Archives: Articles

The Peloponnese, Greece—About 3,500 years had passed before anyone seriously laid hands on the stones that defined the upper reaches of the tombs. Hidden below grape vines in a field not far from the remains of the ancient palace of the mythological and legendary King Nestor himself, most visitors walking along this elevated vista overlooking the Mediterranean Sea in southern Greece would never have suspected the significance of what lay buried beneath their feet.

But a team of archaeologists knew the potential of the field. As is typical at the beginning of any excavation or survey, they began clearing the surface of vegetation — not a particularly enjoyable start. The team consisted of director archaeologists Jack Davis and Sharon Stocker, along with a group of student volunteers, from the University of Cincinnati.

Vegetation notwithstanding, the most arduous task was actually still to come. “There were noticeable concentrations of rocks on the surface once we got rid of the vegetation,” said Stocker.* These were watermelon-sized stones.

And there were thousands.

They were the remains of collapsed beehive-shaped (tholos) tombs the ancients constructed at this location millennia ago, during the Late Bronze Age. In the spirit and style of archaeology, the team removed them carefully one at a time. The painstaking work eventually revealed two tombs, one of them as deep as nearly 15 feet below the surface. “It was like going back to the Mycenaean Period. They had placed them by hand in the walls of the tombs and we were taking them out by hand,” Stocker said.*

Like a Gold Mine……..

Their work soon began to pay off. “By the end of the first week we knew we had something that was really important,” said Stocker.* And the finds were remarkable. These were clearly princely tombs. Excavations yielded “thousands of small pieces of gold foil, beads, pieces of faience, small bits of bronze and the occasional piece of silver”, according to Stocker; and though they did not give up intact bronze vessels and weaponry as was the case in the nearby ‘Griffin Warrior’ tomb, also excavated by a team led by Davis and Stocker in 2015 (see below), they did yield an agate sealstone emblazoned with two genii (mythological lion-like creatures), a gold ring featuring two bulls flanked by sheaves of barely grain, and a gold pendant showing what could be the Egyptian goddess Hathor. These finds, along with the small fragments of gold foil and other small artifact fragments, clearly suggested wealth and status. Some news releases reported that the gold foil indicated the walls had once been covered in gold leaf. But “there is no evidence that the tomb walls were actually covered with gold leaf,” says Stocker. “[Carl] Blegen speculated as much, based on the quantity of gold leaf that was found in Tholos IV, which was excavated by his team member, Lord William Taylour, in 1953”. (Blegen, a Classics professor also with UC, was known for his excavation of the now famous remains of the nearby ‘Palace of Nestor” in 1939. See below.) Nonetheless, the finds and materials clearly point to tombs that once interred individuals or families of singular wealth and/or status, as well as a capacity to carry out a broad network of trade relationships in the Eastern Mediterranean — materials included amber from the Baltic, amethyst from Egypt, and imported carnelian, for example. The researchers employed extensive use of photogrammetry and digital mapping to record and document in detail the location and orientation of all objects within the tombs. This was important, according to director Davis, as it afforded the ability to “see all levels as we excavated them and relate them one to the other in three dimensions,” essential for analyzing, understanding and interpreting the tombs and the significance and meaning of their contents.*

Any scholar familiar with the archaeological remains of this region would say, however, that a more complete understanding of these newly excavated tombs has to take into account the larger context within which the tombs were found — Pylos.

Unearthing Ancient Pylos

…….we went to Pylos and to Nestor, the shepherd of the people, and he received me in his lofty house and gave me kindly welcome, as a father might his own son who after a long time had newly come from afar: even so kindly he tended me with his glorious sons…….

The words of Telemachus, the son of Odysseus and Penelope as penned by Homer in Book 17 of the Odyssey give us this ancient literary glimpse of Pylos, where the legendary King Nestor made his domicile. But beyond Homer the excavations over the last century have revealed a tangible place — a Pylos that can actually be seen and touched, verifying the historicity of the legendary place.

Evidence for human settlement at Pylos extends as far back as the Neolithic, though it is best known as an important center during Mycenaean times (1600 -1100 BC). Pylos as a state extended over 2,000 square kilometers (770 sq mi) with a population that may have ranged from 50,000 to as many as120,000 people. In 1939, a joint Hellenic-American expedition was formed with the Greek Archaeological Service under Epano Englianos and Carl Blegen with the University of Cincinnati. Excavations began on 4 April 1939, with dramatic results.  Almost immediately, stone walls, fresco fragments, Mycenaean pottery and inscribed tablets were unearthed. Blegen identified monumental structural remains as the great “Palace of Nestor”, and although it is not certain that this was indeed such, Linear B tablets found during the excavations indicated that the site in which the structure is located was anciently called Pylos. In fact, about 1,000 Linear B tablets were unearthed. Translation of the tablets confirmed that they were part of a royal archive, and that the palace functioned as the administrative, political and financial center of the Mycenaean region of Messenia.

From 1952 to 1966, yet more of the Palace was uncovered, including areas identified to be part of the acropolis. Evidence attests to the conclusion that Pylos was abandoned at some point after the 8th century BC and ended in a fiery conflagration.

_______________________________

Aerial view showing the Tholos IV tomb, far left, found by UC archaeologist Carl Blegen in 1939 in relation to the two family tombs called Tholos VI and Tholos VII, recently excavated by UC archaeologists Jack Davis and Sharon Stocker. Denitsa Nenova/Courtesy Department of Classics, University of Cincinnati

_______________________________

Aerial view of one of the recently excavated tombs, Tholos VI. Denitsa Nenova/Courtesy Department of Classics, University of Cincinnati

_______________________________

The floor of Tholos VI, featuring giant stone slabs (ashlars) likely removed from the remains of the nearby Palace of Nestor. Courtesy Department of Classics, University of Cincinnati

_______________________________

Carnelian sealstone featuring two mythological creatures called genii, which are lionlike mythological creatures, holding serving vessels and an incense burner over an altar beneath a 16-pointed star. Jeff Vanderpool/Courtesy Department of Classics, University of Cincinnati

_______________________________

A modern putty impression of the carnelian seal stone. Jeff Vanderpool/Courtesy Department of Classics, University of Cincinnati

_______________________________

Gold pendant found in the family tombs, featuring the likeness of Hathor, an Egyptian goddess who protected the dead. Vanessa Muro/Courtesy Department of Classics, University of Cincinnati

_______________________________

Above and below: The covered area of Nestor’s Palace. Fæ, Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license, Wikimedia Commons

_______________________________

Fæ, Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license, Wikimedia Commons

_______________________________

Plan of the excavated remains of the Palace of Nestor. 1-Entrance. 2-Court. 3-Anchamber. 4-Megaron(main hall). 5-Storerooms with olive oil. 6-Storerooms with wine. 7-Archives. 8-Propylon. 9-Bath. 10-Small megaron. Janmad,   Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International , Wikimedia Commons

_______________________________

Tholos tomb IV at the Palace of Nestor site, built ca. 1550-1500 BC. Excavated by Blegen. Peulle, Wikimedia Commons, Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International

_______________________________

This cross section drawing of the Treasury of Atreus typifies a tholos (beehive) tomb.

_______________________________

The Griffin Warrior Tomb

Arguably one of the most remarkable discoveries at Pylos emerged in 2015, as an archaeological team headed by Davis and Stocker (University of Cincinnati) were excavating what appeared at first to be an otherwise unremarkable stone-lined shaft tomb. This description changed very quickly, however, as they began to encounter relatively intact objects made of bronze. Their efforts eventually led to the skeletal remains of an adult male and nearly 1500 artifacts, some of the artifacts featuring rich iconography, and all associated with a single burial. Dated to about 1500 B.C. based on pottery shards found at the location, the shaft tomb and its contents have turned out to be, according to Stocker, “one of the most magnificent displays of prehistoric wealth discovered in mainland Greece in the past 65 years.”** Stocker would know—after years of experience investigating an area rich with evidence of an ancient presence long before the classical Greeks, she had never personally encountered a single burial quite like this one.

The inventory of finds was astounding. As reported by M.B. Reilly of the University of Cincinnati in the related UC Magazine article, the object tally included the following:

The skeleton of an adult male, age approximately 30 – 35 years who would have stood about five-and-a-half feet tall, placed upon his back when buried;

At his left chest, a sword, three feet in length, featuring an ivory hilt decorated with gold in an embroidery design;

Beneath the sword, a small dagger featuring a similarly designed gold hilt;

More bronze weapons laying at his legs and feet;

Four solid gold seal finger rings;

A 30-inch long necklace of box-shaped gold wires with two gold pendants decorated with ivy leaves;

Numerous well-preserved gold beads;

Two gold cups and six silver cups, one with a gold rim;

Bronze cups, bowls, amphora, jugs, and a basin;

More than 50 seal stones featuring intricate carvings of goddesses, altars, reeds, lions, bulls – some with human bull jumpers flying over their horns. All seal stones were in Minoan style and likely originated in Crete;

Pieces of carved ivory, one featuring a griffin with large wings and another showing a lion attacking a griffin;

Six ornate ivory combs, implying that he may have had long hair;

Over 1,000 beads of carnelian, amethyst, jasper and agate. Archaeologists suggest that some of the beads may have decorated a fabric burial shroud – as suggested by several square inches of associated woven threads;

Thin bands of bronze, likely from long decayed body armor; and

Wild boar’s teeth, likely from a warrior’s helmet.**

From a Mycenaean chamber tomb, elephant tooth warrior head wearing boar tusk helmet. Sharon Mollerus, Wikimedia Commons, Attribution 2.0 Generic License

From analysis of the burial, archaeologists could see that many of the burial objects were originally placed above the interred on top of his wooden coffin, which had been initially crushed by a fallen one-ton stone (likely the cap stone of the burial), the wooden coffin having long since decayed and collapsed and leaving the objects resting upon the skeleton. Further analysis of the skull indicated that he had a broad face with close-set eyes and a strong jaw.

The skeletal remains within the context of these finds clearly suggested the burial of a high status individual, perhaps even a king, or wanax, as Mycenaean kings or lords were called anciently. The man represented by the remains has been dubbed the “griffin warrior” by Davis and Stocker based on the griffin iconography and weaponry and armor found in the tomb.

More than a year later, conservationists in the lab revealed another stunning find from the tomb. After meticulous cleaning of a limestone-encrusted seal stone, they exposed an intricately  detailed etching of a combat scene on a hard stone measuring only 3.6 centimeters, 1.4 inches, in length. In fact, many of the fine details become clear only when revealed through photomicroscopy.     

“Some of the details on this are only a half-millimeter big,” said Davis. “They’re incomprehensibly small.”***

The image on the stone portrayed a warrior in the process of defeating two opponents, one already laying dead at his feet, and in the act of plunging a sword into the neck of the shielded second opponent — a scene of Achaean combat that could be likened to any event from the pages of Homer’s Iliad. 

___________________________

Viewed from above, the excavated Griffin Warrior Tomb, with the one-ton capstone which dominated the scene of the tomb details during the excavation. Courtesy Department of Classics, University of Cincinnati

___________________________

Graphic illustration of the shaft tomb, showing the spatial relationships of the various artifacts with the skeletal remains found within the tomb. Archaeologists noted that weapons had been placed on the left side of the body at burial while items such as the seal stones and rings were placed on the right. They also noted that some of the images represented on the rings correlated with actual artifacts within the tomb. Davis and Stocker hypothesize that these patterns suggest some purposeful intent at the time the body was interred. Denitsa Nenova, Courtesy Department of Classics, University of Cincinnati

___________________________

Above and below: The three-foot sword found next to the skeletal remains. Courtesy Department of Classics, University of Cincinnati

___________________________

___________________________

Found within the tomb: A meter-long slashing sword with an ivory handle covered in gold. Courtesy Department of Classics, University of Cincinnati

___________________________

A bronze mirror with an ivory handle, found within the tomb. Courtesy Department of Classics, University of Cincinnati

___________________________

Ivory comb, one of six, found within the tomb. Courtesy Department of Classics, University of Cincinnati

___________________________

One of four solid gold rings found within the tomb. This one features a Cretan bull-jumping scene. Courtesy Department of Classics, University of Cincinnati

___________________________

Shari Stocker stands within the excavated shaft tomb. Courtesy Department of Classics, University of Cincinnati

___________________________

Early Mycenaeans

Most significantly, the findings from the family tholos tombs and the Griffin Warrior tomb at Pylos have provided a tantalizing window on the early formative period of the Mycenaean civilization. “The new tombs are much larger than the Griffin Warrior grave and were used for multiple burials,” says Stocker. But the newly excavated tombs, thus far, have told us a story that is somewhat more obscure about the Mycenaean inhabitants at Pylos than what has been portrayed by the Griffin Warrior tomb. Speaking of the tholos tombs, continued Stocker, “they were certainly once as wealthy, but objects were removed in Mycenaean times and then they were looted after the collapse of the Mycenaean civilization, so we don’t know what they originally contained.” Nonetheless, she concludes, “it is clear from the discovery of the new tholos tombs that several elite families were vying for power and status already at the beginning of the Late Bronze Age. Eventually one individual, perhaps the warrior buried in the Griffin Warrior grave, was able to emerge with the sort of powers we imagine a Mycenaean wanax had, though we cannot be sure that the title was yet used, of course.  We now understand that Pylos was a very important center of power in the formative stages of Mycenaean civilization and that members of the elite were receiving luxury imports from all over the Eastern Mediterranean and beyond.”*

To be sure, the recent discoveries at Pylos have changed perceptions about the sophistication of early Mycenaean art and craftsmanship. The artifacts recovered from both the Griffin Warrior shaft tomb and the tholos tombs have been particularly enlightening. But the finest example was exemplified by the combat scene seal stone (mentioned above) uncovered within the Griffin Warrior tomb, known as the Pylos Combat Agate. “What is fascinating is that the representation of the human body is at a level of detail and musculature that one doesn’t find again until the classical period of Greek art 1,000 years later,” said Davis.*** The style of the piece suggests a Minoan-Mycenaean connection or influence, though the skill that must have been required to produce it appears to exceed anything else known from that Minoan-Mycenaean time period. “It seems that the Minoans were producing art of the sort that no one ever imagined they were capable of producing,” continued Davis. “It shows that their ability and interest in representational art, particularly movement and human anatomy, is beyond what it was imagined to be. Combined with the stylized features, that itself is just extraordinary.”***

_________________________

The tiny sealstone depicting warriors in battle measures just 1.4 inches across but contains incredible detail. Courtesy Department of Classics, University of Cincinnati

_________________________

A digitally altered illustration of the seal found in the tomb of the Griffin Warrior. ourtesy Department of Classics, University of Cincinnati

_________________________

Moreover, regarding the Griffin Warrior tomb, it became clear that a substantial portion of the tomb’s objects actually originated in Crete, exhibiting a characteristic Minoan (3650 – 1450 B.C.) style and technique that differentiated from other objects more typically identified with mainland Greece in the 15th century B.C. Thus, given the nature of some of the key artifacts and the dating of the shaft tomb and its contents, archaeologists could see that there was an apparent Minoan connection here. Based on the dating of the tomb, “we are in the period subsequent to the eruption of the Thera volcano, in a time of intense interaction between the Greek mainland and the so-called Minoan “New Palaces,” says Stocker.

The Thera volcano is today a caldera remnant that forms the present-day island of Santorini (anciently known as Thera), a member of the Cyclades islands southeast of Greece. In the 17th century B.C., it was a fully formed volcano, the most prominent landmark of an island that was home to Akrotiri, a major Minoan city. But around 1600 B.C. the volcano’s massive eruption and destruction buried the Minoan presence there and profoundly affected the entire Minoan civilization, including their main settlements on Crete. The Minoans subsequently rebuilt their destroyed Cretan settlements and palaces at Knossos, Phaistos, Zakros and Malia. It was the time period of these new palaces that witnessed extensive contact and trade between Minoan Crete and the emerging Mycenaean civilization on mainland Greece. The influence can be seen, for example, with the evidence of Minoan handcrafted items on the Greek mainland, indicating a likelihood that the ruling houses of Mycenae were connected to the Minoan trade network. To possess goods of fine Minoan craftsmanship would be considered a sign of status, wealth and prestige. “This latest find is not the grave of the legendary King Nestor, who [according to Greek mythology] headed a contingent of Greek forces at Troy in Homer’s ‘Iliad’,” said Stocker. “Nor is it the grave of his father, Neleus. This find may be even more important because the warrior pre-dates the time of Nestor and Neleus by, perhaps, 200 or 300 years. That means he was likely an important figure at a time when this part of Greece was being indelibly shaped by close contact with Crete, Europe’s first advanced civilization.”* Thus the Griffin Warrior tomb, though rare in terms of its unlooted condition and the richness of its finds, may actually not have been atypical for the burial of a member of the elite structure of early Mycenaean times. By around 1500—1450 B.C., near the end of the early Mycenaean period and the time to which the shaft tomb is dated, archaeologists and historians know that a number of power centers had already emerged in the Greek southern mainland, dominated by a warrior elite society. Christofilis Maggidis, archaeologist and President of the Mycenaean Foundation and one of the world’s foremost authorities on Mycenaean culture, summarizes the Mycenaean world of this time:

“Rising to power was a long process through trade, diplomatic contacts, and constant warfare abroad and at home during the formative Early Mycenaean period (Late Helladic I-IIA/B, ca. 1650-1420/1410 BC). The Mycenaeans proved to be meticulous students: through increasing contacts with Minoan Crete, their trade horizons gradually expanded from the Balkans and Northern Europe to Egypt, the Levant, Cyprus, and Asia Minor. This gradual expansion is documented in the multicultural amalgam of stylistic, iconographic, technical elements and materials of the exquisite finds in the royal Shaft Graves at Mycenae (Minoan, Egyptian, European/Balkan, Hittite, and Helladic influences), the extensive corpus of foreign imports in Greece (orientalia and aegyptiaca), and the increasing Mycenaean exports abroad. Contemporary iconographical evidence (e.g. flotilla fresco from Akrotiri at Thera, silver Siege Rhyton from Grave Circle A at Mycenae) illustrate some of the early military achievements of the rising new power abroad: raiding jointly with the Minoan fleet foreign exotic lands (Egypt?), sieging and sacking foreign towns.”****

With this description, it is easy to see the fitting context of the man in the tomb. “Whoever he was,” speculates archaeological team co-leader Jack Davis, “he seems to have been celebrated for his trading or fighting on the nearby island of Crete and for his appreciation of the more sophisticated and delicate art of the Minoan civilization (found on Crete), with which he was buried.”* The Pylos Combat Agate seems to suggest both traits.

As recorded history and archaeology would testify, the Mycenaean warrior kings continued to dominate their expanding domain in the ensuing centuries, eventually conquering their own Minoan trading partners on Crete following the debilitating disruption of Minoan power and society, caused perhaps, at least in part, by the Thera eruption. Knossos and the other Minoan centers on Crete became predominantly Mycenaean, as evidenced by the archaeology and even the language.  “At some point the palaces on Crete are destroyed, probably by Mycenaean invaders,” says Stocker, “and Greeks take control of Knossos and established an administration that kept records in Greek in the Linear B, as opposed to the old Linear A, script.”

__________________________

The famous “Mask of Agamemnon”, found in Tomb V in Mycenae by Heinrich Schliemann in 1876. Dated to the 16th century BC, it would have been an early Mycenaean work of art. Xuan Che, Wikimedia Commons, Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic

__________________________

Work at Pylos is expected to continue. But the archaeology, as is the case with any major site, will involve much more than excavation and work in the field. Study and research related to the finds will go on, conceivably for decades. And equally important is the ongoing task to preserve what has been uncovered. Archaeological excavation is by its nature a destructive process, despite its careful and systematic process, and it exposes the remains to elements of the environment that would otherwise not be factors if the buried structures and objects had been left untouched. Stocker has been quick to emphasize this.

“We will look for funding to stabilize and conserve the monuments and collaborate with the [Greek] Ministry of Culture to help where we can.”

_________________________

Map of the site shows the two family tombs (Tholos VI and Tholos VII), including the previously excavated Tholos IV tomb, in relation to the tomb of the Griffin Warrior and the Palace of Nestor. Denitsa Nenova/Courtesy Department of Classics, University of Cincinnati

_________________________

Although the tomb excavations and studies have been conducted through the Department of Classics, University of Cincinnati, with sponsorship from the American School of Classical Studies in Athens and permits from the Greek Ministry of Culture, research in the region of the tomb’s location has long been conducted under the auspices of the Pylos Regional Archaeological Project (PRAP), a project that has been underway for well over two decades. Undertaken as a multi-disciplinary endeavor to explore prehistoric and historic settlement in the area of the Bronze Age administrative center of the Palace of Nestor in the western Messenia region of Greece, the project has served to shed additional new light on a region that played a salient role in the prehistoric and Mycenaean history of Greece. Separate from PRAP, recent surveys and excavations in the area have also located and identified remains of houses of the Mycenaean palatial period, as well as remains of the Middle Bronze Age before the emergence of the Mycenaeans.

More information about the PRAP and other projects and organizations involved in the Messenia region can be obtained at the website.

Readers who wish to support the conservation and study of the shaft tomb discoveries may click here and enter Friends of Pylos in the comment box.

____________________________

*https://popular-archaeology.com/article/archaeologists-find-bronze-age-tombs-lined-with-gold/

**https://popular-archaeology.com/article/the-tomb-of-the-griffin-warrior/

***https://popular-archaeology.com/article/archaeologists-unearth-masterpiece-sealstone-in-greek-tomb/

****Christofilis Maggidis, Unearthing the City of Agamemnon, Popular Archaeology, June 5, 2014.

___________________________

Advertisement

Naxos is the largest island in the Greek Cycladic group, located in the Aegean Sea between the Greek and Turkish mainlands. The islands’ varied landscapes combine to give it a special character. Known for its rich land and bountiful crops as well as for its beautiful white marble and abrasive emery, I could make a journey from a sandy beach to a leafy mountain village in about an hour. Wherever I looked my eye found archaeological treasure and history: from Classical temples to Byzantine architecture. It was also all around me as I made my way through the peaceful Naxian villages and towns. The winding medieval lanes of central Chora are perfect examples of places where one is completely immersed in a medieval town-scape with a view: from the top of the medieval Venetian kastro (castle) the Classical temple of Apollo can be seen across the harbor. However, less known to the world, recent archaeological excavations on Naxos have revealed a far older prehistoric legacy on this island.

Beginning in 2013, an international team led by Dr. Tristan Carter of McMaster University through the Canadian Institute in Greece, and his co-director Dr. Demetris Athanasoulis of the Cycladic Ephorate of Antiquities of the Hellenic Republic’s Ministry of Culture and Sports, has conducted a series of ongoing excavations at what is currently the earliest known archaeological site in the Cycladic region. Located on Stélida hill on a promontory that juts out into the Aegean Sea, archaeologists and student volunteers of the Stélida Naxos Archaeological Project (SNAP) have uncovered a wealth of lithic (stone) material suggesting that Stélida was a place used to acquire raw material to form stone tools as long ago as at least two hundred thousand years.

Digging Up an Ancient Quarry

In the summer of 2016 I spent a month with the SNAP team at Stélida as part of my Global Archaeology project. Standing at its summit, I could view the coastline and the sea spreading out before me toward the west. I could clearly see Naxos’s hilly neighboring island, Paros, across a short distance of water. The area is very dry, and the visual contrast between the dry yellow earth and vegetation and the vivid turquoise sea is striking. But what drew me to Stélida was not the view—it was the stone beneath my feet. Stélida was first identified as a significant source of chert in 1981 as part of a survey by the École Française d’Athènes under the direction of René Treuil. Chert is fine grained sedimentary rock that was commonly used in prehistory by hominins and anatomically modern humans for producing stone tools and weapons. SNAP excavation trenches are located on different parts of the hillside, with two archaeologists working at each trench. Every morning of the excavation season the team begins the daily climb from the bottom of the hill and ascends the 118 m hill to their designated trenches. The path is literally littered with lithics – stepping on archaeological material is impossible to avoid at Stélida. By spreading the team across a large area, many different aspects of the prehistoric activities once carried out there can be investigated simultaneously and a more informed picture of the use of this landscape can be developed. This has also allowed the team to refine their research focus over time and explore specific areas of the hillside that are producing particular diagnostic types of lithics — stone material modified by hominins or early humans that are telling us something about when they were made and their material culture.

In 2016, SNAP was focused on opening a few new excavation trenches at the very base of the hill and towards the summit, as well as revisiting some that had been opened the previous year. I was tasked with opening and excavating a new 2m x 2m trench about ¾ of the way up the hill, positioned immediately at the base of a substantial chert outcrop. Without contest this is the most artifact-rich site I have ever excavated. The downside of such a rich site is that what I was excavating was mostly stone – not an easy material through which to shovel. We quickly developed a working rhythm with the passing of time, marked by the ferries sailing past us through the channel between our island, Naxos, and neighboring Paros. It seemed to be a contradistinction to be doing hard labor at a location surrounded by holiday villas and resorts where vacationers were being pampered. Our reward: only the archaeologists were afforded a view of the beautiful sunrise over the Aegean every morning from the top of Stélida hill.

__________________________

Stélida as viewed from the north on Naxos. D. Depnering

__________________________

View from Stélida toward the sea. Kate Leonard

__________________________

The 2016 excavation trench. Kate Leonard

__________________________

Stone tools and other lithics in situ at Stélida. Kate Leonard

__________________________

New Data, New Insights

More recently, the SNAP team has focused on evidence from a particular excavation trench — DG-A/001 — laid out toward the summit on the western side of the hill on a debris cone at the base of a chert outcrop. The 2 m by 2 m excavation trench was dug to a depth of 3.8 m through stratified colluvial deposits — translated, this means the excavators dug twice the height of a tall man through sediment and stone that had both originated at that specific location and washed down the slope from the summit over hundreds of thousands of years. This is tough work through mostly stone compressed in a matrix of soil – not the type of excavation that uses brushes to expose delicate surfaces. In the process, excavators revealed more buried prehistoric soil layers. Using infrared stimulated luminescence dating, a technique used to measure the time elapsed since the last exposure of soil samples to sunlight, levels were dated from 13.8-12.1 thousand years ago toward the top of the trench to 219.9-189.3 thousand years ago toward the bottom of the trench. From this trench, approximately 12,000 artifacts were excavated and over 9,000 of those were in strata (layers or levels) dated to the Pleistocene. The diagnostic lithics (stone objects indicative of particular time periods and/or cultural groups) found in DG-A/001 included Upper Palaeolithic tools — usually associated with modern humans, or Homo sapiens — Middle Palaeolithic technologies (such as Mousterian — usually associated with Neanderthals ), and examples of Mediterranean tool-making traditions from the early Middle to Lower Palaeolithic. Middle and Lower Paleolithic activity at Stélida was also evident in 159 diagnostic artifacts previously identified during surface surveys on the hillside.

The calcareous soil at Stélida was not conducive to the preservation of organic materials and so the excavators worked down through layer upon layer of mostly stone flakes, cores and debitage. When I dug with SNAP, for more than a meter below the modern ground surface the material I was excavating was over half composed of lithic debitage. In terms of volume of artifacts vs. non-artifacts, Stélida is by far the most artifact-rich site I have ever excavated. Like many prehistoric and historic quarry sites the artifacts that were uncovered at Stélida represent the early stages in the production of stone tools and as such the excavation team did not uncover many easily identified stone tools like those that would be found on a habitation site. The majority of what they uncovered was the material evidence of stone extraction and reduction activities. The team was digging through the evidence of quarrying (extraction) and the initial formation of pieces like rough cores (reduction). From the type of lithic material that was found in the excavations at Stélida it can thus be assumed that the higher quality pieces of chert were selected and taken elsewhere by the ancient toolmakers for final processing and use.

While much of the lithics excavated from Stélida are not easily discernible artifact types and analysis is often done of material from the early stages of the reduction process, there have nonetheless been some diagnostically identifiable types excavated from well-sealed and dated contexts. Some of the lithics from Stélida are consistent in their form and modification with artifacts from other well-dated Mesolithic and Lower to Upper Palaeolithic sites in Greece and Anatolia. There is also known Middle Palaeolithic activity at Stélida identified from diagnostic prepared core technology. This means that some of the anthropogenic (human-modified) material found here can be securely dated to the time when Neanderthals were living in Europe. But what the newly published evidence from Stélida tells us is that it is possible there were other hominid species quarrying and using Stélida chert even earlier. For instance, there is potential evidence for Lower Palaeolithic activity at Stélida in the form of possible bifaces that could be interpreted as handaxes. It is plausible that these large heavy tools could have been made by Homo heidelbergensis, the predecessor of the Neanderthals in Europe. The possibility for evidence of these early hominids living on what are now the Cycladic Islands has not been seriously investigated before—until now.

Activity Patterns and Behavior

As an archaeologist, I was interested in knowing if the SNAP team had come across any patterns in the evidence they were revealing. Were similar types of artifacts found in the different trenches? Or do the artifacts suggest different periods of use in different areas of the Stélida hillside? As I corresponded with Carter, he told me that “for the most part we [the SNAP project team] seem to be finding a lot of similar stuff across the site” but noted, however, that “there are some greater concentrations of certain periods”. So the team has identified that generally, similar types of lithic material are found across the hillside, with some concentrations demonstrating more intensive use at certain locations during certain periods. For instance, surface surveys have uncovered more Middle and Lower Palaeolithic material from the areas toward the summit of the hill in front of two identified rock shelters and in the vicinity of the coast at the bottom of the hill, than in other areas. From the evidence uncovered in the excavation trenches the Mesolithic is best represented by the materials uncovered at the top of the Stélida hill, Upper Palaeolithic material is found “everywhere”, and Middle Palaeolithic evidence found below the summit and in the middle of the hill’s slope (although intermixed with later material). Interestingly, the loose concentration of excavated Middle Palaeolithic material comes from an area associated with both a rock shelter and an ancient spring.

Carter revealed another fascinating observation. “The work of my colleague Dr. Dora Moutsiou suggests that there are hints of raw material preferences through time.”—With this statement, he suggests that the evidence from Stélida may show that particular types of chert may have been preferred by different hominins at different times. Middle Palaeolithic materials are more often the slightly grainy grey and orange cherts sourced from around Stélida’s Rock Shelter A (basically an area of collapsed rocks upslope from a spring) and further north on the hill, while the Upper Palaeolithic and Mesolithic materials are more often made of the lustrous white-blue chert sourced from the southern summit of Stélida. The suggestion therefore is that when they visited Stélida to quarry, Neanderthals were looking for grainy grey-orange chert and, later, Homo sapiens were looking for smooth white-blue chert. Perhaps this was part of the prehistoric oral history of Stélida – passing down through generations not only what the landscape was like and how to get there, but what sort of stone tool making materials would be found once they arrived.

The assemblage excavated by SNAP from Stélida is comprised exclusively of lithics due to the highly alkaline nature of the hills’ calcareous soil. The only location so far excavated by SNAP that may produce information about any organic presence on the hillside in the prehistoric period comes from a trench located in front of Rock Shelter B. But Carter clarified for me that “we are not permitted at present to excavate inside the two shelters […] as that falls under jurisdiction of a different bureau of the Greek Ministry of Culture”. The trench just outside of Rock Shelter B contained traces of in situ hearths that may be of Upper Palaeolithic date. According to Carter the fauna from this context is microscopic and is being investigated by a specialist in sedimentary aDNA analysis (a technique to identify evidence of animals and plants via extracted traces of aDNA from soil samples) at the McMaster University ancient DNA laboratory. It is hoped that this innovative technique will expose another facet of what the environment was like at Stélida in the Palaeolithic. Tantalizingly, Carter stated that some of the plant remains from the potential hearths “might be material for matting [or] fuel”. There will be more to come on this once the data is published.

__________________________

Aerial view of Trench DG-A/001 (or ‘Trench 1’). Evaggelos Tzoumenekas

__________________________

Team member Irina Kajtez (Belgrade University) excavating Trench 1 (DG-A/001) in 2015. Rachit Srivastava

__________________________

Shannon Crewson (McMaster University undergraduate in 2015) documenting the excavation of Trench 3 (DG-A/003) in 2015. Rachit Srivastava

__________________________

Ioanna Aslamatzidi (undergraduate Athens University) and Hanna Erftenbeck (PhD candidate Note Dame University) screen for finds on Stelida, 2017. Jason Lau

__________________________

Justin Holcomb (co-author and PhD candidate Boston University) takes and prepares a soil sample from the lower levels of DG-A/001 (‘Trench 1’) for micromorphological studies to understand the development of the deep archaeological sequence. Jason Lau

__________________________

Geological hand sample of Stelida chert. Nikos Skarpelis

__________________________

Beatrice Fletcher (PhD candidate McMaster University) studies a stone tool from the excavations, 2015. Rachit Srivastava

__________________________

Implications: A Shifting Paradigm

When the Stélida area was first reached by hominins the landscape would have been much different than what we see today. Scientific investigations into the ancient environment suggest that the modern islands of Naxos and Paros were joined with others as part of one great island known as the ‘Cycladean Island’ during the glacial maximum (the stage of the Ice Age when the maximum amount of sea water was trapped in glaciers). Paleogeographic reconstructions of the area indicate that during the interglacial periods of the Quarternary (the time period from 2.59 million years ago to the present), sea levels may have been low enough to expose a land bridge between the Greek and Anatolian peninsulas that would have resembled a wetland environment rich in resources. One can envision that tens of thousands of years ago when hominins and anatomically modern humans climbed the hill at Stélida to reach the chert outcrops they would have been looking out over a green, grassy plain, an estuary or even a lagoon, with the sea many kilometers away. It is likely that they were not only attracted to the great Cycladean Island for the Naxian emery, chert at Stélida, or the basalt and obsidian of the nearby island of Melos, but equally for the hunting and foraging opportunities provided by the surrounding wetland environment.

The average person with an average lifespan would find it difficult to fathom a time span of 1 million years. This is the amount of time that has passed since hominins first moved into Europe from Africa, during the Lower Palaeolithic and before anatomically modern humans had even evolved. There is no current way to know if Stélida or somewhere else in the vicinity was a location used for long-term habitation during the Palaeolithic. Due to the nature of the site and the material record available for dating, precise dates for the exploitation events at the chert source are not possible. It is unclear whether the use of the site in the Lower to Middle Paleolithic was intermittent, opportunistic or consistent. Nevertheless, the archaeological material being uncovered suggests that Stélida was a place hominins and anatomically modern humans came back to again and again to extract chert. The question remains: how did they get there?

Early Mariners?

It has always been assumed that these early hominin explorers of Europe were not able to make boats (even the most basic) and so could never have traversed large bodies of water like seas. However, the current evidence from the Palaeolithic environment models tell us that there would not have been large bodies of water to cross in the region of Naxos. At worst, the crossings would have been much smaller, with hominins likely seeing the next landfall within sight of their point of origin. Tides would still have had an effect and at different periods in prehistory the depth and width of the water being crossed would have varied depending on the total glaciation. If water crossing was necessary (as opposed to land bridges) the craft fashioned by the early quarriers may not have resembled what we think of as boats today, but clearly they were effective in allowing Stélida to be accessed again and again for hundreds of thousands of years. The results from SNAP can therefore be described as ground-breaking evidence for alternative route-ways for Homo sapiens and their ancient predecessors’ movements from Asia into Europe.

With this, the possibility of pre-sapiens accessing locations like Stélida triggers a new understanding of what these hominins may have been capable of cognitively. This includes the capacity to communicate complex ideas through shared language, perhaps the construction of vessels to carry them across bodies of water, an understanding of the moon and tides, likely the ability to identify landmarks and return to a site previously visited and/or to follow directions passed on from another, and the ability to navigate a landscape and environment quite different from those elsewhere in Eurasia. To support such a fundamental shift in our understanding of pre-sapien hominin capabilities, a robust data set and sample size that can be scientifically dated from a clearly stratified excavation, like Stélida, is required.

The SNAP excavations and analysis has revealed the first stratified, large, and well-dated Pleistocene lithic assemblage from the Cyclades that allows for the assertion that hominin and anatomically modern human dispersals into Europe traversed through areas, like the Aegean Basin, that have been previously viewed as inaccessible. The team suggests that instead of a single route into Europe from the Anatolian peninsula it is more likely that pre-sapiens and anatomically modern humans took a variety of routes for a variety of reasons. Until now there has been no robust evidence for Middle Pleistocene cultural activity in the central Aegean; Neanderthals and earlier hominins were thought to have been present only on either side of the region, continental Greece and the Anatolian peninsula. Now, new evidence suggests that the Aegean Basin region was open for consistent use by hominins throughout the Palaeolithic.

_____________________________

Location of Stélida archaeological site and hypothesized hominin dispersal routes: 1, Stelida; 2, Rodafnidia; 3, Karaburun; and 4, Plakias. Base map modified from Lykousis 2009 (22). Figure by J.H.

_____________________________

Reconstruction of prehistoric spearheads hypothesized to have been made from stone material at Stélida – of Lower, Middle and Upper Palaeolithic, plus Mesolithic date (L-R). Kathryn Killackey

_____________________________

Select artifacts from Stélida. Flakes unless otherwise noted. a, scraper; b, backed flake; c, bladelet; d, piercer; e, piercer on blade-like flake; f, piercer; g, combined tool (burin and scraper on chunk); h, nosed scraper; i, combined tool (inverse scraper/denticulate/notch); j, denticulate (LU5); k, flake; l, denticulated blade-like flake (LU7); m, piercer; n, denticulate; o, denticulate; p, piercer; q, combined tool (linear retouch/denticulate); r, scraper; s, convergent denticulate (Tayac point); t, blade; u, scraper; v, denticulate; w, linear retouch; x, tranchet; and y, blade-like flake (LU6). Photographed by J. Lau and modified and page set by N. Thompson.

_____________________________

Moving Forward

The SNAP team will be returning to Stélida for another season of excavation in 2020, with continued support from the Canadian Institute in Greece for a new five-year research permit from the Greek Ministry of Culture. Carter plans to return to some very deep (4.5 m) trenches that were opened in previous seasons to obtain further dates, and to start some new excavation trenches in areas of the hillside that may contain less disturbed deposits. The positioning of the new trenches is based on a detailed topographic analysis, says Carter: “We used drone photography to produce a 5 cm resolution digital elevation model and using that with GIS to reconstruct micro-watersheds, and interrogate artifact distribution”. Further work will also be done at the summit of Stélida, but Carter is currently tight-lipped about additional new discoveries the team has been making there — a clue that Stélida will continue to reveal new boundary-pushing evidence of early hominin and anatomically modern human activity in the Aegean.

Read the latest report on the Stélida excavations in Science Advances.

___________________________

SNAP team photo 2019, with young scholars and students from Canada, Greece, England, France, Serbia and the US. Valerie Seferis

___________________________

When one hears the name Pontius Pilate, an indelible image comes to mind: the infamous tunic-and-toga cladded Roman prefect of Jerusalem who played a salient role in the judgment, conviction and crucifixion of Jesus. Though this remains the popular depiction of the man, scholarship and archaeology has, over the years, painted a more complex portrait of this, the Roman Emperor’s official representative to the ancient city. He was also a governor assigned the thankless task of negotiating and, at times ruthlessly, managing volatile and resistant, adversarial groups within the population.

_____________________________

_____________________________

And like King Herod the Great himself, he was also, albeit to a lesser degree, a builder.

So suggests the findings of a recent study published by Nahshon Szanton, Moran Hagbi, Joe Uziel and Donald T. Ariel in Tel Aviv: Journal of the Institute of Archaeology of Tel Aviv University, which details new excavation findings that lead researchers to conclude that a street in Jerusalem leading to the Temple Mount, the largest urban building project in Jerusalem in antiquity, was constructed under Pilate’s governance.

Prior Excavations

Excavations on what has been called the ‘stepped street’ actually began in the late 19^th century. Since then, numerous researchers have attempted to find answers to research questions, including the timeframe of the street’s construction. Historically, one consensus suggests the time range between Herod and his grandson, Herod Agrippa—which places the construction timeline anywhere between 37BCE and 66CE.

There have been a total of fourteen excavations on the stepped street since 1867, with each new dig unveiling more of the street’s history. The first two excavations, ranging approximately from 1867 to 1897, revealed a drainage channel that ran the course of the street, appearing in both excavations in different areas of the site. The street has been traced from the southern gate near the Siloam Pool north to the Temple Mount. Material evidence from a 2007-8 excavation conducted by Onn yielded ceramics within the pavement that provided a secure date within the 1^st Century CE. Years later in 2011, Shukron recovered two ritual baths—one next to the Western Wall, and one further north—which contained coins that could be dated between 17/18 CE and 24/25CE in the first bath, and 5/6 CE during the rule of Augustus in the second bath.

According to new data, however, researchers have been able to narrow down the street’s construction significantly. The new data suggests construction on the stepped street began after 17/8 CE, and that the project was completed after 30/1 CE and no later than 41/2 CE……….

Current Excavations

Since 2013, two excavations have exposed elements related to the stepped street. The first location was at the southern extent of the Tyropean Valley, exposed from the Siloam Pool for a length of 220m. This area has been designated Area S. Here, the excavation team has discovered that the street measures approximately 7.5m wide, with 0.6m curb stones that have been finely carved from limestone, making the street wider than 8m when the curb is included. Artifacts recovered beneath a thick destruction layer above the street feature include pottery sherds, glass, metal, and—most interestingly—coins dating to the days of the First Jewish Revolt. This means that the street was destroyed and no longer used after 70 CE. Probes were dug in several locations beneath the street pavement, yielding more material evidence providing a terminus post quem for the construction of the street.  A total of 22 coins were found in three probes, with the most recent coin dating back to 30/1 CE during the rule of Pontius Pilate.

At a second location, 360m north of Area S, archaeologists excavated the southwest corner of the Temple Mount. Alternating layers of fill yielded pottery, glass, animal bones, and coins dated back to the 1^st Century CE. Three chambers along the wall that measured 2m x 2m were also excavated in this area, which contained pottery—including a tall stand dating to the 1^st Century CE—animal bones, charcoal, and more coins. There were 79 coins found in these fills, with the most recent dating back to the rule of Tiberius, approximately 17/8 CE to 24/5 CE. The walls were built before the street; we know this because the coins in the construction fill of the drainage system match with the coins found beneath the street.

The study presented by Szanton, Hagbi, Uziel and Ariel (noted above) presents evidence that backs up previous claims that the street’s construction took place in the 1^st Century CE. The most recent data presented in this study places the terminus post quem at 30/1 CE. The excavation of 101 coins made reevaluating the dating possible, allowing researchers to narrow down the date of construction even further. Based on their findings, the researchers argue that the construction of the stepped street had to be attributed to the governing prefect prior to Agrippa I. This would be a prefect under Tiberius’ rule. Since there were many prefects in Jerusalem at different times, it is nearly impossible to say for certain the exact prefect stationed in the city at the time of the street construction as there are no written records to confirm. However, the current consensus among researchers is that the street was built under Pontius Pilate’s rule.

__________________________

Location map, marking excavation sites. D. Levi, IAA; printed by permission of the Survey of Israel.

__________________________

The pavement of the street and the solid foundation that was exposed in a place where no paving stones were preserved. A. Peretz, IAA

__________________________

View of the foundations of the Western Wall (left) and the retaining wall that abutted it, built on bedrock (below). To the right are the constructive layers that filled the support system. M. Hagbi, IAA

__________________________

Pontius Pilate the Builder

Pontius Pilate was the most prominent prefect during the beginning of construction (17/8 CE-24/5 CE) as well as its completion (40/1 CE). We know the street’s construction was completed prior to 40/1 CE because of the lack of coins minted by Agrippa I, who would have minted coins starting in 40/1 CE. Therefore, the street’s construction must have been completed no more than between 30 CE and 40 CE. This also means that the construction would have begun in the 20s. There are two dates that are debated as the start of Pilate’s reign: 19 CE, and 26 CE. However, the range of construction dates proposed by the researchers matches both contested dates of the start of Pilate’s reign, which further supports the contention that the street was built under his rule. In addition to this, Pilate had a history of building projects with his name attached. Although the archaeological evidence is still scant compared to that of Herod’s building projects, in addition to the street, the construction of the aqueduct has also been attributed to the Roman prefect, as was the construction of the Tiberieum in Caesarea. Thus it can be argued that the stepped street is the second Jerusalem building project to be attributed to a Roman governor, along with the aqueduct, both of which can be attributed to Pilate.

___________________________

A single inscription by Pilate has survived at the ancient site of Caesarea, on the so-called “Pilate Stone”. The (partially reconstructed) inscription is as follows: “Tiberium [?of the Caesareans?] Pontius Pilate, Prefect of Judea [ .. has given?]”.  The stone attests to Pilate’s title of prefect and the inscription appears to refer to a building called a Tiberieum at Caesarea. Wikimedia Commons, Public Domain Image

Model of the City of David, in the south of the Old City of Jerusalem, where the stepped street was constructed passing near the Siloam Pool close to where archaeologists excavated and exposed a portion of the street. Berthold Werner, Wikimedia Commons public domain image

___________________________

Exposed portion of the stepped Pool of Siloam. Abraham, Wikimedia Commons public domain image

___________________________

Keeping the Peace

While depictions of the prefect are typically quite negative in the historical sources, Pilate’s history of building projects and reign in Jerusalem suggest a man who was clearly a loyal officer of Rome and Caesar, and who strove for stability in the province for which he was responsible. The construction of the aqueduct and the large stepped street were building improvement projects likely meant to glorify Jerusalem by introducing quality architecture from the Roman world. In the case of the stepped street, Pilate constructed a convenient road for the people of Jerusalem to travel on going to and from the Temple Mount from the southern gate of the city by the Siloam Pool, thus making the trek to their place of worship easier. 

Though Pilate could arguably be placed on the list of the world’s great villains, one could also make a case that he was also doing what any Roman prefect in an occupied community would have been tasked to do—keeping the peace in any way he could.

What we see is not always what we expect, whether it is natural or man-made. This is often true with archaeological remains of cities or human settlement, when new discoveries shed unexpected light on old finds, leaving new questions in their wake. Chichén Itzá, the great ancient Maya city in Mexico’s Yucatán Peninsula, is a good case in point. Well-known to thousands of visitors world-wide, it is a place popularly thought to have been thoroughly explored and revealed.

Or so we may think……

At spring and fall equinoxes as it moves from east to west, the sun plays with the angles of the northeast stairway of  Chichén Itzá’s Kukulcán pyramid, called El Castillo in Spanish. The course of the sun projects the shadows of the corners of the pyramid onto the vertical northeast face of the stairway balustrade, giving the visual impression of the body of an undulating serpent slowly crawling down toward its stone head at the bottom.

Thousands of tourists gather on the Grand Plaza to witness the event. They come to share in a communal spirit that transcends time and culture. In our time of extraordinary changes in science and technology, unimaginable only twenty years ago, people still search for mythical answers to contradictions and mysteries in a swiftly moving world.

__________________________

The Kukulcan Spring Equinox shadow.

__________________________

The Shadow and the Equinox

For the ancient Maya, the Kukulcán pyramid was representative of the four-sided temple-mountain, or the fourfold partitioning of the world. The name of its deity is a Maya-Yucatec translation from the name Quetzalcoatl in the nahuatl language. It translates as “Quetzal feathered serpent”, whose religious concept came from Tula, in central Mexico. The record shows that the ideology spread throughout Mesoamarica by the Late Maya Classic period (600-950AD).

Kukulcán is believed to represent the Creation Mountain, with its Feathered Serpents’ head and mouth agape at the base of both balustrades of the north stairway. The serpent symbol, in Maya iconography, appears profusely on numerous stone stelae, temple columns and painted ceramics. The shedding of the serpent’s skin was understood as the renewal of time and life through nature’s repeated cycles. This perception explains why the serpent symbol, attached to both life and death events, is so widespread throughout the ancient cultures of the Americas, and beyond.

_________________________

The Temple-Pyramid of Kukulcan

_________________________

The temple-pyramid is not cardinally oriented, although mythologically, it sits at the center of time and space. The pyramid’s corners are lined up on a northeast-southwest axis toward the rising sun at the summer equinox, and its setting point at the winter equinox, making Kukulcán a monumental sun dial for the solar year. Each of the temple-pyramid’s 52 panels contained in its nine terraced levels equal the number of years in the Maya and Toltec agrarian calendars. The nine levels are reminders of the nine steps to Xibalba, the underworld. Above all, Kukulcán is an instrument dedicated to the deities of nature and their role in the repeated night-day alternations, and in life and death. 

The main doorway of the outer temple at the top of the pyramid opens to the north. The four stairways ascending the pyramid, one on each side, have 91 steps each, totaling 364 steps that, with the temple at the top, constitute the 365 days of the solar year, the haab’, in Maya. The north stairway is the main sacred path, and it is on its northeast balustrade that the sun casts the triangular shadows. Of note is the fact that, in Maya culture, north equals the departure of the power of nature and anchors the sun in culture. It is a metaphor associated with understanding mankind’s burden and commitment in the universe.

The Great Plaza, Kukulcán and the Primordial Sea

The Great Plaza that surrounds El Castillo on four sides is part of the New Chichén (900-1500AD), a portrayal of the Primordial Sea of Creation from which, according to Maya tradition, all life sprung at the beginning of time. The plaza’s north side, on which Kukulcán is built, was also the area where major ceremonies took place. It is bordered by the Venus Platform, close to that of the Jaguars and Eagle Warriors. Behind it is the massive skull rack, or tzompantli in Nahuatl; it is 164 feet long by 40 feet wide and may be the second largest in Mexico. On the skull rack was a scaffold-like construction of wood poles built over the stone structure, on which hundreds of skulls of war captives and sacrificial victims were displayed anciently.

On the east side of the Great Plaza is the massive Temple of the Warriors, and the no less important Ball Court to the west—the largest in the Americas, it is 552 feet long by 300 feet wide, with walls that rise 20 feet. The Great Plaza was enclosed by a wall over seven feet high, with a limited number of guarded entrances, among which is the one leading to the sacred well, the sacbeh.1 or “white road”; there are over 34 sacbeob (plural for sacbeh), in Chichén. Most buildings are oriented 17 degrees off true north; Kukulcán is 23 degrees off.

_____________________________

The Great Plaza at Chichén Itzá 

_____________________________   

Chichén Itza’s Spiritual Gateways

Two other portals, or spiritual gateways, are linked to the temple-pyramid; one natural, the other man-made. The first is the huge sacred cenote, or sink hole, referred to as the “Great Well of the Itza”. This natural well was not used for domestic purposes, but exclusively for rituals. It is reached by the large elevated sacbeh.1, heading 900 feet northward from the Great Plaza and the Venus Platform. The cenote was believed to be the place of communication with the gods of Xibalba, the “Place of Awe”, or underworld, as well as with Cha’ak, the powerful Maya god of rain, lightning and thunder.

The second gateway was the ballcourt where, in accordance with the Maya-Kichè sacred book, the Popol Vuh or Book of Counsel, men and deities of the underworld battle for supremacy, for one or the other team in the real world during ritual ballgames. According to Maya tradition, it is only when ritual games with the deities of the underworld interface simultaneously with a game in the world above that interaction between the two worlds, or field of opposites, was believed to take place. There was no interaction with the deities of the underworld during secular or common games.

The seasons and the metronomic passage of heavenly bodies were understood by the Maya as essential markers to alleviate anxieties of daily life by their repeated familiarity. Their transit through both day and night is enshrined in belief structures and ceremonies spanning thousands of generations. After all, the Maya believed that the sun did not set, but continued its course as the “black sun” at night, to gloriously rise again the following morning. Most ancient monuments are also associated with this spiritual view of the world, essential to carrying out the secular and spiritual functions of cultures.

The Cenote of Sacrifice, the First Gateway

The sacred well is oval shaped (164 feet by 200 feet). From its lip to the water the drop is 72 feet and its depth is 65 feet; there is a bed of mud about 20 feet thick at the bottom.

_________________________

The Well of Sacrifice

_________________________

In one of the rooms of the structure built on the lip of the Well of Sacrifice was the temazcal, or steam bath, to purify sacrificial victims to Cha’ak, god of rain and thunder, and its deities. Gifts were of precious jade and gold, fine ceramics—and human lives—as human remains found at its bottom testify. Noteworthy is the absence of Toltec material in the cenote. Each offering was made in accordance with the needs of the time and the demands of the gods. The archaeological record shows that human sacrifices were of both gender and of any age. In time of dire needs such as a persistent drought, a community would sacrifice its best, not the sickly or the maimed. Sacrificed victims had to be able and in their prime and, the younger the better, for Cha’ak would not accept anything less.

Fundamentals in Maya Belief Structure

The socio-economic organization of ancient Maya communities was based on agriculture, grounded in two seasons at that latitude, which meant two harvests. Hence the Maya belief structure and religious organization that adhered to their seasonal and daily partnership with nature. The gods and deities from their pantheon were those driving the fundamentals of nature they knew: the sun, rain and the vegetable world.

These fundamentals are enshrined in the Popol Vuh, which describes the creation of the universe by the gods who, after failing four times, succeeded in creating mankind out of maize dough. Above all, concurrently with the deities, ancestors were believed to participate at every stage of family daily life and, for this reason, were prominent recipients in self-sacrifice ceremonies. 

The serpent sculpted on monuments at Chichén Itzá and other ancient Mesoamerican and Mexican sites is a metaphor. It was perceived that its body as it moves is comparable to the swirls of smoke after a self-sacrifice by members of the nobility or the priesthood, when a person’s blood falls on bark paper that is then burned. The swirling smoke was then believed to carry the prayers of the supplicant to ancestors and deities, seeking their guidance for living another day in a dangerous world. In ceremonies today, copal nodules, known as pom in Maya-Kichè, are used instead of human blood. Copal, copalli in Nahuatl, is a resin obtained from the sap of tropical trees, believed to be the equivalent of the “blood” for the vegetal world.               

Planting and harvesting were therefore essential daily concerns, together with the weather—rain specifically—because its delay or limited downpour could translate into a bad crop, or no crop at all, and its consequences: famine, death, and the return of anguish and fear. The milpero’s (farmer’s) profound mystical relationship to corn’s mythological substance, and not just its use for actual sustenance, to this day results in a way of life entirely alien to non-traditional communities.

The Great Ball Court, the Second Gateway

The second portal at Chichén is the man-made spiritual gateway, the Great Ball Court, located on the west side of the Plaza together with the Temple of the Jaguars. For the ancient Maya, ball courts, through specific ritual games, were believed to open into the “other world.” This “opening”, however, could only take place during a ritual fateful game destined to end in sacrifice. The deities of Xibalba, the underworld, did not play unless a ritual contest took place above ground at the same time. It is only when the ritual games were concurrent in this world and the “other” that the interplay between the participants in the two worlds were believed to materialize. The metaphor that took place in the ballcourt reflected the tribulations of life and death that define human struggle and tragedy.

Through history the universal use of games for secular and ritual reasons underlines the same need for maintaining peace and balance within communities. Essential to ritual games, and to a certain extent secular games as well, was the need to keep in check latent antagonism between factions of the same polity, as well as between polities.

_________________________

The Great Ball Court

_________________________

The concept of Kukulcán, or “Feathered Serpent,” dates to the Maya Late Classic Period (600-900AD), when the serpent was known as waxaklahun ubah’kan. In Guatemala the deity was called Guqumatz by the Maya-Kichè, but was an evil monstrous snake, the pet of the sun god, with the Maya-Lacandón. Kukulcán is also the Maya name for the god of agriculture, wind, and storms. He also appears in Postclassic period (900-1500AD), as the Vision Serpent. The god came in the early 7^th century with the Toltecs that migrated from Tula. The record shows a long history with Teotihuacán and Tula, on the central plateau of Mexico.

The Maya were already trading with cities of central Mexico with the concurrent exchange of technologies and beliefs inherent with such contacts. Toltec groups migrated sporadically to the Yucatán throughout the 6^th century and possibly earlier. Together with Maya-Chontal, called the Itzá that came from Ppolè on the Yucatán’s south coast, they united their forces at Cobá, about 62 miles on the connecting sacbeh to Yaxuná, and 13 miles from Chichén, with those of the Toltecs. From there, they conquered Chichén Itzá in 987. This event is recorded as “the great descent.”

The Mexicans introduced human sacrifice on a scale unknown before by the Maya. Their military expansion aimed at dominating the surrounding land and people, together with control of the important salt trade and sea routes around the peninsula. Their main anchor on Isla Cerito gave them and their allies command of the Yucatán coastal trade routes. Meanwhile in the countryside Maya gods and deities remained mostly unchanged, since the cult of Toltec deities centered in large towns and cities.

The First Pyramid and the Cenote Within

Chichén Itzá today is not the city that was conceptualized by the Maya before the arrival of the Toltec-Itzá invaders. Long before it was called Uuc Yab’nal (the city’s name in Maya-Yucatec). In the early 1950s investigations brought to light a smaller pyramid of nine terraced levels within Kukulcán. Building a larger structure over a smaller one was common practice in the Maya and other Mesoamerican cultures. The was because the first structure was believed to be saturated with ancestor power that could not be denied through destruction or return to nature through demolition or decay, under pain of failure of the new generation and its ultimate demise.

The single stairway of the buried temple faces northwest; it has 61 steps and a temple on top with two parallel galleries. There is a triple molding on its façade and a frieze showing a parade of jaguars, shields and two intertwined serpents over the entrance. The similarities between the two pyramids indicate that the one within may also be of Toltec origin.

In the antechamber of the inner temple archaeologists found a red jaguar that may have served as a throne for the High Priest. On the seat was an offering of a turquoise mosaic disk. The jaguar is painted red on limestone; the teeth are made of flint, and there are incrustations of fine jade disks for its eyes and on its body, for the animal’s spots.

________________________

The Red Jaguar Throne. HJPD, Wikimedia Commons: Photo created in
1970; Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported (CC BY-SA).

________________________

In 1958 a cenote and a cave were found 50 feet below the pyramids; the discovery was sealed off from the outside world, probably for lack of resources for further exploration at the time. The cenote and the cave system were “re-discovered” during the ongoing research program of the “Great Maya Aquifer”, and “Chichén Itzá Underground” research programs, approved in 2016. The 1500-foot long cave is called Balamkú, or “God Jaguar” in Maya, but its ancient name is unknown. The jaguar is a central figure in Mesoamerican and other mythologies of the Americas because of the belief in the animal’s ability to enter and leave the underworld at will.

Balamkú remained sealed for more than 50 years after its discovery; it was reopened in 2018 by National Geographic’s Explorer Guillermo de Anda and his team of investigators from the Great Maya Aquifer Project (GAM), during their search for the extent of the water table beneath Chichén Itzá. Exploration of the system was funded in part by a grant from the National Geographic Society, and in cooperation with the University of California at Los Angeles.

Thus far, over 170 ceramic bi-conical censers were found in seven small rooms carved from the limestone, identified as those of the Toltec god Tlaloc. The ceramics are dated from the Late Classic (700-800AD) to the Terminal Classic (800-1000AD). This important discovery will no doubt help rewrite Chichén Itzá’s history.

_______________________

Tlaloc Bi-Conical Censers

_______________________

INAH-GAM archaeologist Guillermo de Anda suggests that Balamkú appears to be the “mother” of Balankanchè cave, 1.5 miles away. “I don’t want to say that quantity is more important than information,” he states, “but when you see that there are many, many offerings in a cave that is also much more difficult to access, this tells us something.” Archaeologists now have the opportunity to answer some of the most perplexing questions that continue to stir controversy among mayanists, such as the level of contacts and influence exchanged between different Mesoamerican cultures, and what was going on in the Maya world prior to the fall of Chichén Itzá.

Chichén Yet to be Discovered

Then as today, traditions were comparable to those seen on more recent temple-pyramids, which symbolically show the same concern for life’s daily predicaments, and societies’ dependence on agriculture. Was the serpent’s shadow also seen on equinoxes on the now-hidden pyramid within Kukulcán? We do not know. The sun’s shadow, as seen on the more recent structure may not have been visible then, given its smaller size and angle of the buried structure.

There will be much more to be said about Chichén Itzá, since much is still hidden, as work on the Balamkú cave has attested. Furthermore, excavation programs in the Great Plaza, initiated in 2009, revealed buried structures that pre-date Kukulcán. By 2009 we already knew about the pyramid within. Puzzling discoveries and wonders are certain to continue. Mysteries remain: What else does Chichén Itzá, and its great pyramid hold? What happened to Kukulcán after the defeat of Chichen Itza by Unac Ceel, ruler of Mayapan in the 13^th century? The deity moved with the conqueror to the new Maya political epicenter, 65 miles to the west; but that is another story.

_________________________

Great Plaza Discoveries

_________________________

This narrative is only a glimpse of the ancient city’s complex history. Understanding the questions about its great past will take more “stories” and, no doubt, new interpretations in light of ongoing discoveries. As well, other major monuments of the ancient city can be presented together with their history and purpose, from Old Chichén, to the Observatory (or Caracol), the Temple of the Warriors, Temple of the Three Lintels, the common well Xtoloc or “iguana”, the Chinchán-Chob or Red House, the Osario and its cenote below, and the Nunnery that together with the Akab-Dzib, are among the oldest buildings, and much more.

Stay tuned for more to come.

__________________________

__________________________