Barbara Fash

The Skyband Group: Investigation of a Classic Maya Elite Residential Complex at Copán, Honduras

AbstractHousehold remains of sub-royal Classic Maya elites can provide important insights into the sociopolitical organization of ancient Maya polities, but are seldom investigated through largescale horizontal exposures. A long tradition of settlement archaeology at Copan, Honduras has emphasized the extensive excavation and reconstruction of such remains. Recent research at Group 8N-11, the Skyband Group, provides new information concerning the functions and archaeological signatures of elite establishments at Copan, and the florescence and collapse of subroyal elite components of Copan society.

Building a World-View: Visual Communication in Classic Maya Architecture

The subject of literacy and visual communication among the civilizations of ancient Mesoamerica has been a central concern since the first popular descriptions of the stone art and architecture that embellished its ancient cities (Stephens 1962 [1841]). Recently, scholarly debate has focused on three central issues: the question of what actually constitutes writing and how it was construed and constructed among the pre-Columbian peoples of nuclear America (Boone and Mignolo 1994); the concern about how many people could actually read the hieroglyphs in Classic Maya civilization (Brown 1991); and the ways in which the ancient Mesoamerican texts (and monuments) combined history, myth, and propaganda (Marcus 1992; cf. Bricker 1981). Most scholars agree that relatively few people would have been able to actually read the monumental and other hieroglyphic texts fashioned by specialized scholars, scribes, and sculptors. Likewise, most authorities on indigenous New World civilizations have concluded that art styles were effective means of communication over broad expanses of space, among numerous linguistic and ethnic groups, and without recourse or reliance on accompanying texts (Grove 1989; Proskouriakoff 1950; Rice 1993; Spinden 1913; Willey 1962). The shared elements of religion and world-view that enabled Kirchoff (1943) to define Mesoamerica as a distinct culture area have been

New Approaches to Community Stewardship, Education, and Sustainable Conservation of Cultural Heritage at Rastrojón, Copán, Honduras

Like so many countries in the developing world, Honduras has always faced severe challenges in meeting its obligations and goals in cultural heritage management. These have been exacerbated since the great recession and a series of other difficulties that have dramatically reduced the government’s ability to support heritage management throughout the country. In 2007, the authors began a new program of rescue archaeology, conservation, education, and cultural heritage management at a site in the eastern end of the Copan Valley that engaged the local community on various levels, as well as offered the Instituto Hondureno de Antropologia e Historia (IHAH) a new model for civic engagement in these endeavors. The new model engages the landowner and a local education foundation in sustaining the conservation and protection of the site, and provides technical training and K-12 educational programs to the benefit of the nearby town of Copan Ruinas and the Ch’orti’ Maya community. The site is now open to the public, with signage that emphasizes conservation and the role of the local staff in the rescue, documentation, analysis, conservation, and educational outreach that have been both the project’s and the IHAH’s goals from the onset of the work there. It is hoped that such community engagement and private stewardship will enable the government to enhance public awareness of the value of cultural heritage and the responsibilities local communities have to teach and to learn from it in the present and future.

Masterful hands: Morelli and the Maya on the Hieroglyphic Stairway, Copan, Honduras

in Stucco and Stone (Cambridge, MA, 2011), p. 138. 4. B. W. Fash, “Chisel Power: Reflections on the Art of Architectural Sculpture Production and Distribution in the Copan Region,” in Arqueología imagen y texto: Homenaje a Ian Graham, VI Mesa redonda de Palenque, ed. C. Pallan (Conaculta/Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia, México, in press). It has been said that “[t]he Old Masters did without names, their signature was the white fingers of the Madonna.”1 For the Late Classic Maya (ca. 550–850 c.e.), anonymity was not the only option—at least seventeen painters and 114 carvers tagged their efforts.2 But most texts and images lack authorial labels of any sort. Tikal, Guatemala, dominant in its region, had no signatures, or none known. Despite its plentiful sculpture, Palenque recorded only a few. Far to the southeast, on the margins of Classic Maya civilization, Copan, in Honduras, left what may be the most glaring anomaly of all. Renowned for its architectural and freestanding carving, this city, intensively studied for more than a century, failed to record a single identifiable sculptor. Rulers commanded attention at Copan, not the hands that recorded such messages. It is clear that within Classic Maya artistic cultures, considerable variation existed, at least when it came to the notation or anonymity of individual craftspeople and artisans. There are many possible explanations for the lack of artists’ names at Copan. Perhaps sculptors of the region were simply seen as instruments of royal or noble will. They carved stone in pleasing and appropriate ways, but ultimately, their identity was irrelevant. Signatures might have been an unwelcome intrusion, an impiety, on an object of devotional practice. Perhaps, as one possibility, local sculptors held relatively low social status, and were thus unsuitable for naming. Against this view is telling evidence from Structure 9M-195 at Copan, which depicts two hands holding chisels for carving.3 Presumably, the act of sculpting was consequential, and a reasonable suggestion is that artisans lived in or near this elite building. For this reason, Fash has proposed that the proliferation of sculptors and masons needed to construct the stone architecture and sculptural façades in the Copan Valley elevated carvers to a special status among elites.4 Unfortunately, the chance of understanding the absence of signatures at Copan is low. Explaining a negative, a gap, is difficult in the best of circumstances, much less in a city that lost evidence of literacy in the ninth century c.e. What can be explored with greater force is whether such sculptors left their impress in less overt but still tangible ways: as “hands” inferable by sign choice, manner of execution, contrasts with other carvings, or comparisons that take account of time and demonstrable patronage. This process could be extended to the vast corpus of Copan sculpture, a labor of years. The focus here is more workable, although still large. It concerns a monument of singular scale and ambition, Morelli and the Maya on the Hieroglyphic Stairway, Copan, Honduras