Belize

Altun Ha is most famous for the 4.42 kg jade ‘stone’ found in Tomb B-4/7 by archaeologist Dr David Pendergast (1982b:54-58, figs. 33a-c). The large size of the jade likely encouraged its carving into the image of the Maya god of life, growth, provision and sustenance, Ux Yop Huun. In line with associations of this Maya deity elsewhere — linked to the tallest or largest temples — the jade head was fittingly found in a tomb placed within the tallest Altun Ha temple, Structure B4.

Ceramics

The Maya charted the movement of the sun across the year in relation to the horizon. They pinpointed the two extremes of the path taken by the sun and also a centre point. The three points were marked by temples, thereby linking three stone structures with the movement of the sun and the temporal rhythm of the year [1]. 

Triadically-structured solar observation points occur at many archaeological sites tying them to ‘time’. At Caracol, standing at a fixed point marked by a stone stela at the summit of Structure A6 (A-Group) aligns the viewer with the three markers placed atop western Structure A2. The Maya saw the yearly motion of the sun therefore as moving in relation to and in support of three-stone time. Caracol also reveals many stone ‘altars’ placed within its plazas. These stones display giant ‘day’ ahaw signs carved on their large surfaces, tying the material of stone to the ‘day’ and time.

Lamanai is distinguished from the rest of the Maya lowlands by its continuous occupation from Preclassic to colonial times, maintaining great vibrancy throughout the ‘collapse’ (Graham 2004:225; Pendergast 1982a:57, 1985, 1986). The site, therefore, bridges the cultural gap present in the field by adding depth and detail to the Postclassic story. 

From the Postclassic, ceramics survived as thousands of potsherds piled up in mounds around stairs, platforms, and interred in burials. They were once smashed as part of recurring rituals relating to cyclical time. The destructive process replicates Buddhist monks blowing away sand artworks, revealing that the Maya had a similar philosophy centred upon impermanence (see J John 2008). We now know that the ‘death’ of these ceramic vessels metaphorically mirrored the death of the interred and that time was an integral part of the artistic process.

However – unlike sand artworks – archaeologists have been able to reassemble some of the smashed Postclassic ceramics, and it was through studying these reconstructions that we detected the ancient Maya association between time, change and ‘three’; also, the ceramic reconstructions showed how Maya animations continued into the Postclassic period. 

Many of the appliqué-modelled feet supporting Lamanai tripod vessels depict three faces staring in different directions. We believe they form an artistic expression of how the unending cyclical ‘sight’ of past, present and future was bound to the three-part structure of time. 

Ceramics

The ancient site of Santa Rita lies buried beneath the modern town of Corozal located in northern Belize. One Santa Rita structure once displayed a spectacular mural sequence painted on its exterior walls. While the mural has long since disappeared, we know from a written account by Dr Thomas Gann, the man in charge of excavations in the late 1800s, that the mural was five to six feet tall and 36 feet long. This great size meant that to see the painted imagery up close, viewers would have had to walk along its great length, thereby mimicking the motion of the figures painted on the walls. 

In the Santa Rita murals, it is the motion of walking that unlocks the animation hidden – in three – within the image sequence. As previously explained, recognising the unseen transformation connecting the individual mural figures provides the key to ‘reading’ and understanding the mural. The murals illustrate the story of the Sun God’s fate, destined to be sacrificed each night, to be born again anew the next morning as the Dawn Sun (for a detailed discussion and reproduction of the Santa Rita murals, see The Maya Gods of Time, Chapter 5).

Murals

The design of Maya temples frequently related to how these ancient people perceived the order of their world, with the sky placed above the earth and its waters. Some temples exhibit a vertical, 13-to-9, ‘top-heavy’, architectural design centred on a level or platform, which is often marked by a horizontally-running Ik’ (‘wind’) band. The ‘wind’ band connects — and balances — the solid material of the stone temples with the unseen, the motion of wind. An identical symbolic construct also prescribed the shape of Postclassic Lamanai pedestal-based jars, which similarly formed ceramic world models (see Lamanai [4]).