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Women of the Copan North Group

Conference Paper · March 2016

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Women of the Copán North Group
Wendy Ashmore and Lisa L. DeLance
University of California, Riverside

ABSTRACT

This presentation is about sexed and gendered individuals in contexts of social relations
and mortuary practices. More specifically, we consider women who were interred with
seeming respect in several burial chambers in the Late Classic Maya elite residential
compound of Copan Groups 8L-10 and 8L-12, nicknamed the Copan North Group. We
reflect on whom they might have been, why they were laid to rest in this particular
location, and in the manner they were. Newly available bioarchaeological findings
contribute invaluable evidence about origins of individuals. Interpretations based on
material culture remain more ambiguous. While our combined inferences must thereby
remain more elusive than firm, we consider their potential implications for Classic Maya
women in life and death. We eagerly join the growing voices seeking to bring such
women into a clearer light of understanding.

Why the women of the Copan North Group? Excavations in this locale

encountered remains of three women, none of whom has received virtually any

significant interpretive attention—until now. We propose that all were noblewomen and

related to the Copan royal court, if perhaps in mutually different ways. Few in number as

they are, we believe these women of the North Group allow us to contribute to some new

thoughts on studying gender, social standing, and inhumation practices in the Classic

Maya world. Our argument builds from what Alison Wylie refers to as “cabling”: “As the

cable metaphor suggests, even when there is no single commensurating ground for

judgment—no one line of argument that is sufficient on its own to secure an explanatory

or interpretive conclusion—the cumulative weight of [disparate, multidimensional

considerations of] evidence, data, reasons, and arguments can be rationally decisive . . .

The relativist conclusion that “anything goes” does not follow from the fact that no one

set of considerations is fundamental across the board, no one strand of argument

Women of the Copan North Group 2
(Ashmore and DeLance)


conclusive” (Wylie 2002: 162-163). We hope the cables we weave are strong enough to

provoke consideration.

Location of Copan North Group (8L-10, 8L-12) in the Copan urban core (by Chris Carrelli for Ashmore

1991)

The Setting: Copan and the Copan North Group

The Copan North Group perches in the foothills of the Copan Valley, 1 km north

of the Principal Group, where dynastic rule spanned four centuries, from 426 to 822 CE

(Andrews and Fash 2005). In 1988 and 1989, the Proyecto Arqueológico Copan de

Cosmología, or Copan North Group Project (Operación XLII [42]), sought to test ideas
Women of the Copan North Group 3
(Ashmore and DeLance)


about whether archaeological Groups 8L-10, 8L-11, and 8L-12 at that Classic Maya

center marked a “north” point in an ancient cosmogram oriented to cardinal directions

(Ashmore 1988a, 1988b, 1989, 1991, 2015). The North Group project hypothesis was

that, if such were the case, project members should encounter material allusions to north-

related elements—the Maya celestial realm, ritual activities, and royal ancestors. Group

8L-10, the more northerly of the paired architectural compounds yielded such evidence:

in architectonic sculpture that cited, among other things, the Principal Bird Deity who

lives in the sky; a stone effigy stingray spine for ritual bloodletting: and name-glyph

medallions for Waxaklajun Ubaah K’awiil, the 13th ruler of Copan, who was killed in 738

CE by an upstart rebel subordinate at the rival Quirigua polity capital. Chronological

evidence places known architecture of the Copan North Group in the eighth through ninth

centuries CE (Ashmore 1989, 1991, 2015), toward the end of dynastic rule in 822 CE.

Map of Copan North Group (8L-10, 8L-12) with select structure numbers and burial locations marked (B4

is just west of B1). (by Chris Carrelli for Ashmore 1991)

Women of the Copan North Group 4
(Ashmore and DeLance)

Two decades after the North Group Project, independent visibility and access

analyses at Copan suggest that occupants of the North Group “positioned themselves in

[a] strategic [location] that afforded them a very high degree of social connectivity,

including providing greatest access to the ruler” (Richards-Rissetto 2010: 471, 515, 738-

739). Using these and other spatial analyses, Heather Richards-Rissetto (2010: 506, 522;

Richards-Rissetto and Landau 2014) and Kristin Landau (2015) posit that Group 8L-10,

specifically, played a wider civic role in life at Copan. Because of its relatively open

architectural layout, and its association with ritual activities, including explicit allusion to

a revered royal ancestor—the 13th king of the dynasty—its occupants could have hosted

commemorative and other ritual performances on a neighborhood or community scale.

Moreover, several scholars have proposed that Copan’s 16th and final dynastic ruler, Yax

Pasaj Chan Yopaat, commissioned construction projects with architectonic sculpture and

hieroglyphic texts beyond the Principal Group—as in the Copan North Group—“to

display his power and reach out to lesser elite in an attempt to preserve the existing social

hierarchy,” and “to curb power loss and bring the city’s occupants together during a

stressful time” (Richards-Rissetto 2010: 5, 32; also Fash 2005).

Julia Miller and we also observe that, based on the excellent Proyecto

Arqueológico Copan maps (Fash and Long 1983), Burial XLII-5 is directly north of the

Acropolis, and perhaps most specifically, north of the inferred tomb in Structure 10L-18

of that same 16th ruler, who exhibited what some have called a “consistent

preoccupation” with Ruler 13 (Stuart, Schele, and Grube 1989:2).

Women of the Copan North Group 5
(Ashmore and DeLance)


Recently, Franco Rossi (2015:143) has suggested royal connections for the Group.

He tentatively reads the Str. 8L-74 medallion texts as “It is the Senior Obsidian [Sakun

Taaj] at the house of Waxaklajun Ubaah K’awiil, on 8 Lamat 6 Sek, it is

ordered/assembled.” Together with colleagues, he infers that those who bore the noble

title taaj were skilled in writing, eloquent speaking, and creating paper, books, and

murals, and in teaching these skills to others (Rossi et al. 2015: 13). He recognizes a

particularly prominent Taaj at Copan during the rule of its sixteenth and final king,

named on Altar U alongside the king, his brother, and their mother (Rossi 2015: 138). For

the Copan North Group, however, Rossi further suggests that text could refer to a

Calendar Round date before Waxaklajun Ubaah K’awiil was seated as king, and

identifies the compound as where a Sakun Taaj might have worked as teacher to the

young prince (2015: 145).

On many measures, then, the Copan North Group appears to have been a socially,

politically, and ritually important place, importantly shaped by late eighth- and early

ninth-century dynastic strategies.

Most publications from the Copan North Group Project have centered on the

cosmogram question, answered provisionally in the affirmative (Ashmore 1991, 2005,

2010; 2015; Ashmore and Sabloff 2000, 2002; Carrelli 1990; Yorke 2006), and have

prompted responses, both pro and con (Ashmore and Sabloff 2003; Barrera Rubio 2011:

81; Keller 2006; Landau 2015; Maca 2002, 2006; Smith 2003). Together with several

colleagues, Ashmore has suggested repeatedly that cranial remains in one of the

interments might have actually been those of the aforementioned 13th ruler, whose name
Women of the Copan North Group 6
(Ashmore and DeLance)


is cited there so prominently (Ashmore 1991, 2013, 2015; Ashmore and Geller 2005;

Carrelli 1990).

In this presentation, however, we change focus, to bring other individuals into the

interpretive limelight—more specifically the women whose final resting place was Group

8L-10, in the Copan North Group, or CNG. Our working conclusion is this: Based on

evidence from bioarchaeological and material cultural evidence, we infer slightly varied

social standing for individual women, while affiliating all three with noble or royal

identities. We also suggest possible reasons for their burial in that particular location. The

reasons, we propose, involve both ties to and reverence for Ruler 13, and elements of the

cosmological model offered from the North Group Project.

Burial 42-1
Burial 42-5
Burial 42-4

Group 8L-10

Group 8L-10, Copan, with women’s burials highlighted (after Ashmore 1991).
Women of the Copan North Group 7
(Ashmore and DeLance)

Sexed Decedents in the Copan North Group

Of the 11 individuals identified from whole or partial skeletons in CNG

investigations, 3 were sexed female, 6 male, and 2 sex-indeterminate (Buikstra and Miller

2005; Miller 2015a; Storey, personal communications, 1988, 1989). We refer to the

females as “women” because of their ages at death and the objects encountered with them

(Carrelli 1990). All three were interred in Group 8L-10. Who were they? As in many

cases, including the woman in Copan’s Margarita tomb, we lack recorded names and

depictions, but their bodies and interments have given us many clues. We cable together

implications from several sources of evidence.

Combining bioarchaeological and varied forms of material cultural evidence, we

attempt a life-history approach for characterizing the CNG decedents, as productively

applied by a growing number of bioarchaeologists, and in this case reliant on analyses by

Jane Buikstra, Katherine Miller, and Rebecca Storey (Buikstra et al 2004; Geller 2004,

2012; Piehl et al. 2014; Saul 1972; Storey, personal communications, 1988-1989; Tiesler

et al. 2004). We draw on six kinds of information:

(1) Important insights about decedent identity come from advances in isotopic analyses of

ancient bones and teeth, about origins, mobility, and diet (Price et al. 2010). Katherine

Miller (2013:6) points to Group 8L-10 as a “cool case—the values suggest 50% non-

locals.”

(2) Cranial and/or (3) dental modifications in life potentially point to social rank. Cranial

shaping necessarily begins in infancy, as bones begin to grow, and occurs across social

rank (Geller 2004, 2011; Miller 2009). In contrast, dental modification occurs later in
Women of the Copan North Group 8
(Ashmore and DeLance)


life, usually after eruption of permanent dentition (Geller 2004, 2006; but see Somerville

et al 2016: 155, Bu. 5/1). At Copan, tooth filing or notching does not imply elite status,

but the presence of inlays does (Buikstra et al 2004: 194, citing Tiesler; Tiesler 2011:

200).

(4) Chamber form and particular grave goods can also hint at social, political, and

economic standing for decedents (Taube 2005; Welsh 1988).

(5) Marking interments at plaza level by a stone “altar,” is associated with what Houston

and colleagues at Piedras Negras call the “special dead,” those worthy of repeated acts of

remembrance (Carrelli 1990; Houston et al 2003:123).

(6) Grave placement with respect to architecture can imply intentions in recognizing the

buried dead.

For the three CNG women, all six of the foregoing measures cited point to noble

standing.

Ground work has been amply laid by many before us, including Saul (1972),

Buikstra (1981, Buikstra et al. 2014), Geller (2011, 2012), Ardren (2002), and Tiesler

(Tiesler et al 2004), and from Patricia McAnany’s (1995, 2014) Living with the Ancestors

to James Fitzsimmons and Izumi Shimada’s (2011) Living with the Dead. We learn from

all. In what follows, we are guided most directly by recent presentations of four

noblewomen of El Perú-Waka’, by Jennifer Piehl, David Lee, and Michelle Rich (2014)

and of elite burials more generally at Piedras Negras, by Andrew Scherer (2016; also

Houston et al. 2003).

Burial 42-1
Women of the Copan North Group 9
(Ashmore and DeLance)


For the woman in double-burial 42-1, some 40-55 years at death, strontium ratios

(Sr87/Sr89 = 0.7077), radiogenic strontium, and biodistance measures identify her non-

local origin, coming to Copan from elsewhere, and Katie Miller (personal

communication, Feb 2016) indicates the strontium ratio is consistent with either the

South Central Lowlands OR North/Central Honduras. Cranial and dental modifications of

the deceased woman are signs of the highest echelons in Copanec and Maya society more

generally, and would seem to favor Maya lowlands as her place of origin. Specifically,

her skull was tabular erect in form, a shape associated closely with Copan elites and

royalty in Early Classic times (Buikstra et al, 2004: 195; Tiesler 2014: 231). Her

maxillary incisors and canines bore jade inlays on notched teeth, together forming the

wind sign in silhouette, the Ik’-shape dentition of the sun god (Buikstra and Miller 2005:

1; Carrelli 1990: 30; Houston et al. 2006: 146-147). Indeed, teeth and skull of only that

one CNG woman, an outsider, indicated elite standing, and a jade-inlaid tooth found

loose in Burial 42-1 might have come from that same woman—or from the local man in

that chamber—in Katie Miller’s words, “deposited at her feet”—or even from someone

else altogether. A spindle whorl was retrieved from matrix not directly associated with

either individual. A jade pendant lay by her upper right arm; a slightly larger version

accompanied the male, 24-30 years of age, buried with her. Both decedents were clearly

secondary interments. Together, the pair was laid to rest in “a formal masonry-walled

[container] complete with a lid . . . of large flat [stone] slabs,” with internal height less

than 0.5 meters, a simple crypt, in Scherer’s terms (2016: 6). The woman’s remains were

allotted well more than half of the chamber space. A circular “altar” stone, with signs of

burning and thereby ritual observance, marked the presence of Burial 42-1. Rossi (2015:
Women of the Copan North Group 10
(Ashmore and DeLance)


144) suggests that the two pendants in Burial 42-1 are reminiscent of “similar flat

pendants (though ceramic) found with the Taaj of Burial 11 at Los Sabios [Xultun],” and

by implication that the two individuals might have held analogous roles.

Burial 42-4

Burial 42-4 was the interment of a young woman between 20 and 30 years old at

death, a primary burial whose deeply flexed body lay on her left side. In that position, she

“faced” into the courtyard to the south, and her head lay toward Burial 42-1. Although

she evinced no evidence of cranial modification, two upper right incisors were inlaid with

jade (Buikstra and Miller 2005: 6), once again an indicator of noble or royal status. Her

bone chemistry identified her as non-local, with a strontium isotope ratio (Sr87/Sr89 =

0.7078) consistent with a home in either the South Central Lowlands OR North/Central

Honduras, as with the woman in Burial 42-1 (Miller, personal communication, Feb

2016). She was buried alone, accompanied by a small jade fragment, plausibly placed in

her mouth, plus a ceramic ring, bone fragment, and most strikingly a small, eroded

ceramic jaguar head. Although her decorated dentition and perhaps the broken jaguar

effigy seem most consistent with high status, her burial in a pit, or simple burial, might

appear to diminish her inferred standing (Scherer 2016: 6). Alternatively, the close spatial

and stratigraphic juxtaposition to Burial 42-1 might hint at a subsidiary relation to the

somewhat more exalted, older non-local woman in the latter crypt.

Burial 42-5
Women of the Copan North Group 11
(Ashmore and DeLance)


The 40-55 year-old woman interred in double-burial 42-5 had local roots; to her

south lay a local man, age 20-30 years at death. Her cranium had acquired a tabular erect

shape, described as a “beautiful” example of the form by Buikstra and Miller (2005: 7)

and in similarly admiring terms by Storey (personal communication, 1988). For a local

woman this shaping is a sign of noble or even royal status, as noted earlier. Although her

upper front teeth were notched, they bore no inlays. When encountered, her skeletal

remains were associated in the chamber with two spindle whorls, a small jade ornament

(earflare?), a bone bead, a fragmentary shell ring, and three pottery vessels. While two of

the vessels were common types at Copan for the eighth and ninth centuries, the third was

imported, an example of Pabellon Molded-Carved pottery necessarily post-dating 830

CE. Both decedents might have been placed in a seated position, plausibly achieved by

bundling the corpse while still fleshed, as suggested by the arrangement of bones as

encountered (Ashmore 1988b, 1991, 2015; Reents-Budet 2006; Reese-Taylor et al 2006).

These could plausibly have been secondary interments. As in Burial 42-1, the woman’s

remains were given at least half of the chamber area.

Re-entry to this burial, adopting a custom common in Classic Maya mortuary

practice, is evident at least at the southeast corner of Burial 42-5 (Ashmore 2015; Chase

and Chase 1996, 2003; Eberl 2005: 111-116, 2011; Fitzsimmons 1998, 2002, 2011;

Tiesler 2004). The evidence was a disturbed patio surface east of the southeast corner of

the chamber (Ashmore 1988b). We do not know the exact date of such intrusion, but it

might have involved placement of the simple bowl containing fragmentary remains of

Individual 42-5C, sex-indeterminate but with jade-inlaid teeth. It might also have been
Women of the Copan North Group 12
(Ashmore and DeLance)


then that the male decedent’s bones were confined to a space much more constricted than

that for the local woman.

Atop that disturbed patio surface we encountered an isolated sculpture of a

serpent head (CPN 15115), possibly once an architectonic element and perhaps an

offering made upon reclosing the crypt. We lack positive evidence of equivalent re-entry

on the north, but presence of a Pabellon Molded-Carved vase implies deposition after 830

CE, as noted earlier. Because of the architectonic allusion across the courtyard on

Structure 8L-74, to a specific date in the Calendar Round linked potentially to the death

of Ruler 13, we propose that re-entry or re-entries might have corresponded to

commemorations on anniversaries of that date. The interment as a whole is an elaborated

crypt in Scherer’s terms (2016: 6), similar in concept with the simple crypt, but larger,

with more complex layouts—here, two in-wall niches—and an internal height of 0.5-1.0

meters. At Burial 42-5, a square stone sat on the patio just east of the chamber location,

and directly overlay a discrete offering of a box containing a small Spondylus shell, a

small shell disk, and a 5cm-long stingray spine—arguably paraphernalia for bloodletting.

Spondylus shells correlate with royalty and ritual, and this box and its contents are very

loosely reminiscent, if in a decidedly diluted manner, of the elaborate cache at the foot of

the Hieroglyphic Stairway containing bloodletting implements and, in a Spondylus shell,

remains of blood (Fash 2001: 146-149). Akin to the burning on the altar at Burial 42-1,

the ceramic box offering and its contents at Burial 42-5 bespeak commemorative ritual,

for what Houston and colleagues (2003) label the “special dead,” those worthy of

repeated acts of remembrance (Carrelli 1990; Houston et al. 2003: 123).

In sum, all three CNG women were laid to rest in a high-status location, as
Women of the Copan North Group 13
(Ashmore and DeLance)


members of potentially differing rank in the uppermost levels of the social pyramid. The

bioarchaeology and cultural associations of the three women evinced indicators of noble

standing for each. For decedents at the Copan North Group, treatment followed common

practices, executed in almost all cases with care and seeming respect.

Ancient Maya Women in Life

The potential roles for the elite CNG women are quite varied. Ethnohistoric

evidence places tasks such as weaving textiles and preparing food as squarely in the

domain of Maya women, whatever their social rank. Monumental iconography of women

in ancient Maya sculpture acknowledges some as mothers or wives of rulers, and active

participants in bloodletting rituals in support of the king (Joyce 1992, 1996, 2000;

Marcus 2001; Proskouriakoff 1961). Some were themselves rulers, even warrior queens

(Piehl et al. 2014; Reese-Taylor 2016; Reese-Taylor et al. 2009; Rodriguez-Shadow

2011). Public sculpture and texts occasionally identify women as regents for children

who had ascended to kingship at a very young age, while some women ruled kingdoms in

their own right. Some at Yaxchilan were allotted courtly titles, if largely honorific

(Jackson 2013: 77). DeLance has opened new study of women portrayed on painted

ceramics, exploring the relationship of clothing and pose to elite women’s roles and

statuses (DeLance 2015; Hendon 2002; Houston et al. 2006; Pincemin Deliberos 2003;

Proskouriakoff 1961: 85). In murals at eighth-century Bonampak and fifth-century

Uaxactun royal women “observed face-to-face the political acts of men, commented on

them, and at times participated more directly in them” (Inomata 2008: 63; Miller and

Martin 2004: 94). Indeed, Sarah Jackson (2013: 69) and others note the importance of
Women of the Copan North Group 14
(Ashmore and DeLance)


“witnessing” in the work of all court members. As for domestic work, Mary Miller and

Simon Martin (2004: 95) note that bones of courtly women lacked marks of repetitive

activities like kneeling to grind corn, likely having allocated that and other domestic tasks

to the house staff they managed. Freed of those mundane chores, elite women would have

had more time for “spinning, weaving, and brocading” (McAnany 2010: 119). On the

other hand, Mary Miller (1974) also suggests that women portrayed by Jaina figurines

include slaves. In short, there is ample depictive and textual evidence that Classic Maya

women did many things, and much more than cooking, weaving, letting blood, and

bearing children. Which among these might characterize the lives of the women of the

Copan North Group? We have already asserted their noble standing. We focus on textile

work and on courtly activities—to help weave our interpretive cables (pun intended).

First, textile work: Elite and royal Maya women took prestige from association

with spinning and weaving (Kowalski and Miller 2005). Patricia McAnany and Shannon

Plank (2001:95, emphasis added) even assert “royal women defined themselves in terms

of textile production.” At Chichén Itzá, Ruth Krochock (2002:160) draws from spindle

whorl distribution and unusually large quantities to suggest that the imposing Las Monjas

building was both a residence for elite women and a gathering place for them to spin and

weave, equivalent to arrangements described later by colonial observers. At Copan, Julia

Hendon asserts that, “[a]s in many other cultures where cloth serves as a material symbol

of power and a source of wealth, control of textile production and, possibly, of

distribution emerges as one domain in which women, especially elite women, may be

able to act independently of men” (1997: 45; Joyce 2000; Reents-Budet 2006). She

documents distributions of diverse weaving implements (spindle whorls, bone needles,

Women of the Copan North Group 15
(Ashmore and DeLance)


bone brocade picks) in a well-studied sub-royal Copanec compound, Group 9N-8, and

observes “a clear correlation between the intensity of cloth production and the highest

status residences” (Robin 2004:159-160). Elsewhere, in some instances, the “weaving

bones” carry hieroglyphic texts of ownership (Houston and Stuart 2001:64, 77; McAnany

2010: 184-189). The woman in Copan’s Margarita Tomb, believed to be the queen of the

dynasty founder, was accompanied by an extraordinary bounty of implements for

spinning and weaving, analyzed so thoroughly by Ellen Bell (2002, 2007). These are

thought to mark the queen as the quintessential weaver and the epitome of the female.

The same tomb apparently preserved a fragment of cloth with an impressively high

thread count, attesting to the quality of some woven materials, and perhaps left as an

offering well after her death (http://chem11.proboards.com/thread/398/digging-

dirt?page=12 ). Spinning and weaving paraphernalia would thus be at home in elite

women’s burials, although insufficient alone or in small numbers as an index of the

decedent’s standing. On the other hand, the adult occupant of Burial 1 at Nakum, sex

indeterminate, is identified as a king, whose tomb grave goods include, not only a jade

pectoral, earflares, and an Olmec jade heirloom, but also four spindle whorls at his feet

(Zralka et al. 2012). Spindle whorls are known from two CNG women’s burials, and the

minimal quantity—one in 42-1 and two in 42-5—attests equally minimally to the

importance of textile work to the decedents’ identity.

Elsewhere in the Classic Maya world, depictions and texts affirm eloquently that

women of the court played an active role in political machinations. Honorific titles at

Yaxchilan were mentioned earlier. The justly famed murals of Bonampak Structure 1

show multiple roles. On the North wall of Room 1, a woman, likely the queen
Women of the Copan North Group 16
(Ashmore and DeLance)


accompanies the ruler on his throne, adjacent and subservient to her sovereign (Miller

and Brittenham 2013:82-83, 125). In Room 2, the king receives prisoners, while his wife

and his mother observe the judging of war captives, an essential and highly political act

(Miller and Martin 2004:174). And in Room 3, white-robed women let blood from their

tongues, inferred as marking a transition from death of one ruler to emergence of another

(Miller and Brittenham 2013: 142; compare DeLance 2015). All of the CNG women were

plausibly members or attendants of the Copan royal court. Two of them were foreign-

born, and the one in a paired interment was perhaps a wife in marriage alliance.

Other Classic-period murals suggest additional, likely complementary roles for

Maya women. At Calakmul, women are shown selling or dispensing goods such as

pottery, salt, or maize gruel. Today, Maya women produce food and crafts and then sell

them in a public marketplace, and the same could plausibly pertain to ancient Maya

women as well, to support their families (Ardren 2015:121). An alternative view,

however, is that the famous Calakmul “Lady in Blue” was perhaps “the essence of

gracious hospitality,” more akin to Japanese geisha or to courtesans than to a seller of

quotidian necessaries (Houston 2014). In a similar vein, the five courtly women on the

Princeton Vase are frequently identified as a harem, attending on a smiling God L (Kerr

and Kerr 2005). Our own analytic categories doubtless underplay the richness of ancient

lives.

In sum, elite Maya women likely had complex and varied roles in life. Because

they could delegate mundane domestic tasks to attendants, they would have been able to

apply their own expressive labor in weaving and the like. They would also have had

political obligations including diplomacy, ritual participation, and even royal servitude.
Women of the Copan North Group 17
(Ashmore and DeLance)


Although no depictive evidence illustrates the Copan North Group women directly, the

activities just described and material traces that are available cable together to create a

frame for understanding the lives of these three women.

Ancient Maya Women in Death

Culturally and historically contingent mortuary customs, including body

processing and interment practices, shaped treatment of the Maya deceased at and after

death, of any sex/gender. These are certainly evident in the Copan North Group. But why

were these women laid to their final rest here?

Let us first consider specific architectural contexts and directional positioning of

the interments: while the woman with jade inlays in the simple pit (42-4) was tucked into

her grave under the base of the low northern Structure 8L-73, the other two women lay in

masonry chambers on the central axes of prominent buildings defining the north and west

sides of Group 8L-10, respectively Structure 8L-72 and 8L-77. Elsewhere in the Maya

area, too, plaza-side central axes of buildings were prime locations for burials and cached

offerings (Ashmore 1988b, 1991; Becker 2003; Carrelli 1990: 181). The architectural

counterpart on the east was the northern building of the Str. 8L-74 platform—the one that

bore glyphic sculptural allusions to Copan’s Ruler 13.

Let us turn now to the burial pairs. Maya multiple burials are encountered

relatively widely, with interpretations varying according to characteristics of the interred,

their mutual simultaneity or sequence in burial (Ardren 2002; Carrelli 1990; Chase and

Chase 1996, 1998; Miller 2015a; Scherer et al. 20014; Somerville et al 2016; Weiss-

Krejci 2003: 370-371, 2004). Often these are viewed as family groups, sometimes of
Women of the Copan North Group 18
(Ashmore and DeLance)


multiple generations. We suggest that while the women with tabular erect crania might

have been related to the men with whom they were interred, the relationship need not

have been marriage, as we return to in a moment.

In her 1990 thesis on mortuary practices at the Copan North Group, Carrelli

reviewed comparison cases both in and beyond greater Copan. Locally, she notes other

interments with multiple individuals, finding that when women were paired, it was most

often with children. In serendipitous counterpoint, when she wrote, archaeologists had

just encountered the tomb of male Ruler 12, in the Copan Acropolis; a 12-year-old male

accompanied the king, at the north end of the chamber (Carrelli 1990: 106-108; Weiss-

Krejci 2004: 393). With one, almost eerie exception, she found no close counterparts to

the double-occupant interments of the North Group. The exception, Tomb 6, was located

“‘about half a mile north from the [Principal Group], in a northeasterly direction, on the

lower foothills,’ probably in Morley’s Group 5,” according to John M. Longyear (1952:

42-43). No more precise information is known. It was an unvaulted masonry chamber,

1.9 m north-south, 76 cm wide, 91 cm high, and roofed by three stone slabs. The chamber

was divided in two by a row of stones, and contained the “[r]otted remains” of one

skeleton in the south, and “parts of a second and skull of a third” north of the stone

divider (Longyear 1952: 42-43). The description suggests almost a mirror image of

Burial 42-5, and from Longyear’s account, they would have been mutually contemporary.

Ceramic forms and the internal separation differ markedly from attributes of Copan North

Group tomb Burial 42-5, and we lack data on the sexes of the deceased. But—and here’s

the eerie part—the location, while inexactly described, would have been very near, if not

the very same as the Copan North Group. During the Copan North Group Project, we
Women of the Copan North Group 19
(Ashmore and DeLance)


could locate no nearby architectural groups that might have sheltered Tomb 6, and we

saw no clear evidence within the North Group of past excavations of that sort. Might the

summit “dip” on the mound of Structure 8L-74, the platform yielding the architectonic

sculpture, signal “collapse” of a previously excavated tomb? Because project goals and

permit did not include probing architecture conclusive testing of the latter was not an

option.

The situation leads us to ponder the cosmogram model again, and to suggest that

burials in the two masonry chambers were acts of mortuary commemoration of more than

the decedents themselves (Ashmore 1991). The female-male relationship of each

mortuary pair is unknown. Much interpretation of such pairing as spousal is based on

thorough and critical assessment of models for Maya social organization, and is a strong

and important theme in bioarchaeology-based discussions of Maya mobility (Miller

2015a). All we suggest here is that there might have been other relationships as well that

would lead to these individuals’ co-occupancy. As Katie Miller (2015b) put it, “both of

the females had ‘local’ males deposited at their feet.” Mutual similarity of jade pendants

of the pair in crypt Burial 42-1 could hint at a closer-than-happenstance relationship,

marriage, sibling-ship or other. Rossi tentatively proposes a link for both occupants with

teaching royal arts, as noted earlier. No such similarity occurs in grave goods in tomb

Burial 42-5. In each case the interments were either definitely or plausibly secondary, and

at each site there was material evidence of continuing ritual recognition. Our proposition

is that the two pairs were moved to their final resting places to honor the royal family and

its much admired 13th King, Waxaklajun Ubaah K’awiil, as suggested earlier on one or

more anniversaries of his death.

Women of the Copan North Group 20
(Ashmore and DeLance)


In sum, the women of the Copan North Group were laid to rest in a manner

bespeaking their elite standing. Our working conclusion remains this: Based on cabling

threads of evidence from bioarchaeological and material cultural evidence, we infer

slightly varied social standing for individual women, while affiliating all three with noble

or royal identities. The reason for their placement in specific places seems partly

determined by that standing, and perhaps partly to wider commemoration of Ruler 13.

The practices leading to inhumation were expectably multiple, and burial sites of two of

the women evinced continued ritual performances, whether in their recognition or that of

the slain king. Recall that Ruler 16 likely commissioned visible construction of the North

Group, and that he was “pre-occupied” with Ruler 13, Waxaklajun Ubaah K’awiil.

Ultimate interment in this location might very well have added to the women’s prestige,

long after their deaths.

Women of the Copan North Group 21
(Ashmore and DeLance)


Acknowledgments
The Proyecto Arqueológico Copán de Cosmología (Copan North Group Project) was
formed by contract with the Instituto Hondureño de Antropología e Historia (Lic. Victor Cruz and
Lic. Jose María Casco, former directors) and carried out its investigations with the support from
the National Geographic Society (Grants Nos. 3774-88, 4029-89) and Rutgers—The State
University of New Jersey (Office of the Provost and the Graduate School).
Before and during the fieldwork, Bill and Barbara Fash, Ricardo Agurcia Fasquelle,
Alfonso Morales, Bob Sharer, David Sedat, Rebecca Storey, Arturo Sandoval, and provided
invaluable aid and encouragement. Field staff made the work happen, with skill and enthusiasm:
Christine (Carrelli) Kitchin, Matthew Gajewski, Sharon Horan Dumont, Alessandro Pezzati,
Susan Swiat Yorke, Arturo Sandoval, Refugio Murcia, Guillermo Murcia, and Marco Tulio
Cantillano. For consultation and discussion since that time, we thank Jane Buikstra, Katie Miller,
Chris Kitchin, Pamela Geller, Pat Urban, Ed Schortman, Julie Miller, Franco Rossi, and most of
all for Ashmore, Tom Patterson.
*****
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