Stanley Guenter

EL PERÚ-WAKA' AND THE TERRESTRIAL ROUTE OF THE KAN DINASTY TOWARDS THE HIGHLANDS According with the contemporary hieroglyphic inscriptions, the king Yuknoom Ch'een II established an hegemony over the kingdoms of the Petexbatun region in the second half of the VII DC century, boarding the Pasion river towards the south to Cancuen. In this way, the Kan dynasty of Calakmul controlled a key geographical corridor that linked the Lowlands with the Highlands. Calakmul achieved this amazing success with no need of subordination from Piedras Negras and Yaxchilan, the main kingdoms of the Usumacinta river. Instead, Yuknoom Ch'een II established a terrestrial route through the kingdoms of Sak Nikte' and El Perú-Waka' in the northeast of Peten. This territory leads by itself to this route, as well as the main terrestrial courses towards Campeche and Yucatan, which would still use this road a thousand years later, creating the base for the Camino Real (Royal Road) of the Spaniards, that eventually united Guatemala to Merida. Thus, it is logical to suppose that the route from Calakmul to the Pasion went through the eastern part of Hiix Witz and, precisely, there is a carved monument in Laguna Perdida that suggests the existence of an alliance between this kingdom and the one of El Perú-Waka'. At the end of the VII century, Tikal began to challenge the control of this western route, fighting Calakmul and its subordinates, a conflict that would continue throughout all the VII century. Through four field seasons, the archaeological research from the El Perú-Waka' Project of the Southern Methodist University have unveiled new relevant data regarding the connection with Calakmul. In this presentation this evidence will be presented and the implications for the understanding of the Maya political geography of the Late Classic.

One of the most recent additions to the hieroglyphic corpus of Caracol, Belize is the monument designated as Ballcourt Marker 4. Here we provide an analysis of the glyphic texts of Ballcourt Marker 4 (Grube and Martin 2004a: II-75) and Ballcourt Marker 3 (Chase et al. 1991). We present evidence to suggest that the two extant markers originally formed part of a set of three axial markers and offer a provisional reconstruction of the still-missing third marker of the set. The two known ballcourts of Caracol (Figure 1) witnessed refurbishment in antiquity during the site's decline as is evidenced by the displacement and secondary resetting of ballcourt markers. Considering this evidence, a case is made for the original layout and textual content of the markers in the B-Group ballcourt.

Situated on the floodplain of the Motagua River in southeastern Guatemala, Quirigua was initially a fairly modest site, its first king established by K’inich Yax K’uk’ Mo’ of Copan, in 426. The site was inundated by a disastrous flood sometime between the mid 6th and early 7th centuries, and the first monument after its recovery, Altar L, again references the arrival of a Copan king, K’ahk’ Uti’ Witz’ K’awiil, in 652. Quirigua’s most celebrated and longest-reigning king, K’ahk’ Tiliw Chan Yopaat (r. 724-785), was placed on the throne by Waxaklajuun Ubaah K’awiil of Copan, only to turn around and capture and execute his erstwhile overlord in April of 738, decisively ending some three centuries of client status, and ushering in an era of unprecedented site expansion and monument erection, including some of the most ambitious stelae in the Maya world. In this seminar style workshop, we will trace the rise and fall of Quirigua’s political fortunes through close analysis of its inscriptions, and of parallel texts at nearby Copan.