Maya stelae
Maya cities with a history of stonecarving that extended back into the Early Classic preferred to pair their stelae with a circular altar, which may have represented a cut tree trunk and have been used to perform human sacrifice, given the prevalence of sacrificial imagery on such monuments.
[7] The iconography of stelae remained reasonably stable during the Classic Period, since the effectiveness of the propaganda message of the monument relied upon its symbolism being clearly recognisable to the viewer.
[33] With the ability to portray an identifiable ruler bearing elite goods, accompanied by hieroglyphic text and carrying out actions in service of the kingdom, stelae became one of the most effective ways of delivering public propaganda in the Maya lowlands.
[40] A kʼaltun ritual is depicted carved onto a peccary skull deposited as a funerary offering at Copán, the scene shows two nobles flanking a stela-altar pair where the stela seems to have been bound with cloth.
This appears to have been the case in Piedras Negras where Stela 12 depicting war captives submitting to the victorious king is carved in the style of Pomoná, the defeated city.
[51] At Quiriguá a hard red sandstone was used that was unable to reproduce the three-dimensionality of Copán but was of sufficient strength that the kings of the city were able to raise the tallest free-standing stone monuments in the Americas.
[52] Although Calakmul raised the greatest number of stelae known from any Maya city, they were sculpted from poor quality limestone and have suffered severe erosion, rendering most of them illegible.
In the Late Preclassic it then spread into the Isthmus of Tehuantepec and southwards along the Pacific Coast to sites such as Chiapa de Corzo, Izapa and Takalik Abaj where Mesoamerican Long Count calendar dates began to be carved onto the stelae.
Although at Izapa the stelae depicted mythological scenes, at Takalik Abaj they began to show rulers in Early Classic Maya posture accompanied by calendrical dates and hieroglyphic texts.
[12] By approximately 400 BC, near the end of the Middle Preclassic Period, early Maya rulers were raising stelae that celebrated their achievements and validated their right to rule.
The sculpted Preclassic stelae from Kaminaljuyu and other cities in the region, such as Chalchuapa in El Salvador and Chocolá in the Pacific lowlands, tend to depict political succession, sacrifice and warfare.
[10] In the southern Maya area, the Late Preclassic stelae impressed upon the viewer the achievements of the king and his right to rule, thus reinforcing both his political and religious power.
[79] Around 200 BC the enormous nearby city of El Mirador had started to erect stela-like monuments, bearing inscriptions that appear to be glyphs but that are so far unreadable.
[80] Stela dating to the Late Preclassic period are also known from the sites of El Tintal,[81] Cival,[82] and San Bartolo[83] in Guatemala, and Actuncan[84] and Cahal Pech[85] in Belize.
[81] Stela 13 at Takalik Abaj also dates to the Late Preclassic; a massive offering of more than 600 ceramic vessels was found at its base, together with 33 obsidian prismatic blades and other artefacts.
[81] At the very end of the Preclassic Period, around 100–300 AD, cities in the highlands and along the Pacific Coast ceased to raise sculpted stelae bearing hieroglyphic texts.
This decline has been linked to the intrusion of peoples from the western highlands combined with the disastrous eruption of the Ilopango Volcano that severely affected the entire region.
The existing Preclassic Petén styles of architectural sculpture were combined with features of the highland and Pacific Coast tradition to produce the Early Classic Maya stela.
For example, the so-called "Jester God" was transferred to the headdress of the ruler portrayed on Tikal Stela 29,[34] which bears the oldest Long Count date yet found in the Maya lowlands – equating to 292 AD.
[99] The reverse of the stela bears a lengthy hieroglyphic inscription detailing the history of Tikal, including the Teotihuacan invasion that established Yax Nuun Ayiin I and his dynasty.
[100] In the Early Classic period the Maya kings began to dedicate a new stela, or other monument, to mark the end of each kʼatun cycle (representing 7,200 days, just under 20 sidereal years).
[16] Maya kings are depicted as warriors wearing costume from the Mexican highlands, including elements such as the foreign god Tlaloc and the Teotihacan serpent.
[109] After Quiriguá defeated its overlord Copán in 738, it brought massive blocks of red sandstone from quarries 5 kilometres (3.1 mi) from the city and sculpted a series of enormous stelae that were the biggest monolithic monuments ever raised by the Maya.
[115] Seventeen stelae were erected at Seibal between 849 and 889, and show a mix of Maya and foreign styles, including a lord wearing the beaked mask of Ehecatl, the central Mexican wind god, with a Mexican-style speech scroll emerging from the mouth.
[128] A plain stela in Twin Pyramid Group R at Tikal was removed by the local inhabitants some time during the Postclassic; its accompanying altar was also moved but abandoned some distance from its original location.
[136] While Stephens was engaged on business elsewhere, Catherwood carried out a brief investigation of the stelae at Quiriguá but found them very difficult to draw without a camera lucida due to their great height.
[137] Ambrosio Tut, governor of Petén, and colonel Modesto Méndez, the chief magistrate, visited the ruins of Tikal in 1848 accompanied by Eusebio Lara, who drew some of the monuments there.
[148] Many Maya archaeological sites have stelae on display in their original locations, in Guatemala these include, but are not limited to, Aguateca,[149] Dos Pilas,[150] El Chal,[151] Ixkun,[152] Nakum,[153] Seibal,[154] Takalik Abaj,[155] Uaxactun,[156] and Yaxha.
[161] In the early 1970s some museums, such as that of the University of Pennsylvania, responded to international criticism by no longer purchasing archaeological artefacts that lack a legally documented history, including place of origin, previous owners and an export license.
[163] A number of remaining fragments of the monument were rescued by archaeologist Ian Graham and transferred to the mayor's office in Dolores, Petén, where they were eventually used as construction material before once again being recovered, this time by the Atlas Arqueológico de Guatemala in 1989, and moved to their archaeological laboratory.
