Revisiting the Xunantunich Palace: The 2003 Excavations

Conclusions

By way of conclusion, I would like to offer some broader inferences that can be made from the data collected by XPE.  First, all available evidence supports the hypothesis–first forwarded by MacKie–that Plaza A-III was where members of the ruling family lived and where they interacted with their subjects. This inference is supported by the layout of the complex and its individual buildings, and by the artifacts and features found therein. That said, the data suggest that Plaza A-III was not the venue for all of the types of activities that Simon Martin (2001) has argued characterized the royal court of a k’uhul ahaw. There is no evidence, for example, of attached craft specialists. Even more conspicuous is the almost total absence of accretionary growth in the residential structures associated with the court, a pattern very distinct from what we would expect from a palace occupied for several generations. Finally, the palace compound contains no bench with "arm rests" that are understood to be thrones in the central Maya lowlands (Harrison 2001; Noble 1999). I have argued elsewhere that these observations strongly suggest that Plaza A-III housed a more limited ruling court that conforms with what might be expected of a ruling family with close and subordinate ties to a larger and more powerful kingdom (Yaeger 2003; C.f. Taschek and Ball 2004 for different interpretations of some of the same lines of evidence).

Whatever the status of its inhabitants vis-à-vis neighboring kingdoms, the palace compound was a powerful place where the new rulers of Xunantunich sought to impress their subjects and consolidate their power. The buildings were large and awe-inspiring, but perhaps as importantly, they were adorned with powerful symbols that reflect the ways in which the rulers of Xunantunich sought to legitimize their position. The fragments of the carved wall panel found in 1997 demonstrate that they deployed concepts of noble descent in establishing their authority. The palace’s location at the cosmologically powerful northern edge of the site associated its residents with revered ancestors and the celestial realm (Ashmore 1991). Furthermore, stucco frieze fragments recovered by MacKie and by XPE on Str. A-11 reference powerful concepts like the witz sacred mountain.

We found ample evidence to confirm that at least some of the activities in the lower building related to the ruler’s role as intermediary between the divine realm and his subjects. We recorded several more incised graffiti designs on the walls and two additional patolli boards carved into the building’s floor. Curtain tie holders allowed for the sealing of visual and physical access into these rooms. Planned iconographic analysis of sculpted stucco fragments from Str. A-11’s façade–many of which have recognizable motifs–might clarify further the cosmological claims made by the site’s rulers. Unfortunately, we found no additional fragments of hieroglyph-bearing monuments.

The built environment of the palace compound created spaces for five levels of access to the court of the ruler of Xunantunich. Movement from one space to the next was highly visible, as it required ascending broad stairways in plain sight of larger open spaces, and then disappearing from view upon passing through narrow doorways. This built environment created the potential for these kinds of movements to reflect one’s degree of privileged access to the court and the ruler in a given contextual situation. Clearly, the architects designed the palace in part to reinforce the hierarchical differences that were a key part of the city-state’s new social order.

Over time, this built environment shows a progressive restriction of access to the ruler and of spaces for interaction between the ruler and his/her subjects. The Maya blocked and filled the interior stairway to Str. A-11’s upper building, the ruler’s private residence, shifting access to the rear of the structure. Subsequently, they blocked the doorways of the flanking rooms and filled them, sealing these spaces for private interactions with the ruler. The Maya later removed the stair block in front of Str. A-11, a feature that had permitted the extension of activities on the frontal terrace into closer proximity to the people in the plaza. Use of the central room continued, but it was also later dismantled stone-by-stone and then filled, marking the end of Str. A-11’s use-life.

Clearly, the abandonment of the palace bespeaks political transformations at the end of the Late Classic. The continuity of ritual practice on Strs. A-1 and A-6 during the Terminal Classic Tsak’ phase (A.D. 780-890), the carving of three stelae and an altar in the Tsak’ phase, and the presence of Tsak’-phase occupation in Str. A-15, the acropolis of El Castillo, and Group B all indicate that the site remained an important political center for several generations after the abandonment of most of the structures surrounding Plaza A-III.  Instead of signaling the abandonment of Xunantunich as MacKie (1961) argued, the intentional dismantling of the palace–an event charged with symbolic and political significance–is better understood as a sign of intense political change at Xunantunich at the end of the Late Classic period. Although it is possible that the ruling family simply moved to another residential location within the site, given the magnitude of the changes, it seems more likely that the final dismantling of the palace reflects a replacement of the ruling family. The palace had served for generations as the residence for the polity’s rulers and an integral component of their efforts to establish their legitimacy and recraft the region’s social order had no place in the new Terminal Classic political order, and it was abandoned, rather than remodeled and rehabilitated.

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