Maya Civilization

Bonampak, Yaxchilán, and the Usumacinta

The Usumacinta River and its tributaries form the natural western border of the Maya lowlands, and along its banks a string of powerful Late Classic city-states — Yaxchilán, Bonampak, Piedras Negras, and the upstream city of Toniná — waged an almost continuous series of wars and marriage alliances. These cities, set deep in the rainforest of Chiapas, Tabasco, and the Petén, are the heartland of Maya narrative art. The three great mural programs of the Late Classic, the carved wooden lintels of Yaxchilán, and the magnificent sculptures of Piedras Negras were all produced in this small region in the 7th and 8th centuries CE, and they remain the most important bodies of pre-Columbian narrative art in the Americas.

For a wider survey, see the overview on major Maya cities and archaeological sites, and the eastern sister site in Palenque: art and court of Pakal. The murals of Bonampak are read in detail in what the Bonampak mural shows, and the broader dynastic background is in the history of the Maya civilization.

Setting and the river corridor

The Usumacinta is one of the largest rivers of Mesoamerica, rising in the highlands of Guatemala and flowing northwest into the Gulf of Mexico. In the Late Classic, the river was a major artery of commerce, warfare, and communication, and the cities along its banks could draw on the rich alluvial soil of its floodplain. The river has cut deep canyons through the limestone, and the major sites sit on bluffs above the river at strategic points — Yaxchilán on a sharp bend, Piedras Negras on a low promontory, Bonampak on a tributary (the Río Lacanjá) high in the foothills. The political and military geography of the river is in why Calakmul was such a powerful rival to Tikal and the wider context of the history of the Maya civilization.

The rainforest of the Usumacinta corridor is the densest of any Maya region, and the sites of the river remained in heavy forest cover for centuries after their abandonment. Many were not visited by European travelers until the 19th century, and several — including Bonampak and the upper sites — were not rediscovered until the 20th.

Bonampak

A small site in the rainforest of Chiapas, Bonampak is famous above all for its murals, painted in three rooms of the so-called Temple of the Paintings in 692 CE under the rule of the Yaxchilán vassal Chaan Muan II. The site is small: a central acropolis with a few buildings, a couple of outlying groups, and an associated settlement that probably never exceeded 1,000 people. But the murals, painted in three rooms of the temple, are the only complete narrative mural program to survive from the Classic Maya world.

The murals were discovered in 1946 by two young American conscientious objectors, Carlos and Giles Healy, working with the Mexican-American archaeologist Frans Blom of Tulane University’s Department of Middle American Research. Blom first visited the site in February 1946 and returned with the Healys in May of the same year, when the murals were photographed by the young artist Rupert Hastings. The site was visited shortly afterward by Sylvanus Morley of the Carnegie Institution, who commissioned a small excavation, and by the Mexican Instituto Nacional Indigenista (INI). Major conservation of the murals was carried out in the 1950s by Agustín Villagra Carretón of INAH and has been continued by the Coordinación Nacional de Conservación del Patrimonio Cultural of INAH since 1995.

The murals of Bonampak

The three rooms of the Temple of the Paintings are conventionally labeled Room 1, Room 2, and Room 3 by the restorers who first opened them. Each room shows a single scene of a continuous narrative:

  • Room 1 depicts the presentation of royal children and the dance of the court, with the ruler Chaan Muan II seated on a throne in the form of a jaguar, surrounded by musicians, dancers, and a long procession of lords in elaborate costume.
  • Room 2 depicts a war, with rows of prisoners being brought before the ruler, the count of severed heads, and the celebration of victory.
  • Room 3 depicts a bloodletting ritual, with the king and his consort drawing a thorned rope through their tongues while a vision serpent emerges from a bowl of blood. A long procession of lords in court costume follows.

The murals are read in detail in what the Bonampak mural shows; the techniques of Maya wall painting are in Maya murals, painting, and iconography. The iconography of the vision serpent and the bloodletting ritual is treated in the wider context of Maya rituals, bloodletting, and sacrifice.

Yaxchilán

Set on a sharp bend of the Usumacinta directly across the river from the modern Guatemalan town of La Libertad, Yaxchilán was a powerful Late Classic city whose emblem glyph, the head of a jaguar-spotted bird, served as the dynastic sign of the Xok lineage. The city was rediscovered in 1881 by the German explorer Gustav Bernoulli, who cleared several of the buildings and sketched the carved lintels. The British archaeologist Alfred Maudslay visited in 1882, and his careful drawings of the lintels — and his eventual removal of three of them to the British Museum in 1883 — are the foundational documents of the site’s art history. The principal modern excavator of the site has been Tatiana Proskouriakoff of the Carnegie Institution (1930s) and (since the 1970s) the Proyecto Arqueológico Yaxchilán, led by Roberto García Moll and (since 2002) of the INAH Chiapas project.

The lintels of Yaxchilán

Yaxchilán is best known for its carved wooden lintels spanning the doorways of its major buildings. Three of these lintels — Lintel 24, Lintel 25, and Lintel 26 — were removed by Maudslay in 1882 and are now in the British Museum. They are:

  • Lintel 24, depicting Lady Xoc (the principal wife of the ruler Itzamnaaj B’ahlam II, r. 681–742 CE) drawing a thorned rope through her tongue in a vision-inducing bloodletting rite. A great vision serpent rises from a bowl of blood at her feet.
  • Lintel 25, depicting Lady Xoc in similar ritual pose, with a kneeling warrior and a K’awiil lightning deity emerging from the serpent.
  • Lintel 26, depicting Itzamnaaj B’ahlam II in a war costume, holding a captive by the hair.

The lintels of Yaxchilán are read in the wider context of Maya art, architecture, and monuments and Maya stelae, altars, and stone monuments. The political and religious background is in Maya rituals, bloodletting, and sacrifice.

The stelae of Yaxchilán

The stelae of Yaxchilán are the second major body of monumental sculpture at the site. They are concentrated in the Great Plaza at the heart of the city, and depict the rulers of the city in elaborate costume. The most famous is Stela 11 of Yat Ahk I, depicting the king in a richly carved costume with a K’awiil deity emerging from a vision serpent. A series of stelae and carved panels is also associated with the Labyrinth, a complex multiroomed sub-structure that has been interpreted as a kind of ritual maze.

Piedras Negras

A few kilometers upstream of Yaxchilán, on the Guatemalan side of the river, lies Piedras Negras. The city was the seat of a dynasty that, while politically independent of Yaxchilán, was closely linked by marriage and war. The site was first mapped in 1921 by the Carnegie Institution under E. H. Morris and Sylvanus Morley and was excavated intensively between 1931 and 1939 by Linton Satterthwaite of the University of Pennsylvania Museum. The corpus of carved stelae, altars, and panels of Piedras Negras is the densest and most accomplished of any Late Classic city outside Calakmul.

The signature monuments of Piedras Negras include:

  • Stela 14, the so-called “Sky Band” stela of the late 7th-century king Ruler 7, depicting a vision of the night sky and the great celestial bird, the Itzam-Yeh bird of the king.
  • Throne 1, a great square stone throne carved with the portraits of Ruler 4 and his predecessors, and with a long text of dynastic history.
  • Panel 3, a long carved lintel depicting a row of captive lords, the most ambitious narrative composition of the Late Classic.
  • Stela 11, depicting the dynastic founder Ruler 1 in a tall conical headdress.

The sculpture of Piedras Negras is treated in the wider context of Maya stelae, altars, and stone monuments. The dynastic history is discussed in what happened at the ancient city of Copán and the wider context of history of the Maya civilization.

Toniná

On a steep ridge above the fertile valley of the Tulijá River in Chiapas, Toniná rises some 80 meters above the valley floor in a sequence of thirteen acropolis platforms. The city is best known for its military exploits and for the reign of its Ruler 3, K’inich Baaknal Chaak, who in 711 CE captured the Palenque king K’an Joy Chitam II in a war that is recorded in the inscriptions of both cities.

Excavation of Toniná has been led since the 1970s by Juan Yadeun Angulo of INAH Chiapas and (since 2001) by the joint INAH / UNAM project of Emilio Gallaga Murrieta. The most recent discovery, in 2018, was the Tomb of the Hanging Chacmool — a deep burial chamber at the heart of the Acropolis containing the painted stucco head of a Chacmool, the recumbent figure that holds a bowl on its belly. The site is a center of the modern Chol Maya cultural revival, and the Museo de Toniná at the site is a major destination for visitors to the Tulijá Valley.

The wider art of the river corridor

The art of the Usumacinta corridor, as a single regional tradition, is characterized by a number of features that the modern literature has noted:

  • A preference for horizontal carved lintels spanning doorways, in contrast to the upright stelae preferred at Petén sites.
  • A deep investment in narrative composition, with multi-figure scenes of wars, bloodletting, and the vision serpent.
  • A tendency to flat, planar sculpture rather than the rounded three-dimensional work of Palenque and Copán.
  • A close connection between the royal court and the river, with stelae and lintels depicting rulers on canoes and in river scenes.

The political and economic context of the river is treated in the overview on Maya trade, markets, and economy and the history of the Maya civilization.

Rediscovery and modern archaeology

The Usumacinta corridor was first visited in modern times by the German explorer Gustav Bernoulli in 1877, who is credited with the rediscovery of Yaxchilán. The British archaeologist Alfred Maudslay visited Yaxchilán and Piedras Negras in 1882 and his detailed drawings of the carved monuments remain fundamental to the study of the site. The first professional excavation of Piedras Negras was carried out in 1921 by the Carnegie Institution and again in the 1930s by the University of Pennsylvania Museum. The first visit to Bonampak was in 1946 by Frans Blom and the Healys, and the murals were conserved in the 1950s by Agustín Villagra Carretón of INAH.

The river cities are now a focus of the Proyecto Río Usumacinta, a binational INAH / IDAEH project, and a series of smaller INAH Chiapas and Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM) projects. The principal modern excavator of Yaxchilán is Roberto García Moll of the INAH; of Bonampak, the Coordinación Nacional de Conservación del Patrimonio Cultural; of Toniná, Emilio Gallaga Murrieta; and of Piedras Negras, Héctor Escobedo of the Universidad de San Carlos de Guatemala and (more recently) the Universidad del Valle de Guatemala.

Sources

  • Martin, S. & Grube, N. (2008). Chronicle of the Maya Kings and Queens (2nd ed.). Thames & Hudson. — link
  • Fash, W. L. (2001). Scribes, Warriors and Kings: The City of Copán and the Ancient Maya. Thames & Hudson. — link
  • Stuart, D. & Stuart, G. E. (2008). Palenque: Eternal City of the Maya. Thames & Hudson. — link
  • Demarest, A. A. et al. (1997). The Petexbatun Regional Archaeological Project: A Multidisciplinary Study of the Maya Collapse. Vanderbilt University (final reports). — link
  • Canuto, M. A. et al. (2018). Ancient lowland Maya complexity as revealed by airborne laser scanning of northern Guatemala. Science 361 (6409), eaau0137. — link
  • Chase, A. F. & Chase, D. Z. (2014). Ancient Maya Cities and the Caracol Project. University of Pittsburgh Latin American Archaeology. — link
  • Miller, M. E. (1986). The Murals of Bonampak. Princeton University Press. — link