In Belize with Jaime Awe

Dr. Jaime Awe, field lecture at Xunantunich, Belize on 25 June 2011

While in Belize, we spent some time with Dr. Jaime Awe (his name is best pronounced Hi-me Ah-way) who serves as the Director of the Institute of Archaeology for the Belizean government. Although he is a native of Belize, he studied in Canada, the U.S. and England before returning to Belize to head up the Belize Valley Archaeological Reconaissance Project (BVARP).










This project focuses on the western region of Belize along the Guatemala border, where Maya cities were most highly concentrated during the Classic era (250 - 900 AD). A printable version of this map can be found by clicking here.

During our time with Jaime Awe we made site visits to Xunantunich (pronounced Shoe-none-to-nich), Cahal Pech, and Lamanai. All of these sites are considered important Classic Maya cities, both for the architecture built at each location as well as for the influence they had on the region.

Dr. Jaime Awe on site at Xunantunich, Belize

Prior to each site visit we were to read texts about the location. One of those texts was a field report, entitled "Architectural Manifestations of Power and Prestige: Examples from Classic Period Monumental Architecture at Cahal Pech, Xunantunich and Caracol, Belize" authored by Jaime Awe. Caracol, another important Classic Maya city that we visited, is also in Belize. Although Jaime Awe was not with us for that excursion, he had performed recent restoration work at Caracol.

The central idea about the three sites (Xunantunich, Cahal Pech and Caracol), as identified in the field report, was that "spatially distinct units represent socially distinct segments of society" (170). In other words, in this region of the Maya world, buildings were placed and constructed to represent the power of the individuals inhabiting the structures. In Classic Maya society different social classes have been identified. They include commoners (those who worked in the fields), artisans (those who possessed specialized skills and worked for the elites) and the elites. This latter category appeared to be stratified as well, into high elites who were royalty or directly related to the royal family and low elites who worked for the king but may not have been blood relatives. Furthermore, this hierarchy was very important to the elites as it reinforced their power and authority. In short, they needed physical symbols to project their position when commoners, artisans and outsiders came to visit the city. Thus, access to some buildings was restricted as one kind of manifestation of power, and that "architecture was purposely and effectively used by the ancient Maya to distinguish between private elite space and public space" (169). This restriction to access was exhibited in three important ways:

north side of the Castillo at Xunantunich

1) access was restricted by elevating a building above others. For the Maya, "elevation was a much more important criterion than cardinal direction for distinguishing status in Classic period . . . cities" (170) and "elite living in the more elevated . . . plazas may have enjoyed a higher status than elite living in less elevated . . . courtyards" (170). Thus, it would appear that in Maya society, the most important people inhabited the tallest buildings or the buildings at the highest elevation;

2) access was restricted by creating Audiencias, which is an architectural form associated with doorways. An Audiencia is created on a structure by limiting the number of doorways through which individuals below can access the ruler above. Many Maya buildings have multiple levels or stories. As the staircase ascends the various levels, access can be restricted by reducing the number of doorways that open out from a staircase. A good example of the use of Audiencia can be found at the Castillo at Xunantunich. Take note of the central staircase that ascends to an intermediary level about halfway up the structure. Although it's difficult to see in this photo, there are thirteen doorways facing the plaza. Yet only one doorway -- the central or seventh doorway -- provides access higher up the structure. This is an Audiencia. According to Awe, it "marks a point of transition between private space (the upper sections of the Castillo) and public space (the plaza courtyard)" (166). Thus a person could ascend the staircase up to the midway point but only one of the doorways at the midway point would allow further access to the higher portions of the temple.

It might also be important to point out that the number thirteen is symbolic to the Maya as it represents the levels of the Upper World. Thirteen is also an important number in the Maya calendar so it's probably not a coincidence that their architects would design temples that incorporate it.

A view of the Audiencia from above;
note access is restricted to only one opening by counting seven from the left

Furthermore, it is believed that the ruler would stand in doorway seven (the center of the thirteen doorways, which represents the center of the world) and look out over the public sphere below. This served to reinforce his power and reassure the people in the plaza below. "The Xunantunich rulers could have used this building to view public events in [the] Plaza from a discrete vantage point. That [the] Plaza was used for events that allowed public participation is suggested by the fact that the site's two major causeways [known as sacbes] terminate at the [Plaza] courtyard, just below this Audiencia at the eastern and western base of the Castillo" (166);

Side view of the Audiencia;
note the restricted access between the portals on the right and the rooms on the left
(photo courtesy of Jaime Awe)

Artist's recreation of Xunantunich, courtesy of Jaime Awe

3) access was restricted by entry points into plazas. Sacbes (roads within and between Maya cities) would channel the public into open plazas. Typically the open plazas would be accessible from three or more directions. Other smaller, more restricted plazas could only be accessed by one or two directions and, in some cases, only by going through a restricted access building. These are what Awe calls "restricted and semi-restricted access plazas" (166). These restricted access plazas "are indicative of private space reserved for the upper echelon of the society. Conversely, some semi-restricted access plazas probably served as residence for elite of lower status" (170).

In this artist's recreation of the core of Xunantunich, the sacbes are the roads entering the site at the bottom of the image. Adjacent to the two sacbes are three numbered plazas. Plazas 2 and 3 are more easily accessible by the sacbe on the right. Thus Plaza 2 is not restricted and Plaza 3 is semi-restricted, thus both are, to varying degrees, accessible to the public. Plaza 1, however, is a restricted access plaza located halfway up the Castillo. The only way to access Plaza 1 is by way of the Audiencia. It should be pointed out, though, that because the sacbe on the left runs right below Plaza 1, scholars believe that "the Castillo represents a large, multi-function, acropoline, complex that included the dwellings, private shrines and administrative hub for the elite rulers of Xunantunich" (166). The elites who used Plaza 1 would watch the comings and goings of the commoners on the sacbe below.

The take away message from this is that the Classic Maya of western Belize used architecture to depict and project power, and to identify public from private spaces.

View from the top of the Castillo, looking north, Xunantunich, Belize

It's Over!

After five weeks (four in Mexico and one in Belize) traipsing around in rainforests, I flew back to the States. Happily I was greeted at the airport by two of the most beautiful people on the planet who came bearing a bagful of Thai food takeout along with their smiles of greeting.

The trip was a National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship Institute which was focused on studying the Maya. This means that 24 university and college faculty from across the country were drawn together for an intensive study. We were given a bibliography of texts prior to departure, some of which I read on the road and some that I am still plowing through now that I am back home. We had site visits at important Maya archaeological sites (Palenque, Chichen Itza, Uxmal, Bonampak), and we visited some fairly obscure locations as well (Hochob, Cahal Pech, Sayil). During the Institute, we were introduced to archaeologists, art historians, epigraphers and other scholars in the field of Maya Studies who presented seminar and field study lectures.

As it was originally planned, we were to have visited Guatemala (in particular Tikal), but recent violence in the Flores region of Guatemala caused the U.S. State Department to issue a travel restriction for the region. And, since we were operating as "consultants" for the U.S. State Department, we were required to heed that travel restriction. Thus, a few days in Belize was substituted for the time we should have spent in Guatemala. If I was disappointed by this change in itinerary, I was also relieved.

All in all, the Institute was an awesome experience. The people of southern Mexico and Belize are hard working, friendly, cheerful in the face of poverty, and dignified in the face of global pressures they cannot control. I am humbled by the ways in which they conduct their lives, and I hope that I was a respectful ambassador between their world and ours.

Leaving Belize

Belize is behind us now, as we crossed the border back into Mexico earlier today. Before we left I had to say good bye to our Belizean driver, Alvin, who had been awesome about getting us around safely and on time. Here he is goofing off at a stop on the way to Carocal.

Along with his excellent driving, Alvin also had a great attitude. Nothing was a problem for him.

With this in mind, it's worth mentioning a story: on the first afternoon we arrived in Orange Walk Town, I headed into the market to pick up water and check out the place. I had not yet figured out that Orange Walk was a fairly dangerous little city, full of drug dealers and people down on their luck for having been born in Belize. As I was walking around that afternoon, I ran into Alvin in the central plaza. He walked and talked with me all the way back to our hotel. I thought it somewhat odd at the time because he also said he needed to meet up with his sister who lived there. But he gave me some good insights about the region and the economy so I appreciated his company.

It was only later that I learned Alvin was carrying a pistol in Orange Walk. Apparently even he thought it was a dangerous town. He also locked up the wheels of the bus with a huge chain, which is something I had not seen him do in any of the other Belizean cities we had been in.

When I learned this, I realized why he had walked me back to hotel. He was protecting me! So thanks, Alvin. This one is for you.

Water and Sky on the Way to Lamanai

This morning we got up early and took a fast boat up the so-called New River to Lamanai. The river is a myriad system of waterways which reminded me very much of the Amazon region in Brasil. Sometimes the river was very wide and sometimes the river was very narrow. Often lily pads lined the banks, and birds would walk along them watching for bites to eat in the water below. At least once we caught the bubbles of a crocodile as he (or she?) slid below the surface so as to escape our eager gazes.

Eventually we made it to Lamanai, and upon disembarking the mosquitos began to devour us. These mosquitos were huge! I have seen lots of mosquis before, but never this big. Needless to say, I was glad to have started taking my malaria meds last week, because the lightweight citronella hoighty-toighty organic nonsense I had in my backpack was no match for these monsters.

The Maya site at Lamanai includes 718 mapped structures, an ancient harbor and a well defined sacbe, which is a Maya road leading in and out of the city. All of this suggests that Lamanai was an extensive and important site for the Maya in the region. Furthermore, although some of the structures show evidence of being constructed earlier, Lamanai is important for its Middle Classic traits which combine elements of both Early Classic and Late Classic artistry.  

Early Classic is the period which generally runs from about 250 - 600 CE, and is considered the beginning of the high point in Maya political development, art and architecture. Most of the motifs in Maya art and culture have been clearly established by the Early Classic, including social hierarchy, ball court construction, glyphs, the calendar and the pantheon of gods. Interestingly enough, it is also during the Early Classic that we begin to see the first influence from Teotihuacan, which is the great city in Central Mexico and a pre-cursor to the Aztec.

The Middle Classic is really just an overlapping era which runs from about 500 - 700 CE. What's important to keep in mind is that the Middle Classic differs from region to region. Here in the Belizean lowlands the Middle Classic appears a bit later than it does further south in the highlands of Guatemala.

The Late Classic runs from about 600 - 800 CE. This era marks the beginning of the end of Maya greatness, although that decline also differs from region to region.

One of the more significant finds includes a structure that was excavated in the ceremonial section at Lamanai. The building was given the ignominous name N10-27 by archaeologists. The drawing below suggests its appearance when the Maya constructed it, and it's pretty likely that it was named something different by the Maya too. I photographed this from an article so the flower at the top of the picture is the artwork on the hotel room bed covering.

This is what the structure looks like today.

Lamanai was originally settled around 900 BCE. The spot where this structure is located began to take on important sacred meaning for the Maya by about 200 BCE and, as a result, they just kept constructing new temples over the older ones so that there are layers of buildings underneath this one.

By the time we get to about 600 CE this structure has been modified into it's last iteration as an administrative and religious complex which includes the enclosure with three doorways that can best be seen in the drawing above. A stela was placed in the middle doorway of this enclosure. Underneath the stela was an offering pit, which contained the remains of five children ranging in age from infants to about eight years of age. There were also shell beads, chert and obsidian placed in the offering pit. David Pendergast, one of the archaeologists who worked at this site in the 1980s claims "the five children were sacrificial victims ... [because the] remains bear no signs of violent death." Pendergast asserts that the final stage of construction, along with the placement of the stela and the offering of children, was part of a ritual. It's full meaning and importance is poorly understood.

What we do know is that the stela depicts a king of Lamanai known as Lord Smoking Shell. He is dressed in clothing which suggests his accession to the throne, and the writing on the stela tells us this auspicious event took place in 608 CE. The stela itself was placed in the doorway of the structure in 625 CE.

The text from the stela reads,

Wucub ahau ox pop tzoki te tun waa...
Uuac kib kan zec
Wucublajun tunob kan kinob xikah kaan
chicchan pal ahau...
Ukabale butz anki sol kaan tu ton ain
macuch lakin LAMA'AN'AIN

In case you don't read Maya it reads,

It was on 7 ahau 3 pop that the tree stone of time ended
[a 52-year era ended in 625 A.D.]
He had become ruler 17 yrs 4 days before [A.D. 608] on 6 Kib 4 Zec
He was the youngest son of the heir to the king
His name was Lord Smoking Shell

His celestial Progenitor was the Spirit Crocodile
Lord of the east, of the province of LAMA'AN'AIN

From rubbings, photos and interpretations of the glyphs it is believed that the head portion of the stela looked like this in situ:

Today it looks like this:

In terms of interpreting some of the iconography of the image, Dorie Reents-Budet of Duke University Museum of Art has done a nice job in her essay entitled "The Iconography of Lamanai Stela 9."

In her essay, Reents-Budet explains that Lord Smoking Shell's torso is depicted frontally but his head is in profile. Furthermore, Lord Smoking Shell wears a headdress which is similar to other Early Classic images in the Guatemala highlands. Interestingly, Lord Smoking Shell's head "emerges from an open-mouthed serpent headdress." This can best be seen in the drawing above as the serpent is colored blue and surrounds the king's head. In this case, the serpent represents origins so depicting the ruler's head as coming out of the mouth of the serpent is the Maya way of saying the king is great because he is associated with the origin of the world. His head emerges from the center of the beginning.

The king also holds a "double-headed ceremonial bar diagonally across his body." The ceremonial bar is something akin to the king's sceptor and represents his power and authority. This particular ceremonial bar also contains imagery in it that associates Lord Smoking Shell with the two Hero Twins of the Popol Vuh. Furthermore, Lord Smoking Shell's left hand holds a zoomorphic image of Venus, which is a celestial monster. Reents-Budet explains that because of the placement of the ceremonial bar and the symbols embedded in it, the artist of this stela is presenting the viewer with a "Classic Period model of the cosmos, with the front head of the celestial monster (Venus) in [the king's] left hand and, cradled in in his right arm, the ceremonial bar from which emerges" one of the Hero Twins who represents the underworld sun. All of this, according to Reents-Budet, "demonstrates Lamanai's innovative manipulation of the royal symbols that were being reconfigured during the Middle Classic."

Orange Walk Town

This morning we left San Ignacio by bus and headed north. We are now in Orange Walk Town, which is a gritty little city of about 20,000 people situated in a predominately agricultural region -- sugar cane, mostly. The town sits on the banks of the New River, which was aptly named by the English because it was new to them. It was not, however, new for the Maya who have lived in these parts since at least about 1000 BCE. They called the river the Dzuluinicob, which means "foreign men." Perhaps they named it this because the river is a deep water channel and a means by which foreigners can navigate up it.

This part of Belize has an interesting history which can be compressed into distinct periods of time. There is evidence of human habitation going back at least as far as 7000 BCE. Then between about 7000-1200 BCE there is evidence of a kind of formative pre-ceramic people. Neither of these two groups are considered to be Maya.

Some time around 1200-900 BCE we find evidence of a ceramic society. These are people thought to be the earliest Maya in the region. They are constructing waddle and daub structures which is essentially plaster stuck between and on top of small wooden poles. What's really cool about this is that very tiny fragments of cotton with textile weave have been found pressed into the plaster.

So picture this: some man is building his house around 1000 BCE. It's hot so he takes a little break to wipe his brow and catch his breath. He leans back against the wet plaster that he just laid and it creates an imprint that dries in the form of the weave of his clothes.

Three thousand years later, we are finding that imprint. And what it tells us, along with the the type of construction of the house, is that weaving and textile making were in place by 1000 BCE. It also suggests that cotton production is already in place by this time because surely whoever this man is, he's not the only one around wearing cotton textiles. Furthermore, agricultural production suggests a sedentary, rather than a nomadic, form of society.  We have all the ingredients for a settlement.

This era from 1200-900 BCE is known as the Cunil Phase. Beyond the agriculture, textiles and housing construction other items have been found that are associated with these people. Those items include small ceramic figurines, carved jade objects, obsidian blades and some slate carvings. Since some of these materials are not from the Upper Belize River Valley, scholars suggest that by 1000 BCE extensive trade networks had been established between Honduras in the south, Guatemala in the west and the coastal plains of Tabasco and Veracruz in the north. It is what Jaime Awe calls a "pan-Mesoamerican" network. Furthermore, early motifs associated with both the Olmec and the Maya are beginning to appear in the artifacts. These are also considered "pan-Mesoamerican motifs" and include a slate crocodilian effigy. This last item is important because it relates to one of the oldest temple sites in the region known as Lamanai.

Lamanai was recorded by the Spanish when they arrived in the early 16th century as Lamanay or Lamayna. This is a twist on the Maya word Lama'anayin, which means "submerged crocodile." Apparently the crocodile was symbolically important to the people of the region as far back as 1000 BCE, and it continued to be important to them when they began constructing a portion of the temple complex known as the Mask Temple in 200 BCE.

Perhaps most important for our discussion here is the fact that the Mask Temple at Lamanai not only is "clearly related to characteristics of Olmec iconography" -- which supports that pan-Mesoamerican motif theory, but that the masks on the temple appear with an "up-turned upper lip and broad nose. The masks are each adorned with a headdress representing a crocodile. This symbol validated the ancient site name recorded by the Spaniards as Lamanay, 'place of the crocodile.'" All of the quotes come from Jaime Awe's book entitled Maya Cities and Sacred Caves: A Guide to the Maya Sites of Belize.

Happily, I report that tomorrow we will take a boat up the river with Jaime Awe to visit Lamanai.

Maya World Here I Come!

Several months ago I applied for a fellowship to study the Maya of Mexico, Guatemala and Belize. The objectives of the project include visiting Maya temples and archaeological sites, as well as attending seminars hosted by scholars in the field. Happily, I was accepted and have been making plans for departure, which will be next week.

Unhappily, since I received the acceptance letter, drug cartels from Mexico spilled into the Peten region of Guatemala and beheaded 27 people. As a result of this violence, the U.S. State Department issued a travel advisory to avoid Guatemala. And, thankfully, the people who are organizing the fellowship decided to change some of the itinerary so we will avoid Peten.

Nevertheless, if you are thinking that I am being somewhat vague in my descriptions of people, places and dates you are correct. For security reasons, I have decided to minimize the specifics in my blog entries. Only after I have left certain regions will I be more detailed. I hope you understand! I really want to return to California with my head firmly attached to my shoulders.

Despite these security challenges, we will be studying topics as wide ranging as tourism and its impact on modern Maya today, the Zapatistas and their impact on the Chiapas region of southern Mexico, ancient Maya architecture, the Mayan calendar, and the liminal space between the indigenous of Belize and people of African ancestry who arrived on the east coast of the Yucatan peninsula, originally, as slaves.

All in all, it should be an awesome project and I look forward to sharing it with you. I hope you enjoy the ride!