Guatemala highlands
Milpa at Vi’k’ab’eb’al
It is a pleasure to greet you, I am Adriana Linares Palma, originally from Guatemala City, where I had the opportunity to study Archeology at the public university. After working for several years at different archaeological projects, I left the country to pursue my master’s and doctorate degrees.
My interest in studying archeology increased after visiting a Maya site called Tikal with my family when I was 17 years old. I wanted to know how people built the pyramids and how they made the beautiful and shiny ceramic pots that we saw in the site museum. And that is precisely what I love about archaeology: the possibility of writing histories of people and societies based on objects and the context in which we find these objects.
In this kit I have included details about the architecture of a site called Vi’k’ab’eb’aland the ceramics that we collected on the surface during our participatory mapping. This mapping was done in collaboration with the Ancestral Authorities of San Juan Cotzal who asked me to coordinate archaeological research in their town. From 2013 to 2016 we consulted and designed the type of research we were going to do, and after several meetings we decided not to carry out excavations, due to the sacred nature of sites. Instead we conducted a participatory mapping (Figures 1 and 2).
Figure 1: Sessions with community authorities of San Juan Cotzal to share information and discuss details of the mapping program (photography J. Córdova 2019)
Vi’k’ab’eb’al is one of the totzotz k’uy kuman (the “house of the ancestors”) or archaeological sites. This information is important because Vi’k’ab’eb’al, together with the other sites, form part of the constellation of memory, a concept that explains the processes in which people, ancestrally, have been intertwining their experiences with the landscape, history, and spirituality.
The first time I visited Vi’k’ab’eb’al I thought, “How difficult it is to come here,” since we walked over 45-min uphill over a steep and narrow trail. This is why, along with other features, Vi’k’ab’eb’al is listed as a defensive site. When we started mapping, I wondered, "How many people have come to this place to see or play the ball game?" This is a question that archeology cannot yet answer.
What I’ve included here is some of what we learned during our participatory mapping and some of the questions we still can not answer. I hope you enjoy learning about Vi’k’ab’eb’al.
Sincerely,
Adriana Linares Palma
Figure 2: Mapping Vi’k’ab’eb’al in February 2019 (photography A. Linares 2019).
Vi’k’ab’eb’al (pronunciation: vee-ka-ve-baal) is an archaeological site located in San Juan Cotzal, one of three current towns forming the Ixil (pronunciation: ee-sheel) Region, at the western Maya highlands of Guatemala (Figure 3). The low humid mountains of the Ixil Region are difficult to access and move around in. This was true during ancient times and still today. Two mountain systems in Cotzal shape the flow of the Cotzal River, which runs from the west towards the northeast. The people who live here today are mostly Maya Ixil, one of the Indigenous groups of the Maya highlands. There are also, in lower percentage, K’iche’, Q’eqchi, and Ladinos (non-Indigenous) living in this area.
Figure 3: Map showing location of Vi’k’ab’eb’al and the three current towns of the Ixil Region.
Vi’k’ab’eb’al is located in a sunken area at the top of the mountain with the same name, in the main town of Cotzal. According to the cumpares (spiritual guides) and ancestral authorities of Cotzal, the grandmothers and grandfathers of all the Ixil people who live in San Juan Cotzal today once inhabited this site. “Grandmothers and grandfathers” means the distant ancestors of the Ixil, going back many generations.
Before the construction of Vi’k’ab’eb’althere were other settlements in the Ixil Region. The first women and men who inhabited this region, during the Classic period (1-1000 CE), used the few small valleys and hillsides for housing, cultivation, and public/ceremonial activities (Figure 4). People built settlements in direct contact with the river and water springs. Archaeologists describe these sites as non-defensive, meaning people could access them easily. This pattern changed during the Early Postclassic (1000-1250 CE), when Ixil women and men settled at semi-defensive sites, where they could watch over the landscape to control both basins and mountains.
We know that Ixil people built Vi’k’ab’eb’al during the Late Postclassic period (1250 – 1530 CE) but we don't know if they divided this work according to gender. Did women select the building sites or did men? Did age and gender determine the jobs people did and the decisions they got to make about the new settlement? Archaeologists don't have answers to these questions. This site was the only defensive ceremonial center in the whole Ixil Region. That is to say that the Ixils built this center at a high altitude, in a hard-to-access place, for better surveillance and control of Cotzal basins, since there were intense political tensions throughout diverse territories in the Maya highlands during this period
Figure 4: Map of archaeological sites in the Ixil Region
Starting with the Spanish invasion, which began in 1530, the societies of the Ixil Region went through radical changes in social organization and relationships to land. In the Colonial period (1530 – 1821), the Dominican missionaries led a process of forced resettlement called congregación or reducción de pueblos de indios by uniting small, separate Indigenous communities in bigger and centralized pueblos de indios (Indian towns). According to George Lovell, they did this to make Catholic evangelism, control, and collection of tribute easier. The congregación was a violent process that prohibited Indigenous spiritual practices by imposing the Catholic religion, forced the Ixil families to leave their communities, and exposed them to exploitation.
During the Liberal dictatorship era (1871-1944) many communal lands were expropriated and turned into private property, which later became farms owned by non-Ixil people. The period of Civil War (1960–1996) is one of the most violent and crude periods of the history in the Ixil Region because the Guatemalan government and the military committed a genocide against Ixil people and committed war crimes against them. In this period the Guatemalan army intentionally destroyed many archaeological sites in which cumpares practiced Maya ceremonies, and in many instances the army imposed Evangelical Protestant spiritual practices, prohibiting any Maya spiritual practices.
Postgenocide Cotzal (1996 – today), the Ancestral Authorities of the Ixil region, cumpares, and members of the Ixil University are working together to revitalize the totzotz k’uy kuman, or the "house of the Ixil grandparents." Today, Vi’k’ab’eb’al is a corn farmland and each year milpa cover the archaeological remains (Figure 5). During the tapisca (harvest) and sowing (planting) time, one can see the fragments of ceramics on the surface. Vi’k’ab’eb’al is also a nachb’al (or sacred place) for Ixil women and men that live in the town of Cotzal. Several cumpares practice Maya ceremonies at the altar over one of the old structures.
Figure 5: Milpa covering Vi’k’ab’eb’al, before tapisca (photography A. Linares 2018)
Based on its architecture, settlement pattern, restricted location, and ceramics, archaeologists can tell that Vi’k’ab’eb’alwas the only defensive site in the Ixil region, dated for the Late Postclassic period (1250 – 1530 CE). To understand more about this place, we can combine physical evidence with the cultural and linguistic knowledge of modern Ixil people. First, we’ll consider cultural and linguistic information.
The etymological analysis of the name Vi’k’ab’eb’al supports the claim that it was a defensive settlement. Te’k Sam and Tixh Vijom, two of the ancestral authorities of San Juan Cotzal, provided various interpretations of the meaning of Vi’k’ab’eb’al in the Ixil language. Three of them are important to discuss here.
The first interpretation comes from the expression “K’av”, which means the type of scolding that parents do to children. The second is “K’aveb’al,” which means “over the lookout”. The third is the expression “K’am nak’ab’atzi,’" which translates to “what are you looking at there?!” The prefix Vi’ means “above” or “on top of” (Te’k Sam and Tixh Vijom pers. comm. 2019). These translations are all related to expressing power and watching from a lookout, and in fact, Vi’k’ab’eb’al is a good lookout point to view the east and west basins of the principal rivers of Cotzal.
We can also learn from the etymology of the word Xe’tenamich (pronunciation: Shee - te - na - mich), which is the name of the current canton (neighborhood)that surrounds the foothills of Vi’k’ab’eb’al Mountain. To understand, you first need to know two words: cabacera and tenam. In Spanish, the cabecera is the main town in a small region. Tenam is the Ixil word that means the same thing: the main town in a small region. Today, when Ixil people say tenam, they’re talking about the modern towns of Cotzal, Nebaj, or Chajul. So let’s go back to the neighborhood called Xe’tenamich. The prefix “Xe’” means “below” and according to Aurelia Gomez (pers. comm. 2019) “tenamich” means “where the tenam used to be.” In other words, Vi’k’ab’eb’al, which is located on a hilltop, used to be the tenam, and the name for the modern neighborhood of Xe’tenamich tells us its location: “below + where the tenam used to be.”
For modern Ixil people, Vi’k’ab’eb’alis also a nachb’al (or sacred place). It was constructed by Ixil grandmothers and grandfathers and in the Ixil perspective, this history means it holds special energies that are important for spiritual ceremonies today. Vi’k’ab’eb’al is one of several nachomb’al (the plural of nachb’al). Together, the nachomb’al form a constellation of memory, a network of sacred places, archaeological sites, and places of historical memory that are spiritual and related to the creation of the world. The protection of every element in this constellation of memory is fundamental to maintain the tiichajil (pronounced tee-cha-jeel), which is the Ixil philosophy of a life in balance.
Physical evidence can add to our understanding of this place. During our mapping program at Vi’k’ab’eb’al we identified four lookouts located at strategic points of the site in the highest points of the mountain. These four lookouts each faced a cardinal direction: north, east, south, west. I suggest that during the Postclassic Period a small group of people stationed at these lookouts could have alerted the residents of Vi’k’ab’eb’al to movement through the northeast and southwest Cotzal river basins.
Figure 6. Map of Vi’k’ab’eb’al, showing in red the location of the Maya altar over one of the checkpoints (Structure 6) (Map by Antolin Velásquez, 2019).
Practices at this site have changed over time. Today, at the top of one of these lookouts (Figure 6) there is an altar with a cross that sometimes has offerings in the form of flowers and candles (Figure 7). The owner of the land where Vi’k’ab’eb’al is located shared his story. According to him, during the civil war this nachb’al was abandoned because the Maya spiritual practice was prohibited. After the peace accords, he was committed to revitalization of this place and invited the municipal authorities to help him construct new wooden crosses and clean the altars. Then, more cumpares (spiritual guides) came to this nachb’al and practiced the Maya ceremony. Considering the violent history of colonialism, you might be surprised to learn that a local person chose to erect crosses at a nachb’al. This is an example of how Ixil people incorporated aspects of Christianity into their own spiritual practice.
Figure 7. Photography of the altar and flower offerings (photography A. Linares 2019).
Vi’k’ab’eb’al was a place planned for ceremonial-public purposes. The architecture relied mainly on large and small limestone blocks probably obtained from a quarry to the south, almost reaching the entrance of the site, forming temples, terraces, and staircases.
The masonry followed the shape of the sunken area of the mountain, surrounding the entire western and southern part of the depression. This architectural arrangement formed a kind of amphitheater that faced the flattest, central section of the site (Figure 8). In the central section, there is an enclosed ball court and a small plaza next to it.
Figure 8: Hypothetical reconstruction of Vi’k’ab’eb’al by Tatiana Proskouriakoff in 1947 (Smith 1955).
In our mapping we documented the foundations of 10 structures, several terraces, staircases, and lookouts. Structures 4 and 5 were facing the core of Vi’k’ab’eb’al. Structure 5 was aligned to the ball court, and Structure 4 to the plaza. This composition suggests that people used these structures to directly observe the activities happening in the ball court and the plaza (Figure 9).
Figure 9: Map of Vi’k’ab’eb’al (2019)
Vatz’k’aveb’al was the residential area in the outskirts before entering Vi’k’ab’eb’alPeople used the hillsides to build low stone platforms over terraces and on top they built perishable houses, similar to the way Ixil people live today. All materials used to construct residential and public buildings were local. One difference between residential and public spaces is that in the public spaces we observed evidence of stucco on the architecture. We found more substantial evidence of stucco on the walls of the main temples (Structures 1, 2, 3 and 4), and less evidence on the terraces and staircases. Stucco was also a local material. It was made using lime, a mineral they extracted from the soil of the local mountains. Its composition was similar to the stucco used in other settlements: mainly compact, resistant, hard, and fine. The addition of stucco on the architecture created a smooth surface that allowed people to apply red pigments or paint murals as decoration of the architecture.
Archaeologists catalog Vi’k’ab’eb’al as defensive because of its strategic position, restricted access to just one entrance to the south, and the presence of four lookouts. According to Leyard Smith (1955:33), there is a wall of dirt or stone about 8 meters (~26 feet) high that blocks circulation at the northern side of the ball court. In our participatory mapping, we noticed the presence of four low platforms that probably had the function of lookouts due their location. People built these lookouts on top of the peaks that surround the sunken area. From each one of them, one can have a good view of the river basins to the northeast and southwest of Cotzal river (Figure 10).
Figure 10: View of the northeast basin from Vi’k’ab’eb’al checkpoint (Str. 10)
(photography A. Linares 2019).
In general, ball courts in the Maya area were right next to the central plaza at big ceremonial centers, with a median size of 15-20 m x 10 m (49-65 ft x 32 ft). However, one of the characteristics of the Ixil Region societies is that each of their small ceremonial centers also had at least one full-size ball court that served as the central axis of each settlement. This tradition is unique for the Ixil Region and it started in the Classic period, continuing throughout the Postclassic. It is possible that the elites and non-elites both observed the ball game, however, archaeologists can´t say how many people all attended at once.
People built these ball courts in coordination with the main temples forming an open plaza, and some of these plazas had an altar in the center. The composition of ball courts consists of two great platforms mostly oriented from east to west, flanked on both sides by a major and a minor building (Figure 11).
Figure 11: The red arrow points to the ball court composition at various sites of Cotzal (drawings taken from Smith 1955 and Adams 1972).
In the Maya region, the ball court has a strong relationship to cosmology. Archaeologists have conceptualized the Mesoamerican ball game in varied ways, some of which include: a practice related to the Underworld, astral (star-related) symbolism, fertility, economical and sociopolitical systems, and as a medium for conflict resolution (Ferguson 1991; Fox 1991; Santley et.al 1991; Scarborough 1991; Taladoire and Colsenet 1991; Wilkerson 1991). In other words, scholars know the ball game was important, because ball courts were built everywhere, and evidence suggests that the ball game was deeply embedded in many aspects of Maya cultures.
The amphitheater-like setting of Vi’k’ab’eb’al emphasized the centrality of the ball court and the plaza next to it. They were built in the center of the settlement and aligned with the biggest temples (Structures 4 and 5). This spatial organization shows the ball game’s significance in Ixil society and politicsMore excavations are needed to clarify the specific use of the ball court in Vi’k’ab’eb’aland understand its relationship with particular practices
Ceramic analysis can help archeologists understand how societies interacted and traded with each other. During our mapping, we found diversification of ceramics on the surface at Vatz’k’aveb’al (the residential area next to Vi’k’ab’eb’al). Of the sherds we collected there, 82% were examples of a very popular utilitarian type in the northern Maya highlands during the Late Postclassic period. In other words, most of what we found was remnants of the kinds of ceramics people had for everyday use. This type of northern Maya highlands pottery has different names according to each site but in each place it is characterized by its reddish, brown, and orange slip (coating), with a decoration of horizontal grooves across the vessels (Figure 12). For instance, Bipana Rojo is the local type for the Acul Valley and Nebaj areas, and Tuja Red-Brown type is the local version of Cotzal (Becquelin and Gervais 2001, Adams n.d.). It is called Xola Micaceo for the samples found at Qu’markaaj, in central K’iche’ (another Maya region) (Macario 2007, Ceramoteca).
Figure 12: Bipana Rojo and Tuja Red-Brown ceramic types (photography A. Linares 2019).
In the sample we collected at Vatz’k’aveb’al, out of the 82% mentioned above, 76% was Xola Micaceo (theK’iche’ ceramic type) and 24% was Tuja Red-Brown (the local type). The remaining percentage of the sample (18%) had decorations with traditions from the Maya lowlands, such as incised jars (meaning decorations were cut or pressed into the surface). Plus, we found ceramic traditions from other parts of the Maya highlands, such as zoomorphic effigy stands (vessels in the shape of animals), styles belonging to the Early Postclassic period. This evidence shows the popular ceramic types people traded in the Maya highlands, but also indicates that people liked and had access to foreign vessels from the lowlands.
Moreover, archaeologists can see evidence of trade and movement of people in burials in the highlands. Researchers have found ceramic vessels from the Maya lowlands as offerings in corbeled vault tombs (see images below) at big centers in the Ixil region like Xevak and Xacb’al, but also at smaller ones like Tzikuay (Figure 13). Corbeled vault tombs were originally a lowland tradition. Inside these tombs, the majority of vessels were imported from the Maya lowlands. Only a small percentage was local highlands pottery. Likewise, these sites had offerings of jade, gold, copper, green obsidian, and polished shell (Smith & Kidder 1955, Burkit 1930, Adams 1972, Becquelin & Gervais 2001). These materials were imported from diverse areas. For instance, sources of green obsidian are found in the Valley of Central Mexico; jade generally from Motagua Valley in Central Maya highlands; and polished shells from the south and Atlantic coasts.
Figure 13. Corbeled vault tombs (a lowland tradition) at Structure 7 in Tzikuay (upper) and Tomb 1, Mound 2, in Xevak (lower) (drawings from Smith 1955; Smith and Kidder 1951).
This evidence tells us a lot about trade and interaction. First, the ceramics and other artifacts show that the network of exchange of cultural objects and consumer goods in the Mayan area was wide and rich. Trade depended on the resources that each region had, plus the distances merchants traveled from the place of production to the destination, making some objects more precious than others. For example, ceramic evidence suggests that people in the highlands valued foreign (lowlands) pottery and considered it something special. Second, the presence of corbeled vault tombs shows that there was interaction between the lowland and highland areas.
The presence of corbeled vault tombs and lowland goods could mean that the lowland people moved into the highlands, bringing their burial traditions and goods with them. However, it is most probable that the highland people adopted a lowland practice. We would need more studies of the Ixil region burials to know for sure.
"The Maya" from National Museum of the American Indian
Maya Research Project from The British Museum