Corpus Volume 17 includes photographs and drawings of 27 monuments from Dzibanché, Quintana Roo, Mexico. The introductions, written by Bruce Love and Dzibanché Project Director Sandra Balanzario, summarize their documentation process and place the site of Dzibanché in its historical context.
-Bruce Love and Meghan Rubenstein
Corpus Volume 17: Monuments of Dzibanché, Quintana Roo, Mexico
Corpus Volume 16 presents a single monument in two parts. The lower half of Stela 1 from Cancuen is in a school room in Cobán, Alta Verapaz, and the upper half is in a school courtyard in Santa Elena, Petén. This publication photographically reunites them. The photos, by Bruce Love, were taken in March and April of this year.
-Bruce Love and Meghan Rubenstein
Corpus Volume 16: Cancuen Stela 1: Cobán, Alta Verapaz, and Santa Elena, Peten, Guatemala
According to archaeologists José Francisco Osorio and Francisco Pérez, La Mesa de los Cautivos, as it is now known, was first exposed during clearing of interior rubble in the Templo de los Caracoles building (Structure 5C5; Temple of the Snails) in 2005 during work at the Initial Series Group at Chichén Itzá under the direction of Dr. Peter Schmidt, but only the top surface was seen and the sides were not cleared. At that time, it was identified as a banqueta (bench).
In 2019 it was further exposed by the Proyecto Arqueológico Chichén Itzá, then headed by Osorio, and was discovered to have four carved sides. News of its discovery was published in Mexicon in 2020 (Vol. XLII February). Bruce Love photographed it on March 25, 2021, with permission of then site director Eduardo López Calzada, when Love was working at the site in collaboration with the project La Pintura Mural Prehispánica en México under the directorship of María Teresa Uriarte Castañeda of the Instituto de Investigaciones Estéticas UNAM. Love made the drawings the following month.
Love’s photographs and drawings were published in Arqueología Mexicana (at a small scale) in no. 172, enero-febrero 2022, in an article by project directors José Francisco Osorio and Francisco Pérez, and the figures with glyphs were added to Love’s Catalog of Non-Maya Glyphs at Chichén Itzá, also in 2022.
Photos and drawings of the four carved sides of the “table top” are published here with the consent of (now) site director José Francisco Osorio to whom I am deeply grateful for his collaboration.
-Bruce Love
Corpus Volume 15: La Mesa de los Cautivos from Chichén Itzá, Yucatán, Mexico
Corpus Volume 12 presents four monuments from the Classic Maya site of Santa Elena, Tabasco, Mexico. The monuments are unusual in that their shapes are somewhere between stelae and panels. They are as thick as stelae but quadrangular like panels. Could they have been ballcourt panels? The details of their discovery and removal to the town of Balancan are unknown to the authors of this Corpus Volume. Photos are by Bruce Love and drawings are by Sergei Veprestkii.
-Bruce Love and Meghan Rubenstein
Corpus Volume 12: Santa Elena Monuments in Balancan Museum, Tabasco
Corpus Volume 11 presents 10 monuments from around Lake Petén Itzá, only one of which is in situ. Three of the monuments are in the central park or plaza on the island of Flores, three are in front of the town hall of San Andrés on the western edge of the lake, three are in a rustic wooden enclosure at a highway intersection (entronque) in the town of Ixlu on the eastern edge of the lake (where the north-south road to Tikal meets the east-west road from Belize), and one is in the site of Ixlu itself, near to that intersection.
-Bruce Love and Meghan Rubenstein
Corpus Volume 11: Petén Miscellanea: Monuments from Five Sites
Corpus Volume 10 consists of two monuments from Kaminaljuyu that are currently on display at the National Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology (MUNAE) in Guatemala City. The photographs were made by Bruce Love and illustrations by Lucia R. Henderson.
-Bruce Love and Meghan Rubenstein
Corpus Volume 10: Kaminaljuyu, Sculptures 10 and 65, MUNAE, Guatemala
Research Contribution 9 and Corpus Volume 9 are here published simultaneously; both are about the carved stone panels known as Ichmul de Morley Panels 1 and 2. The Research Contribution, by Gregory Smith, details the early history of the discovery of the panels by Sylvanus Morley and their subsequent documentation, while the Corpus Volume presents recent photographs and drawings of them by Bruce Love.
Corpus Volume 9: Ichmul de Morley, Yucatán, Mexico
Research Contribution 9: The History of the Ichmul de Morley Ballplayer Panels, by J. Gregory Smith
Corpus Volume 8 presents a single monument, an Early Classic period relief carving, three meters tall, high on a limestone escarpment that overlooks a major (though unrecorded) archaeological site about halfway along the paved highway connecting La Libertad and El Ceibo, Petén. The project was facilitated by the alcalde of the municipio of La Libertad, where I had photographed the Itzimte stelae in 2016 that constituted our Corpus Volume 7.
When I returned to La Libertad in April 2019, again with Bernie Mittelstaedt as my guide and co-worker, I brought two plaques showing the Itzimte stelae as gifts and tokens of appreciation to alcalde Benjamín Ipiña. These plaques were made of metalized material suitable for hanging outdoors. Mr. Ipiña then made phone calls for us that paved the way for us to photograph Planchón del Rey.
-Bruce Love
Corpus Volume 8: Planchón del Rey (San Diego Cliff Face), Petén, Guatemala
At the municipio compound in La Libertad, Peten, Guatemala, three stelae from nearby Itzimte are guarded and protected. Corpus Volume 7 presents photographs and drawings of those three stelae.
-Bruce Love and Meghan Rubenstein
Corpus Volume 7: Itzimte Stelae at La Libertad, Petén, Guatemala
Corpus Volume 6 combines photos by Bruce Love with drawings by Oswaldo Chinchilla of three stelae from the site of Palo Verde, located in the hinterlands of the Late Classic city of Cotzumalguapa, on the Pacific piedmont of Guatemala, an abrupt departure from Volumes 1-5 that were all from south-east Peten.
Presenting three stelae from the Cotzumalguapa archaeological zone demonstrates our dedication to bringing our readers inscriptions from throughout Mesoamerica, not only the Maya area. This volume takes advantage of a recent opportunity by Love to photograph in the Museo Nacional de Arqueología y Etnología (MUNAE) in Guatemala City. While working there at night on July 31 and August 2 and 3 of this year, Love photographed the three stelae from Palo Verde that are currently on display in the main courtyard of the museum.
Dr. Chinchilla has graciously allowed us to publish his drawings alongside the photos, along with a link to an important journal article* by him and colleagues that describes archaeological investigations at the site.
-Bruce Love and Meghan Rubenstein
*The journal article is made available here in compliance with JSTOR “Terms and Conditions of Use” (https://about.jstor.org/terms/).
Corpus Volume 6: Monuments from Palo Verde, Chimaltenango, in MUNAE, Guatemala City
Contributions to Mesoamerican Studies 