

40

16-121-4

Base

Plate

1.9

1

3

Source: PACH.

Table E.5. Ceramic fragments from Operation 17 with positive readings of fatty acids and/or carbohydrates according to operation Operation 17 PACH PACH PACH PACH PACH PACH PACH PACH Source: PACH.

Sample

PACH

Vessel part

Shape

Weight g.

FA

C

20 4 17 19 5 12 14 15

17-120b-11 17-120b-13 17-120b-11 17-120a-10 17-120b-13 17-120b-12 17-120a-6 17-120b-14

Rim Rim Ring base Rim-wall Rim-wall Base Base Rim

Bowl Bowl Jar Plate Bowl Bowl Bowl Bowl

4.8 8.6 8.7 6.5 9.7 6.8 5.4 8.1

3 2 2 2 1 1 1 1

3 2 3 2 2 3 3 3

410 · Mauricio Obregón Cardona et al.

Ethnographic Container Control Values

The control container was a ceramic vessel used for six years in the preparation of chocolate (Table E.6).5 This open-mouth jar once bore a side handle, or asa, and a small spout on the opposite side. The neck merged to an everted rim with rounded lip, the body was subglobular, with a flat base. Final Preparation of Samples

Testing for both fatty acids and carbohydrates was determined, for the former, by mixing 0.1 g of the powdered ceramic sample with 2 ml of chloroform (CHCl3). Heating by alcohol burner reduced the mixture to one third of the volume, which allowed for concentration and extraction of the molecular residues of oils and fats. The concentrate was then poured onto a watch glass, to which were added two drops of ammonium hydroxide (NH4OH) for a saponification reaction. If the result was positive, stable foam enabling better visibility was generated by adding concentrated hydrogen peroxide (H2O2). The relative amount of foam resulting was measured on a scale of 0 (none) to 3 (substantial). To determine the presence of carbohydrates, 0.2 g sample of ground ceramic was combined with resorcinol (C6H4 (CH)2) and sulfuric acid (H2SO4), resulting in a reddish substance. The results were read on a color scale from 0 (least) to 4 (greatest; see Terreros Olivares 2013). Along with the archaeologically obtained sherd samples, samples of positive and negative control were analyzed to guarantee the reliability of the results. Table E.7 provides the values of fatty acids and carbohydrates for the ten vessels ultimately identified as containing cacao residues. Results of SQT

Descriptions of a representative sample of 14 vessels out of 43 containing positive results for fatty acids and carbohydrates on ceramics from Chocolá are as follows (Figure E.1): (a) Sample 135, PACH 4-23-3. Openmouth jar with direct rim and thickened rounded lip, divergent curved neck, a smoothed and polished surface, and a dark red slip. Yellow-reddish paste with iron, quartz and pumice inclusions; (b) Sample 65, PACH 4-624. Open-mouth jar with direct rim and divergent neck; (c) Sample 102, PACH 4-23-2. Plate, outflaring walls and basal flare, flat base, a red-yellow wash on the exterior, and a red slip. Fine-textured paste with iron, mica,

Appendix E. Theobromine, Fatty Acids, and Carbohydrates in Ceramic Samples · 411

Table E.6. Ethnographic container control values Code

PACH

Part/type

Form

Weight (g)

FA

C

151

Control sample

Shoulder-wall

1.5

2

2

152

Control sample

Base

Open-mouth jar/Cántaro [same vessel]

1.5

3

3

153

Control sample

Toasted cacao

N/A

6.2

3

4

Source: PACH. N/A = Not available.

Table E.7. Ten vessels with positive results for HPLC and their correlation to fatty acids and/or carbohydrates Id

Sample

Excavation code

Form

FA

C

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

100 14 97 98 89 102 122 125 88 121

PACH 4-23-3 PACH 17-120a-6 PACH 14-325-7 PACH 14-326-4 PACH 4-91-5 PACH 4-23-2 PACH 4-23-3 PACH 14-112-6 PACH 14-239-3 PACH 4-276-3

Plate Jar Bowl High-neck jar High-neck jar Plate Bowl Bowl Bowl Bowl

2 1 1 1 1 2 0 1 0 1

4 3 3 4 3 4 4 2 3 4

Source: PACH.

and pumice inclusions; (d) Sample 103, PACH 4-14-2. Straight divergent walled bowl with a direct rim, a smoothed and polished surface, red slip, and incised decoration on the edge and groove between base and wall. Fine red paste with pumice inclusions; (e) Sample 72, PACH 4-1-8. Flat bottom bowl with straight divergent walls, orange slip on the exterior, and incised decoration on the interior. Light red paste with iron, pumice, and quartz inclusions; (f) Sample 40, PACH 16-121-4. Bowl with curved base and slightly concave curved bottom with ring base. Dark red slip, and brown paste; (g) Sample 36, PACH 16-132-10. Straight divergent walled bowl with direct rim, flat bottom, and a cream slip on exteriors and interiors. Fine red paste with sand and pumice inclusions; (h) Sample 39, PACH 16-61-8. Outcurving walled bowl with direct rim, smoothed and polished surface, reddish brown slip, and brown paste; (i) Sample 20, PACH 17-120B-11. Bowl with incurving walls, direct rim, and a subrim smoothed surface with red

Figure E.1. Drawing of sherds from North Sector (Operation 4), Central Sector (Operation 16 and 17), and South Sector (Operation 16), with positive readings for fatty acids and carbohydrates. a) Sample 135/PACH 4-23-3; b) Sample 65/PACH 4-62-4; c) Sample 102/PACH 4-23-2; d) Sample 103/PACH 4-14-2; e) Sample 72/PACH 4-1-8; f ) Sample 40/ PACH 16-121-4; g) Sample 36/PACH 16-132-10; h) Sample 39/PACH 16-61-8; i) Sample 20/PACH 17-120B-11; j) Sample 15/PACH 17-120b-14; k) Sample 5/PACH 17-120b-13; l) Sample 56/PACH 14-218-2; m) Sample 4/PACH17-120b-13; n) Sample 54/PACH 14-17-2. (PACH)

Appendix E. Theobromine, Fatty Acids, and Carbohydrates in Ceramic Samples · 413

slip. Vessel body decorated with incised patterns. Black inner surface was unslipped. Reddish brown paste, medium texture; (j) Sample 15, PACH 17-120b-14. Diverging walled bowl with rounded lip. Smooth surface, red slip on exterior and horizontal incised decoration. Brown paste, medium texture; (k) Sample 5, PACH 17-120b-13. Composite silhouette bowl with a smoothed outer surface, reddish brown slip, and incised decoration on the exterior wall. Red paste with dark core and pumice and sand inclusions; (l) Sample 56, PACH 14-218-2. Globular high-neck jar with brown smoothed surface on the exterior applied between the shoulder and neck joint. Dark paste, medium texture with pumice inclusions; (m) Sample 4, PACH17120b-13. Bowl with out-curving walls and rounded lip. Body thickens below neck. Light brown slip on exterior. Reddish brown paste, fine texture with pumice and sand inclusions; (n) Sample 54, 14-17-2 PACH. Bowl with flat bottom and out-flaring walls. Light brown smoothed exterior with an incised decoration vertically on interiors walls. Dark brown paste, medium texture with pumice and sand inclusions. Theobromine at Chocolá: HPLC Results

Our experiment was originally designed to use SQT to determine fatty acids and carbohydrates in sherd samples in order to reduce a large sample to a much smaller one for HPLC testing, given the high cost of the latter. The Hershey Company laboratory generously ran all 150 samples, the result of which was to strengthen the correlation of positive results for SQT and HPLC. HPLC found that ten ceramic vessels from the sample (n=150) once contained cacao. A comment is in order about how well our SQT and HPLC results correlate. We reported previously (Paredes et al. 2016) an original batch of 40 sherds as having priority for HPLC testing based on results from SQT; a recount determined that 43 samples were preselected by SQT instead of 40. Having considered all 43 sherds as high priority for HPLC would have resulted in a cleaner correlation between our SQT and HPLC; at the time of the 2016 publication, we did not know exactly what to look for until the full round of analysis was available. We employed SQT for fatty acids (FA) and carbohydrates (C) for the sample of 150 sherds. This procedure was based on the fact that cacao is rich in both FA and C, as well as other substances not suitable for SQT. The sequence of the analysis was to test first for FA on the 150 sherds, and secondly for C; C was only tested for in those samples that resulted in 36

414 · Mauricio Obregón Cardona et al.

positive readings for FA. Later, we added to these 36, 7 additional sherds that were not positive for FA but did test positive for C. They were selected in spite of testing negative for FA, because they had interesting form features for the research team (two of them resulted in positive C values of 4, 2 of 3, 1 of 2, and 2 of 1). Thus, we ended up with a subsample of 43 sherds with high priority for HPLC. HPLC tested all 150 samples in spite of our original plan, a fortuitous circumstance enabling us to further cross-check the validity of the SQT as a first-stage strategy for reducing the sample. We note that all 10 positive samples that ultimately were confirmed for cacao through HPLC were included in the SQT-reduced batch of 43. Given that 10 out of 10 positive samples for cacao determined through HPLC presented C values higher or equal to 2, 8 of which also presented at least some values for FA, SQT future research for cacao should consider as a higher priority for HPLC those sherds with values 2 and higher in C that also contain FA, even if those quantities are low. Technical details of the HPLC process are as follows: the multiple reaction monitoring mode (MRM) is used to analyze and quantify theobromine, with the transitions of m/z 181 >138 for theobromine, which is analyzed using an ABSciex 4000 Q Trap mass spectrometry coupled with a Waters Acquity UPLC separation system. A 1.7 mm Acquity UPLC BEH C18 analytical columm (2.1 × 100 mm, Waters, Ireland) is used to separate theobromine. The gradient elution is conducted using a flow rate of 0.4 mL/min with the following conditions: Initiate in 5% mobile phase B (0.1% acetic acid in acetonitrile) and 95% solvent A (0.1% acetic acid in water), a linear gradient to 100% mobile phase B in 2 minutes, and keep the 100% mobile phase B for 2 minutes to flush the column. The autosampler is kept at 4 °C, and the column temperature is maintained at 30 °C. The ABSciex 4000 Q Trap mass spectrometer was equipped with an electrospray ionization probe operated in positive mode. The decluster potential (DP) was 70 V; the entrance potential (EP) was 10 V, the collision energy (CE) was 35 V, and the collision cell exit potential (CXP) was 8 V, while the curtain gas (CUR) was 40 L/h, the collision gas (CAD) was 10 h/L. The IonSpray voltage was 5500 V, the temperature was 500 °C, the ion source gas 1 was 40 h/L, and the ion source gas 2 was 30 h/L. The multiple reaction monitoring mode (MRM) was used to analyze and quantify theobromine, with the transitions of m/z 181 >138 for theobromine. All peaks were integrated and quantified by ABSciex Multiquan 3.1 software. Ten vessels with positive readings for cacao, five bowls, three jars, and two plates, are shown in Figure E.2. Chromatograms for positive samples

Figure E.2. Whole vessels testing positive for cacao. Drawings and photos of ceramics from Chocolá with positive identification for methylxanthines, by sector. North Sector: e) Sample 89, PACH 4-91-5, high-neck jar with slightly everted rim and round lip, coarse orange paste; a) Sample 100, PACH 4-23-3, plate, outflaring walls and basal flare, flat base, Rofino ware; f ) Sample 102, PACH 4-91-5, plate similar to sample 100; g) Sample 122, PACH 4-23-3, bowl with mammiform-supports, unslipped exterior, smoothed black surface on interior, pink/orange paste, probable utilitarian ware; Central Sector: b) Sample 14, PACH 17-120a-6, concave base of globular jar, Rosada ware; South Sector: i) Sample 88, PACH 14-239-3, open bowl with straight walls, everted rim and round lips; c) Sample 97, PACH 14-325-7, bowl with short and slightly everted neck and rounded lip; d) Sample 98, PACH 14-326-4, high-neck jar, everted rim and rounded, thickened straight lip, possibly Rosada ware or Monte Alto Red; j) Sample 121, PACH 4-276-3, bowl with everted walls and round lip, sublabial flare, unslipped, possibly Rosada ware; h) Sample 125, PACH 14-112-6, bowl with mammiform supports, basal flare, and round base, possibly Chocolá Black-Brown Slipped or Glossy Black ware. (PACH)

416 · Mauricio Obregón Cardona et al.

Figure E.3. Chromatograms for positive HPLC identification of cacao on Chocolá samples 88 and 89, and negative samples 85 and 91. (PACH)

88 and 89 and negative samples 85 and 91 are shown in Figure E.3. Table E.7 (above) lists the ten positive samples in summary form and gives their values for FA and C. Our results broken down by sector follow here6: North Sector: (a) Plate with out-flaring walls and basal flare, flat base. Rofino ware. Smoothed and polished exterior, red-orange, smoothed interior. Fine-textured red paste with pumice and iron inclusions (PACH 4-23-3). Sample No.100; (b) High-neck jar with slightly everted rim and round lip; smoothed red-orange interior and exterior. Fine- to mediumtextured paste same color as surface, dark cores and pumice inclusions (PACH 4-91-5). Sample No. 89. (c) Plate with out-flaring walls and basal flare, flat base (PACH 4-23-2), Sample 102. We presume that it is likely that samples 100 and 102 are of the same ware and possibly even fragments of the same vessel. (d) Bowl with mammiform-supports. Unslipped exterior, smoothed black surface on interior, pink/orange paste; probable utilitarian ware (PACH 4-23-3), Sample 122. It is worth noting that Samples 100, 102, and 122 were all recovered from the same excavation unit placed 8 meters south of Structure 15-1, although the context appears to be construction fill for a branch of the water conduit system. (e) bowl with everted walls and round lip, sublabial flare, unslipped; possibly Rosada ware (Pach 4-276-3) Sample 121, this vessel fragment was recovered from a unit placed 10 m north of Structure 15-1, and associated with a hearth consisting of a number of cooking and storage vessels and a grinding stone. Central Sector: (f) Concave base of a globular jar. Dark brown smoothed surface. Yellow medium-textured paste, with sand and pumice inclusions (PACH 17-120a-6). Sample No. 14. This sample was recovered from a deep

Appendix E. Theobromine, Fatty Acids, and Carbohydrates in Ceramic Samples · 417

stratigraphic unit placed at the bottom of the southern stairway of Structure 6-1. The unit exposed the spatial relationship of the structure and the plaza, the analyzed samples was recovered in fill 20 cm above the plaza floor. Southern Sector: (g) Globular bowl, short and slightly everted neck, rounded lip. Smoothed and polished surface, red slip. Post-slip incised decoration of vertical lines on exterior. Red medium-textured paste with fine pumice, quartz, mica, and iron inclusions (PACH 14-325-7). Sample No. 97; (h) high-neck jar, everted rim and rounded, thickened straight lip with red surface, smoothed on exterior, coarse on interior with finger prints. Red, medium-textured paste, same color as surface, with mica, iron, and pumice inclusions. (14-326-4) Sample No. 98; (i) Bowl with mammiform supports, basal flare, and round base. Brown-black slipped smoothed and polished exterior, interior unslipped. Hollowed rattle mammiform support. Lightbrown fine-textured paste. (PACH 14-112-6) Sample No. 125. (j) Open bowl with straight walls, everted rim, and round lips (PACH 14-239-3) Sample 88. All 4 samples from the southern sector come from in and around Structure 5-1. Samples 97 and 98 were recovered outside the structure and associated with a floor, Sample 88 was recovered from an excavation unit placed on top of the structure and near its center. Sample 125 was recovered from an excavation unit that revealed a section of Structure 5-1’s north wall. Context of 7 of the cacao-positive sherds appears to be construction fill; two were associated to a floor outside structure 5-1 (samples 97 and 98) and one (sample 121), was located in the north plaza of Structure 15-1 associated with food processing. Discussion

Fatty acids and carbohydrates in the sample were found more frequently on the inner bottom surfaces than at the vessel’s shoulders and walls. However, positive samples for methylxanthines were found in Samples 89 and 98, consisting of rim and neck sherds alone. More and better sampling should increase understanding of cacao use patterns in the Suchitepéquez piedmont and its original presence there, beginning in the Early Preclassic. The analysis presented here appears to show that other beverages and food account for 22.6% of positive readings for acids and carbohydrates. Although our sample may be too limited to draw general conclusions about the ancient preparation, storage, and consumption of cacao-based

418 · Mauricio Obregón Cardona et al.

beverages at Chocolá, results are sufficient to indicate the presence of this social preference throughout the site. While 6.7% of the original sample (n = 150) showed positive results for theobromine, the evidence comes from all three sectors, south, central, and north, which may indicate egalitarian access to cacao (but see below). The results of this study may be compared with analysis of ceramics for cacao residues from San Lorenzo, Veracruz, which found that 17% of 156 were positive for theobromine (Cyphers et al. 2013). Compared to our sample from Chocolá, the San Lorenzo sample is clearly placed chronologically in the Early Preclassic (1800–1000 BCE), while the one presented here by us encompasses possible dates likely ranging from the Late Middle Preclassic to the Late and Terminal Preclassic. A ratio of less than 20% positive for cacao at both sites may indicate certain levels of restriction on cacao consumption at producing centers. Both Suchitepéquez and Veracruz are known to have produced cacao in pre-Hispanic times, although ethnohistory also reports that production from Suchitepéquez was larger than from Veracruz at the time of the European conquest (Bergmann 1969). Agricultural production is dependent on many variables including weather, soils, and human labor; it is therefore linked to historical contingency, and patterns vary significantly through time. A caveat is that a bias from the samples may exist, since we may be looking at patterns of production and consumption across time and with marked differences in production capabilities. Relevance of Residue Analysis on Pottery for Understanding Pre-Hispanic Consumption Patterns

Evidence of food consumption through organic residues in archaeological ceramics supports a stronger case for discussing ancient human patterns and behaviors than those provided by archaeological identification of seeds and other plant remains. Discovery of cacao kernels preserved in a pot inside a residential structure in the Late Classic small village of Joya de Ceren, El Salvador, was shown to Paredes Umaña in 2008 in storage at the National Museum in San Salvador (see also Lentz et al. 1996, Sheets 2002, and Ogata 2008); this cannot determine whether the cacao kernels were intended for use as food or for exchange. Contextual evidence adds to this particular case, for Ceren archaeology also provides an example of cacao trees growing behind Structure 4, as well as “considerable processed cacao in pottery

Appendix E. Theobromine, Fatty Acids, and Carbohydrates in Ceramic Samples · 419

vessels inside” this structure (Sheets 2015); however, only residue analysis in pottery can definitively provide accurate data on consumption patterns. Maize consumption, determined through residue analysis, should include chemical markers for the mixing of maize with calcium oxide (the nixtamalization process; Barba et al. 1991; Paredes Umaña et al. 2016). Chemical indications of this process should include positive identification of phytoliths and starch combined with calcium oxide in organic residues of household appliances for product processing such as grinding tools. Implications

This study adds to the limited number of archaeological identifications of cacao consumption in ancient Mesoamerica, and presents the first concrete evidence from the southern piedmont of Guatemala. It is the first in Mesoamerica employing SQT preparatory to HPLC for the identification of cacao residues in pottery. Due to the generosity of the Hershey laboratory, all 150 samples were analyzed by HPLC. All samples that tested positive for theobromine were previously included in those determined by SQT as having higher potential for cacao residues; the testing of all 150 samples, given the results, strengthens the argument that SQT is a successful discrimination technique in reducing the sample. SQT reduced the original sample of 150 sherds to 43—a reduction to 28.6% of the original sample—demonstrating the particular importance of carbohydrate residues as pre-HPLC analysis indicators in the detection of cacao residues, especially if they are considered simultaneously with fatty acid residues. Accordingly, for limited budgets the use of relatively simple tests for fatty acids and carbohydrates in reducing the number of samples for expensive HPLC analysis can be recommended. Evidence of food consumption through organic residues in archaeological ceramics supports a stronger case for discussing ancient human patterns and behaviors than those provided by archaeological identification of seeds and other plant remains. Of the 150 samples from Chocolá tested by HPLC, positive evidence of cacao was found in 10, distributed as follows: five bowls, three jars, and two plates. In the Olmec (San Lorenzo) study, “the presence of cacao in liquid form is suggested by . . . 13 positive samples: nine open bowls and one cup (which are personal dishes suitable for beverage consumption), and two bottles that could be appropriate for storing and serving liquids” (Powis et al., 2011: 8596). Considering all of the

420 · Mauricio Obregón Cardona et al.

studies thus far of cacao residues in vessels from Olmec sites and sites in the Southern Maya Region, a tentative pattern may be emerging, with bowl shapes predominating. Our research provides further data about vessels used for cacao consumption early in the Southern Maya Region. We propose that the provenience of five of the samples found positive for cacao residues in the southern sector of Chocolá near a large, low structure—which we identify as having functioned to manage agriculture—is further tentative support for our theory of intensive arboriculture of cacao in the Preclassic. More and better sampling should help better understand cacao use patterns in the Suchitepéquez, Guatemala, piedmont and its original presence there, beginning likely in the Early Preclassic. Finally, together with the research from other cacao investigators cited in this paper, our cacao findings are helping to build a picture of the antecedent processes and patterns leading to the powerful role cacao played materially and ideologically in later Lowlands Classic Maya civilization, and elsewhere in later Mesoamerica. Mauricio Obregón Cardona, Laboratorio de Prospección Arqueológica IIA, UNAM Luis Barba Pingarrón, Instituto de Investigaciones Antropológicas, UNAM William J. Hurst, Hershey Laboratory Eos López Pérez, Laboratorio de Prospección Arqueológica IIA, UNAM Marielos Corado Mena, Proyecto Arqueológico Chocolá José Carlos Aldana, Escuela de Historia, USAC Lucía Cano, Escuela de Historia, USAC Jonathan Kaplan, PACH Federico Paredes Umaña, PACH and UNAM Notes 1. The ceramic sample was selected from the materials recovered by the Chocolá Archaeological Project, or PACH, from 2003 to 2006. In accord with IDAEH Convenio DGPCYN-36-2014, in September 2014 at the premises of Salon 3, Aurora, Paredes Umaña selected a sample of 150 ceramic fragments for preanalysis. More detailed information than in this appendix is found in Kaplan et al. 2017. 2. Fermentation markers and procedures are not discussed in this appendix as they are part of an ongoing research project directed by Hurst. 3. The forms associated with functions such as food storage and preparation (jars, tecomates, and pans) were underrepresented; these forms should be tested in the future.

Appendix E. Theobromine, Fatty Acids, and Carbohydrates in Ceramic Samples · 421

4. Conducted by Dr. Mauricio Obregón Cardona, with the assistance of student Eos López Perez of the Institute of Anthropological Research at UNAM, in facilities in Salón 3, IDAEH Aurora, Guatemala City, in October 2014. 5. Obtained by donation from Sra María Teresa López, owner of the La Taberna restaurant, San Juan del Obispo, Guatemala. 6. Another publication (Kaplan et al. 2017) contains the same information, somewhat differently presented.

References Barba, Luís 2007 Chemical Residues in Archaeological Lime-Plastered Floors. Geoarchaeology 22(4): 439–452. Barba, Luís, Roberto Rodríguez, and José Luís Córdoba 1991 Manual de técnicas microquímicas de campo para arqueología. Cuadernos de Investigación UNAM, México. Barba Pingarrón, Luís, Agustín Ortiz Butrón, and Alessandra Pecci 2013 Los residuos químicos. Indicadores arqueológicos para entender la producción, preparación, consumo and almacenamiento de alimentos en Mesoamérica. Anales de Antropología 48: 201–239. Bergmann, John 1969 The Distribution of Cacao Cultivation in Pre-Columbian America. Annals of the Association of American Geographers 59(1): 85–96. Burkitt, Robert 1930 Excavations at Chocolá; Museum Journal 21: 5–40 n.d. Container no. 1. Correspondency of Burkitt and Gordon/McHugh (1927, 1928, 1929), Expedition Records. Archives of the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology. Cano, Mirta, and Nicholas Hellmuth 2008 Ethnobotany Field Trip. Suchitepéquez, Guatemala June 2008. Asociación FLAAR Mesoamerica. http://www.maya-ethnobotany.org/ [accessed 07/08/2013]. Cheesman, E. E. 1944 Notes on the Nomenclature, Classification and Possible relationships of Cacao Populations. Tropical Agriculture 21(8): 313–366. Cyphers, Ann, Terry G. Powis, Nilesh W. Gaikwad, Lois Grivetti, Kong Cheong, and Elvia Hernández Guevara 2013 La detección de teobromina en vasijas de cerámica olmeca: nuevas evidencias sobre el uso del cacao en San Lorenzo, Veracruz. Arqueología 46: 154–166 Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia, México. Hurst, W. Jeffrey, Robert A. Martin, Jr., Stanley M. Tarka, Jr., and Grant D. Hall 1989 Authentication of Cacao in Maya Vessels Using High-Performance Liquid Chromatographic Techniques. Journal of Chromatography 466: 279–289. Hurst, W. Jeffrey, Stanley M. Tarka, Jr., Terry G. Powis, Fred Valdez, Jr., and Thomas R. Hester 2002 Cacao Usage by the Earliest Maya Civilization. Nature 418: 289–290.

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Hurst, W. Jeffrey 2006 The Determination of Cacao in Samples of Archaeological Interest. In Chocolate in Mesoamerica: A Cultural History of Cacao, Cameron McNeil, ed., 105–113. University Press of Florida, Gainesville. Kaplan, Jonathan, Juan Antonio Valdés, and Federico Paredes Umaña 2004 Informe No. 2: Segunda Temporada 2004, Proyecto Arqueológico Chocolá. Report presented to the Instituto de Antropología e Historia de Guatemala. Kaplan, Jonathan 2008 Hydraulics, Cacao, and Complex Developments at Preclassic Chocolá, Guatemala: Evidence and Implications. Latin American Antiquity 19(4): 399–413. Kaplan, Jonathan, Federico Paredes Umaña, W. Jeffrey Hurst, D. Sun, Bruce Stanley, Luis Barba Pingarrón, and Mauricio Obregón Cardona 2017 Cacao Residues in Vessels from Chocolá, an Ancient Maya Polity in the Southern Guatemalan Piedmont. Journal of Archaeological Science Reports 13: 526–534. Kufer, Johanna, and Cameron McNeil 2006 The Jaguar Tree (Theobroma bicolor Bonpl.). In Chocolate in Mesoamerica: A Cultural History of Cacao, Cameron McNeil, ed., 90–104. University Press of Florida, Orlando. Lentz, David L., Marilyn P. Beaudry-Corbett, Maria Luisa Reyna de Aguilar, and Lawrence Kaplan 1996 Foodstuffs, Forests, Fields, and Shelter: A Paleoethnobotanical Analysis of Vessel Contents from the Ceren Site, El Salvador. Latin American Antiquity 7: 247–262. Love, Michael, and Jonathan Kaplan 2011 The Southern Maya in the Late Preclassic: The Rise and Fall of an Early Mesoamerican Civilization. Michael Love and Jonathan Kaplan, eds. University Press of Colorado, Boulder. Ogata, Nisao 2008 Investigating the Sacred Cacao Groves of the Maya. Report to FAMSI. Ogata, Nisao, Arturo Gómez Pompa, and Karl Taube 2006 The Domestication and Distribution of Theobroma cacao L. in the Neotropics. In Chocolate in Mesoamerica: A Cultural History of Cacao, Cameron McNeil, ed., 69–89. University Press of Florida, Gainesville. Paredes Umaña, Federico 2006 En busca de las esculturas de Chocola. In XIX Simposio de Investigaciones Arqueológicas en Guatemala, 2005, J. P. Laporte, B. Arroyo, and H. Mejía, eds., 96–105. Museo Nacional de Arqueología y Etnología, Guatemala (versión digital). Paredes Umaña, Federico, Margarita Cossich, Diana Belches, Jonathan Kaplan, and Juan Antonio Valdés 2006 Un sistema de manejo de aguas en el grupo norte de Chocola, Suchitepéquez. In XVIII Simposio de Investigaciones Arqueológicas en Guatemala 2005, Juan Pedro Laporte, Bárbara Arroyo and Héctor Mejía, eds., 989–996. Museo Nacional de Arqueología y Etnología, Guatemala. Paredes Umaña, Federico, Mauricio Obregón Cardona, Luis Barba Pingarrón, William J. Hurst, Jonathan Kaplan, Eos López Pérez, Marielos Corado Mena, Marlen Garnica, José Carlos Aldana, and Lucía Cano

Appendix E. Theobromine, Fatty Acids, and Carbohydrates in Ceramic Samples · 423

2016

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Index

Acalan, 272 Achí (language) as “mother tongue” of the Pacific coast, Guatemala, 108 Achí (people), 94, 99, 105 Achiguate Ceramic Tradition, 196, 198, 201 Achiguate River, 82, 266 Achiote, 85, 103, 107 Acomé River, 82, 266 Acosta, José de, 102 Acuña, Rene, 97, 103, 105, 108 Administrative center, Chocolá, 17, 41, 191 Administrative/religious structure(s), 7, 126, 135 Adobe structures, 135, 142, 320 Agriculture, 14, 74, 84, 88–89, 91, 121, 124, 134, 166, 169, 171, 191, 264, 267–268, 270, 272, 281, 283–285, 287, 289, 296, 310, 317, 320, 323, 332, 358, 364, 420–421 Aguadas, 272–274 Ahuachapan, 18, 290 Aimers, James John, 35, 198 Alambique, 2 Aldea, 1, 21, 82, 116 Alluvial, 74, 276 Alnus spp., 321, 332 Altars with depressions, 240. See also Cupule monument Alvarado, Pedro de, 24, 90, 94 Alvarado y Chávez, Gonzalo de, 98 Ancient agricultural practices, 331 Ancient writing/text/hieroglyphs at Chalchuapa, 49 at Chiapa de Corzo, 10, 38, 317 at El Baúl, 9, 13–14, 36, 38, 42, 53, 317 at El Portón, 9, 13–14, 63 and Hero Twins, 295–296, 309 at Kaminaljuyu, 9–10, 13–14, 32, 41–42, 366 at San Bartolo, 13, 44 at Southern Maya Region, 9–10, 12–13

at Takalik Abaj, 9–10, 13, 48–49, 317 at Tres Zapotes, 10, 36, 38, 317 Andira inermis, 85, 332 Annals of the Cakchiquels, 26 Annona muricata, 332 Annona reticulata, 85, 332 Annona sp., 321 Anthracology, 162 Anthropomorphic (sculpture), 7, 230–234, 252–253, 261, 300 Antillean Mountain System, 71 Appadurai, Arjun, 20 Arana Osorio, Carlos Manuel, 122, 225 Arbenz Guzmán, Jacobo, president of Guatemala, 1952–1954, 120–121 Arboriculture, 14, 317, 320, 420 Archaeoastronomy, 9, 315 Archaeobotanical, 331, 333, 335, 337, 339–343, 349, 351 Archaeobotanical remains, 331–343, 349, 351. See also Archaeobotany Archaeobotany of cacao, 332, 340–343, 349–350 of Chocolá, 331–332, 349, 351 Archaeological evidence, 289, 317, 322 Archaeological wood charcoal, 331 Archaeology, Maya. See also Community archaeology and critiques of, 328–329 and impacts on local people(s), 324–329 and objectification of Maya people(s) and culture(s), 324–325 and representatives of elites of, 326 and work context of conflict and genocide, 325 Arecacea, 321, 349 Arecaceae palms, 332, 342 Arenal Ceramic Phase (Kaminaljuyu), 45, 207, 223

474 · Index Arévalo, Juan José, president of Guatemala, 1944-1952, 120 Arroyo, Bárbara, 59, 64, 84, 238, 351, 422–423 Ataco (El Salvador) and Jaguar Head Tradition, 58, 60–62 Late Preclassic Monument 1, stela depicting ruler figure, found at, 14, 291 radiocarbon dates from, 17, 40, 157, 159 Atitlán (volcano), 80–82, 113 Atitlán, Lake, 72, 80, 286 Atitlán III caldera, 81 Augustinian priests in Guatemala, 16 Axis-aligned architecture, 33 Aztec(s), 16, 47, 264, 268, 309–310, 312 Bacab, 293 Bajos, 264, 274 Balberta, 22, 300 Baldío, 78, 110, 118 Ball courts rare at Preclassic sites in eastern Guatemala, 64 Balsamo Brown Ware, 201 Barrigón(es), 58. See also Potbelly(ies) (monument[s]) Barrios, ancient, 41, 117–118, 270 Barrios, President Justo Rufino, 117. See also Mandamiento(s) Barter exchange, 313 Bas-relief, 225–226, 228–229, 234, 244 Basalt (monuments), 184, 244, 246–247, 249, 251–252, 254–256, 258–261 Batres, Leopoldo, 27 Belize, 26, 35, 73, 273–274, 288–289, 299, 351, 364 Bench figures at Chocolá, 232–234 dating of, 232 erroneous assignment of Teotihuacan-like incensarios to, 53 and Early Classic iconographic links to Montana/Los Chatos, 53–54 at Kaminaljuyu, 232–234 at San Francisco Zapotitlán, 233–234 Beneficio de café, 117 Berendt, Karl H., 28 Bergmann, John, 98, 103, 105, 290, 418, 421 Bilbao Late Classic occupations at, 54 Monument 21, 106 Parsons investigation of, 22–23 Bilbao Monument 21, 106. See also Bilbao Bocacosta, Guatemalan, 1, 84, 366, 393

Bolaños, Javier, 119 Bonampak, 293 Borhegyi, Stephan F. De, 32, 88–89, 105 Botanical knowledge, ancient, 331 Bourbourg, Charles Etienne Brasseur de, 26 Bove, Frederick J., 34–35, 50, 58, 102, 282, 289, 291, 300 Bowditch, Charles, 26–68 Brinton, Daniel, 26, 68, 97 Broken altars, 237–238 Brosimum alicastrum, 332 Bruehl, Gustave, 28–29, 34, 48 Bulk goods, 19 Bureaucracy(ies), ancient, 17, 69, 265, 323 Bureaucratic/supervisory structure(s), 16, 131, 191, 265 Burial(s), ancient at Canton Corralito, 282 at Takalik Abaj, 280, 283 Burkitt, Robert activities of on behalf of the University of Pennsylvania, 224–226 at Chocolá, 320 and El Cerro Partido, 133 excavations of Mound 2 by, 132–133 idiosyncrasies of, 1 and Monument 1, 224–226 “Burkitt’s trench,” 133. See also Mound 2 (El Cerro Partido), Chocolá Burseraceae, 332 Bursera simaruba, 85, 332 Byrsonima crassifolia, 85, 321, 336 C14. See Radiocarbon dating Cabrera, Tania, 45, 264, 270, 277 Cacao at ancient Chocolá, 349 and appearance in Mesoamerican and Maya codices, 293 arboriculture of, 14, 317, 320, 420 attested by Southern Maya region ethnohistory, 24–25 and Cacao Heartland, 14, 18–19, 91, 102, 286–290, 298, 311–312, 317, 322 and cacao trade among the Maya, 296–298 as central to Maya creation mythology, 294–295 as central to Maya ideology, 171 at Chocolá today, 17, 85 criollo (bean), 286 “Criollo politics,” 117 and cultivation locales, 7, 18, 50–51, 78, 115, 263–265, 271, 285, 290, 298–299, 306, 312, 321–323

Index · 475 and evidence for in the Preclassic Southern Maya Region and at Chocolá, 299–300 forastero, 286 and Hershey laboratory, 263, 405, 419–420 iconography of, 52, 105–106, 293 (see also Cotzumalguapa) and iconography and narrative scenes on Maya sculpture and ceramics, 292–293 and iconography of death, war, and sacrifice from Cotzumalguapa, 105 ideal soils for, 74–75, 263, 366 intensive cultivation of at Chocolá, 7, 263, 285, 306 in Maya and Mesoamerican ethnohistory, 21–22 and its meaning and importance to the Maya, 292 in Mesoamerica and among the Maya, 264, 286 origins of (from wild to domestication of), 18 pataxte and, 99–100, 107, 321, 349 in the Popol Vuh and other Maya mythology, 294–296 post-Conquest industry of in Southern Maya Region, 286 and a Preclassic cacao industry at Chocolá, 51, 300 and “progenitors-inheritors model,” 322–323 and scarce iconography or depictions of in Preclassic Southern Maya Region, 322 and the Shook Altar, 243, 303 soil and water needs of, 169 in the Southern Maya Region, 7, 10–12, 22, 25, 29, 32, 34, 39–40, 46, 48, 53, 55, 57, 59, 64, 69, 88, 106–107, 128, 134, 136, 138, 219, 226, 229, 232, 237–238, 242, 277, 282, 286, 288, 290, 296, 301, 311, 316, 318, 324, 420 surplus cultivation of at Chocolá, 298 trinitario, 286 used as currency, 102 used medicinally, 103–104 and world-systems approaches to understanding of, 298–299 Cacao arboriculture, 14, 317, 320. See also Cacao Cacao consumption, Chocolá, 103, 312, 317, 322, 418–420 Cacao cultivation, 18, 50–51, 263, 312, 321–322, 349, 421. See also Cacao Cacao glyph, 292 Cacao groves, 265–266, 271, 287, 312, 323, 422. See also Cacao Cacao-growers, ethnicity(ies) of, 291 Cacao Heartland, ancient. See also Cacao Chocolá, in center of, 135

evidence of ancient cultivation in, 115 extent of, 134 Cacao industry, ancient, 51, 90, 103, 107, 286, 288–289, 292–293, 298, 300, 307, 313–314, 317, 322. See also Cacao Cacao pod–like ceramic support, Chocolá, 299. See also Ceramic effigy of cacao bean, Chocolá Cacao residues in ceramics, 14, 16, 148, 166, 187, 287, 300, 312, 317, 320–321, 349, 410, 418–420, 422 Cacao trade, ancient, 9, 14, 46, 106, 296, 300, 312–313. See also Cacao; Cotzumalguapa Caesalpinia yucatanensis, 332 Caja, 144, 160, 162–163, 192, 212, 215, 275 Caja/redistributive box (Mound 15/Structure 15-1) water conduits associated with, 137, 146 well associated with, 150 “Cakolqueh,” 29 Calakmul, 230 Calderón, Estuardo, 68, 110, 119, 124 Camaché Ceramic Phase, 200 Campeche, 35, 38, 73, 272–274 Campesino labor, 117 Canals, 45, 47, 172, 268–270, 272–274, 277–278, 280, 333. See also Water management system, Chocolá Canícula, 74, 77 Canton Corralito, 282 Capital-invested land-use model, 117 Caracol, 274 Caribbean Plate, 80 Caricaceae, 332 Carica papaya, 85, 332 Carmack, Robert, 15, 67–68 Carnegie Institution of Washington (CIW) research at Kaminaljuyu, 26–27 research in Southern Maya Region, 29–33 Carved-in-the-round, 57, 61, 226, 234, 237, 244, 251–252, 254, 257, 259, 261 Cascajal Block, 36 Casco (headquarters building, Chocolá plantation, during German ownership), 78, 114–119, 257 Caserío, 1 Cash-crop(s), 79, 109, 111, 286 Castillo Armas, Carlos, 122 Catholic Church, 110, 121 Caves, 57, 71, 90–91, 284, 314, 328 Cayman Trench, 80 Ceiba, 85, 116, 340, 342–343 Ceibal, 35 Cementerio, Chocolá

476 · Index artifacts recovered from, 143–144 and Mound 22, 143 in North Sector of ancient city, 143 test pits dug in, 166 Cenotes, 271 Central American Plantation Corporation (CAPCO), 119 Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), 92, 121–122, 324 Centralized planning, 283 Centralized water systems, 284 Central Mexico, ancient. See also Teotihuacan as one of two previously considered great civilizational impulses in Mesoamerica, 103 Central Sector, Chocolá, 2, 126, 135, 137, 144, 151, 191, 193, 213, 239, 263, 320, 412, 415–416 Centrifuga, 2 Ceramic chronology, 69, 195 Ceramic effigy of cacao bean, Chocolá, 300 Ceramic phase(s), 32, 63, 189, 194, 198–200 Ceramics of Chocolá and Chocolá’s cultural history, 214 and chronology of, 195 Early Classic, 195–196, 199–204 Early Preclassic, 194–199 Late Classic, 196, 199 Late Preclassic, 196, 199, 202, 204–208 Middle Preclassic, 196, 199 Postclassic, 7, 15–16, 20 whole vessels recovered, 194, 196, 198, 201–209 Ceramic tradition(s), 58, 194, 196–198, 201, 210 Cerén, 124, 289, 321, 349, 423 Cerro Partido, 133, 135 Cerros, 14, 64, 70, 273 Chaak, 315 Chalcatzingo, 14, 40, 59, 219, 268 Chalchuapa ceramics found at similar to those from Preclassic Kaminaljuyu, 59–60 distance from Chocolá, 59 Early Preclassic horticulture at, 60 Late Classic rich tombs found at, 27 links to Maya Highlands, 60 Miraflores style Monument 1 bearing hieroglyphic text found at, 60, 63 Monuments 50 and 51 belonging to Jaguar Head Tradition found at, 60 neutron activation studies at, 60 Olmecoid rock carvings found at, 59 possibly equal in importance as Takalik Abaj and Izapa, 59

Usulután ceramics found at, 61 Charnay, Claude-Joseph Désiré, 25–26 Chase-Dunn, Christopher, 14–16, 19, 46, 313 Chiapa de Corzo distance from Chocolá, 54 earliest “E group” arrangement found thus far at, 54 as early important center in Southern Maya Region, 54–55 estimated Preclassic apogee at, 54 and iconographic links to Kaminaljuyu, 54 and links with Kaminaljuyu and other Southern Maya Region centers, 54–55 links to La Venta, 54 long sequence of occupation at, 54 proposed Mixe-Zoque speakers at, 54 Stela 2 and earliest Maya Long Count date found thus far, 54 Chiapas Highlands, 235, 276–277, 317 Chicanel as ceramic and/or cultural tradition, 63–64 as putative evidence of Lowland Maya expansion, 63 Chichen Itza, 26, 28 Chichoy River, 261 Childe, V. Gordon, 8, 10 Chimaltenango, 73, 80, 100, 207, 209, 230, 232, 237 Chinampas, 264, 268 Chinchilla Mazariegos, Oswaldo, 43, 53, 56, 69, 105, 107, 315 Chiquimula, 63, 73, 94, 102 Chiranthodendron, 321, 332 Chiranthodendron pentadactylon, 321, 332 “Chitulul,” 97 Chixoy River, 196 Chocolá ancient construction methods of, 138–141 ancient elite residences at, 6–7 ancient humanly modified landscape at, 48, 131, 145 ancient sectors of, 134, 214, 317, 420 archaeoastronomy of, 9 archaeobotany of, 331 archaeological features, 126 archaeological operations at, 126 archaeology of, 93 at least 1.5 km extent of water system of containing both ancient subterranean and ancient surface sections, 281 cacao at, 263 caja(s) at/in water system of, 160–163 caves at, 57, 71, 90–91 as “central place,” 328–329

Index · 477 ceramics of, 194–196 chromatograms from, 414–416 Classic Period of, 9, 17, 165 coffee at, 3, 19, 77–79, 113–118, 332 coffee-processing machinery at, 115–117 colonial history of, 60, 104, 109, 287, 322 conduits in water system of, 268–269, 280 difficulties of working at, 34, 122 and disposition today of ancient city of, 313 edaphology of, 82 ethnohistory of, 93 etymology of name, 109 evangelical pastors at, 68 experience of genocide in, 120–122 and ex-PACs, 122–123 fauna of, 86 features, archaeological, of, 126 figurines from, 213 first georeferenced map of, 127–128 flora of, 84 German ownership of plantation at, 78, 114–119, 257 Germans at, 28, 84, 118–123 gradiometry at, 148 historical context of, 1, 100 hydraulics of, 17, 265, 285–286 infrastructure, ancient, of, 116–118, 266, 281 La Montañita, 77, 84, 86 and La Ventana (cave), 112, 284 linguistic affiliation of, 94, 291 linguistic history of, 94 link to Kaminaljuyu, 40 link to Takalik Abaj, 48 located centrally in Southern Maya Region and in the Cacao Heartland, 18, 286 longevity of ancient occupation of, 128 modern aldea of, 1 modern coffee farm at, 77, 116 modern German piggybacking of water system at, 192 modern history of, 21 modern population of, 2, 21, 94, 99, 270 modern settlements/villages and towns near to, 95 monuments of, 224 Mound 1, 2, 79, 126, 135, 254, 283 Mound 2, 5, 59, 63, 67, 126, 132–136, 138, 140, 142–143, 192, 254, 311, 320 Mound 5, 126, 132, 134, 166–170, 189, 223, 281 Mound 6, 126, 187, 221, 223, 249–250, 259–261, 406 Mound 7, 126, 173–174, 180–181, 184, 216, 247, 249–250, 259

Mound 9, 131–132, 134, 137, 143–144, 151, 192, 253, 283, 320 Mound 11, 151, 240, 281 Mound 15, 17, 126, 133–134, 137, 143–155, 162–166, 179, 212, 215, 223, 275, 278, 280–285 Mound 23, 131, 151, 281 mounds of, 2 natural springs at, 82 nine-course platform wall at, 166 north-south spatial divisions of, 131–132 northern orientation of many structures at, 278 obsidian sources of, 366–368, 373 PACH survey and mapping of, 6, 128 palaeoenvironment of, 74 pedology of, 82 physiography/physical environment of, 71, 90 platform structure (5-1) at, 166 as possible ancient “kingdom of cacao,” 52 Postclassic Period of, 20, 99 postcolonial history of, 68, 78 Preclassic Period of, 40–44 pre-Conquest history of, 96 radiocarbon dates from, 17, 40, 157, 159 rainfall at, 76 riachuelos in, 17, 283 rivers in, 83, 288 (see also Chichoy River; Chocolá River) similarities to Takalik Abaj, 243 Stela 1, 11, 13, 36, 38, 48, 53, 62, 68, 228 tectonics affecting it, 79–80 test pits excavated at, 143 toponym of, 51 Victorian structures at, 114, 117–118 volcanoes near to, 82, 91 xamanes at, 110–111 Chocolá, artifacts of archaeobotanical, 331 ceramic, 194 disposition of, 313 donated by villagers to PACH, 79, 132, 234, 251–254 from Mound 15, 212, 215, 283 obsidian, 365–369 radiocarbon, 395–404 sculptural/monumental, 224 stone, 134, 138, 141–145, 148–151, 160–165, 169–170 Chocolá Black-Brown Ware incised, 202 Chocolá Brown Ware, 199–202, 207–211 Chocolá Ceramic Tradition, 196

478 · Index Chocolá Monument 1 as one of nine sculptures in the Southern Maya Region depicting Preclassic ruler figures, 63 similarity to Kaminaljuyu Stela 10, 228–230, 240, 246, 283 Chocolá Plantagen Gesellschaft, 118–119. See also Plantagen Gesellschaft Chocolá Neutze Chocolá River, 86, 145, 244 Chocolate, 20, 107, 109, 207–210, 286, 293, 410, 422–423. See also Cacao Chocolá wares Balsamo Brown, 199–201 Chocolá Brown Utilitarian, 201 Glossy Black, 199–200, 205 Glossy Orange, 160, 199–200, 203, 205 local, 200–203 Middle and Late Preclassic Imported, 204 Monte Alto Brown, 200 Monte Alto Red, 199–200, 204 Morfino, 199–200, 207, 209 Red Paste, 199, 201, 204 Rofino, 199–200, 207 Rosada, 199–202, 210 Semetabaj, 199–201, 203, 208–209 Utatlán, 29, 200, 208 Xuc, 199–200, 209 Cholan, 29, 291 Chromatogram, 414, 416 Chronology, Maya, 35–36 Chrysophyllum cainito, 332 Chuajij, 143–144, 255 Chultun, 273 Cimarrones, 99 Cinnabar, 16, 189, 278 Cistern, 276 Cities, ancient, 41, 82 City-states, ancient, 316–317, 365 Ciudad Real, Antonio de, 24 Civic pools, ancient, 281 Civil War, Guatemala, 121 Clark, John E., 40, 137 Clasificadora, 2 Classic Lowlands, 3, 37, 49, 274 Classic Maya, 7–11, 14–16, 23, 29–35, 41–42, 45, 49, 52–53, 67, 91, 103, 111, 143, 195, 238, 275–276, 285, 292–299, 306–308, 312–317, 420 Clavijero, Francisco Javier, 24, 119 Coastal Undifferentiated ceramic ware(s), 200 Coba, 274 Coban, 116 Cobble construction, ancient, 142 Cochineal, 84, 107, 113, 115

Cocos Plate, 80 Codices, ancient, 287, 293, 296 Coe, Michael D., 10, 23, 30–36, 40, 42, 51–52, 60, 68–70, 88, 103, 109, 264, 267, 271, 286, 289, 292, 294, 304, 309, 315, 423 Coffee arrival in Guatemala, 113–116 as cash-crop at Chocolá today, 79, 109, 111, 286 cultivation of as significant contributor to poverty of Chocolenses today, 124 introduced to Guatemala from Cuba, 115 most important cash-crop in Guatemala today, 107 role of in ending cacao industry in Guatemala, 115, 124 Colha, 288–289 Collapse, Middle Preclassic, 219, 223 “Collective action theory,” 67 Columbus, Christopher, 102, 296, 312 Commodity(ies), 14, 20, 47, 105–107, 286, 297–298, 313–314 Commoner dwellings, ancient, 320 Community archaeology, 325 Compartmentalization (geographic/topographic/hydraulic), 24, 266, 285 “Complex/complexity,” 7–8 Comunidad agraria, 21, 94 Conchas ceramic Phase/Ware, 2 Construction techniques, ancient, 138, 282, 320 Copan, 22–26, 104, 171, 235, 273–275, 314 Core/cores (in world systems theory), 46, 67, 299, 307–308, 313 Core-periphery, 46, 308 Corporate/corvée labor, 300 Cortés y Larraz, Pedro, 94, 101 Cosmology, ancient, 50, 91, 288, 307, 310 Costa Cuca, 48, 73 Costa de Guazacapán, 73 Costa de Zapotitlán y Suchitepéquez, 97 Costa Grande, 73 Costa Rica, 81, 115, 350 Cotton, 21, 88, 107, 124 Cotzíj, 107 Cotzumalguapa, 6, 14, 22, 27–29, 38, 43, 53–54, 56, 91, 100, 105–106, 212, 229, 288–289, 300, 312, 322. See also Bilbao; El Baúl; El Castillo and cacao and war imagery on sculptures, 91 and conflation of cacao, death and sacrifice iconography at, 105–106 Cycle 7 monument at, 53 investigation by Parsons of, 53 investigations by J.E.S. Thompson at, 26–27 Late Preclassic developments at, 44, 320

Index · 479 nuclear zone of, 53, 56 sculptural style(s) of, 53 three separate sites contained in, 53 Countles, 102. See also Zontles Coup d’état, Guatemala, 1954, 122, 324, 326. See also Arbenz Guzmán, Jacobo, president of Guatemala, 1952–1954 Coyolate River, 82, 266 Craft specialization, ancient, 33, 270 Criollo, 117, 286. See also Cacao Criollo politics, 117 Cuba, 115 Cucurbita spp., 85, 321, 338, 349 Cultural evolution “billiard balls” and cultural evolutionary theory, 19 limitations of theory(ies) of, 198 theoretical typologies of, 198 Cultural geography, 73, 86 Cultural innovation(s), 12, 319 Culture/cultural history, 20, 40, 48, 66, 198, 214, 422 Cupressus lusitánica, 321, 332, 338 Cupressus lusitánica blanco, 321, 332, 338 Cupule monument, 173, 241. See also Altars with depressions; Monuments of Chocolá: and water worship Cuyotenango, 65, 99–101, 105–106 Cybistax donnell-smithii, 332 Cycle 7, 53, 69 Cycle 8 (Maya Long Count), 38, 69 Czudnochowski, Friedrich von, 119, 395 Death squads, 120–121, 325 Decipherment, 29, 32, 34, 292, 315 Deininger, Fedor, 119 Deities, ancient Maya, 47, 58, 97, 228, 238, 288, 293, 308, 310 Del Rio, Antonio, 25 Dendrograms, Chocolá, 369, 373 Despulpadora, 2 Díaz del Castillo, Bernal, 98 Diehl, 30, 32, 40, 264, 267, 304, 318 Dieseldorff, E. P. as one of several Germans undertaking early archaeological research in Guatemala, 28 at Nebaj, Alta Verapaz, 63 Ditches, defensive, 271 Dominican priests in Guatemala, 24–25, 29 Dresden Codex, 27, 293 Dry season, 17, 52, 173, 267, 272, 274, 284. See also Agriculture Dual oppositions (ideological), 271

Dulles, Allen, 121. See also 1954 coup d’état; United Fruit Company; United States Dulles, John Foster, 121. See also 1954 coup d’état; United Fruit Company; United States Durán, Diego, 24 Early Classic Period, 165, 196 Early Maya, 11, 14, 109, 171 Earspool, 303 Economics, ancient, 100, 117, 314 Ecosystem, 321, 332, 349 Ecozone, 89, 321 Edaphic/edaphology, 82, 286 Edzna, 272 Ek Chuah, 307–308, 310 El Bálsamo Cuadros and Jocotal ceramic phases at, 58 earth-fill structures at, 57 first described by E. M. Shook, 57–58 main mound group at, 55–57 Middle Preclassic occupation at, 56–58 and putative Preclassic conquest of Olmec sites, 267 sculptures from, 57–58 stylized jaguar depiction at, 57 22 mounds at, 57 undifferentiated coastal wares from, 58 El Baúl as part of larger Cotzumalguapa site, 43, 53–54 Stela 1, 53 El Baúl Stela 1. See also El Baúl as early Maya Long Count text in the Southern Maya Region, 38 El Castillo as part of larger Cotzumalguapa site, 22, 53 El Chayal obsidian fields, 42. See also Kaminaljuyu El Escondite, 59, 278, 280. See also Takalik Abaj: ruler burials at Elite residential structure, 270 Elite(s), 6–11, 16–17, 33, 44, 47, 52, 68, 90, 106, 117, 126, 131, 134, 143, 191, 193, 202, 219, 264, 268, 270, 273–274, 282–285, 291–297, 303, 310, 313, 320, 322, 326 “Elites, self-effacing,” 11, 44 Elite sector, Chocolá, 320. See also Mound 6, Chocolá; Mound 7, Chocolá; Mound 9, Chocolá; Mound 15, Chocolá; North Sector, Chocolá El Jobo, 22 El Kiosko (“sculptural garden” established by Germans at Chocolá), 134 El Mesak, 22

480 · Index El Mirador, 13, 44, 67, 70, 169, 219, 274 El Portón, 9, 13–14, 22, 63, 232 El Portón Monument 1, 63 El Vergel, 33 Emergence/emergent, 12, 36, 286, 316–317 Empresa Campesina Agricola (ECA), 92, 94, 110, 123, 125, 247–261 Empresa Campesina Asociativa, 94, 110, 121, 124 Encomienda(s), 24–25 Entradas, Spanish, 24 Epiclassic Period, 37, 68 Epi-Olmec, 10, 41, 291 Epistemics of ancient Chocolá, 91 Epistemology of archaeology, 326 Eruptions, volcanic, 90 Escuintla, Department of, 53, 73, 100, 290 Esperanza Flesh Ware, 211 Estrada, Juan de, 94, 107–108 Estrada-Belli, Francisco, 64, 366, 393 “Ethics of no intervention,” 317 Ethnic boundary(ies), 291 Ethnicity, 46, 50, 291 Ethnogenesis, colonial, 94 Ethnography, 30, 32, 308 Ethnohistory of cacao in Guatemala, 102–105 and direct historical approach, 100 as resource for Mesoamerican and Maya archaeology, 21–22 of Soconusco, 288 of Suchitepéquez, 93 Ethnological Museum of Hamburg, 55 Evangelical Christians, Chocolá, 68, 132, 151, 253–254 Evangelico(s), 68, 132, 151, 253–254, 324, 327. See also Evangelical Christians, Chocolá Evolution, cultural, 8, 19, 46, 67, 90. See also Cultural evolution Excavation grid, 145, 147, 166, 168, 173, 175, 186 Excavations by PACH Mound 2, 135 Mound 5, 126, 132, 166–170, 189, 223, 281 Mound 6, 126, 187, 221, 223, 249–250, 259–261, 406 Mound 7, 126, 173–174, 180–184, 216, 247, 249–250, 259 Mound 9, 131–134, 137, 143–144, 151, 192, 253, 283, 320 Mound 15, 143 rescue operation in South Sector, 151 sampling strategy by PACH for, 131–132, 159 of water system, 134, 265, 267, 277, 284

Fast-flowing rivers, Guatemalan piedmont, 319 Fauna of Chocolá, 86 Feasting, ancient, 292 Feeders rivers, 266, 319 Ficha, Shook, 302–303, 310 Ficus sp., 332 Figurines, Chocolá from Chocolá, largely Preclassic in date, 288, 300 from Mound 2, 5, 59, 63, 67, 126, 132–136, 320 from Mound 15, 212, 215, 283 Finca, system, 281 Finca Acapulco, 33 Finca La Argelia, 234 Finca Las Conchas, 232, 234 Finca San Julián, 244 Finca San Rafael, 244 Finca Santa Isabel, 94 Floodwaters, Southern Maya Region/piedmont/Chocolá, 284–285, 290, 311, 313, 316–322, 328, 365 Flora of Chocolá, 84 Flow velocity, hydraulic, 284 Folk classifications of soil, 89 Forastero, 286. See also Cacao Formalist/formalism, 8, 93, 297 Forms/modes of production, ancient, 19, 265, 284 Förstemann, Ernst, 27–28 Fraijanes, 116 Franciscan priests in Guatemala, 16 Fried, Morton, 8 Fuego (volcano), 80, 82 Fuentes y Guzmán, Francisco Antonio, 45 Full-round, 58, 230–232, 236–237, 243–244, 305. See also Carved-in-the-round Functions of buildings, ancient Chocolá, 7, 16, 91, 99, 109, 191, 243–244, 300, 349 Gage, Thomas, 25, 51, 88, 103, 105, 107 Galindo, Juan, 25, 104 Gamio, Manuel, 27, 31, 80 Genocide, Guatemalan, 21, 120–122, 317, 325 Geographical Dictionary of Guatemala, 109 Germans built infrastructure at Chocolá, 116, 118, 266 at Chocolá, 28 deported from Guatemala during and after World War II, 120 enjoyed great profits from Chocolá agribusiness, 118 expanded size of Chocolá farm, 121–123

Index · 481 in Guatemala, 28 and impact on Germans in Guatemala of losing World War II, 118–119 nationalization of property during and after World War II, 119 pre–World War II plantation business success in Guatemala, 117 in Southern Maya Region, 28 and vertical business model, 118 Germany, 55, 120, 356 Gillespie, Susan, 9, 307–309 Glossy Black Ware from Mound 15, 212, 215 Glossy Orange Ware, 199, 203, 205 Glottochronology, 94 Glyphs (hieroglyphs), Maya, 11, 48–49, 60, 63. See also Maya hieroglyphic writing God L/Itzamnaaj, 97, 111, 307, 310 Goebel, John, 119 Gordon, George Byron, 26 GPS-based survey, Chocolá, 130 Gradiometry, 148 Graham, John, 234, 236, 254, 302, 311 Gravity-flow, 269, 282 Groves, 100, 264–266, 271, 287–288, 296, 312, 323, 422 Guacales, 139–142 Guardiola, Josep/José, 1, 3, 110, 113, 117–118 Guatemala independence from Spain, 110 postcolonial transformation of rural land in southern parts of, 92 tenth on list of world coffee producers today, 116 Guatemalan upper coastal plains, 290 Guernsey, Julia, 51–52, 57, 228–229, 234, 238, 282, 291 “Gumarcaah-Izmachí,” 99 Gumarcaaj (Utatlan), 22 Gutiérrez, Oscar, 135–136, 139, 143, 166 Hacienda Chocolá, 118 Hall, Thomas D., 290, 313 Handbook of Middle American Indians, 22, 32, 45 Hansen, Richard, 14, 44 Helmets (ancient attire or costuming), 232, 252, 303 Heredades, 286, 289 Hereditary elites, 33 Hero Twins, Maya, 97, 295, 309 Herrera, Antonio de, 24 Hershey Company Laboratory, 413

High/complex culture, 16 High cultural traits, 10, 31 Highlands, Guatemalan, 2, 21, 27, 31–32, 35, 38–39, 41, 61, 63–64, 68, 73–74, 80 High performance liquid chromatography (HPLC), 290, 405–406, 411, 413–414, 416, 419 Hocart, Alfred E., 309 Horticulturalism, 296 “Hotel” (for visiting persons, Chocolá plantation during German ownership), 117 Households, ancient, 286 Huehuetenango, 38, 73, 122 Huertas, 82, 263 Human body, in sculpture, 237, 251 Human figures, in sculpture, 53, 59, 230, 234–235, 252 Humid Subtropical Low Forest, 321, 349 Hurst, William J., 420, 422 Hydraulics, 17, 265, 273, 285–286, 314. See also Water management systems, ancient; Water systems, ancient Hydraulic systems, 265–266. See also Water management systems, ancient; Water systems, ancient Hydroagricultural systems, 265–266 Icán River, 82 Ichon, Alain, 63–64 Iconography, 105–106, 228, 242, 268, 270, 280, 282, 288, 292–295, 300–301 Ideology, ancient at Chocolá, 9 at Cotzumalguapa, 27, 38, 54, 56, 312 of elites, 47 at Izapa, 229, 240, 243, 280 at Kaminaljuyu, 63, 136, 152, 172, 196, 207–208, 219, 234, 277–278 and physical environment(s), 23, 86, 90 of rulership, 283 at Takalik Abaj, 11, 14–16, 36, 40–41, 44, 48–49, 59, 131, 143, 152 Imported wares, Chocolá, 204 Indigenous labor force, Guatemala, 117 Indigenous Maya alienation from ancient Maya culture of, 116 consciousness of, 109 and labor exploitation of, 116 and the mandamiento(s), 25, 117 as victims of racism, 28, 69, 228 Ingenio(s), 88, 113, 120 Inomata, Takeshi, 12–13, 35, 40, 43, 45, 49–51, 54, 63, 67, 149, 195, 199, 201, 209, 214 Institution(s), ancient, 225, 323, 350

482 · Index Instituto Agropecuario Nacional, 121, 421 Instituto de Antropología e Historia (IDAEH), 7, 49, 64, 68, 125–126, 192, 243, 327, 351, 422–423 Instituto Nacional de Transformación (INTA), 122 Internal vs external factors in cultures/societies/sociocultural development, 10, 15 Interregional/long-distance trade, 8, 11, 14–15, 286–288, 296–297, 300, 308, 317–318, 320 Invention of writing, Mesoamerica debates about origins of, 318 Kaminaljuyu, 299, 307, 313, 323, 365–366 Maya, 292–293, 296, 298, 319 Olmec, 319, 321, 419–420 San Bartolo, 13, 44, 70, 229 Irrigation channels, 276 Irrigation system(s), 17, 270, 277 Isthmus of Tehuantepec, 22, 24, 30, 39 Itinerancy (in ancient Maya ideology), 306–307 Itzamnaaj, 97, 111, 307, 310. See also Ek Chuah; God L/Itzamnaaj; Shook Altar Ixquin-Nehaib, 99–100 Ixtacapa Ceramic Phase, 84, 200, 266, 285 Ixtacapa River, 107 Ixtepéque, 321, 365–366, 369, 372, 393 Izapa ancient cacao cultivation and trade at, 18, 50–51, 263, 312, 321–322, 349 “Cacahuatán” toponym for locality at, 51 central plazas of, 52 iconography of, 52 as important center in Southern Maya Region, 9 Late Preclassic Guillén at, 51–52 LIDAR surveys at, 50, 52 as likely political center for Jaguar Head Tradition, 58, 60–62 and links to Kaminaljuyu, 50 Miscellaneous Monument 20, 53 Miscellaneous Mound 121, 52 more than 100 mounds at, 51, 263 as possible ancient “kingdom of cacao,” 52 possible unified sacred narrative message on public sculptural art at, 51 sculptural depiction of cacao tree pods at, 287, 306, 308–310 structures more than twenty m high at, 2, 51 twelve plazas at, 51 water system and conduits at, 7, 47, 51–52, 59, 82, 126, 131, 137, 144, 151, 161, 280–286 Izquin Ahpalotz y Nehaib, Francisco, 99

Jaguar Head Core Zone, 60, 262, 394 Jaguar-head sculptures, 31, 60, 62, 261–262, 394 Jaguar Head Tradition, 58, 60–62 Jaguar(s) monuments from Chalchuapa belonging to, 59–61, 63–64, 68, 230, 234 Jalapa, 63, 73, 80 Jones, Christopher, 6, 45 Josserand, J. Kathryn, 11, 23, 38, 94, 99 Joyce, Rosemary, 307–309 Joyce, Thomas A., 26 Junajpu, 294–295, 309 Jun Chouen, 294, 315 Jun Junajpu, 295 Kaminaljuyu adobe structures of, 313 ajaw glyph on Stela 68 from, 11–12, 45–46 and Carnegie Institution of Washington, 26, 225 as core in core-periphery system, 46, 298–299, 308 D mound district as likely Preclassic center of, 45 and eclectic monuments from, 41 and El Chayal obsidian trade, 42, 46, 69, 320, 365 ethnicity(ies) of, 291 as extraregional center, 42, 313 greatest number of Preclassic texts from, 13 history of research at, 40 and Kidder, Jennings, and Shook volume about, 43 and “kingship” at, 44 as largest Southern Maya Region city and polity, 41 links to Chocolá, 44, 46 links to Takalik Abaj, 41 Miraflores Period at, 41 Monument 65, 228–229, 235, 307 Mound E-III-3, 207, 234 multiple ethnicities and possible “multepal” at, 46 Preclassic, 208–215, 220–223, 228 as prospective core in core-periphery world system, 308, 313 and revised chronology at, 199, 201 and Shook and Kidder volume about, 30, 33, 41, 43, 136, 142, 207 Stela 9, 234 Stela 10, 32, 42, 45–46, 228–230, 240, 246, 283, 291, 323 Stela 68, 11–12, 45

Index · 483 Throne 67, 11, 45–47, 60 Kaminaljuyu Monument 65 lengthy text on, 10, 45 similarity to Chocolá Monument 1, 225–226, 228–230, 246 Kaminaljuyu Stela 9, 234 Kaminaljuyu Stela 10, 32, 42, 46, 60, 228–230, 240, 246, 283, 291 Kaqchikel, 2, 68, 94, 96–97, 100–101, 109, 113 Karstic, 31, 276 Kerr, Justin, 293 K’iche’, 2, 24, 29, 93–94, 96–101, 108–110, 113, 291, 294 “Kichechí,” 101 “King, Achí,” 99 “Kingdom, Kan,” 44 “Kingdoms of cacao” Chocolá as, 20 “Kings, self-effacing,” 44 “Kings” as “strangers,” 310 “Kingship,” ancient and commerce, 308–309 comparative definition of, 48–49, 246–247, 283, 308–309, 319, 323 and customary focus of many Maya archaeologists, 326 Kaminaljuyu Stela 10 depicting, 246–247, 283 and the “king’s ambit,” 309 and “life,” 309 and Shook Altar, 300 and the “stela-altar cult,” 319 undefined by Maya archaeologists, 44, 67 Kirchhoff, Paul, 31, 71 La Blanca and absence of sculpture from, 57 and collapse and abandonment of, 57 and distance from Chocolá, 58 few monuments from, 57 and first description of by E. M. Shook, 301 “large chiefdom” at, 57 and Middle Preclassic developments at, 320, 322 Monument 3, 58, 60 Mound 1, 79, 126, 135 and Naranjo Ceramic Tradition, 57 and succession as regional center by Ujuxte, 56–57 Lacadena, Alfonso, 48, 69 La Democracia, 282 “Ladinoization,” 21 Ladinos/as, 68, 113

Lago de Atitlán, 1, 50, 71, 81, 97–98, 100, 113, 261–262. See also Lake Atitlán Lagunas, 280 Laja(s), 16, 44, 59, 146, 150–152, 164, 178–179, 192, 277–281 La Joyanca, 274 Lake Atitlán, 72, 80, 286 La Ladrillera (ECA), 92, 94, 123, 249, 251–256, 258–259 La Libertad, 22 Lamanai, 14, 70, 238 La Mojarra Stela 1, 36, 228 La Montana (site), 22 Landed elites, Guatemala, 117, 121 La Nueva, 22, 124 Laporte, Juan Pedro, 64 Las Casas, Bartolomé de, 24, 98, 103 Las Charcas Ceramic Phase (Kaminaljuyu), 63, 121, 196, 199–201, 219, 223 Late Classic Period, 234, 277, 292, 407 Late Middle Preclassic Period, 44 Late Preclassic, 11, 14–15, 18, 41, 43–46, 48, 50–53, 57–59, 63–64, 67, 69, 92–93, 128, 144, 148, 160, 166, 189, 191, 196, 199, 202, 204–205, 207–209, 212, 214–215, 218, 223, 228–229, 234–235, 237–238, 240, 242–244, 246–249, 251–254, 257–261, 263, 268, 272, 277, 279– 281, 283, 285, 287–288, 291, 299, 301, 306, 317, 320, 322–323, 365–366, 393–394, 407, 422 Late Preclassic Period, 15, 18, 44, 67, 208, 214, 272, 320, 322, 366, 394, 407 Latifundia, 28, 84, 88, 109, 116. See also Plantation system “Lattice model” of cultural and sociopolitical and economic interaction and development, 12, 319 Laughton, Timothy, 51, 306 Lavadora, 2 La Venta, 40, 54, 58, 112, 219, 284, 304, 307 La Venta Monument 13, 307 Legumes, 349 Lempa River, 84, 266 Lemus, Byron, 64, 66, 243 Lenca, 29 Le Plongeon, Augustus, 25–26 Liberal Reforms of 1871, 117, 324 Limestone architecture, 267, 269, 273, 276 Lineages, ancient, 91, 286 Linguistic boundaries, ancient, 49, 291 Llanto Ware, 211 Local styles (ceramic; sculptural), 240 Lohse, Jon C., 15, 39 Lolemí (ECA/agricultural cooperative), 92, 94, 123

484 · Index Lolemí Ceramic Phase, 200 Lonchocarpus xuul, 332 Long Count, Maya, 9–10, 12–13, 36–38, 53–54, 69, 235, 318, 366 Los Esclavos River, 84, 266 “Lovers’ Altar,” 245 Lowe, Gareth W., 15–16, 20, 32–33, 51–52, 54 Lowland Maya, 111 Lowlands-Highlands dichotomy, 36 Lowlands-Highlands relations, 36 Low relief, 184, 226, 232, 235, 241–242, 244, 246, 252, 254, 256, 301, 303, 306, 311. See also Bas-relief Lubaantun, 68, 288 Lucas García, Romeo, 122–123 Madremía (ECA/agricultural cooperative), 94 Madre Vieja River, 82, 266 “Magic of the foreign, The,” 296, 322. See also “Kingship,” ancient Magliabechiano Codex, 293 Maler, Teobert, 27 Malvaceae, 321, 332, 339–340, 342–344, 346–349 Mam, 2, 49 Mammiform supports (ceramic), 189, 221, 223, 232, 415–417 Mamom ceramic phase, 37, 219, 221 Mandamiento(s) of 1876, 113, 117. See also Barrios, President Justo Rufino Manihot esculenta, 85, 321, 332, 338–339, 349 Manikara achras, 332 Maria Linda River, 84, 196, 266 Market economy, 286 Marroquín, Beatriz, 230 Marroquin, Felipe, 110 Martin, Simon, 294 Martínez Hidalgo, Gustavo, 264, 277 Martinez Peláez, Severo, 68 Martinique, 115 Materialism/materialist, 8–9, 66, 100, 102, 263 Matricula de Tributo, 99, 103–104 Maudslay, Alfred P., 25–26, 28–29, 33, 37 Maya as modern construct, 15 Maya and Their Neighbors, The, 30–33, 42 Maya civilization chronology of, 214 debates about origins of, 13–14, 32 diffusion of traits in, 13 high, cardinal traits of, 38 and proto-Mayan homeland, 38 and Southern Maya Region, 38 trajectory of, 30

Maya hieroglyphic writing early forms of, 12–13 at El Mirador, 13, 44, 67, 169, 219, 274 at Kaminaljuyu, 12–13, 68 at San Bartolo, 13 in Southern Maya Region, 12, 55, 69 origins of, 13 at Takalik Abaj, 9–10, 13, 38, 41, 43, 48–50, 317, 366 Maya Long Count Calendar and eastern horizon at Chocolá, 9, 288 originating in the Southern Maya Region, 318 Mayan language(s), 39, 101, 291 Mazatenango, 29, 65, 77, 94, 99–101, 105–107, 110, 116, 152, 154 McBryde, Felix, 23, 71, 73–74, 77, 88, 104–105 Melicoccus bijugatus, 332 Memorial de Sololá, 97 Mendieta, Gerónimo de, 24 Mendoza Codex, 99, 103–104, 124 Merchant trade, ancient, 314 Mesoamerican world-systems, 46, 297–299, 308, 313 Mexico, 96–97, 101–103, 108, 124, 192, 235, 264, 267–268, 270, 285, 288, 290 “Miahuatan,” 97 Mica, 16, 144–145, 151, 162, 209, 410, 417 Middle Preclassic Collapse, 219, 223 Middle Preclassic Period, 44, 196, 214, 219, 283, 293, 320 Migration(s), ancient and modern, 21, 39, 113, 303, 331 Miles, Susanna W., 45, 232, 247 Millon, Rene, 78, 102, 104–105, 271, 286, 296 Mirador Basin, 12–13, 44, 67–68, 70 Miraflores Ceramic Sphere, 64, 221, 223 Miraflores Period, Kaminaljuyu, 41 Miraflores sculptural style, 47, 60, 64, 69 Mixe-Zoque migration of speakers of, 291 Moctezuma, 100, 103 Mode of production, 19, 265 Modern migration of peasants to Chocolá, 113 Mokaya, 18, 289–290 Molina, Alonso de, 29 Monkey(s), depictions of in sculpture, 252 Montane Subtropical Wet Forest, 321, 349 Monte Albán, 31, 269, 282 Monte Alto and developments contemporaneous with El Bálsamo Cuadros and Jocotal ceramic phases, 58 and distance from Chocolá, 58

Index · 485 effigy heads from, 58 lajas at, 59 Late Preclassic/Early Classic occupation at, 59 main architectural group at, 58 Middle Preclassic occupation at, 58 Monument 3, 58, 60 Monument 11, 59 monuments from, 58–59 originally “substantial,” 58 plain stelae from, 58–59 plain stelas in association with water conduit and spring found at, 59 stone drains at, 59 three plain stelae at making the winter solstice, 59 water conduit(s), for ingress and egress, at, 59 Monte Alto Brown Ware, 199, 207 Monte Alto Monument 3. See also Monte Alto ceramics found at, 280 Monte Alto Red, 199–200, 204, 415 Montículo de la Culebra as amplification of traditionally considered extent of Kaminaljuyu, 45, 277 Monument 1, Chocolá, 5–6, 37, 46, 49, 54, 56, 60, 224–226, 228–229, 283, 291, 301, 310–311, 317, 323 Monument 2, Chocolá, 244, 247 Monument 3, Chocolá, 52, 57–58, 60, 241–242, 244, 247–248 Monument 4, Chocolá, 244, 248 Monument 5, Chocolá, 248–249 Monument 6, Chocolá, 240, 249 Monument 7, Chocolá, 244, 249–250 Monument 8, Chocolá, 249–250 Monument 9, Chocolá, 249–250 Monument 10, Chocolá, 240, 247, 251 Monument 11, Chocolá, 56, 59, 235–237, 251, 291 Monument 12, Chocolá, 232–233, 252 Monument 13, Chocolá, 232, 252, 307, 311 Monument 14, Chocolá, 132, 144, 253 Monument 15, Chocolá, 132, 241, 253 Monument 16, Chocolá, 226, 234, 236, 242, 254 Monument 17, Chocolá, 255 Monument 18, Chocolá, 255 Monuments 18, 20, 21, Chocolá, 53, 56, 106, 224, 255 Monument 22, Chocolá, 225, 228–229, 256 Monument 23, Chocolá, 235, 257 Monument 24, Chocolá, 257 Monument 25, Chocolá, 258

Monument 27, Chocolá, 171, 173, 176–177, 184–185, 191, 241, 259 Monument 28, Chocolá, 259 Monument 29, Chocolá, 188, 241, 244, 260–261 Monument 30, Chocolá, 15, 58, 188, 231, 260, 320, 406 Monument 31, Chocolá, 178, 230–231, 261 Monuments of Chocolá. See also El Kiosko (“sculptural garden” established by Germans at Chocolá); “Lovers’ Altar”; Shook Altar bas-relief, 225–226, 228–229, 234, 244 bench figures and pedestals, 230, 232, 234, 240 and confusion with Palo Gordo monuments, 55–56 cupule, 173, 240–241, 243, 253, 255 diaspora and loss of, 224 full-round, 230–232, 236–237, 243–244 local styles of, 240 original proveniences of, 303 and other monuments from Chocolá’s immediate area, 242 as part of German owners’ “sculptural garden,” 253–255, 260–261 potbelly, 246, 260, 320, 406 stelae and altar pairs, 14, 49, 219 various functions of, 267, 272 and water worship, 193 Morfino, 199–200, 207, 209, 221 Morley, Sylvanus A., 26 Motagua Fault, 80, 92 Motagua River/river basin, 74, 81 “Mother Culture,” 55 Motolinía (Toribio de Benavente), 104 Mound 1, Chocolá in ancient administrative sector of Chocolá, 285, 317 as landmark in modern village, 2–3 Mound 2 (El Cerro Partido), Chocolá. See also Burkitt’s trench; Structure 2-1, Chocolá abundant taxcal found in, 162 Burkitt’s 1927–28 excavations at and great trench within, 135, 142 cylindrical jade bead reported by Burkitt from, 143 damaged condition of, 132 earthen fill of, 139 evidence of episodes of burning within, 141 Graham and Shook’s testing of, 23, 36, 42 guacales as ancient construction device, 139–142 height of, 118 location in Central administrative sector of ancient city, 134

486 · Index modern use as garbage dump, 132–133, 136 modern villagers regarded as haunt of supernaturals, 136 obsidian from, 365, 369, 392 other artifacts from, 287 PACH’s excavations of, 5–6, 20, 56, 84, 128, 136, 142–144, 148, 183, 224, 238, 285 proximity and relationship to Mound 1, 77, 89–90, 169, 187, 268, 274 stratigraphy of, 60, 128, 136 white stone figurine of humpbacked dwarf recovered from, 142–143 Mound 5, Chocolá. See also Operation 14, Chocolá; Structure 5-1, Chocolá agricultural administrative function theorized, 7, 135, 320 central test pits revealed evidence of burning and possible floor within, 278, 280 ceramics found at, 166 evidence for craft workshops found near, 169 features of, 169 first evidence of very large platform structure found, field season 1, 2003, 263 and initial discovery in 2003 of Structure 5-1, 166, 169 Monument 27, bearing remnant red paint, found near, 171 nine-course walls revealed, field season 2, 2004, 166 proximity and relationship to Mounds 3 and 4, 169 proximity to stream, 169 substantial amount of obsidian artifacts found near, 365 Mound 6, Chocolá. See also Operation 17, Chocolá; Structure 6-1, Chocolá ceramics associated with, 188 construction of, 189, 260 earliest ceramics recovered by PACH through controlled excavations associated with, 189 eastern plaza of, 173, 176 eastern stairway of Structure 7-1 inside of, 174 features of, 244 Monument 30, potbelly, found at, 58, 188, 230 oversized Monument 29 found at, 188 southern stairway of Structure 6-1, 186–187, 219, 417 Mound 7, Chocolá. See also Operation 16, Chocolá; Structure 7-1, Chocolá features of, 135, 242

likely “onionskin” pattern of older structures inside later ones found in, 138 northeast cache found at, 56, 176–177, 182, 191, 223 northern orientation of Structure 7-1 inside of, 56, 166 Structure 7-1 found inside, 73 Structure 7-2 just to the east of, 187 water conduit found at, 191 Mound 7 East Plaza at least six floors found in, 181 basalt Monument 27 with cupule basin and carved frog found in, 184, 241, 259 ceramics from Middle Preclassic to Postclassic found in, 181 garbage or midden deposits found in, 182 Mound 9, Chocolá high number of ceramics found at, 162 and mica flake cache, 144 Monument 14, “Maria B’atz.” found at, 144 and Plaza 16, 134 and proximity to Mound 15, 151 threatened/damaged/destroyed by construction of modern evangelical Christian church, 68, 327 water conduit(s) at, 131, 151 Mound 11, Chocolá Black-Brown incised sherds found from, 160 Mound 12, Chocolá, 151, 246, 248, 251, 281, 283 Mound 15, Chocolá. See also Operation 4, Chocolá; Structure 15-1, Chocolá caja (redistribution box) at, 144 ceramics dating from Late Middle Preclassic likely to Late Classic, 148 ceramics from, 148, 214 chronological/stratigraphic discussion of, 154 cleanest water distributed from, 320 eight different stone-encased laja-topped conduits of water system discovered at, 281 excavations by PACH of, 148 five of ten sherds testing positive for cacao found at, 148 floors found within, 141 gradiometry undertaken at, 148 Guatalón phase sherds found from, 160 located on humanly modified natural terrace, 131 machacador found from, 151 obsidian from, 144 other artifacts from, 137–138 other structures in addition to Structure 15-1 found within, 137

Index · 487 partially destroyed by road constructed circa 1900, 144 proximity to natural springs north of, 283 radiocarbon dates from, 157, 159, 193, 214, 223 resemblance of water system of to systems at Kaminaljuyu, Takalik Abaj, and site at San Juan Sacatepéquez, 152 reshaped cobblestones of walls and water system of, 285 spindle whorls found from, 151 stratigraphy of, 136 Structure 15-1 found within, 149 use of taxcal as sealant in water system of, 82, 177 Usulatán sherds found from, 206 whole vessels from, 209, 212, 214–217 wide everted-lip red-orange slipped jars found from, 160 Mound 23, Chocolá threatened/damaged/destroyed by construction of modern evangelical Christian church, 68, 327 Mozos colonos, 119 Multiethnicity possibly at Kaminaljuyu, 40 possibly at Takalik Abaj, 40 in Southern Maya Region, 40 Municipio, 1, 65–66, 94 Mythology, ancient Maya, 294–295 Nagualapa, 106 Nagualat River, 108 Nahualate River, 55, 84, 101, 266 Nahuat, 29 Nahuatl, 29, 94, 97, 109, 270 Nakbe, 11, 44, 219 Naranjo (Valley of Guatemala site), Naranjo Ceramic Tradition, 57 Naranjo River, 266 Narrative scenes, sculptural, 292 National Geographic, 39 Navarrete, Carlos, 45, 79, 232, 264, 277 Network (trade), 287 Neutze, Enrique, 118–119 New Archaeology, 60 “New Empire,” 37 New World Archaeological Foundation (NWAF), 30, 137 Nezahualcoyotzin, 98 Nimá Ceramic Phase, 84 Nimá River, 84 Nohmul, 14

North Sector, Chocolá, 132, 134, 395 Nueve Cerros, 64 Nuttall Codex, 293 Obregón, Mariano, 110 Obsidian sources, Southern Maya Region, 4, 64, 366–368, 373 Ocós, Santa Clara (site) difficulties of working at, 34 Ocós Ceramic Phase/Ware, 32 Ocosito, 82, 196, 266 October 1944 Revolution, 120 Old Empire, 37 Old World hydraulic systems, 266 Olmec. See also Olmec Heartland and debates about, 302–303 as one of two great civilizational impulses in Mesoamerica, 40 Olmec and Their Neighbors, The, 33 Olmec Heartland, 33, 40, 55, 58, 267, 282, 300. See also Olmec Olmec horizon, 33 Olmecoid artistic traits, 40 script, 36 sculpture, 58, 242–243, 301 Operation 4, Chocolá, 145–147, 157, 159, 212–213, 215, 369–370, 392, 395, 407–408, 412. See also Mound 15, Chocolá; Structure 15-1, Chocolá Operation 14, Chocolá, 166–168, 213, 369, 371, 392, 407. See also Mound 5, Chocolá; Structure 5-1, Chocolá Operation 15, Chocolá. See also Excavations by PACH: rescue operation in South Sector cache associated with partially destroyed by construction of small road, 189 several whole vessels recovered from, 212 Operation 16, Chocolá, 173–175, 179, 184, 216, 407, 409, 412. See also Mound 7, Chocolá; Structure 7-1, Chocolá Operation 17, Chocolá, 186–188, 221, 369, 372, 392, 406–407, 409. See also Mound 6, Chocolá; Structure 6-1, Chocolá Ordoñez, Diego, 24 Oriental Despotism, 265 Origin of the state, 123 Orrego Corzo, Miguel, 48–50 Oviedo y Valdés, Gonzalo Fernández de, 102 Owens, John G., 26, 350 PACH (Proyecto Arqueológico Chocolá) and community archaeology, 325

488 · Index PACH—continued donations of artifacts to, 132 excavations by, 132–136 field seasons of, 128, 145, 189, 194, 323–324 forced occupation of offices of, 125 relationship with community, 327 threats to from evangelical church pastors, 68 PACH 2003 field season, 128 PACH 2004 field season, 189 PACH 2005 field season, 259 Pacific Bocacosta, 84 Pacific coast, Mexico, 80 Pacific Ocean, 80, 319 Palace structure, Chocolá, 7, 17, 191 Palaeobotany, 14, 17, 116, 136, 139, 263, 287, 321 Palenque, 25–26, 28, 104, 275, 282, 295, 331–332, 349 Palm oil, 79, 86, 116 Palo Gordo and abundant Tiquisate cylinder vases from, 56 Robert Burkitt at, 113, 224, 226, 247, 320 and investigations by Termer, 56 largest number of carved monuments in the Cotzumalguapan style outside of the Cotzumalguapan Nuclear Zone at, 56 Late Classic acropolis of, 56 Late Classic apogee of, 51, 54 like Chocolá location of between two rivers, 285 location of near Chocolá, 366 J. Alden Mason at, 56, 113 modern-era movement of monuments from to Chocolá, 224 Monument 1, 5–6, 37, 46, 49, 56, 60, 283, 291, 301, 303, 310–311, 317, 323 Monument 11, 56, 59, 235–237 Monument 20, 53, 56, 224 Monument 26, 56, 240, 242 “Piedra Santa,” 56, 224 Preclassic developments at, 56, 317, 320, 322 Preclassic monuments at, 9, 14, 243 Palo volador, 85, 116, 332, 340–343 Paramilitary terror, 121. See also Death squads; United States Parcelas/cafetales, 19, 78, 214 Parsons, Lee, 79 Paso de la Amada child’s rich burial at, 33 and proposed earliest ceremonial in Mesoamerica at, 54 and proposed largest center in Mesoamerica by 1700 BC at, 54

Pataxte, 85, 99–100, 107, 321, 332, 349 Patrulla de Autodefensa Civil (PAC), 122 Patulul, 65, 97, 107, 244 Paz River, 266 Peabody Museum of Harvard University, 26, 224–225 Peasant/campesino, 21, 25, 90, 94, 113, 117, 324 Pedestal monuments, 230, 233, 237 Peniel (church, Chocolá), 254 Pennsylvania State University, 33, 43 Pentadactylon, 321, 332 Periphery(ies) (in world-systems theory), 46, 298–299, 307–308 Persea americana, 85, 321, 338, 349 P. hartwegii, 321, 332, 338 Phaseolus sp., 85, 321, 349 Philip II, 103 Physiography/physical environment of Chocolá, 90 of Guatemala, 81 of Guatemalan piedmont, 71 of Southern Maya Region, 23 Piedmont, Guatemalan, 68 Piedra Santa, Palo Gordo (monument), 224 Piel, Jean, 94 Pier(s), 169–170, 173, 179, 191 Pink Paste Ware, 200 Pinus, 139, 321, 332, 337–345, 347–349 Pinus ayacahuite, 321, 332 Pinus pseudostrobus, 321, 332, 338 Pipil(es) language, 101 people, 2 Plantagen Gesellschaft Chocolá Neutze, 119. See also Chocolá Plantagen Gesellschaft Plantation system, 118. See also Latifundia Plaza floor(s), ancient, 178, 259, 417 Plazas at Mound 6, 187 at Mound 7, 247 at Mound 9, 134 at Mound 15, 144 P. maximinoi, 321, 332, 338 P. montezumae, 321, 332, 338 Pochteca, 69, 291, 297, 308–309, 314 Political authority, ancient, 267, 285 Politico-religious authority, ancient, 268 Polity(ies), ancient, 7, 41, 54 Ponce de León, Luís, 104 Popenoe de Hatch, Marion, 11, 15, 44–45, 194–197, 199, 204, 264, 277, 291 Popol Vuh, 10, 26, 29, 47, 52, 56, 232, 234, 246, 294–295, 309, 315 Positivism/positivist, 20, 99

Index · 489 Postclassic Period, 221 Post-Conquest Period, 21, 24–25, 74, 96, 99, 101, 106–107, 286, 312 Post-fired red pigment, 221 Post-slip incisions, 219, 221, 407 Potbelly(ies) (monument[s]), 219, 230–231, 235, 244, 246, 260, 320, 406. See also Barrigón(es) “Pots as people,” 291 Pouteria campechiana, 332 Pouteria mammosa, 332 Pouteria sapota, 321, 349 Powis, Terry G., 16, 18, 35, 39, 288–290, 312, 322, 405, 419 Ppolom, 314 Preclassic emergence of complex social organization, 286 Preclassic Lowlands, 10, 44 Preclassic Period, 15, 18, 44, 67, 132, 196, 208, 214, 219, 272, 283, 293, 320, 322, 366–367, 394, 407 Pre-Olmec, 61, 290 “Prestige good/preciosity,” 16, 297–299 Primary Standard Sequence (PSS), 292 Primitive capital accumulation, 297 Prisoners, ancient depiction of, 237 “Progenitors-inheritors model,” 309, 322. See also Cacao Proskouriakoff, Tatiana, 37, 43, 52, 237, 247 Protoclassic, 37, 42, 68, 221 Proto-Mayan homeland, 38 Providencia Ceramic Phase (Kaminaljuyu), 64, 160, 199–200, 205, 207, 209, 214, 221, 234, 278 Public architecture, ancient, 9, 14 Pueblo, 1, 21, 82, 105–106, 113 Puerto Escondido, 290 Pulltrouser Swamp (Belize), 289 Punctuation of development, Southern Maya Region, 15 Putnam, Frederic W., 26 Puuc, 273, 315 Pye, Mary E., 33, 39–40, 50–52, 54–55, 63, 282, 290, 303, 318 Pyramidal structures, 126 “Q Complex,” 31 Quararibea guatemalensis, 332 Quercus spp., 321, 332 Quintana Roo, 73, 273–274 Quirigua, 26, 28, 275–276 Radiocarbon dating, 42 Rainfall agriculture, 71, 74, 79, 82

Rainy season, Chocolá, 17, 139, 142–143, 173, 275, 284 Range structure(s), 131, 141 Rattled mammiform supports, 223 Redistribution box, 126, 144, 160–161, 163, 212, 215, 275, 281. See also Caja Redistribution system (economic), 17 Red Paste Ware, 199, 204 Regional Perspectives on the Olmec, 33 Rejolladas, 289 Relación de la Provincia de Soconusco, 104 Relación de las Cosas de Yucatán, 26 Relación de Motul, 289 Relación Zapotitlán, 103, 108 Remesas, Chocolá, 68, 123 Repartimiento(s), 25 Reservoirs, ancient, 173, 267–268, 271, 273–275, 281 Retalhuleu, 48, 73, 101, 235, 237, 257, 290, 365 Reuse of pre-Hispanic monuments, 256 Revised Kaminaljuyu ceramic sequence, 214, 219 Riachuelo(s), 17, 281, 283 Rio Azul and the “Screwtop Vase,” 290, 292 Rio Blanco, 196 Ríos Montt, Efraín, 122 Ritual caches from Mound 7/Structure 7-1, 216 from Mound 9, 131 from Operation 15, rescue operation, 151, 217 Ritual/Ceremonial structure(s), 268 Rofino Ware, 199, 207, 415–416 Rosada Ware, 199–202, 210, 415–416 Rosenswig, Robert M., 50–52 Round altar sculpture(s), 57, 219, 238, 247, 249–251, 256, 277, 301 Rubber, 79, 116, 308 Ruler portraits, ancient, 6, 44, 63, 316 Rulership, ancient. See also “Kingship,” ancient; Twinship (in ancient “kingship”) Sabal yapa, 332 Sacred breath (ancient Maya ideology), 229 Sacred cosmic center (ancient Maya ideology), 319 Sahagún, Bernardino de, 24, 104, 310 Sajorín, 253 Salvage/rescue archaeology, Chocolá, 43, 132, 214 Samalá River, 29, 82, 107, 196, 266 Samayac/Samayaque, 65, 99–100, 105 Sambo, 99 Sampling limitations, 198

490 · Index San Antonio Suchitepéquez, 55, 65, 94, 101, 106–107, 113, 152, 223, 226, 233, 242–243, 246, 253, 301, 303, 311 San Bartolo, 13, 44, 70, 100, 229 San Bernardino Suchitepéquez, 244 San José El Idolo, 66, 244 San José Pinula, 232 San Juan Nahualapa, 107–108 San Lorenzo Tenochtitlan, 267, 282, 289, 304 San Marcos, Department of, 73–74 San Martín Jilotepeque, obsidian source for Chocolá, 46, 320, 365–366, 369, 372, 392 San Martín Jilotepeque exchange system, 321 San Mateo, 33 San Pablo Jocopilas, 1, 65, 94, 101 San Pedro (volcano), 1, 80, 101 Santa Leticia, El Salvador monuments belonging to Jaguar Head Tradition found at, 58 potbelly monuments from, 58 Santa Maria (volcano), 81–82 Santa Maria River, 100 Santa Marta Brown Ware, 210 Santa Marta Café Ware, 210 Santa Rosa, Guatemala (Soconusco), 63–64, 73, 290, 366 Santo Tomás (volcano), 81 Santo Tomás La Unión, 77, 94, 226, 244, 254 Sapindaceae, 332 Sapotaceae, 332, 334–335, 340–345, 347–348 Sapper, David, 28, 119 Sapper, Karl, 28, 48, 119 Schelhas, Paul, 27–28 Schieber de Lavarreda, Christa, 48–50, 279, 282 Sculptural traditions, ancient, 57, 235, 261–262, 323 Sculptures/monuments, ancient Ataco, 14, 61–62, 229, 365 Chalchuapa, 14, 22, 49, 59 Chocolá, 6, 46, 49, 60, 63, 132, 280, 283, 288, 91, 224 passim, 293, 300 passim, 323 Cotzumalguapa, 91, 100, 105–106 Izapa, 240, 280 “jaguar-head,” 31 Kaminaljuyu, 307 Palo Gordo, 22, 55–56 Takalik Abaj, 57, 59 Secadora, 2–3 Second World War, 55, 118–119 Seler, Edward, 27–28 Sello, 214 Semetabaj, 22, 50, 196, 199–201, 203, 208–209, 321, 365 Semetabaj Brown Ware, 208–209

Sequence, ceramic, 214, 219 Service, Elman, 8 Shook, Edwin M., 248, 254, 256 Shook Altar art history, narrative depiction, and iconography of, 303 assignment of to Chocolá corpus, 224 and comparative analysis, 295 and itinerancy ideology, 306–307 Shook Archives (Universidad del Valle), 302 Sibun River Valley, 299 Sicana odorífera, 85, 332 Simple to complex societies, 8 Simposio de Investigaciones Arqueológicas en Guatemala, 33, 351, 422–423 Sixteenth-century priests in Guatemala, 322 Social classes, ancient, 265 Social power, ancient, 264 Social stratification, 323 Sociopolitical complexity, ancient, 265 Sociopolitical innovations, ancient, 10 Soconusco as a major source of cacao in ancient Mesoamerica, 51 Solano Ceramic Tradition, 196, 210 Sololá, Department of, 201 Sonsonate, 18, 94, 102, 290 Sotomayor, Juan de Villagutierre y, 24 Southeastern Mesoamerica, 67, 80, 316, 394 Southern Guatemalan subregion, 73 Southern Maya in the Late Preclassic, The, 46, 393, 422 Southern Maya Region as likely origin of Maya writing, the Maya calendar, and important traits of Classic Maya “kingship,” 12–13 major archaeological sites in, 4 in relation to the Maya area, 12 in relation to the Maya lowlands, 42 Spanish missionaries in, 55 underinvestigation archaeologically of, 22 Southern Sierra Madre mountain range, 79 South Sector, Chocolá, 258 Southwestern Guatemala, 21, 24, 77, 89, 96, 99, 104, 117, 125 Spain 1876 mandatatario and, 113 Spanish Conquest, 312 Spanish missionaries, 55 Spider monkey with cacao pod, 294 Spinden, Herbert, J., 26 Spondias mombin, 321, 333, 349 “Spring house,” 126, 131. See also Mound 15, Chocolá; Structure 15-1, Chocolá

Index · 491 Stairways, ancient, Chocolá, 171 Staple (food or commodity), 16, 115, 297–298, 313 State, ancient, 265 Stela 1, Ataco, 14 Stela-altar complex, 10–11, 42, 237, 247 Stela-altar cult, 10, 12–13, 35–36, 219, 238, 319 Stela cult, 214, 219 Stephens, John Lloyd, 23, 25, 273 Steward, Julian, 8 Stirling, Matthew W., 27, 30, 33, 38–39, 41 Stone-encased drains, Chocolá, 278 Stone-paved floors, Chocolá, 149, 162 Stratigraphy, Chocolá, 60, 128, 136 Streaky Brown Ware, 211 Structure 2-1, Chocolá. See also Mound 2 (El Cerro Partido), Chocolá archaeological features of, 137–138, 139 Burkitt believed was round or conical in shape, 138 Burkitt described in letter to University of Pennsylvania Museum, 136 Burkitt’s excavation of, 136 construction methods of, 136 early date of, 137 earthen fill of, 139 features of, 137–138, 139 guacales used in construction of, 139–140 likely administrative-religious function of, 171 taxcal lenses in, 138–139 white stone figurine recovered from, 143 Structure 5-1, Chocolá. See also Mound 5, Chocolá; Operation 14, Chocolá archaeological features of, 166 construction of, 171 large size of, 135 northern orientation of, 278 proximity to river, 136 recessed corners of, 166 in Southern Sector of ancient city, 285 Structure 6-1, Chocolá. See also Mound 6, Chocolá; Operation 17, Chocolá archaeological features of, 173 ceramics associated with, 188 function of, 191 Monument 30 (potbelly) found at, 188, 231 in Northern Sector of ancient city, 252 oversized Monument 29 found at, 45 piers of stairway of, 169 relationship with plaza adjoining Structure 7-1, 173 southern stairway found at, 188 three-platforms of, 187–188

Structure 7-1, Chocolá. See also Mound 7, Chocolá; Operation 16, Chocolá archaeological features of, 145 ceramics associated with, 155 eastern plaza of, 173 eastern stairway at, 174 likely “onionskin” pattern of older structures within later ones found in, 138 northeast cache found within, 182, 191 in Northern Sector of ancient city, 252 piers of stairway of, 169 relationship with plaza adjoining Structure 6-1, 173 shape or form of, 138 talud façade of east wall of, 179 water conduit found at, 151 whole vessel cache of Late Classic vessels found in northeast corner of, 212 Structure 15-1, Chocolá. See also Mound 15, Chocolá; Operation 4, Chocolá ancient floors of, 160–164 “annex” near to, 212 Black-Brown incised sherds found from, 160 caja (water redistribution box) within, 212, 275 ceramics from, 151, 159 cleanest water distributed from, 191 construction of, 148 corridor or second chamber found in, 148 eastern stairway and plaza of, 283 eight different stone-encased laja-topped conduits of water system associated with, 281 five of ten sherds testing positive for cacao found at, 317 five-cobble ritual cache representing the five directions found at, 150 floor found water conduits of, 151 gradiometry undertaken at, 148 Guatalón phase sherds found from, 160 located on humanly modified natural terrace, 145 machacador found at, 151 northern orientation of, 278 obsidian from, 278, 320 other artifacts from, 137–138 oversized olla with associated radiocarbon date recovered from, 149 partially destroyed by road from circa 1900, 144 possible stepped northern access to, 187 proximity to natural springs north of, 283 radiocarbon dates obtained from, 17 rectangular shape of, 135

492 · Index as “spring house,” 126, 131 stratigraphy of, 136 water system associated with, 162–165 well at center of, 161 whole vessels from, 209, 212 Stuart, David, 315, 423 Subtropical wet forest, 1, 86, 321, 331–332, 349 Suchiate River, 82, 266 Suchitepéquez, Department of as a major source of cacao in ancient Mesoamerica, 51 Sugar, 86, 103, 113, 116–117 “Sugar cane and coffee plantation archaeology,” 324 Sula Valley, 289 Surplus (agriculture, trade), 14, 82, 264, 286–287, 289–290, 310, 314 Survey, Chocolá, 331 Syncretism, 40, 295 Tacaná (volcano), 81 Tajamulco (volcano), 81, 366 Takalik Abaj corporate labor at, 50, 141, 320 early Maya writing at, 292 early rulership template at, 49 early stela-altar pairings at, 9 four-fold stylistic division of monuments at, 50 humanly modified terraces at, 48 importance regionally, 30 link(s) to Chocolá, 50 link(s) to Kaminaljuyu, 50 as major center in Southern Maya Region, 282 monumental corpus/sculpture of, 58 near Chocolá, 226 as participant in development of Maya calendrics, cosmology, and writing, 50 as piedmont site, 14 as possible ancient “kingdom of cacao,” 52 as possible cacao-cultivation and trade site, 50–51 possible ceramic boundary of, 50 possible syncretism at, 40 and revised chronology at, 201 ruler burials at, 48 Stela 2, 44, 51 water system at, 52 Taller de máquinas, 117 Taphonomy, Chocolá, 18, 289 Tarrales Ceramic Phase, 200 Tasación de Tributo, 103, 105 Taube, Karl, 229, 271, 294–295, 306, 315

Taxcal, 82, 117, 133, 141, 145, 160–164, 169–171, 177–178, 192, 254, 279 Taylorism, 117 Tecomate(s) thin-walled sherds associated with Guatalón phase of found in Mound 15, 160 Tehuacan, 31, 268 Tenochtitlan, 24, 98, 103–104, 267, 282, 289, 297–298, 310 Teotihuacan and links to Kaminaljuyu, 31 and water ideology, 270 water system, 270 Teotihuacanoid, 128, 212 Termer, Franz, 29, 55–56, 101, 224, 232, 244, 248, 257 Terminal Classic Period, 37, 128 Terminalia, 85, 321, 332, 336, 339–344, 346–349 Terminalia amazonia, 332 Terminal Preclassic Period, 11, 37, 42, 45, 60, 68, 207–208, 219, 223, 232, 278, 291, 300, 418 Terraces, ancient, 131 Theobroma bicolor, 85, 332, 422 Theobroma cacao, 85, 332, 422 Theobromine, 191, 223, 290, 405, 407, 411, 413–414, 417–419, 421, 423 Thermometer Theory, 22, 34–35, 66, 214, 318 Thompson, Edward H., 26–27, 30, 37–38 Thompson, J.E.S. and divisions in Maya history, 37 as major paradigmatic figure in Maya scholarship, 27 as mistaken about several beliefs about the Maya and the Olmec, 33 Thrones, ancient, 41, 47, 226 Tikal Stela 29 and beginning of Classic Maya civilization, 37 Tiquisate Ware, 177, 212, 216 Titulo de los señores de Quetzaltenango, 29 Tlaxcala, 96, 169, 268 Tok, 142, 219 “Tok Casper,” 143 Tolimán (volcano), 80–81 Tombs, ancient, 27, 59, 67 Torquemada, Tomás de, 24, 98–99, 289 Torres, Edgar, 5 Totonicapán migration of workers to Chocolá from, 331 (see also Mozos colonos) Tozzer, Alfred M., 26, 296 Trabanino, Felipe, 162, 339, 350 Trade, ancient factors in, 298

Index · 493 and “prestige good”/ “preciosities,” 297, 299 staples of, 298 Trade routes, ancient, 303 Tres Zapotes as early Maya Long Count text in the Southern Maya Region, 366 Stela C, 36 Tres Zapotes Stela C, 36. See also Tres Zapotes Tribute, ancient system of, 94, 100 Trinitario, 286 Tudela Codex, 293 Tulul, 108. See also Zapotitlán Twinship (in ancient “kingship”), 295, 308–309 Type-variety ceramic classification system, 198 Tzapotitlán, 96. See also Zapotitlán Tz’utujil, 97, 100–101, 109 Uaxactun, 14, 38, 70, 237–238, 289 Ubico Castañeda, Jorge, president of Guatemala, 1931–1944, 119 Ujuxte Late Preclassic potbelly sculptures from, 57 proposed “city-state” at, 57 and transition from the Middle to the Late Preclassic, 37 Unequal exchange, 297 United Fruit Company, 121 United States emerging from World War II as most powerful in world, 120 1954 coup d’état, 324 (see also Arbenz Guzmán, Jacobo, president of Guatemala, 1952–1954) pressure on Guatemala to deport Germans, 120 Universidad del Valle, 66, 256, 302 Universidad San Carlos, 323 University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, 6, 113, 136, 143, 226, 246–247, 421 Upper piedmont, Guatemala, 100 U-shape, 229 Usulután/resist decoration from Mound 15, 221 Utatlan (Gumarcaaj), 22, 29 Uxul, 272 Vaides, Ponce, 120 Vaillant, George, 29, 31 Van Akkeren, Ruud, 101, 109 “Vase of the Seven Gods,” 111 Vázquez de Espinosa, Antonio, 102 Ventana Ceramic Phase, 189, 200

Veracruz, 17, 28, 40, 55, 288, 300, 418, 421 Verapaces, Guatemala, 24 Verbena Ceramic Ware (Kaminaljuyu), 199 Vertical archipelago model, 89 Victorian structures, Chocolá, 118 Villacorta, Carlos A., 58 Villacorta Calderón, José Antonio, 136 Violence/conflict, ancient, 90 Volcano/volcanoes, Guatemalan, 28 Wagner, Regina, 68 Waldeck, Jean-Frédéric Maximilien de, 25 Wallerstein, Immanuel, 14, 19, 46, 298–299 Ware(s), ceramic, 199–200 Warm Subtropical Wet Forest of the South, 321, 332 Water management system, Chocolá ancient repair capabilities of, 252 both subterranean and ancient surface, 152 breakwaters of, 284 and bureaucracy-laborer social stratification, 323 bureaucracy necessary to supervise construction and maintenance of, 300 caja (redistributive box) of, 144, 160–161 characteristics of, 145 cobble floors of, 151 complexity of, 163, 192 consistency of construction throughout ancient Chocolá, 353 construction of, 50 Early Classic tripod vase found in as evidence of family or lineage responsibility for section of, 268 emerging out of initial need to control flooding, 142 evidence of same type of system found near Mazatenango, 154 extending at least 1.5 km down to Central Sector of Chocolá, 263 found in Central Sector, 263 indicative of class distinctions because of, 285 as indicator of emergent social complexity, 9 lajas of, 59, 151, 164 links to natural springs of, 283 markers of household or lineage responsible for construction and maintenance of, 268 at Mound 7, 281, 283 at Mound 9, 281, 283 at Mound 15, 146 overlapping sections of, 163 paved surface found above some sections of conduits of, 164

494 · Index “piggybacked” by modern German era water system, 192 road cut profile of in Mound 15, 151 and similarity of remains of water system conduits found near Mazatenango, 154 similarity to systems at Kaminaljuyu, Takalik Abaj, and San Juan Sacatepéquez, 14 sophistication of, 282 stone-encased cobbles of, 47, 143, 180 taxcal sealants of, 82 volume of in conduits, 272 Water management systems, ancient, 268, 273 “Water mountains,” 271 Water resources, Chocolá, 86, 263, 274, 284, 288 Water systems, ancient. See also Water management system, Chocolá; Water management systems, ancient at Champotón, 267 at Chiapa de Corzo, 54 and city design, 314 at Copan, 273 at Edzna, 272 at El Mirador, 274 and indicators of elite power, 273 at Izapa, 273 at Kaminaljuyu, 277 in Mesoamerica, 304 at Monte Albán, 269 at Ojo de Agua, 273 at other sites in Oaxaca and Central Mexico, 264, 268 at Palenque, 275 at Quirigua, 275 at San Lorenzo Tenochtitlan, 267, 282 at sites in the Chiapas Highlands, 276 at Takalik Abaj, 278 at Teotihuacan, 289 at Tikal, 273 at Uxul, 272 at Yaxchilan, 273 Water systems, similarities of in Southern Maya Region at Chocolá, 281 at Kaminaljuyu, 277 laja-topped, stone-encased construction of, 281

at San Juan Sacatepéquez, 152 at Takalik Abaj, 278 Weber, Max, 17 Wells, ancient, 277 Western El Salvador, 18, 31, 35, 38, 58–61, 64, 81, 229, 242, 261–262, 317 Wet forest(s), 1, 86, 321, 331–332, 349 Wet gullies and cacao cultivation in Mesoamerica, 312 Whole vessels, Chocolá, 56, 132, 176–177, 179–180, 189–190, 209, 212, 214–215 Wisdom, Charles, 32 Wittfogel, Karl, 264–266 Wolf, Eric R., 19, 264 World-systems theory, 14, 46 Wucub’ Junajpu, 295 Xaman(es), 110–112 Xbalanque, 47, 295, 309, 315 “Xepit,” 97–99 “Xetulul,” 97, 99 Ximénez, Francisco, 29 Xinca (language), 29 Xiquipil, 102 Xocoatl, 103, 109 “Xoconochco,” 104. See also Soconusco Xojolá, 109, 143–144, 255 X-ray fluorescence (XRF), 365, 374 Xuc Ware, 199, 209 Yaxchilan, 25–26, 273 Yellow Paste Ware, 203 Yucatán, 24–26, 28, 35, 37–38, 73, 267, 272–273, 289–290, 296, 315, 350 Zacualpa, 22, 208 Zaculeu, 22 Zapato ceramic type, 182 Zapotitlán, 65, 94, 97–100, 103, 105–108, 233, 243 Zea mays, 85, 321, 338, 346–347, 349 Zontles, 102 Zoomorphic (sculpture), 7, 31, 56, 60, 117, 230, 234, 243–244, 252, 259, 261 Zoomorphs, 230, 234, 242 Zunil (volcano), 81

Jonathan Kaplan, an anthropologist teaching at the Beijing Institute for Technology, Daxing, Beijing, is director of the PACH, Chocolá project. Federico Paredes Umaña is full-time professor of anthropology at the Center for Anthropological Studies, Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico, and codirector of the PACH, Chocolá project.

Maya Studies Edited by Diane Z. Chase and Arlen F. Chase Salt: White Gold of the Ancient Maya, by Heather McKillop (2002) Archaeology and Ethnohistory of Iximché, by C. Roger Nance, Stephen L. Whittington, and Barbara E. Borg (2003) The Ancient Maya of the Belize Valley: Half a Century of Archaeological Research, edited by James F. Garber (2003; first paperback edition, 2011) Unconquered Lacandon Maya: Ethnohistory and Archaeology of the Indigenous Culture Change, by Joel W. Palka (2005) Chocolate in Mesoamerica: A Cultural History of Cacao, edited by Cameron L. McNeil (2006; first paperback printing, 2009) Maya Christians and Their Churches in Sixteenth-Century Belize, by Elizabeth Graham (2011) Chan: An Ancient Maya Farming Community, edited by Cynthia Robin (2012; first paperback edition, 2013) Motul de San José: Politics, History, and Economy in a Maya Polity, edited by Antonia E. Foias and Kitty F. Emery (2012; first paperback edition, 2015) Ancient Maya Pottery: Classification, Analysis, and Interpretation, edited by James John Aimers (2013; first paperback edition, 2014) Ancient Maya Political Dynamics, by Antonia E. Foias (2013; first paperback edition, 2014) Ritual, Violence, and the Fall of the Classic Maya Kings, edited by Gyles Iannone, Brett A. Houk, Sonja A. Schwake (2016) Perspectives on the Ancient Maya of Chetumal Bay, edited by Debra S. Walker (2016) Maya E Groups: Calendars, Astronomy, and Urbanism in the Early Lowlands, edited by David A. Freidel, Arlen F. Chase, Anne S. Dowd, and Jerry Murdock (2017) War Owl Falling: Innovation, Creativity, and Culture Change in Ancient Maya Society, by Markus Eberl (2017) Pathways to Complexity: A View from the Maya Lowlands, edited by M. Kathryn Brown and George J. Bey III (2018) Water, Cacao, and the Early Maya of Chocolá, by Jonathan Kaplan and Federico Paredes Umaña (2018)