Visualizing Tayza, Capital of the Petén Itzas: Teasing Meanings From Postclassic Pottery Styles

Abstract

A decade of public-works excavations on Flores Island—once Tayza, capital of the powerful Itza Maya confederacy in Postclassic- and contact-period Petén, Guatemala—has recovered large quantities of artifacts but without proper provenience controls. This important center is poorly understood in archaeological terms because of the dense modern construction that precludes systematic investigation. Thus, these excavated materials become critical despite their limitations for insights into the Itza settlement. Convenience samples of the slipped and decorated pottery from the salvage (and other) excavations were analyzed to interpret style and meaning through the combined perspectives of design structure analysis, information exchange, visual rhetoric, literary studies, and semiotechnology. Features examined include forms, types, colors, layouts, and motifs. The spatial distributions of these features over the island were assessed in terms of a quadripartite organization mentioned in Spanish accounts. It is proposed that the southeastern quadrant was the residential area of Itza royal elites, due to the presence of elaborate and innovative polychromes conveying messages of elite power. Pottery in the northern quadrants has more traditional decoration resembling that at mainland sites in the Lake Petén basin, and signals ordinary Itza identity. These differences, and the overall theoretical approach, might be testable on larger, better-excavated samples.

ZACPETEN STRUCTURE 719: ACTIVITIES AT A CONTACT PERIODPOPOL NAHBEFORE RAPID ABANDONMENT

“…Above was approximately 25 centimeters of fill (plaza construction), which was initially dated to the Early Postclassic. Subsequent excavations in Itza territory, however, revealed that many decorative diagnostics of Late Postclassic pottery are rare outside of Tayza/Flores (Rice 2017; e.g., Ixlu; Rice and Rice 2016), and we now consider the plaza to actually date to this later period. This fill was also capped by thin plaster surfacing (Floor 2).…”