Exploring heaven on earth: testing the cosmological model at La Milpa, Belize. (News & Notes).

Exploring heaven on earth: testing the cosmological model at La Milpa, Belize. (News & Notes). Two years ago, we reported the discovery of two outlying minorcentres, La Milpa West and La Milpa North (LMW LMW Low-Molecular-WeightLMW Licensed Manufacturing WarehouseLMW Littoral and Mine WarfareLMW Lead Mobility WingLMW Limited Manufacturer WarrantyLMW Low-Water MarkLMW LanMan WorkstationLMW Level of Maximum WindLMW Local Minority Woman Owned Company , LMN LMNlower motor neuron. ) in locationspredicted by a model based on prior knowledge of the La Milpa East andSouth (LME See London Metal Exchange. LMESee London Metal Exchange (LME). , LMS) centres (Tourtellot et al. 2000). LME and LMS werefound during systematic surface mapping of settlement transectsorientated in those cardinal directions from the civic core of the largeClassic Maya city of La Milpa in northwestern Belize (Tourtellot et al.1993). Both were 3.5 km from the Great Plaza and set upon elevationshigh enough to be intervisible with activities on the top of the largestpyramid, Structure 1, in the absence of hilltop forest growth (FIGURE1). [FIGURE 1 OMITTED] These four cardinally positioned and equidistant e��qui��dis��tant?adj.Equally distant.equi��distance n. groups, three ofthem with a large plaza, absence of obvious dwellings, a small pyramid,and LME at least with a plain stela (Stela 19, still in situ), suggesteda cruciform cruciform/cru��ci��form/ (kroo��si-form) cross-shaped. cruciformcross-shaped. spatial organization of ritual groups overlying overlyingsuffocation of piglets by the sow. The piglets may be weak from illness or malnutrition, the sow may be clumsy or ill, the pen may be inadequate in size or poorly designed so that piglets cannot escape. the workinglandscape of La Milpa's dense settlement and landscape engineeringof agricultural terraces, berms and water-management features (for whichsee www.bu.edu/lamilpa). Such a design could be designated ascosmological in both origin and function (cf. Coggins 1980 for aprescient application on a smaller scale): we surmised that a late rulerhad utilized the deforested landscape with its enhanced viewshed toimpose on the city a cardinally oriented quincuncial Maya cosmogram,consisting of the pre-existing La Milpa central precinct with its GreatPlaza and tall pyramids, and four new outliers each with its own plaza,three with freestanding small pyramids and LMN with its pyramidsandwiched between two palace courtyards. The dominant east-west axis,tracking the path of the sun, and that between the northern and southernoutliers representing the heavens and the underworld respectively, wereboth 7 km long, crossing in the Great Plaza. We could not, however, avoid the possibility that these discoverieswere serendipitous, and that numerous surrounding hilltops supportedsimilar groups of structures in an arbitrary, topographically determinedmanner: nor could we ignore two alternative structured models, one inwhich intercardinal minor centres formed a more complex cosmogram(FIGURE 2), the other of a ceremonial circuit, not necessarily regularlyspaced or on the highest points, of hilltop shrines, like the notedethnographic example documented by Vogt (1969) at Zinacantan, Chiapas. [FIGURE 2 OMITTED] Our 2002 season thus included a Hill Survey outside our previouslymapped transects and Survey Blocks (together covering some 6% of theestimated settlement zone) to test these hypotheses. We began with alist of at least 42 target hills noted from satellite imagery andtopographic maps, and investigated these and more than 20 others; but wedid not succeed in falsifying or complicating our initial hypothesis. Nosimilar substantial pyramid-plaza groups lay on other hilltops, and inmany cases the residential groups present were surprisingly small. We relocated the `lost' Say Ka (Guderjan 1991: 73) group, 4 kmeast-southeast of its alleged position. It lacks a pyramid and lies welloff the southeast half-cardinal axis and joins a class of often elegantcourtyard groups (`mini-palaces') that lack pyramids, which mayhave been local control facilities at a level below the palace and noblehouses of La Milpa Centre. Such a secondary tier of local controlcomprises Plaza Plan 2 and other large house groups which are welldistributed across the community: the three found in 2002 brings thetotal to 18. Identified by pyramids on their eastern sides (probablyancestor shrines of leading lineages), PP2 groups correlate well withhill shoulders and sub-maximal altitudes, placing them in anadvantageous position between hill and valley resources and settlement.LME, LMW and LMS are PP2s, but are exceptionally placed on the veryhighest hilltops, intervisible with the Great Plaza pyramids. Furtherexcavations by Estella Weiss-Krejci (University of Vienna HistoryThe University was founded on March 12, 1365 by Duke Rudolph IV and his brothers Albert III and Leopold III, hence the additional name "Alma Mater Rudolphina". After the Charles University in Prague, the University of Vienna is the second oldest university in Central ) at LMErecovered more water management features and confirmed Early Classic (c.AD 400) activities there. LMS had much Preclassic pottery and LMW wasapparently unfinished. The four outliers of the cosmogram had variablehistories before their incorporation into the final grand design. Two of the most complex PP2 groups near the site core, which wereexcavated, had masonry-vaulted buildings and particularly fine`domestic' artefacts (FIGURE 3) dating to the Late/TerminalClassic, c. AD 800. Earlier ceramics of the Late Preclassic (300 BC-AD250) indicate these loci were among those first occupied by pioneers andremained important throughout their histories. Soil sampling indicatesdeep rich garden soils around them. We propose that people in PP2sserved as social and organizational intermediaries between the ruler andordinary farmers, while the cosmogram groups were disembedded from localconcerns and formed a centrally conceived and imposed grand design oftranscendent rather than sublunary sub��lu��na��ry? also sub��lu��naradj.1. Situated beneath the moon.2. Of this world; earthly.[Late Latin subl function. [FIGURE 3 OMITTED] Acknowledgements. We appreciate the help of Mr George Thompson,Acting Archaeological Commissioner of Belize, Mr Herbert Haylock ofProgramme for Belize, and Professor Fred Valdez, Jr. Funding for the LaMilpa Archaeological Project (LaMAP) was provided by Boston Universityand by generous gifts from Dr Raymond and Mrs Beverly Sackler and MissMary Ann Harrell. We are grateful for the varied contributions of DrFrancisco Estrada-Belli (to whom LaMAP website queries should beaddressed: Francisco.Estrada-Belli@vanderbilt.edu), supervisors DrEstella Weiss-Krejci, Elizabeth Garibay, Jason Gonzalez, and KyleWagner, ceramicist Kerry Sagebiel, the other LaMAP staff and students,and our workers from San Felipe, who made our brief season so enjoyableand productive. References COGGINS, C. 1980. The shape of time: some political implications ofa four-part figure, American Antiquity 45: 727-39. GUDERJAN, T.H. (ed.) 1991. Maya settlement in Northwestern Belize:interim report of the 1988 and 1990 seasons of the Rio BravoArchaeological Survey. San Antonio (TX): Maya Research Program. TOURTELLOT, G., A. CLARKE & N. HAMMOND. 1993. Mapping La Milpa:a Maya city in northwestern Belize, Antiquity 67: 96-108. TOURTELLOT, G., F. ESTRADA-BELLI, M. WOLF & N. HAMMOND. 2000.Discovery of two predicted Ancient Maya sites in Belize, Antiquity 74:481-2. VOGT, E.Z., JR. Zinacantan: a Maya community in the highlands ofChiapas. Cambridge (MA): Harvard University Press The Harvard University Press is a publishing house, a division of Harvard University, that is highly respected in academic publishing. It was established on January 13, 1913. In 2005, it published 220 new titles. . GAIR TOURTELLOT, MARC WOLF, SCOTT SMITH, KRISTEN GARDELLA &NORMAN HAMMOND * * Tourtellot, Wolf, Smith, Hammond, LaMAP, Department ofArchaeology, Boston University, 675 Commonwealth Avenue, Boston Commonwealth Avenue (often spoken of as Comm Ave by locals, the latter word pronounced in the same manner as "have") is a major street in the cities of Boston and Newton, Massachusetts. MA02215-1406, USA. gairtt@attbi.com Gardella, Department of Anthropology,University of Pennsylvania (body, education) University of Pennsylvania - The home of ENIAC and Machiavelli.http://upenn.edu/.Address: Philadelphia, PA, USA. , Philadelphia PA 19104, USA.