Kristin Landau

Este proyecto explora las relaciones dinámicas entre poder centralizado y la organización de un barrio periférico en una sociedad compleja. La investigadora ha solicitada fondos de varias agencias para apoyar dos temporadas de campo y de laboratorio para investigar el barrio de San Lucas del UNESCO World Heritage Site de Copán, dentro del área maya del occidental de Honduras. Las metas mayores son (1) examinar como la fuerzas centralizadas y descentralizadas afectaban la vida diaria en el barrio de San Lucas, y (2) explorar como la vida podría haber cambiada en San Lucas a relación a la subida y caída de la dinastía de Copán. Se alcanzan estas metas a través de un estudio diacrónico de tres aspectos de la organización de barrios que ilustran como los residentes interactuaban con el poder central: (1) el nivel de autonomía político-económico de los residentes de San Lucas, (2) la organización social interna del barrio, y (3) el manejo de un área de oratorio dentro del barrio, conocido como Los Sapos. Un mapeo comprehensivo, excavaciones de grupos arquitectónicos de una escala “micro”, y métodos del laboratorio enfocados en la cronología ofrecerán una historia local de este barrio periférico, la cual complementa nuestro conocimiento detallado de gobernantes reales e inscripciones jeroglíficas. Como uno de las ciudades más estudiadas en el mundo antiguo, Copán presta una oportunidad increíble aprender como un barrio local reaccionaba e influía poder central desde su establecimiento hasta el abandono.

This dissertation addresses issues of state integration for ancient residents of the city of Copán and the contemporary Chortí-Maya of Honduras through a community archaeological project. Today a UNESCO World Heritage site, Copán was a major center of ancient Maya commerce and ideology during the Classic Period (AD 400-900). My research shows how specific Copán kings chose to exert control over a wide area in the eighth century, and how local residents creatively negotiated the state’s involvement in their lives. I build on the rich history of archaeological fieldwork at Copán by involving local community members through a sustained educational effort. I incorporate scholarship in political anthropology with urban studies and practice theory to argue that the intermediate scale of a neighborhood is well suited for assessing citywide political dynamics.

Fieldwork included remapping the urban neighborhood of San Lucas, and excavating four households within it to document their dynamic life history. I focus on changes at these households over time, attending to episodes of landscape engineering, architectural construction, and trends in ceramics, obsidian, and other material culture. I chronologically articulate my findings at San Lucas with political
events recorded by the hieroglyphs at Copán’s center. I use this synthesis as a proxy for the state’s tight or loose integration with surrounding communities to demonstrate moments when the state was more or less centralized. Sometimes political events at the city center did not perceptibly affect everyday life in San Lucas, other times new state policies forever changed the local social and economic landscape.

Concurrent with fieldwork, I co-taught a 10-month introductory anthropology course for 20 indigenous high school students, and discovered how questions of state integration in the past are also meaningful for young adults in present-day Copán. As the Pan-Maya Movement gains momentum in Honduras, the Chortí-Maya indigenous councils of Copán negotiate between their newly won autonomy
and simultaneous reliance on local governments and state power. My work demonstrates how and why neighborhoods are an ideal venue to understand the social processes that maintain states, a challenge for the contemporary world and for archaeologists as well.

Spatial logics are guiding ideals for how space should be structured, as determined by the
culturally embedded decisions of architects and builders. I test various spatial logics within
sub-communities at the city of Copan, Honduras, to better understand principles behind
the planning of paired groups. Results support a prevailing cosmological logic, in keeping
with work on concepts of directionality, and particularly with the significance of north and
salience of a north–south building axis. The anthropology of space and place has gained
much from an increased reliance on archaeological literature, as well as the closely related
fields of geography and empirical Geographic Information Systems (GIS) analyses. Because
we shape and are shaped by landscapes, consideration of spatial relationships should help
us evaluate and refine our conceptions of social relations.

While most tourists arrive to Copán to see the Hieroglyphic Stairway, three-dimensional sculptures, and royal tombs, archaeological ruins are scattered widely across the landscape. An ancient neighborhood on the south side of the Valley is now receiving attention from local students.

Last year’s election of President Trump reveals that we live in an age of “post-truth politics” when policy decisions need not be based on evidence, precedent, or even a majority. When asked why Sean Spicer uttered provable falsehoods at his first press conference, Kellyanne Conway replied, “alternative facts.” Rather than post-truth, therefore, perhaps this is an era of too many truths – anything goes. Postmodern scholars have long argued for epistemic relativity, the absence of objective reality, and the co-existence of incompatible yet equally valid ways of knowing. The weather was not rainy at Trump’s widely attended inauguration because this was the reality his administration sought. How do we as archaeologists combat this blatant disregard for past actuality? Education. In this paper, I engage with the critical pedagogies of Paulo Freire and bell hooks to wield education as a form of activist resistance in classroom and field contexts. We must first fight for our role as “educators” and not “customer service agents” in the university setting by treating our students like adults and ensuring that evidence-based reasoning is a core course objective. We must second consider local community members as collaborators and teammates in conducting archaeological research. Archaeologists have the advantage of working in close quarters for intense periods, where we can model the merits and process of science. Last, I present an example of an archaeological project that prioritized education among indigenous high school students in Honduras. In this era of “post-truth,” a collaborative methodology is necessary for accurately representing past actuality and for the long-term sustainability of archaeology.

En el Conjunto 12M-1, ubicado dentro del Barrio de San Lucas, a la orilla del cuerpo urbano de Copán, existe un santuario rupestre conocido localmente como Los Sapos. Esta es un área geológica especial, en donde la roca madre emerge del suelo, sobre la cual los antiguos habitantes tallaron diversos elementos asociados al culto a la fertilidad y el agua. Estilísticamente Los Sapos puede fechar al menos para el Protoclásico (150 a.C.-400 d.C.) y las figuras talladas incluyen un sapo, un cocodrilo, dos altares troncocónicos, un posible bloque glífico y varias escalinatas rituales. También existe una imagen en bajo relieve de un individuo masculino realizando autosacrificio, datado estilísticamente hacia el Clásico Terminal o Posclásico. Como parte del Proyecto Arqueológico de los Barrios de Copán -PABAR-, Kristin Landau dirigió investigaciones arqueológicas que incluyeron mapeo y excavaciones para datar la ocupación del barrio y la documentación gráfica de las esculturas rupestres, apoyada por el equipo del PARACOPAN de la Universidad de Harvard.  Las excavaciones revelaron un interesante sistema hidráulico que desemboca finalmente en el conjunto de Los Sapos, creando un espacio ritual muy especial.  Además se presentaran nuevas visualizaciones en 3D de las esculturas más representativas.

Understanding the growth and dissolution of state entities has long been a topic of anthropological inquiry. More recently, archaeologists are promulgating dynamic and careful conceptions of how leaders acquire power, and whether and why surrounding residents may support them. By turning our attention to the political economic relationship between Maya rulers and the local population, we can identify successful and failed attempts to maintain states. In this paper, I combine political anthropology with urban studies and practice theory to illustrate how the intermediate scale of neighborhoods can be useful for assessing state dynamics. I focus on the neighborhood of San Lucas during the Terminal Coner ceramic subphase (ca. AD 820-900) to examine the transition between the death of the last major ruler and the full onset of the Postclassic. Multiple lines of evidence from four architectural groups indicate that San Lucas residents enacted different living strategies in response to the dissolution of central government.  For example, households established in the Preclassic continued to support small families, while higher status living arrangements were quickly abandoned. Such data offer a more nuanced picture of who emigrated from Copán and when, allowing us to infer the aftereffects of state collapse on residing populations.

Urbanization connotes a long-term process in which population nucleates around a central zone, principally through migration. Ethnogenesis describes the coming together of two or more groups of people with distinct ancestries to form a new ethnic identity. These two processes often co-occur at multiple scales in our globalized world, where over half the human population lives in cities. However, processes of urbanization and ethnogenesis also have historical—even ancient—origins; investigation of expressions of ethnic identity in premodern cities represents a relatively new research domain. In fact, archaeology’s comparative methodology is particularly well suited for discerning ethnicities in the artefactual and documentary record. In line with the conference theme, this paper reviews what constitutes evidence toward identifying emerging ethnic identities in urban contexts. Examples from historical archaeology form the basis for understanding ethnogenesis at the ancient city of Copán, in western Honduras. I present new evidence from excavations in the San Lucas neighborhood from the time before the first Maya ruler came to power (pre AD 400). Evidence from San Lucas and other areas suggests not only the co-existence of multiple ethnic groups in this borderlands region, but also the amalgamation of previously distinct material identifiers that may imply ethnogenesis. I conclude by briefly discussing if and how ethnogenesis might affect our understanding of UNESCO’s “Maya Site of Copan,” especially in light of the pan-Maya Movement in Mexico and Guatemala.

Recent work in the San Lucas neighborhood outside of Copán’s urban core discovered significant human occupation in the Late Preclassic period—centuries before the first king came to power. Construction materials, ceramic styles, obsidian tools, human remains, and radiocarbon dates from three households attest to the early and continuous settlement of this area in the foothills south of the Copán River. This paper reviews the evidence for San Lucas’s Preclassic population, and its significance for a revised understanding of early Copán culture history. Comparisons are then made to known Preclassic settlement within the southeast borderlands region, to begin to explore the cultural and ethnic affiliation of Copán’s pioneering families.

This paper interweaves issues of political-economic integration and autonomy among the contemporary Ch’orti’ Maya and ancient residents of Copán, Honduras, through a community archaeology project. The project taught a year-long introductory anthropology course for high school students (most of whom consider themselves indigenous) who participated in the process of archaeological knowledge construction. Regular class meetings opened long-term, structured dialogue with the students and their teachers that was ultimately more effective at integrating concepts of identity, heritage, and conservation than prior efforts led by NGOs and the Honduran government. Many of the students’ parents are members of Ch’orti’ Maya indigenous councils who are actively negotiating the extent of their autonomy from the Honduran state. Ancient residents of Copán likewise experienced increasing and diminishing levels of political-economic integration with Copán center over time. Excavations at the urban neighborhood of San Lucas reveal when and why state centralization strategies may succeed or fail, and how local residents may have resisted them. Focusing on marginal neighborhoods and marginalized people enriches anthropological inquiry with a local-level perspective, and invites local communities to contribute in broader academic and applied discussions.

Generations of Copán archaeologists have revealed the secrets of royal tombs and hieroglyphic inscriptions, as well as explored humble households of the rural periphery. A new project brings together these two initiatives to study the diversity of settlement within one particular neighborhood of the ancient city. Growth and change in the San Lucas neighborhood are articulated with major political events at Copán’s center to assess the degree of state integration, and more importantly, when, how, and why  this degree fluctuated over time. Simultaneously, the project prioritized community integration with the indigenous people residing in today’s San Lucas. We collaborated with a local high school to teach a year-long introductory anthropology course and directly involved students in the excavations. This talk highlights how typical academic archaeological investigation may be productively coupled with high school education through a focus on neighborhoods and a blurring of the arbitrary distinction between past and present.

In this paper we discuss our “translations” of traditional analog datasets to digital formats, the lessons we learned in the process of so doing, and how they may be applied to archaeological practice. Analog data include paper maps, architectural drawings, or field notes, while geodigital data are spatially-referenced including GIS maps and 3D models.  We address questions such as:  What can we learn as we convert the two kinds of data formats? In the first part of this paper we discuss several examples of translating analog data to geodigital data including: (1) converting maps—originally generated with Alidade and plane table to Geographic Information Systems (GIS) data, (2) converting hand-written field notes on spatial location and notebook drawings of architectural groups and topography into GIS data, (3) integrating multi-source data collected at different times and with different instruments (e.g., GPS, GNSS, total station), (4) analog to geodigital conversion for 2.5D visibility analysis, (5) analog to geodigital to generate geo-referenced 3D models, and (6) data integration (tacking back and forth) from analog to GIS to Lidar. 

In the second part of the paper, we summarize the lessons we have learned from our experiences in translating analog data to a geodigital format, through a recent case study at the ancient city of Copán, in the Maya area of western Honduras. We discuss what elements are lost and gained in the six translations described above. We then apply what we have learned to provide concrete insights that can be applied to archaeological practice in the Maya area and beyond. We contend that as we translate analog data into geodigital data, we acquire new knowledge about data collection, documentation, and interpretation. In turn, this knowledge encourages new archaeological questions and methodologies that can and should inform archaeological practice at all stages of research.

Members of the Ch’orti’ Maya Movement in western Honduras have spent years laying the ground work to re-define the tense relationship between indigenous people, the ladino (non-indigenous) population, and the Honduran state. Since land was privatized in the region in the early 1900s, indigenous Hondurans have labored under ladino and foreign landowners as peons, and are still today broadly considered as poor peasants, or pejoratively, as indios. Even though activists have secured land for indigenous communities and contributed to the development of an “indigenous consciousness” to be proud of, the pathway to indigenous Ch’orti’ identity formation remains in its infancy.

Recent efforts by two indigenous councils in the municipal region of Copán targeted the fields of tourism development and cultural revitalization in order to raise awareness and strengthen people’s understanding of what it means to be Ch’orti’ Maya. The councils as well as the Honduran government have sponsored community workshops on heritage and Maya archaeology, especially pertinent due to the proximity of the UNESCO World Heritage Archaeological Site of Copán. The workshops are seen to expand the repertoire of elements available to continue building an indigenous Maya conciencia.
However, sporadic, two-day workshops are not long or accessible enough for people to develop a clear understanding of heritage or to be able to incorporate it into their idea of Ch’orti’ identity. As Rodriguez-Mejia’s dissertation research among indigenous activists and villagers makes clear, unless people are directly involved in tourism servicing or are active members of the indigenous councils, the significance of being Ch’orti’ remains ambiguous at best. For instance, several weeks after one of these workshops, the majority of attendees reported having little or no knowledge of archaeological work conducted in Copán, ancient Maya culture, or Maya heritage.

In this paper we discuss a new effort to expand people’s knowledge of both heritage and archaeology. Taking to heart the lessons of the Ch’orti’ Maya Movement and similar initiatives sponsored by the Honduran government and other non-governmental organizations, the authors began to teach a year-long course (Feb-Nov 2013) for 20 students from various indigenous villages around Copán. The course not only exposed students to the history of anthropological research in Copán, but also to the cultural products yielded by this research (e.g., artifacts, sites, knowledge). Students also learned basic anthropological concepts and methodology, including ethnographic interviews and archaeological excavation, and participated in field trips to museums and heritage storage facilities that are typically closed to the public. At the end of the course students showcased what they had learned about anthropology, archaeology, heritage, and their identities via group presentations at the town municipality.

We make the argument that open, systematic, and sustained communication between workshop teachers and attendees, as well as exposure to diverse heritage spaces (e.g., museums, research laboratories, archaeological sites), will promote a deeper understanding of cultural patrimony and thus facilitate its incorporation into people’s notions of their identity.

International borders and similar boundary lines have shaped the development of nation-states as well as academic research trends within them. Such an influence may be felt more strongly in previously colonized nations than anywhere else, as modernity is argued to arise in Latin America with the institution of political borders (Silverblatt 2004). Since Honduras became an independent and sovereign nation in the middle of the nineteenth-century, state leaders have struggled more than most to construct a national identity that incorporates the country’s many geographies, ethnicities, and cultural traditions. Today, as historically and prehistorically, the borders of Honduras hold multiple distinct ethnic groups, yet this diversity often goes internationally unrecognized for the promotion of an ancient Maya past and archaeo-tourism. However, the only “ancient Maya” site of Honduras, Copán, in fact lies within and on either side of the border zone with Guatemala. Even in AD 400-900, Copán sat on the eastern periphery of the Classic Maya world, negotiating contacts between the Maya “heartland” and multiple other indigenous groups to the east. Archaeologically, new stylistic and isotopic studies show that ancient Copán was inhabited by a staggering number of migrant kings and commoners, born and raised in other parts of Central America. What does it mean to live in a border zone? How did and do state leaders manage internal heterogeneity to construct a broadly applicable identity? How and why must we conceptually dissolve borders to better understand the dynamic processes that produce nations and states through time?

La preservación del patrimonio cultural es una labor fundamental para la investigación arqueológica tal como el orgullo y la identidad de poblaciones vivas. Sin embargo, las relaciones entre pueblos modernos, antropólogos científicos, y la protección de restos arqueológicos son frágiles y tensas. Presentamos un nuevo esfuerzo para mejorar estas relaciones a través de enseñar un curso de la antropología en un colegio local de Copán, Honduras. Cada semana, 19 estudiantes aprenden conceptos básicos de la antropología y hacen actividades a fortalecer su conocimiento, desde entrevistas etnográficas a excavación arqueológica. Hacemos el argumento que comunicación abierta entre arqueólogos y estudiantes jóvenes promoverá el entendimiento y la preservación del patrimonio cultural.

The population dynamics of the Classic Maya collapse can be studied from a macro-demographic perspective that entails broad settlement surveys in rural and urban areas, as well as micro-demographic processes that are detected from individual loci of habitation in various zones of settlement.  At Copán, Honduras, a Classic Maya (AD 250-900) center on the southeastern periphery of the Maya region of Mesoamerica, archaeological investigations over several decades have produced abundant databases that span early occupation to abandonment in multiple areas of the valley, making Copán an ideal site for addressing questions of population mobility on both the macro and micro levels. Recent investigations by Kristin Landau complement previous work by Nancy Gonlin. These data provide an evaluation of urbanizing and de-urbanizing processes that led to population mobility among the Classic Maya in the Copán Valley.

The anthropology of space and place has gained much from an increased reliance on archaeological literature, as well as the closely related field of geography and empirical geographical information system (GIS) analyses. Because we shape and are shaped by the landscape, thoughtful consideration of spatial relationships should help us develop, evaluate and refine our conceptions of social relations. In this paper I build on recent discussions of ancient Maya site-planning principles through the application of models based on efficiency maximization (mean center and least cost paths) as well as those derived from Maya cosmology (elevation, viewshed). I test these models on the sub-community scale at the site of Copán, Honduras, to better understand principles behind the planning of paired groups. Whereas efficiency-based models did not offer any insight into these principles, it seems highly likely that ancient residents of Copán planned their communities according to potent symbolic belief systems. Results are in keeping with Wendy Ashmore’s (1991) paper on concepts of directionality among the ancient Maya, and particularly with the significance of north and salience of a north-south building axis. Through systematic and comparative spatial analyses, this paper empirically supports cosmological-based models of Maya site planning.

La relación dinámica entre poder centralizado y la organización de barrios periféricos no es bien entendida en las sociedades complejas. La investigación arqueológica en San Lucas, Copán, está diseñado para estudiar la organización social, económica y política de los residentes de la región, y sus relaciones con los gobernantes del estado y poder centralizado. Las dos metas principales del proyecto son la examinación de cómo fuerzas políticas centralizadas y descentralizadas afectaban la vida diaria en el barrio de San Lucas, y la exploración de cómo la vida podría haber cambiado en San Lucas en relación a transiciones políticas claves a lo largo del ascenso y la caída de la dinastía de Copán. Estos objetivos se lograrán por un estudio diacrónico de (1) el nivel de autonomía política económica de los residentes de San Lucas, (2) la organización social interna del barrio, y (3) el manejo de un oratorio único dentro del barrio, conocido como Los Sapos. Un mapeo completo, excavaciones de una escala “micro” de conjuntos arqueológicos y métodos en el laboratorio enfocados en la cronología brindarán una historia de abajo hacia arriba de este barrio periférico, que complementará 170 años de investigación concentrada en los reyes divinos e inscripciones jeroglíficas. También, una historia holística de un barrio periférico tiene la potencial iluminar debates populares del ascenso y la caída de la dinastía de Copán.

Considerado monumentos sagrados en la región Maya, estelas son altos obeliscos de piedra, a menudo talladas en la imagen de un rey bajo de la apariencia de un deidad y adornado con motivos iconográficos y escritura jeroglífica. Estelas en la Gran Plaza de Copán representan al rey en un estado perpetuo de la acción ritual, en la realización eterna de la soberanía divina y la legitimación de poder. Debido a su alto relieve tallado, los arqueólogos han utilizado estas estelas para ejemplificar la altura estética y logro artístico del Maya Clásico. Por considerándolos primeramente en contextos antiguos, los arqueólogos han pasado por alto el papel que las estelas desempeñan en la representación de Copán para el turismo internacional, y su importancia para los hondureños contemporáneos. Hoy las estelas son, literalmente, la cara de publicidad para el turismo cultural, y la proliferación de réplicas de estelas en todo el país ha estimulado la “mayanización” de una sociedad prehistóricamente cosmopolita. De hecho, los últimos tres inauguraciones presidenciales han ocurrido en el parque arqueológico o han convocado escenarios de la famosa arquitectura de Copán. Porque las interpretaciones de los arqueólogos de la función de las estelas en la vida antigua son sorprendentemente similares a la manera en que se utilizan hoy en día, se discute cómo la materialidad de la estela puede haber contribuido a esta persistencia. Trazando los 1300 años de la “vida social” de la Estela A de Copán y argumento por una mayor conciencia de los usos del pasado maya en el presente Hondureño.

Although archaeologists have long researched the elite core of urban Copán, distinct communities on the outskirts lie uninvestigated. In this paper I explore the social organization of rural communities, with specific attention to eight so-called paired groups and reasons for their spatial configuration. I evaluate these reasons by performing various statistical analyses in GIS to define and measure ancient social interaction and inequality. The same methodology can be inversely applied to present-day Copán so that communities might develop more harmoniously, especially in areas where ancient ruins and modern interests intersect.

Considered sacred monuments throughout the Classic Maya (AD 250-800) region, stelae (stela, singular) are tall stone obelisks, often carved in the image of a king guised as deity and adorned with iconographic motifs and hieroglyphic writing. Stelae in the Great Plaza of the site of Copán, Honduras depict the king in a perpetual state of ritual action, in eternal performance of divine rulership and power legitimation. Due to their high-relief carving, archaeologists have long used Copán’s stelae to exemplify the aesthetic height of Classic Maya artistic achievement. By primarily considering them in ancient contexts, archaeologists have overlooked the role stelae play in the representation of Copán for international and national tourism, and their significance for contemporary Hondurans. Stelae today are literally the advertising face for heritage tourism, and the proliferation of stela replicas throughout the country has prompted the “mayanization” of a prehistorically cosmopolitan society. Indeed the last three presidential inaugurations have either taken place at the archaeological park or have summoned scenes of Copán’s famous architecture for media backdrop. Because archaeologists’ interpretations of the function of stelae in ancient life are strikingly similar to how they are used today, I discuss how the very form and materiality of the stela may have contributed to such a persistent ideology of power. In so doing, I trace the 1300-year “social life” of Copán’s stelae and argue for a greater awareness of the uses of the Maya past in the Honduran present.

Although archaeologists have long considered where ancient people built houses, ritual structures, whole communities and principal centers, it has been difficult to assess human circulation among these features within the natural environment. Successful mobility from one point to another is predicated on a tension between what one can see upon starting, markers along the way, and what one has the ability to access, whether constrained by practical or cultural factors. Previous research in the Maya region suggests that certain areas were highly visible, but virtually inaccessible, vice versa or neither; native cosmological paradigms and information on sociopolitical relations provide a cultural lens through which to make sense of such inequalities. Our research utilizes Geographic Information Systems (GIS) to measure the impact of both cultural and natural features on access and visibility—factors serving as proxies to (re)construct potential circulation patterns at the Late Classic (AD 600-900) center of Copán, Honduras. Interpreting the mobility patterns as indicators of social connectivity, sociopolitical control, and ultimately social inequality, we were able to reevaluate both traditional classifications of site types and previously applied indigenous spatial models. Multi-scalar settlement analysis from the level of the city to specific “paired” architectural groups reveals differential degrees of social integration and segregation based on site type, ritual importance and geographic location. Finally, our analyses prove GIS to be a productive archaeological technique to engage the study of past movement, social inequality and related anthropological questions.

In garnering a more holistic conception of ancient societies, archaeologists attempt to uncover material residues of power and authority and interpret how such objects and structures may have been used to sustain a ruler’s control.  In this paper, I argue first that the carefully carved stone stelae of Copán’s Great Plaza are a physical manifestation of Ruler 13’s authority, their commissioner; thus they are associated with well known methods of power maintenance, such as institutionalized ritual and ancestor veneration.  Second, I show that this ruler erected his stelae under nearly full moons, a powerful lunar phase whose occurrence evokes notions of agricultural abundance and fertility: a reassuring notion for struggling Late Classic Copanecos.  Overall, I seek to demonstrate that the Great Plaza stela circuit acted as a tool for the maintenance of kingship while its ties to astronomical events and planetary rhythms legitimized the basis for divine authority in a manner previously unknown to us.

This presentation carefully analyzes the Classic Maya (A.D. 250-900) use of astronomy and basic astronomical principles at the archaeological site of Copán, in Honduras, Central America. Specifically I address (1) how and in what ways astronomically significant buildings and standing monuments were commissioned, (2) reasons for, and (3) possible results of their erection. By "astronomically significant, " I refer to the tendency of Maya rulers to align structures with each other and astronomical phenomena, such as the setting sun on the longest day of the year (i.e. summer solstice), as well as the celestially symbolic inscriptions carved on the monuments themselves. After 2.5 years of research regarding the ancient Maya and their astronomy and extensive fieldwork at Copán, this work, composing my senior Honors Thesis, represents the culmination and synthesis of both primary and secondary literature as well as archaeological investigation.

Through a study of change over time, I argue that Rulers 12 (A.D. 628-695) and 13 (A.D. 695-7 38) acted as divine kings during the more than I 00-year span over which they governed. They successfully established, legitimized, and maintained authority as evidenced through the astronomically significant structures they erected. However, I also examine what the patterns of astronomical construction and the monuments themselves may reveal about changes in social and political structure and growth during this dynamic period in Copán 's history. For example, Ruler 13 periodically references his deceased divine ancestor on the structures he erected in the ceremonial center of the city. Might the inception of such a connection point to the disguised frailty of a ruler whose reign ended with capture and beheading? I consider this and other examples of defining events in the life and times of these two Copán kings and their polity through their use and manipulation of astronomy in architecture to assert and defend power.

Hypotheses generated by PAPAC suggest a distinct urban plan for Late Classic Copan, one based on relationships between the architecture and stelae of the Great Plaza and the construction plans of specific architectural complexes outside of the Principal Group of ruins. This paper discusses the heart of this hypothetical plan by addressing the processional nature of Waxaklahun-Ubah-K'awil's Great Plaza stelae and their association with astronomical information and the quadripartite motif in Maya world-view and mythology.