The Kingdom of Piedras Negras: A View from Mexico

Summary

Though today the Usumacinta River marks part of the boundary of Mexico and Guatemala, during the Classic period the Usumacinta would have passed through numerous kingdoms, including Piedras Negras and Yaxchilan. Alternate travel routes through the valleys to the west in Mexico crossed an even more complicated political landscape approaching the kingdoms of Palenque, Tonina, and Sak Tz’i’, as well as the plentiful minor centers and rural settlements throughout the region. While surveys between Piedras Negras and Yaxchilan in Guatemala have identified a definite border between the two kingdoms, research in Mexico has demonstrated a complex frontier that changed throughout the Late Classic period. Still, many of the sites identified by the Proyecto Arqueológico Busiljá-Chocoljá and others known from epigraphy can safely be associated with Piedras Negras at least for part of the Late Classic period, either based on proximity or emic accounts from inscriptions. Where carved monuments are absent, we must rely on archaeological evidence, primarily from ceramics and architecture, to understand this frontier zone of the kingdom of Piedras Negras. In this paper, we present survey and excavation data from this study region to reconstruct a perspective of Piedras Negras from adjacent areas across the Usumacinta in Mexico.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 83rd Annual Meeting, Washington, DC (2018)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 20281