Arqueología

The hieroglyphic text on Stela 1 of El Baul, which includes an Initial Series date in the year 36 AD, is the key to understanding the early development of writing in South Preclassic Mesoamerica and the cultural history of the South Coast of Guatemala. However, little is known about the archaeological context of this important sculpture. Several decades ago it was removed from its original location in front of the Structure 21, one of the most important buildings of El Baul, which also originally housed Stela 27 and the Monument 14 (the Great Jaguar of El Baul). In recent years, the structure was partially destroyed as a result of agricultural activities on the site. During the 2010-2011 Cotzumalguapa Archaeological Project’s field season, excavations were conducted in this structure, in order to document the architecture and stratigraphy. A primary objective was to determine the presence or absence of constructive strata of Late Preclassic period, contemporary with Stela 1. This paper describes the results of this research, which allowed us partially constructive history and architectural features of the building. The excavation also produced several findings of interest to the study of ritual activities that took place around the structure and extraordinary monuments that stood in their environment.

The human skeletons and skeletal beings representations -probably gods of death-are common themes in the art of Cotzumalguapa. In this paper we report the discovery of two important examples, monuments 78 and 79 of El Baúl. Archaeological and iconographic contexts of these and other related sculptures serve as a basis for interpreting some proposals about the gods of death and skeletal figures in Cotzumalguapa.

Received 22 May 2012 Revision received 7 July 2013 Keywords: Maya Mobility Migration Isotopes Provenience Human remains Strontium Oxygen Carbon Enclave Introduction Copan has been a World Heritage site since 1980. The archaeo- logical site, located in western Honduras near the Guatemalan bor- der, was once the important capital of a Classic Maya state. The ruins of the ancient city extend over an area of approximately 16 km2 in the Copan Valley, one of the best-preserved centers in the entire Maya region. Small farming communities appeared in the valley ca. 1400 BC and monumental construction at Copan itself began during the late Preclassic and the first part of the Early Classic period (ca. AD 200–400). In AD 426/427, a royal dynasty was founded at Copan by a foreign individual known as K’inich Yax K’uk’ Mo’. His reign was followed by a sequence of 15 rulers who governed the city and its surrounding polity for a period of some 400 years, until ca. AD 822 (Andrews and Fash, 2005; Bell et al., 2004; Fash, 2001; Martin and Grube, 2008; Price et al., 2009; Webster et al., 2000). ⇑ Corresponding author. E-mail address: [email protected] (T.D. Price). http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jaa.2014.02.003 0278-4165/Ó 2014 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. abstract Strontium, oxygen and carbon isotopes are measured in human tooth enamel from 32 human burials in structural complex 10J-45 at the Classic Maya site of Copan in western Honduras. These results are com- pared with similar information from the Copan Acropolis, common graves throughout the site, and base- line information from the surrounding region and the Maya area in general. More than one-third of the burials are identified as non-local based on strontium and oxygen isotope ratios. These non-local individ- uals came from a variety of different places. Two of these persons appear to be dynastic rulers or highly placed nobles in Copan society. The high density of non-locals and the location of the burials suggest this area may have been an enclave of foreign Maya at the site. The presence of non-local rulers in both this area and the Acropolis supports the concept of ‘‘stranger kings’’ in the Maya realm.

Our study focuses on histologically assigning age ranges in diagenetically deteriorated skeletal remains. To this end, we review the age-related microscopic metamorphosis in thin sections of undecalcified bone to generate selective counts of microstructures and qualitative assessment of histological tissue. In this essay, we evaluate the potential of these standards in three case studies on deteriorated skeletal remains of Maya dignitaries. In the first case, the macroscopic approximation is confirmed by histologic scrutiny while in the second case, contradictions lead to discussions to the pathological conditions of the individual that explains the discrepancy in specific lines of evidence. In the third specimen, the combination of macroscopic and microscopic results improved the cronovital age assignation. We conclude our work by discussing the potential that histomorphological evaluation (and its different protocols) holds in the age-range assignment in deteriorated skeletal remains from archaeological contexts.

The cronovital estimation of damaged bones is one of the biggest and difficult challenges to physical anthropology around archaeological human remains, especially in the archaeology of the Maya lowlands which suffer the rapid deterioration of all organic materials, including human remains. This paper introduces a new strategy of microscopic estimation of age at death, which is adapted to the destructive conditions prevailing there. The procedure examines three components in the analysis: osteons selective counts per area to obtain osteons density (OPD), the cortical area in the cross section of rib, and the qualitative evaluation of the microstructures therein.
Histological procedures were applied in the study of two damaged bones from the archaeological site of Copan, Honduras. The burials were found in the central
quadrant 10J, and offerings allow us to consider one of them as a member of the local dynasty. In both cases, our results improve conventional determinations and
provide new perspectives for the analysis of damaged remains.