Book chapter
Relevancia de las canchas de juego de pelota alrededor de Uaxactun. Una interpretacion sociopolitica y epigrafica
After several seasons prospecting the area surrounding the site, we found many ballcourts in western Uaxactun area. These were confirmed by LiDAR. These ballcourts are related to satellite sites, located at the average distance of 2 to 10 km away from the city core. Excavations in 2017 helped to clarify the chronology of these buildings. The information obtained helped us to understand better the urban and social development of the city.
In book
Second season of the project "Atlas Epigrafico de Peten" was realized in April and Maya of 2014. It was iriented to the documentation and analysis of the giant hieroglyphic inscription on the roofcomb and facade of the Temple VI or Temple of the Inscriptions of Tikal.
The first volume of the Wayeb Publication Series is a Gedenkschrift to Alfonso Lacadena García-Gallo (1964–2018).
Alfonso was one of the founders and a great supporter of Wayeb. The numerous presentations and workshops he gave at the EMCs between 1997 and 2016, have inspired colleagues and students from different parts of the world. This is the reason why we considered that it is more than appropriate that a volume dedicated to Alfonso would be the one inaugurating the new Wayeb Publication Series. In accordance with the spirit of Alfonso, of a collaborative, open and accessible nature, this volume is published digitally and it is freely accessible on the Wayeb webpage to facilitate its dissemination.
The volume has been divided in three sections, preceded by writings by Alfonso and his family. The first section of this volume brings together a series of writings in which his contributions to the field of research and teaching are collected, from the end of the eighties until he left us in the month of February 2018. The authors of these texts are those who have had the joy of being able to share innumerable experiences with Alfonso, both in fieldwork in archaeological sites of Mexico and Guatemala and in the daily life of the Complutense University in Madrid and the Autonomous University of Yucatán.
The second part of this publication includes the research of numerous colleagues and specialists in Mesoamerican studies, starting with the publication of “New Research on the Aztec Script: A True Writing System” that Alfonso delivered in October 2011, at Harvard University, when he was awarded the Tatiana Proskouriakoff Award. Following, the reader will find texts on Mesoamerican writing systems and languages, iconography, belief systems and ritual practices, and accounts on the Contact period and the Colonial era. Some of these texts were generated from long conversations or joint work with Alfonso, while others present ideas that do not always agree with some of his proposals. However, all agree that the field of Mesoamerican research has lost a brilliant thinker and an admired professional.
The last section brings together a collection of memories and anecdotes that the colleagues and friends of Alfonso shared with him. Some are funny, others emotional, but all of them show the immense human quality that characterized Alfonso, as well as his catching enthusiasm in each activity he undertook, his passionate way of working, and his singing skills.
Newly identified Early Classic Maya ruler K’ahk’ Ti’ Ch’ich’ Aj Saakil was one of the illustrious line of kaanul kings who held sway over parts of the central lowlands during the Early Classic, an overlord who exercised influence at Naranjo and El Peru, and even over some portion of the Tikal line. This shines additional light on the formative period of the kaanul hegemony, the years in which it first rose to challenge its great rival Tikal and set a course toward regional dominance
The principle aim of the paper is to present the evidence behind our identification of the phonetic sign we, and to trace some key implications of that decipherment. Additionally, however, it is our apologia—that is, our explanation and justification of this strangely delayed discovery, now only entering the scene some six decades after Yuri Knorozov (1952) initiated the phonetic decipherment of Maya writing.
Uaxactun or “Stone Eight” was named by Sylvanus Morley in 1916 due of its great epigraphic importance. It attracted a lot of attention because of several stelae dated to 8th baktun. With the rise of “historical paradigm” in Maya epigraphy in 1960s the paralelisms detected at Uaxactun and Tikal served as the evidence for the political interaction in Peten in the Early Classic. After the publication of the Uaxactun volume of “Corpus of Maya Hieroglyphic Inscriptions” and later research by Federico Fahsen, Juan Antonio Valdés and Hector Escobedo the reconstruction of the history of Uaxactun obtained its current form. Redocumentation of the hieroglyphic inscriptions that started in 2009 and included photography, rubbings, RTI and photogrammetry helped to realize new study of the dynastic history of this Mayan center.
In this paper, data related to the chronology of Temple VI (The Temple of the Inscriptions) at Tikal is analyzed. During the second season of fieldwork on the “Atlas Epigráfico de Petén” project (April-May 2014), we documented the inscription on the roof comb of the temple, which is the largest hieroglyphic text from the Late Classic at Petén and one of the largest in the Maya Lowlands. The construction sequence of the relief and sculpted stucco observed on the roof comb, combined with epigraphic data, demonstrates that Temple VI was constructed in two phases. The first included the raising of the basal pyramid, the upper sanctuary, and the relief on the eastern façade of the roof comb, dedicated by the king Yihk’in Chan K’awil in 735 A.D. During the second phase, dated to around 766 A.D., the temple was enlarged and adorned with the reliefs on the north and south facades.