Revisiting the Xunantunich Palace: The 2003 Excavations

Introduction

The Maya royal court has proven to be a stimulating and fruitful area of research in recent years. The Maya palace has been recast in terms of the various agents who peopled the Maya court, the power negotiations inherent to the court, and the social dynamics of the interactions among nobles and between nobles and commoners that occurred in Maya palaces (see chapters in Christie 2003; Inomata and Houston 2001a, 2001b; Miller and Martin 2004). The Xunantunich Palace Excavations (XPE) program undertook a season of investigations at the site’s palace compound in the summer of 2003 in order to examine changes in the nature of political authority and legitimacy at Xunantunich as reflected in the built environment and the way architectural spaces organized court activities, especially interactions between the ruling family and other members of the Xunantunich polity.

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