Archaeologists Presents Piedras Negras Panel
During the XIV Archaeological Sympsium, Hector Escobedo, publicly showed stone Panal 15, one of the largest of its genre. According to Excobedo's estimates the stone dates from AD776.
Ernesto Arrendondo, one of the researchers on Escobedo's Piedras Negras team, uncovered the piece this past April. It lay under a shalllow earth covering at he base of Pyramid J-4.
The glyphs describe a battle led by the young king know as "Governor 2 or Itzamk' anahk K'in Ajaw. It also shows one of the most impressive presentations o prisoners of war to the king.
Experts believe the stone carving is a funeral tribute to Governor 2.

PIEDRAS NEGRAS

On the banks of the Usumacinta River, just within Guatemalan territory, lies Piedras Negras, one of the most important cities of ancient Maya Civilization. Here scholars first discovered the historical nature of Maya writing and compiled the first reliable list of kings. During archaeological work in the 1930's, researchers from University of Pennsylvania developed one of the first ceramic sequences in the Maya region. Trenches and pits helped established a more sophisticated understanding of how monumental buildings were constructed, modified and used. Maya archaeology as practiced today rests heavily on discoveries at Piedras Negras and on the methods pionered there.

What we know of Piedras Negras is more tantalizing than satisfying. Many of the ceramics from the early excavations were lost or their provenience (find-spots) garbled. Of forty or more test pits made in the 1930s, only a handful posse any surviving records. Many of the ceramics from the early excavations consisted of clearance, sometimes unsupervised by archaeologist, of walls and platforms edges around buildings... virtual nothing is known about the more modest settlement at the site, until now. How did the population supported itself? How was the landscape around the site used? The origins of the site, represented by early temples and hieroglyphic texts are as murky as our understandings of how and why Piedras Negras developed through time. The discovery of substantial burning and violent destruction of monuments in the Palace at Piedras Negras raises important questions about the nature of the Maya collapse. Unfortunately, the information collected by the University Museum in the 1930’s does not allow us to understand clearly what happened at the time.

After excavations by the Brigham Young and Del Valle Universities, the results continue to raise more questions yet many have been answered. In 1997 the outlying social structure of the inhabitants of Piedras Negras were examined. The 1998 season brought studies of the West Group Plaza and the surrounding outlying area. The 1999 season located a mixed cemetery where evidence of a Sahal (noble vassal) burial was found. This lends credence to the change in political structure during the late classic period. The rediscovery of the largest known cenote of Mesoamerica at Piedras Negras, although now dry, leads credence to why Yokib, a large opening, was chosen for the emblem glyph of this large city-state. During the 2000 season the burial of the ashes of Tatiana Proskouriakof were located at the site of the highest complex at Piedras Negras. The final reconstruction of various buildings and the famous Large Royal Maya Steam bath gives all the more reason to see this site in person

Ask for more descriptions of the myriad of other sites we visit on our journeys into the Maya Biosphere Reserve and the Ruta Maya:: Yaxhá, Uaxactún, El Mirador, Nakbé, Wakná, Tintal, Río Azul, Nakum, Naranjo, Cancuen, San Bartolo, Holmul, Sufricaya, La Joyanca etc...