El Baúl

El Baúl, a Late Classic (a.d. 600–900) center of the Cotzumalhuapan culture in the department of Escuintla, on the Pacific coast of Guatemala. The site is one of six architectural centers clustered on the rich cacao lands. Located near mountain corridors, these centers were strategically situated for coastal, piedmont, and highland trade. El Baúl is famous for its carved stelae and boulders, and sculptures in the round executed in a Mexican-derived Cotzumalhuapan style. The site also has an Izapan-style monument, Stela 1, dated ce 36, and a decapitated potbelly sculpture from 500–200 bce

The mapped portion of El Baúl has an acropolis, 83 feet high and 660 feet with four courts, a ball court, and twenty-two platforms. Some of the earthern structures have ramps. Pavements, staircases and drains are of stone.

There are twenty-eight Cotzumalhuapan-style monuments on the site. The themes of the sculptures are ritual scenes involving humans. Some include cacao imagery, reinforcing the idea that the elite of El Baúl were involved in the production and distribution of the crop. Other scenes show ball players and confrontation scenes between older and younger individuals. The death theme is represented by death's heads and figures in the round with closed eyes and crossed arms. Tenoned heads of serpents were architectural decorations. There are individual boulder sculptures of gods, one of which, the "Dios del Mundo," is used in present-day Maya ritual. There also are portraits of rulers. Speech scrolls, elements of dress, and glyphs indicate the art is of Mexican derivation.

The ethnic group associated with the art of El Baúl is thought to derive from southern Mexico. The style is found for 90 miles along the Pacific coast and perhaps as much as 30 miles into the mountainous interior of Guatemala.

See alsoBall Game, Pre-Columbian; Mesoamerica.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

John Eric Sidney Thompson, An Archaeological Reconnaissance in the Cotzumalhuapan Region: Excuintla, Guatemala, Carnegie Institution of Washington Publication 574, Contribution to American Anthropology and History no. 44 (1948).

Michael D. Coe, "Cycle 7 Monuments in Middle America: A Reconsideration," in American Anthropologist, 59, 4 (1957): 597-611.

Lee Parsons, Bilbao, Guatemala: An Anthropological Study of the Pacific Coast Cotzumalhuapa Region, Publications in Anthropology (Milwaukee Public Museum) 11 and 12 (1967–1969).

Additional Bibliography

Evans, Susan Toby. Ancient Mexico & Central America: Archaeology and Culture History. London: Thames & Hudson, 2004.

Orellana, Sandra L. Ethnohistory of the Pacific Coast. Lancaster: Labyrinthos, 1995.

Oswaldo Fernando Chinchilla Mazariegos, Oswaldo Fernando, and Bárbara Arroyo, eds. Iconografía y escritura teotihuacana en la costa sur de Guatemala y Chiapas. Guatemala: Asociación Tikal, 2005.

                                   Eugenia J. Robinson