College of Wooster archeologist leads discovery of Maya queen's tomb in Guatemala (photo

gallery)
John Mangels, The Plain Dealer By John Mangels, The Plain Dealer
on October 07, 2012 at 12:01 AM, updated October 09, 2012 at 2:32 PM

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Juan Carlos Perez, El Peru-W ak a
Archeological Project
Using a brush, College of W ooster archeologist O livia NavarroFarr work s carefully to ex pose the headdress of the SeventhCentury Maya queen Lady Kabel. A large shattered ceram ic
plate resem bling a shield is in the foreground.

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Juan Carlos Perez, El Peru-W ak a
Archeological Project
Using a brush, College of W ooster archeologist O livia NavarroFarr work s carefully to ex pose the headdress of the SeventhCentury Maya queen Lady Kabel. A large shattered ceram ic
plate resem bling a shield is in the foreground.

It w as the offerings heaped among the remains of the ancient Maya building that
convinced Olivia Navarro-Farr she had found a sacred place.
There w ere pieces of household crockery. Bits of ceramic figurines. Carved shells.
Handmade w histles. Tool fragments. Jew elry. A grinding stone. A fishing hook. Even
shards of human bones. Hundreds of thousands of tokens, accumulating at the structure
for more than tw o centuries, deep in the past. Layers upon layers of simple objects, all
precious to their long-dead ow ners, the citizens of the Maya city that once thrived at this
spot in the dense Guatemalan rainforest.
The staggering number and w ide range of the tokens reminded Navarro-Farr, an
archeologist at the College of W ooster, of the teddy bears, photos and other mementos
that mourners lovingly place at modern shrines, like the Vietnam Veterans Memorial W all
or the Oklahoma City bombing site. As she and her colleagues returned year after year to
dig in the damp jungle, Navarro-Farr grew certain that the relic-strew n building held great
ceremonial meaning.

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Juan Carlos Perez, El Peru-W ak a
Archeological Project
Using a brush, College of W ooster archeologist O livia NavarroFarr work s carefully to ex pose the headdress of the SeventhCentury Maya queen Lady K'abel. A large shattered ceram ic
plate resem bling a shield is in the foreground.

Finally, this summer, its significance became clear. Probing beneath a crumbling stone
staircase, Navarro-Farr and Guatemalan archeologist Griselda Perez exposed a collapsed, crypt-sized chamber. W hat they found inside, coupled w ith a

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startling clue in the Cleveland Museum of Art, led the team to conclude that they had located the probable tomb of a pow erful w arrior queen called Lady
K'abel, the "Holy Snake Lady" of Seventh-Century Classic Maya
Civilization.
The discovery, announced late last w eek, has draw n
international new s coverage. It is one of only a handful of
Maya tombs w hose occupants have been identified, according
to W ashington University anthropologist and project codirector David Freidel.

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Juan Carlos
Perez, El PeruW ak a
Archeological
Project

"It's moving. It's overw helming. It's just an incredible, once-ina-lifetime experience," Navarro-Farr, 36. said by telephone
from Guatemala City, w here she w as readying a return to
Cleveland and her teaching duties in W ooster. "And yes, it is a
career-making experience. I'm honored to be part of it."
The puzzling mass of trinkets at the Maya site has nagged
Navaro-Farr's thoughts since 2003, w hen the then Southern
Methodist University student began excavating the building for
her doctoral research project. Now no more than a mound of

A close-up view of the

alabaster effigy jar,
k nown as a W hite Soul
Flower cache vessel,
shows a bust of an
elderly wom an em erging
from a conch shell. The
Maya religion holds that
the conch shell trum pet
is the dwelling place of
royal ancestors and
gods. The sacred jar is
stained red with
cinnabar.

buried rubble, the structure once occupied the central plaza of

the ancient Maya city of W aka (pronounced w ah-KAH), the
seat of the kingdom of W ak, the Centipede Dynasty.
Rise and fall of Maya civilization
For almost 3,000 years, the Maya civilization flourished, dominating a w ide sw ath of Mesoamerica, w ith settlements
stretching from present-day southern Mexico to Guatemala, Honduras, Belize and El Salvador The empire reached its peak
during the so-called Classic Period, from 250 to about 800 AD, w ith elaborate art and architecture, and advanced
mathematics, astronomy and w ritten and spoken language.
After that time, for complex reasons that may include overpopulation, heightened w arfare and climate change, Maya society
began a gradual decline and eventual collapse, w ith the abandonment of its once-great cities and the dispersal of its people.
During the Maya heyday, though, the city of W aka occupied a strategic spot near the San Pedro Martir River, a vital east-w est
transit route through the southern Maya domain. Located on a broad ridge above the river and its tributary, W aka spread
over an area roughly the size of the dow ntow n Cleveland core, w ith royal palaces, soaring pyramid temples, broad public
plazas and commoners' dw ellings.

Maya cities w ere governed by a king and queen w hose subjects w orshipped them as gods on Earth. Cities w ere the seats of
royal dynasties that sparred for territory, resources and political control w ithin the broader Maya realm. In the Classic Period,

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the tw o dominant, w arring cities and their ruling dynasties, likened to superpow ers, w ere Tikal, 45 miles east of W aka, and
Calakmul, about 60 miles north.

Maya w ritings indicate that at one point, smaller and w eaker W aka and its Centipede Dynasty w as allied w ith the city's near neighbor, Tikal. But in the
Sixth Century, Calakmul's rulers, the mighty Kan (Snake) Dynasty, began surging southw ard, hoping to gain control of the San Pedro Martir River route.
W aka shifted its loyalties. And that's w here Lady K'abel comes in.
A bride and an alliance
Like royal families throughout history, the Maya rulers often used inter-marriages betw een dynasties to broker political ties. To bolster his influence in the
recently conquered territory, in the late Seventh Century the Kan king offered a member of his family the princess K'abel (pronounced kah-BELL) in
marriage to the W ak Dynasty king, K'inich Bahlam, the Sun-Faced Jaguar.
Lady K'abel w as a heavyw eight, both in physical stature and clout. Befitting her heritage purported mystical pow ers, she w as called the Holy Snake Lady.
Carved monuments called stelae depict her as stout and sharp-nosed, w ith a tow ering ornamental headdress. She arrived in W aka w ith the royal title of
kaloomte (pronounced kah-loom-TAY).
There's some disagreement about w hether the title has military implications; some experts interpret it as "supreme w arrior" w hile others believe it
signifies strictly royal status. But there's no doubt that Lady K'abel had much greater authority than her husband, the king.
"People w ho carry that [kaloomte] title are considered to be more pow erful than normal kings," said University of California San Diego archeologist

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Geoffrey Braswell, w ho w as not involved in the find. "It also connotes something else . . . the founder of a new lineage. She w as definitely view ed as
the mother of the future kings of a pow erful site."
Lady K'abel and King K'inich ruled W aka together for at least 20 years, from 672 to 692 AD, perhaps longer. After their reign,
W aka, like other Maya cities, began its long, slow fadeout. Decay and the jungle's relentless grow th w iped out most of the
kingdom's visible traces.
The re-discovery of Waka
A thousand years later, in the 1950s and 60s, oil and chicle prospectors penetrated the Guatemalan rainforest and rediscovered the W aka site, now called El Peru-W aka. That paved the w ay for looters, w ho Friedel and others have said
managed to hack loose tw o facing 8-foot-tall carved limestone slabs, or stelae, depicting King K'inich and Lady K'abel.

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Juan Carlos
Perez, El PeruW ak a
Archeological
Project

The massive slabs ended up in w ell-know n museum collections King K'inich at Fort W orth's
Kimbell Art Museum and Lady K'abel at the Cleveland Museum of Art. Both institutions purchased
the stelae before the 1970 international treaty that outlaw ed the trade of stolen antiquities.

Inside the tom b of

Maya queen Lady
K'abel, archeologists
O livia Navarro-Farr, left,
and Griselda Perez
ex am ine a carved
figurine that lay nex t to
the ruler's rem ains.

Navarro-Farr, w ho w ould end up on the faculty of the College of W ooster, barely an hour's drive
from Cleveland, has yet to see the Lady K'abel stela in person. (It's not currently on display due to
gallery construction but w ill return to public view next summer.)
But she w as familiar w ith the image, as w ell as Lady K'abel's history, w hen she came back to El
Peru-W aka this year to resume deciphering the ruins of the central building and those perplexing
ritual offerings.

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The style of the pottery pieces and radio-carbon dating show ed that the relics w ere left beginning
a century or more after Lady K'abel had died, throughout the slow demise of Maya civilization.
They w eren't part of a trash heap, since there w ere no animal or food remains. As she dug
deeper, Navarro-Farr w as convinced she w as unearthing an intentional, enduring shrine.
A hint of w hat inspired that enduring devotion came from stelae fragments found inside the
building. One of the monuments show ed a male w ith a feathered crow n by date and

Cleveland
Museum of Art
This 8-foot-tall
lim estone m onum ent,
or stela, depicts the
Maya queen Lady K'abel
in cerem onial
headdress. It is part of
the Cleveland Museum
of Art's pre-Colum bian
collection, currently in
storage.

appearance almost surely King K'inich. Another more damaged slab piece depicted an
unidentifiable queen, facing tow ard the king. The stelae w ere reminiscent of those in the Cleveland and Fort W orth museums.
Then, in early June, Navarro-Farr and her colleagues pierced the corner of a collapsed
masonry chamber large enough to hold a body. They w orked around the clock for 10 days,
under protection from the Guatemalan army in case looters appeared. Carefully clearing
dirt and rubble from the vault, at times w orking w ith soft paint brushes, they w ere
stunned at w hat they found.
Weath of artifacts inside tomb

Describing the find: Archeologist Olivia Navarro-Farr

talks about discovering the tomb of Lady K'abel. For
more information about the find, click here. For a
video lecture about earlier work at the site, click
here.

There w ere richly detailed ceramic containers, and pieces of carved jade and shell jew elry. Shards of a smoky pyrite mirror, covered in painted stucco. And
on a small bench, the bones of a stout adult. Protruding from the rear of the skull w as an enlarged knob of bone.
A decorated ceramic plate resembling a battle shield covered the body's left torso. The arm bones w ere flexed in death, as if
posed to hold it through eternity A finely etched jade jew el near the chest show ed the portrait of a young w oman. A red spiny
oyster shell lay on the low er torso. And a palm-sized alabaster jar, carved to mimic a conch shell, depicted the w izened face of
an older w oman emerging from the shell's mouth. On the rear of the cracked, cinnabar-stained jar w ere four Maya symbols, or
glyphs.
W ith later analysis, the clues fell into place. The ornate burial gifts befitted a ruler. The shield belonged to a w arrior. A heavy,
constantly w orn royal headdress w ould have formed the skull knob. Maya queens also w ore oyster shells as girdle
ornaments. And a pow erful sorcerer, like a Maya queen, w ould have used a mirror to communicate w ith dead ancestors.
The final, definitive sign w as the jar, know n as a W hite Soul Flow er cache vessel. The Maya believed the intensely personal
object w as a repository for one's soul. Translated, the decorative glyphs read "the house of" and "Lady W aterlilly-Hand" and
"Lady Snake Lord," identifying the jar's ow ner as a princess of Calakmul.
Although they can never be absolutely certain, the researcher believe they've found Lady K'abel's tomb. The offerings piled at
her shrine over the ensuing centuries may have comforted inhabitants of the dying empire, reminding them of better times
and majestic rulers.

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El Peru-W ak a
Archeological
Project

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The tomb and the shrine are "a compelling story of a pow erful w oman w ho politically, dare I say, out-shined her husband,"
said Navarro-Farr, w ho w ill return next spring for more excavation at W aka. The artifacts the team recovered eventually w ill
go to the National Museum of Archeology and Ethnology in Guatemala City.
"There's a lot that this burial and the remains have yet to present to us in terms of information," the archeologist said. "It is

The Maya sym bols, or

glyphs, on this
alabaster jar found in
the burial vault read
"the house of" and
"Lady W aterlilly-Hand"
and "Lady Snak e Lord,"
identifying the jar's
owner as a princess of
the city of Calak m ul.

an immense volume of material, but w e intend to do it justice. W e w ant the w orld to know w ho this w oman w as."
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