Quiriguá
Quiriguá is an ancient
Maya site in the
Izabal department of
Guatemala.
Stela D
North face
Quiriguá is a medium sized site along the lower Montagua river, with the ceremonial center heart of the site about 1 km from the left bank of the river. The city's period of occupation seems to correspond to the length of the
Maya Classic period; the site being occupied by
200, construction on the acropolis begun about
550, a great boom of grander construction beginning in the
700s with all construction evidently halting about
850. Quiriguá's boom in the 700s was no doubt tied to the military victory by Quiriguá's king
Cauac Sky (also known to the Ancient Maya as "Butz Tiliw" and "K’ak’ Tiliw Chan Yo'at") over
Copan in
738. Before this Quiriguá was probably a vasal state of Copan, afterwards the situation was reversed. The amount of grand ceremonial architecture is perhaps rather small for a site of Quiriguá's importance, but the site remains very impressive thanks largely to it's wealth of sculpture, some of the finest of ancient
MesoAmerica. This includes unusually huge stelae elaborately carved from single blocks of stone, the largest being 10 meters (35 feet) tall and weighing some 60,000 kg (65 tons). In addition to the tall vertical stelae, the site has a number of bolders elaborately sculpted into the forms of mythological animals; these sculptures are referred to as
Zoomorphs. There are also various altars and sculptures used as decoration in the fascades of buildings. As a whole, the artistry of the sculptures is not quite so good as the best found at
Palenque and
Copan; most Quiriguá monuments have a grand formal monumentality that is rather stiff compared to the naturalistic grace of the art of those other sites. A few Quiriguá monuments, however, show exceptional artistry. Probably the finest of these are
Stela D from
766 which has extravagant full-figure anthropomorphic versions of Maya hieroglyphics on one side, and
Zoomorph P (which explorer Maudslay nicknamed
The Great Turtle), from
736, which are masterpieces of Mesoamerican art.
Modern history of Quiriguá
The first visitor to publish an account of Quiriguá was Frederick Catherwood in 1840. Due to adverse conditions he was only able to stay a short time at the ruins, but made drawings of two of the stelae which were published with a short account of Catherwood's visit in John Lloyd Stephens's book Incidents of Travel in Central America, Chiapas, and Yucatan. A longer account of the ruins was made in 1854 by Dr. Karl Scherzer. Alfred Maudslay set up camp at the ruins during 1881, 1882, and 1883, making a very throurough examination and photographic record of all visible monuments, making some minor excavations, and making paper and plaster molds of all the heiroglphic inscriptions and principle sculptures; these molds were then shipped to the British Museum. Maudslay made a return visit to Quiriguá in 1894.
Zoomorph B
photo by Maudslay
In 1910 the United Fruit Company bought Quiriguá and all the land a large distance around for banana production; they set aside 30 acres including and around the ruins as an archeological zone. More archeological work was done 1910 - 1914 by Edgar Lee Hewitt for the School of American Research at Santa Fe. Duplicates of the stelae of Quiriguá made from Hewitt's plaster casts of the originals were exhibited at the Panama-California Exposition in San Diego, California in 1915. The Carnegie Institution conducted several intermittent projects here from 1915 through 1934.
From 1975 through 1980 an extensive archeological project was conducted at Quiriguá sponsored by the University of Pennsylvania, the National Geographic Society, and the government of Guatemala.
Quiriguá is a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
External links