University of Queensland archaeologists are testing a radically new hypothetical model of Mayan political organisation in the famous archaeological site of Copan in the Honduras.
The idea of the model literally came to Dr Rene Viel at one o'clock one morning when he was getting ready for bed. He spent the rest of the night sketching it out.
However, it took two more years to flesh out the hypothesis, which is 12 months into testing in painstaking research by University of Queensland archaeologists and forensic scientists in a three-year, $138,000 Australian Research Council-funded project.
The University of Queensland is the only Australian university researching the Mayan civilisation in Mesoamerica (including Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras, Belize and El Salvador), working alongside international teams including those from the Universities of Pennsylvania and Harvard.
Along with their team of local Honduran workers, and University of Queensland students, co-principal investigators Dr Jay Hall and Dr Viel recently completed a study of pre-Classic Mayan remains from about 1400BC, preceding the Classic Maya occupation in the Copan River Valley between 250 and 900AD.
Dr Hall, a senior lecturer in archaeology in the University's Anthropology and Sociology Department, and Dr Viel, currently an ARC research associate (and former postdoctoral fellow) in the Department, have been researching Copan's pre-Classic settlement, since 1991.
They are now sorting through previous research findings by international teams, and a mountain of material in a Copan warehouse, including 15 million pottery sherds assembled by research groups over 20 years.
Dr Hall said it had been assumed there was basically one elite Maya lineage at Classic Copan and that kingship succession was associated with this one line.
'But Rene's iconographic investigation of the chest ornaments or ?pectorals' worn by Copan's rulers and depicted on important monuments has led him to argue three different elite groups were vying for power in Copan during the Classic period,' he said.
Called the B, T and Z groups, each had a different ethnic background and controlled separate territories within the valley as well as a separate trade zone outside the valley.
Dr Viel said this year the researchers were able to gather archaeological evidence that Copan was built by these three groups which arrived in the valley at different times.
'We have also revised the chronology so that we are now able to posit both a time for the migration of each of the three groups and their geographical place of origin,' he said.
'We believe the B group, originating from the Pacific Coast, was the first to arrive in Copan at about 1400BC. The T group came from the highlands of Guatemala at around AD100, and the Z group arrived from the Mayan lowlands at about AD400. It appears that both the T and Z groups spoke a Classic period Mayan language known as Cholan.'
Dr Hall and Dr Viel said each group appeared to cope differently with the swampy Copan environment. The T group appeared to have brought to Copan a channelled/raised field technology to improve agricultural production in the valley.
There were hints that the Z group reclaimed land by draining and filling a former ox-bow bend in the river, and by rechannelling the river.
Another line of investigation is through pottery. Dr Viel, author of The Evolution of the Ceramics of Copan, the standard text authority on Copan's pottery, said that ceramic analysis clearly demonstrated three affiliations, one with Central Honduras/western El Salvador, another with the highlands of Guatemala, and a third with the Mayan lowlands.
Burial analysis could also provide a powerful test of the model.
Dr Hall said a shift in funerary practices was known to have occurred sometime between AD600 and AD650. Examination of skeletal remains showed the pattern of burying people with their limbs fully extended was replaced with the burial practice of folding limbs into a flexed pattern.
'The shift from extended to flexed bodies is seen as reflecting a takeover of political power by the B ruling faction,' he said.
'To further test this notion we plan to set up another archaeo-biological program through eminent University of Queensland forensic archaeologist Dr Tom Loy. He will use cutting-edge DNA analysis to determine population differences.'
Dr Hall said the new model was now being published and it promised to shake up previous notions of political organisation at Copan and perhaps other Mayan sites. Papers had been submitted to the journals Ancient Mesoamerica and Latin American Antiquity, conference papers presented in Guatemala City and at the University of Queensland, and further papers would be presented next year in Seattle and Melbourne.
Dr Hall and Dr Viel were the first researchers to discover structural remains relating to the pre-Classic period of the famous Maya site of Copan, Honduras. They also established that this early agricultural civilisation, which existed between about 1400BC and AD100, was much more extensive than archaeologists previously thought.
Earlier this year they discovered a pre-Classic little house, built in the old landscape before Mayan water management practices were used. The excavation found distinctive cooking ovens in sunken stone pits.
Research team members also included University of Queensland student volunteers PhD student Sean Ulm, master of science student Carney Mathieson, bachelor of arts (honours) student Vanessa Kruger and bachelor of arts student Karen McFadden. Another three to four student volunteers are expected to join the Copan project over the Christmas break.
The University's research in central America has also been funded by a University of Queensland External Support Enabling Grant, by CEMCA, the scientific branch of the French Foreign Ministry in Central America and by the Honduras Institute of Anthropology and History. Dr Hall and Dr Viel have also used personal funds to advance the project.
For further information contact Dr Hall or Dr Viel, telephone 07 3365 3235 or 07 3378 8207, email: j.hall@mailbox.uq.edu.au
