ABSTRACT
Cival’s Preclassic Stela 2 was found a few centimeters away from the Middle Preclassic Cache 4 jade offering along the east-west axis of the plaza. In style, it predates the earliest monuments from Nakbe and El Mirador (Estrada-Belli 2003a). Although found on the surface, its oval-shaped setting pit was identified during excavation. It originally stood on a small rectangular platform in front of the stairway of Structure 7, the E-Group’s eastern platform (see Figure 4.9, above; Estrada-Belli et al. 2003a; Bauer 2005). A vessel found in an offertory cache placed under the oval-shaped pit suggests a probable date for it of 300-200 BC. It is carved in simple low-relief outlines. The figure wears a jade bird-head pectoral with three plaques. This avian motif is often worn by rulers as a pectoral or a headdress on Preclassic/Protoclassic monuments at Kaminaljuyú, Abaj Takalik, in the Maya Highlands, on the Pacific Coast, and on the Gulf Coast of Mexico (e.g. La Mojarra, Stela 1; Parsons 1986; Winfield Capitaine 1992). This image has many parallels with scenes of the maize god wearing the feather costume of the Principal Bird Deity (PBD; Bardawil 1976) and performing a dance described by Taube (2009). These images are common, for example, on Holmul dancer-style vessels produced in this same area during the Late Classic. In them, a maize god impersonator wears a feather backrack. In a famous Early Classic vessel from Kaminaljuyú an individual wears a full avian costume and is captured in a spinning motion. The meaning of this dance may have to do with the superior importance of the PBD among all Maya supernaturals (see below) and the taking of his headdress and other accouterments by the maize god in Classic and Postclassic Maya mythology. The Late Preclassic mural of the West Wall of the Pinturas Sub1A structure at San Bartolo may depict an early version of this myth that culminates with the crowning of the maize god with the foliated headdress of the PBD. This scene in turn serves as mythological precedent for the accession ceremony of a mortal ruler vested with the avian crown by the maize god himself wearing an avian cape and headdress as well (Taube 2009). Traditionally, scenes in which the maize god faces the PBD are most readily compared to the mythological episode of the triumph of the maize god over the avian impostor Vukub Qakix
“Seven Macaw” of the Popol Vuh creation story (Tedlock 1996). However, the actions and identities of the characters in Classic and especially Preclassic art may refer to mythologies not preserved or only partially preserved in the Popol Vuh and thus unknown to us (see, for example, interpretations of the PBD alternative to Vukub Qakix in Bassie-Sweet 2008). Regardless of the exact mythological reference, the Cival stela could be the oldest representation of the ritual dance performance that was so important to Maya royal ceremony. Finally, it is also worth noting that this stela’s tapered shape recalls upturned jade celts such as those in the cruciform cache, a feature noted in early stela monuments in the Gulf Coast as well, suggesting once again a ruler/maize god/world tree identification in the person of the ruler (Taube 2000). In sum, at the time of the Cival Stela 2 dedication, circa 300-200 BC, the ideological charter of Maya kings was fully in place.
