MESA REDONDA 1997

Ancient Maya and Contemporary Research

by Anabel Ford, Ph.D & Clark Wernecke, Ph.D
 
 

Lowland Maya Cultural History

The Maya did not suddenly disappear from the lowlands as many authors and scriptwriters would have it. Today there are 3-4 million Maya, speaking many distinct Mayan languages descended from the same family of languages spoken by the ancient Maya. The descendants of the ancient Maya live across the same region they always occupied &emdash; modern Mexico, Guatemala, Belize, and parts of Salvador and Honduras. The mystery is not where they are, but why they abandoned the trappings of their advanced civilization in the Central Maya Lowlands.

The Maya, like all native inhabitants of the Americas, originally migrated into the region via the Bering Straits when Siberia and Alaska formed a land bridge. The initial occupation of the New World is part of the continuing story of growing population. Asiatic peoples pushed their way into North America, spreading through Central and South America. In nuclear Mesoamerica, from the Valley of Mexico south into modern Salvador and Honduras, these foraging people concentrated in highland areas and about 4,000 bc reached such great numbers in some locations, that they began domesticating plants to supplement other food sources. At this time there was little or no occupation in the Maya Lowlands.

Settlements of incipient Maya emerge late in the tropical lowland Maya forest. Around 2,000 bc farmers are evident but, archaeologically-speaking, they were nearly invisible until around 1,000 bc. These Maya settlers started in a simple way but evolved into a flamboyant society that peaked in the second half of the first millennium between the years ad 250-900. After the tenth century, the great cities of the Central Maya Lowlands were mostly abandoned.

Archaeologists have divided the cultural sequence of the lowland Maya into periods that reflect the general developments. The chronology of the Maya is straightforward. Archaic foragers roamed the area in the earliest times, but it all really started in the Preclassic when people settled down and began to practice agriculture. The civilization flourished in the Classic Period when the majority of the largest temples and palaces were built. This whole civilizational process was transformed in the Postclassic. The transformation follows the so-called mysterious Classic Maya Collapse. Summarized in the following table is the essence of this time line.
 
 

THE PRECLASSIC (±2000 bc - ad 250)

The Preclassic, also known in greater Mesoamerica as the Formative, has been divided into three logical time periods, the Early, Middle, and Late. The earliest Maya came into the Maya forest as farmers before 2,000 bc, but did not appear in the archaeological record for nearly a millennium.

The Early Preclassic Period marks the beginnings of agriculture. The earliest evidence for burning and the cultivation of maize dates before 2000 bc in the Peten of Guatemala. Lake core sediments record the beginnings of human manipulation of the environment. These sediments show periodic &emdash; probably annual &emdash; burning, and the increase in grasses are indicative of human intrusions. However, corresponding archaeological sites are hard to pin down. Ceramics and household architecture are associated with this phase, now defined as roughly 2000 - 1000 bc. Much of what we know about life during this period comes from beyond the bounds of the Maya area. Early Maya evidence is found at the site of Cuello, in northern Belize. Dating of this site is still controversial, yet ceramics from Cuello are likely earlier than those previously known from the area. Late breaking news from recent research in the Belize River area suggests this early period may be pushed back even more.

Early agriculturalists from northern Belize began to grow maize, fruits, cacao, and a selection of root crops. Yet only part of their diet was supplied by these domesticated products. There was still dependence on the bounty of the lands and waters. Hunting, fishing, and plant foraging provided an important part of the diet for the first Maya &emdash; a pattern that would persist in different ways throughout prehistory. Social organization was simple; a family-centered life prevailed in those times.

The Middle Preclassic dates to the interval between 1000 bc and 300 bc. Settlements of the Middle Preclassic Period were numerous enough to be recognized archaeologically across most of the Maya area. This was the time that the Maya moved from the coast up the river valleys, ultimately penetrating the interior. House sites were wide spread, communities were small, and there was little in the way of public architecture. The more significant communities of the Middle Preclassic were found peripheral to the interior heartland of the Maya. The heartland was virtually the last to be occupied, yet was the area that developed so prominently later in the Classic Period.

Coincident with the larger populations and settlements comes the definitive evidence of public architecture. Again, northern Belize is featured at this time and sites such as Cuello, Cerros, Nohmul, and Lamanai show major building activity. As more investigation progresses, we are finding occupation and construction in the Belize River Valley area, where scattered houses have been recorded on extensive surveys and public platforms have been identified in intensive excavations at local centers such as Cahal Pech and Pacbitún. Recently, buildings have been found that date to the Middle Preclassic deep in the tunnel excavations at El Pilar. This ushers in the foundation of ancient El Pilar.

From 300 bc to ad 250 the lowland Maya population continued to grow and expand, resulting in greater competition for land. This led to increased Maya settlement density, larger communities, and the development of more intensive resource management strategies. Maya civilization began to evolve more complex and elaborate mechanisms for coordinating, organizing, and feeding the growing populations. This is revealed in their settlement distribution, architectural elaboration, and agricultural methods. Among the important institutions documented in this period was the establishment of the bureaucratic trappings of rulership in the form of Maya kingship. This institution would shape the social history of the lowlands on through the Postclassic Period.

The Late Preclassic Period was one when occupation in the interior around Tikal was at its inception. At the same time the interior centers such as Tikal were being founded, the centers of northern Belize, particularly Nohmul, Lamanai, and Cerros, were at their peaks, commanding the loyalty of large domains of well established settlements. El Pilar, only 50 km from Tikal, was firmly rooted by this time. Major public constructions of platforms and pyramids, found throughout different sectors of the site, date from this period.
 
THE CLASSIC (ad 250 - 1000)

The Classic Period is defined by the appearance and use of dated monuments, or stela. The wide-spread use of dated stelae occurred toward the end of the third century ad. Stelae and altars recorded the political, social, and religious history of the Maya using the Long Count, a calendrical system based on multiples of a 360-day year with an origin point of 3114 bc. The seven centuries of the Classic Period exhibited tremendous civilizational developments that were fueled by the steady increase in population. The cores of the massive ruins that we see today&emdash;monumental stone-vaulted buildings and huge temple pyramids&emdash;were founded in this period.

The Classic is often divided into two periods, the Early and the Late, separated by the "hiatus." The hiatus was a time when there was a marked decrease in building and the setting of dated monuments, particularly at Tikal. Recent studies have pointed to this as a phenomenon peculiar to the interior of the Central Maya Lowlands, probably brought on by Tikal's involvement in a series of destructive offensive and defensive military exploits. These conflicts were based on shifting alliances among the reigning regional power centers of the era. A few examples include Calakmul, Naranjo, Caracol, and Tikal. This interlude is variously recorded at these important centers, but ultimately the problems reflected by the hiatus were surmounted, making way for an acceleration of the civilizational processes in the Late Classic.

All major centers of the region experienced major growth in the Late Classic Period, especially El Pilar. This growth must have been rooted in the sustainable management of the region's valuable resources found throughout the rolling ridge lands. For more than three millennia, the Maya were able to support and maintain their society's growth by forging a dynamic alliance with their environment. This alliance was a balancing act that, for 15 centuries, supported the development of the Maya civilization across 40,000 sq km or 15,440 sq miles of space.

Toward the end of the Classic, the elaborate civilization of the Maya began to undergo changes. Notably, there was an increase in conflict, probably due to competition over scarce resources, culminating in a drastic reduction in population. This is most dramatically reflected in the complete disregard for site maintenance. After this time, there was no new construction at lowland monumental centers. Residential settlements were not so abruptly deserted, but they too were at last abandoned. The great Classic centers in the central lowlands collapsed first &emdash; Tikal was deserted in the ninth century. Building activity was prolonged at many eastern centers right to the end of the Terminal Classic as recorded at El Pilar. Around El Pilar, however, occupation even extended into the Postclassic. This was the time when the once magnificent rooms, such as the Zotz Na of El Pilar, were apparently converted to exotic dump sites for flutes and figurines, as mere reflections of the center's past glory.
 
THE POSTCLASSIC (ad 1000 - 1521)

The end of the Terminal Classic Period has been viewed as the final blow for the Maya civilization, and the Postclassic has traditionally been described as a militaristic, decadent, and degenerate phase in Maya history. But more enlightened views would see that the militarism was indicative of a tendency toward secularism and the resultant downplaying of the ceremonial rituals that dominated the Classic Period. Moreover, many of our interpretations of the Postclassic were projected from ethnohistoric accounts of the Spanish intrusions in the region, hardly an unbiased source. Little attention has been directed toward understanding the Postclassic through archaeology, although recent research on the period, particularly at Santa Rita in northern Belize, suggests continuity from the Classic Period.

The focus of cultural development moved from the Central Maya Lowlands to the northern Yucatan Peninsula, where the Spanish first contacted the Maya culture. There was continuous, albeit distinct, occupation from the Classic through the Postclassic periods. Not only did the people of Lamanai continue to build and trade with their neighbors, but they also continued to live around the center until around 1675. The Spanish founded a mission at Lamanai in 1570 and another at Tipu/Negroman in the Upper Belize River Valley. These were abandoned by the Spanish during a revolt of the Maya in the 1630s. It was not until 1696 that the Spanish conquered the last of the independent Maya city-states, the Itza of Tayasal in the Petén, the descendants of the ancient Maya realm. The Central Maya Lowlands, which today include most of Belize and the Petén of Guatemala, are still home to Maya who can trace their ancestry back into prehistory as attested by the patronyms of local villagers: Bacab, Balam, Canchan, Cocom, Hobb, Mai, Panti, Pech, Pott, Shish, Teck and Tzul, to name a few.

The Origins of Research at El Pilar

After the enthusiastic introduction to the region in 1982 by Jaime Awe, then of the Department of Archaeology, Anabel Ford of the University of California, Santa Barbara was given permission to initiate the Belize River Archaeological Settlement Survey (BRASS) in the upper Belize River area north of San Ignacio, Cayo.

Advocating efforts to appreciate the full range of Maya society &emdash; both the monumental and the mundane &emdash; the BRASS project was designed to examine the cultural ecology of the Belize River area. This involved using environmental and geographic information for the area as a backdrop for the archaeological settlement survey. The project collected data that identified where the ancient Maya lived, when they lived there, and what they were doing across the landscape. The results of the study have allowed us to assess the distribution of house sites and communities on the one hand, and their context and relationship to natural environment on the other.

The first field seasons involved the mapping of all identifiable cultural remains within three 250 m wide transects, one ten km and two five km long. Excavations were conducted at residential sites within the identified resource zones of the valley, foothills, and ridge lands and revealed a variety of archaeological sites, from isolated field huts to large elite household compounds, not to mention monumental civic-ceremonial centers. Their locations were predictable: few and scattered houses were associated with poor agricultural soils in rugged or swampy terrain more characteristic of the foothills while dense settlements, including imposing elite patio groups, were found in the rolling fertile ridge lands concentrated in the vicinity of the major center of El Pilar.

While most houses displayed evidence of the basic household activities of farming, storage, cooking, and serving, a few exhibited distinctions that spoke to other, more specialized occupations. Several, particularly in the poorer zones of the area, were involved in making the common stone tool, called the "chopper," that would have served as the ancient Maya machete for everything from opening palm nuts to chopping firewood.

Rare in all the Maya area was the discovery of an obsidian&emdash;volcanic glass&emdash; production site in the ancient ridge land settlement cluster we named Latón, about 2.8 miles or 4.5 km south of El Pilar. An elite house at Latón is the first identifiable obsidian blade production site found in the Central Maya Lowlands. The site yielded a concentrated stash of thirty-nine exhausted prismatic cores behind one house wall and production waste in another stash of over 30,000 pieces of obsidian translating into densities as high as 1.7 million obsidian, pieces per m3. From trace element tests conducted at the University of Missouri, we know that this obsidian was imported into the Belize River area from the volcanic highlands of Guatemala from Chayal and Ixtepeque, over 300 km or 200 straight line miles.

Communities of the fertile Belize River Valley were made up of moderately sized homes widely spaced from one another, and contained everything that a household would need to enjoy life in those ancient times. The residents were able to afford a certain amount of luxuries which are most often associated with only the elite in other areas. Such unusual privileges must have been conferred by those in control of valley dwellers. Since the valley alluvial soils are among the best in the Maya Lowlands, but form only a small proportion of the local area, let alone the region as a whole, it is probable that they were producing what today we call "cash crops." In fact, at the time of the first Spanish explorations in Belize, the populations of the Belize River Valley were producing cacao (chocolate).

Like other ancient Mesoamericans, the Maya likely used cacao as a form of early currency, "money" that literally grew on trees. These trees had to be carefully tended, managed, and protected; something a single family could not afford to do on its own if household subsistence was an issue. The production of valued crops such as cacao, and also cotton or tobacco, required extra investments that would have sanctioned special luxuries. The valley Maya may have received luxury goods in exchange for faithful production of chocolate. Luxuries of the Maya included blades made of obsidian (like those produced at Latón), beads fashioned from marine shells, and highly prized green stone, such as jade or jadeite, and other exotic materials. This arrangement fostered a dependent relationship between specialized farming communities such as those of the valley and the elite aristocratic administra tion at El Pilar. The administration would have guaranteed redistribution of basic foodstuffs produced in the ridge lands in return for cash-cropping.

Not all were so fortunate. Other Maya lived in the marginal zones found mainly in the foothills rising up from the valley. People of these zones could not depend solely on agricultural pursuits. The dispersed families which were relegated to these areas, augmented their farming tasks with manufacturing and independently trading of stone tools, pottery, and other simple and basic household products to satisfy their daily food needs. Consequently, they could not afford many things beyond the bare necessities of life; hence, few valuables were found at these ancient houses. Such households relied on the central administration to maintain a stable exchange environment so that their household industries would net the foods so fundamental to their existence.

While the settlements of the valley and foothills of the Belize River area were administered from afar, communities of the ridge lands such as Latón were under the more direct scrutiny of the local Maya hierarchy whose apex was located nearby at El Pilar. The ridge lands have the greatest proportion of good agricultural soils and make up the cornucopia of the region. Some 85% of the area's settlement was concentrated in these ridge lands that form only 35% of the areas' resources. Here, in the ridge lands, we discovered the great diversity of occupations and ways of life of Maya society. They were composed of both rural and central civic areas. There were elite "haves," who controlled and governed, and peasant "have-nots," who toiled and bore the obligations associated with sustaining the civilization. At the community centers, elites managed everything from the local farmers to the broader political agenda, manipulated loyalties of lesser elite within their grasp, and negotiated with peers of other centers. This undoubtedly included far-flung trade relations; we know that many valuables recovered at Lowland Maya sites were made of material not found locally. Typical materials include obsidian from the volcanic zones of Guatemala and Mexico and jadeite from the Montagua Valley in Guatemala.

As glamorous as the elite Maya were, the majority of Maya were farmers who provided food for the populace. Some, as in the foothills, manufactured basic household items that were exchanged for food. Still others provided direct services to the elite, and in return, were supported and patronized by them. The most diverse of these people were found at the major centers of the region. El Pilar served as the focal center for these local households as well as the wider communities throughout the Belize River area.

The mosaic of good agricultural land spread the ancient Maya across the landscape in large and small communities as well as hamlets and homesteads. Settlements in the ridge lands around El Pilar show this hierarchy of community size and composition related directly to the amount of available farm lands.

The fertile lands are abundant in the surrounding rolling hills and ridges of the Maya forest. Small areas of fertile land supported minor centers, such as Chorro, to the east. Pockets of land, such as those of Latón, had administrative temples associated with elite residences. Other dispersed and isolated spots of good farm lands would have only field huts within or adjacent to them. All sizable areas of good agricultural land had comparable densities of settlement, approximately one house per acre. The larger the area of fertile lands, the larger the community, and the largest community in the area was El Pilar.
 
 

El Pilar Site Background

El Pilar is located 10 m north of the western Belizean town of San Ignacio, between Belize and Guatemala. The ridge land escarpment where El Pilar is prominently situated extends from Guatemala's Peten into Belize, north of the Belize River Valley. Coming up from the valley on the Pilar Road, you ascend this major escarpment more than 900 ft, or some 340 m.

The area has long carried the name of El Pilar and while the origin of this name is obscure, the numerous natural sources of water speak to the old Spanish word for watering basin or pila, whose collective would be designated in Spanish as El Pilar. Two local streams have their origins at El Pilar, one to the east, which we call El Pilar Creek, and one on the west referred to generally as El Manantial (the Spring). About 1.2 miles or 2.3 km east is Chorro, a lovely, delicate waterfall. Not far from the waterfall is a minor center we named Chorro, after the falls. The abundance of water in the vicinity of El Pilar is rare in the Maya area; the venerable ancient city of Tikal had no natural water sources at all. The population there relied on constructed reservoirs or aguadas. The center of El Pilar is situated at the edge of the interior ridge lands that begins east of Tikal. At the point where El Pilar is perched, the ridges overlook the eastern flat lands that run to the Caribbean Sea. This situation provides a natural outlet for water and in part explains its abundance there.

The center was recorded by Belize's Department of Archaeology in the 1970s by Joseph Palacio and the late Harriot Topsey, but its full extent was then unknown. Recorded as a triangle on the Department maps, Jaime Awe saw that El Pilar was in the area of the BRASS surveys, and, in 1983, encouraged Anabel Ford to visit the site with him. From this brief tour it was clear that El Pilar was large, and a preliminary map was made of the major architecture in 1984 as part of the BRASS project. In 1986, also as part of the survey phase, preliminary excavation and rescue work was pursued at the site. The first full-scale investigation of El Pilar was finally begun in 1993 as a result of support and encouragement from Daniel Silva, at that time the area's government representative for Cayo.

El Pilar has more than twenty-five identified plazas in an area of approximately 100 acres (40 hectares), ranking it equal with major centers of the lowland Maya region. It is the largest center in the Belize River area, more than three times the size of other well-known centers such as Baking Pot or Xunantunich. The site as it is presently known is divided into three primary sectors: Xaman (North) Pilar, Nohol (South) Pilar, and Pilar Poniente (West). The eastern and western sections are connected by an offset causeway system extending between two large public plazas. The western section, including Pilar Poniente, is in the Petén of Guatemala.

The Maya used a fine and durable limestone extracted from local quarries around El Pilar, and preservation is exceptional. Beautifully plastered masonry rooms, imposing corbel vaults, and monumental stairways have been identified in illegal looters' trenches and controlled archaeological excavations conducted in the initial stages of study. A preliminary chronology, based on ceramic comparisons, has revealed that monumental constructions at El Pilar began in the Middle Preclassic and continued with major remodeling completed in the Terminal Classic. Occupation extended into the Early Postclassic. This long sequence spans more than 15 centuries and testifies to a continuous, methodical, and sustainable development in the area.