In this Chapel of Ritual: The Life and Death of Temple XIX at Palenque, Chiapas.

Summary

The excavation of Temple XIX at Palenque, Mexico from 1998-2002 garnered considerable attention primarily for the recovery of monuments with preserved inscriptions and iconography carved in stone and modeled in stucco. The fragmented state of several monuments, evidently victims of systematic mayhem in antiquity, preoccupied the excavators constantly as monument fragments were recovered from inside and outside the approximately 9 by 34 meter building. These monuments have now been consolidated and are on display in the site museum near the ruins in Chiapas. Although the epigraphy of these monuments has been discussed extensively in press, the context of their recovery has not received the same attention. As primary supervisor of the Temple XIX excavations I have a unique perspective on the construction, dedication, use, and termination of the building. In this paper I review the recovery program and contextualize how Temple XIX was used by the ruling court of Palenque in the mid 8th century AD. I then address the termination of the structure and the apparent dereliction of the entire South Group (or South Acropolis) in the second half of the 8th century AD prior to total abandonment of the site in the early 9th century AD.

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This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 80th Annual Meeting, San Francisco, CA (2015)

Keywords

Spatial Coverage