Great Stories from an Unlikely Place: Sak Nikte’ in the Maya World
Thursday, February 18
Workshops | 1:00 pm to 3:00 pm
Like the Back of Your Hand: Archaeological Mapping Using Mobile Device Apps
Rodrigo Guzman Piedrasanta, Middle American Research Institute, Tulane University
Location TBD
Since the development of Geographic Information Systems (GIS), surveying methods have increasingly incorporated digital technologies as they have become available. Data collectors and GPS navigation devices have improved surveying precision and expanded data-collection capacity. More recently, smart devices have strengthened the connection between GIS processing and field surveying, mapping, and reconnaissance to an unprecedented degree. Cellphones and tablets now have built-in GPS receivers and can be used for surveying through specialized applications. This workshop is an introduction to surveying applications for smart devices. Participants will explore some available options, and a practical example on an archaeological site will be presented. Participants are welcome to use their own smart devices to download the application and the example file. However, having a smart device is not required, as all activities will be demonstrated and projected on the workshop room screen.
What the Potsherds Reveal: A Hands-On Ceramic Analysis Workshop
Caroline (Carrie) Parris, University of Iowa Office of the State Archaeologist
Location TBD
Potsherds, or ceramics, are the most common artifact type recovered in the Maya area. From dating a site’s occupation to providing insights about social interactions, the study of potsherds plays a vital role in understanding and interpreting the archaeological record, at La Corona and across the world.
Focusing on hands-on learning, this workshop will cover some basic methods of studying ceramics: attribute analysis, type-variety, form and function, and refitting. Participants will practice each method on sherds from a teaching collection. Examples of how these strategies have informed our understanding of the city of Sak Nikte’ and its residents will be highlighted throughout the workshop.
This workshop is designed to accommodate a wide range of experience and knowledge levels: beginners will learn how archaeologists use ceramics to understand the past; intermediate-level learners will reinforce existing knowledge and discover a new perspective for approaching ceramic analysis; experienced attendees will be reminded of the applicability of ceramic analysis to their research and will gain new strategies for teaching ceramic analysis. All participants will be challenged to (re)kindle a love for sherds and think about the archaeological record and their daily interactions with ceramics in a new way.
Exhibit Opening, Talk, and Reception
Mexican Cultural Institute
Suite 118
901 Convention Center Blvd. (entrance on Andrew Higgins Blvd.)
6:00 pm to 8:00 pm
Investigating a Royal City: Calakmul in the Classic Maya World
Jordan Kobylt, Tulane University
The ancient Maya city of Calakmul, Mexico, served as the dynastic seat of the Kaanu’l royal lineage during its period of maximum political authority in the seventh and eighth centuries AD. However, the city had a long period of occupation predating Kaanu’l, dating back as far as 1000 BC. This talk will overview recent research on the rise of Calakmul as an urban center, its transformation into a major political capital in the seventh century AD, and how ongoing archaeological and epigraphic studies are helping scholars understand Calakmul’s unique and important role in the Classic Maya world. Together, these investigations have helped illustrate relationships between ancient Maya urbanism, economics, and sociopolitics.
This event is free and open to the public.
Friday, February 19
8:30 am to 9:00 am
Registration, Check In, Light Breakfast
9:00 am to 12:00 pm
Epigraphy and History at La Corona
David Stuart, University of Texas at Austin
Marc Zender, Middle American Research Institute, Tulane University
Room 305, Dinwiddie Hall, Tulane University, 6823 St. Charles Avenue
The Maya ruins of La Corona (ancient Saknikte’) sport an unusually large textual and historical record. The site’s inscriptions, despite their highly fragmented and incomplete state, present epigraphers and archaeologists with a detailed account of a royal family that ruled there at least from the 6th to 8th centuries. Excavations in the last several years have revealed many more inscribed sculptures. This forum will focus on the distinctive characteristics of La Corona as a literate community of the Classic period, highlighting aspects of dynastic history, ritual subject matter, textual presentation, and language, all of which provide important cultural and political contexts for understanding La Corona in the wider world of the lowland Classic Maya. More broadly, we discuss the continuing emergence of a historical methodology in the theory and practice of Maya archaeology.
12:00 pm to 1:00 pm
Lunch
Location TBD
Workshops | 1:00 pm to 3:00 pm
From Sherds to Source: Provenance Research for Maya Archaeology
Melissa Galván Bernal, Hiroaki Yagi, Whitney A. Goodwin, Wesley D. Stoner, James A. Davenport, Alejandro J. Figueroa, Brandi L. MacDonald, Virginie Renson, and Jeffrey R. Ferguson
Archaeometry Laboratory, University of Missouri Research Reactor (MURR)
Location TBD
Where was this pot made? What can these obsidian flakes reveal about ancient exchange? Compositional analysis offers powerful tools for answering questions about production and interaction in the ancient Maya world—but how can archaeologists effectively incorporate these methods into their research? This workshop introduces Maya archaeologists to the analytical techniques, comparative databases, and collaborative opportunities available at the Archaeometry Laboratory at MURR. Using Maya case studies, MURR researchers will demonstrate how neutron activation analysis, X-ray fluorescence, mass spectrometry, and other methods can trace the origins and life histories of ceramics, obsidian, metals, pigments, and more.
Participants will learn practical strategies for designing provenance research, from selecting methods to interpreting data and integrating results. The course will also introduce subsidized analytical opportunities through MURR's NSF-supported archaeometry program. No experience with archaeological science is required. Join us to explore how provenance research can enrich your understanding of the Maya past—and discover new collaborative paths for your work!
Court Summons, Usurpation, and Untimely Death: The Language & Narrative of La Corona Panel 2
Mary Kate Kelly, Mount Royal University
Location TBD
This 2-hour workshop will focus on La Corona Panel 2 and its complex narrative of power dynamics in the mid-seventh century. At a time when the seat of power of the Kaan hegemony was shifting, succession at La Corona (known anciently as Sak Nikte’) was also fraught. Brief forays into related texts from La Corona and elsewhere will bolster our understanding of this ancient history, highlighting tensions between Kaan kings and La Corona elite, as well as within La Corona’s own dynastic line. Additionally, linguistic details on Panel 2 lend nuance to the narrative of power dynamics, indicating that, in at least some respects, the La Corona elite had substantial autonomy despite their subordination to the Kaan kings. Following a traditional workshop format, participants will decipher the inscription using provided resources (i.e., a syllabary, logogram dictionary, and calendrical tools), as well as their own keen observation and deduction skills.
Keynote Address and Reception
Lapis Auditorium
New Orleans Museum of Art
One Collins Diboll Circle, City Park
5:00 pm to 6:00 pm
A Period-Ending Celebration: 20 Years of Research at La Corona, Guatemala
Tomás Barrientos Q., Universidad del Valle de Guatemala
Just as the celebration of 20-year cycles was important to the ancient Maya, this talk summarizes the results of the La Corona Regional Archaeological Project over its first two decades. A joint effort of Tulane University and Universidad del Valle de Guatemala, the project stands among the most notable projects in 21st-century Maya archaeology, in large part because it has investigated one of the least-known regions of the Maya area. Its multidisciplinary team has gathered new data that establish the ancient city of La Corona and its surrounding region as one of the most strategically important areas in Classic-period geopolitics. Over the last two decades, excavations at La Corona have recovered more hieroglyphic inscriptions than at any other Maya site, and the region was among the first areas in which lidar technology was applied, revolutionizing our understanding of settlement patterns. For these and many other reasons, the project has had a lasting impact on Guatemalan archaeology and on the conservation and protection of heritage in the Maya Biosphere Reserve.
6:00 pm to 7:30 pm
Keynote Reception
The keynote address is free and open to the public.
Saturday, February 20
Symposium
The Village Theater / Lake Theater
Behind Lake Residence Hall
#48 on Interactive Campus Map
8:00 am to 8:45 am
Registration, Check In, Light Breakfast
8:45 am to 9:00 am
Welcome & Opening Remarks
Marcello A. Canuto, Director, Middle American Research Institute, Tulane University
9:00 am
Northwest Petén from the Beginning of Time to the Founding of the Saknikte’ Royal House
Luke Auld-Thomas, Northern Arizona University
La Corona and its dynasty developed in a landscape that was already thick with history—even if it was never thick with people. This talk sketches that history and provides an account of how we know what we know about it. Northwest Petén has always been a place at the margins: first of an innovative tradition of monument building in the Middle Preclassic, then of the Maya Lowlands’ first wave of complex urban polities during the Late Preclassic, then of a second wave of polities whose conflicts and alliances defined Classic Maya geopolitics. Precisely because it was on the margins, thinly occupied yet with abundant water and ample room to maneuver, Northwest Petén attracted the attention of powerful Maya polities during the Preclassic and the Classic periods, and its history was shaped by the articulation of local demographic processes and regional political machinations. We know this history thanks to work by PRALC archaeologists and epigraphers, not only at La Corona but also at El Achiotal, La Cariba, El Jobillo, and numerous sites farther afield.
9:40 am
Some Contributions of the La Corona Project to Maya Decipherment
Marc Zender, Middle American Research Institute, Tulane University
This presentation explores recent epigraphic discoveries at La Corona, Guatemala, and the many ways in which these have contributed to the ongoing refinement of Maya historical narratives, highlighting the contingent nature of epigraphic discovery. Unexpected textual finds not infrequently require revisions to previously established political histories and royal nomenclatures. A key example includes the phonetic reevaluation of a ruler’s name, illustrating how advanced decipherment directly impacts historical interpretation. These ongoing discoveries illuminate La Corona’s complex geopolitical ties to the Snake dynasty and confirm that archaeological unpredictability ensures Maya history remains a dynamic, self-correcting field of study.
10:20 am
Coffee Break
10:40 am
Evolving Political Regimes in the Regal Palace of Sak Nikte’
Maxime Lamoureux-St-Hilaire, Mount Royal University
As quintessential political landscapes, ancient regal palaces may be studied as the blueprints of past regimes. Sak Nikte’s palace is the polity’s largest building, with six construction phases (spanning ca. 500–830 CE) that reflect its evolving regimes: from humble beginnings to a Kaanul fief and, eventually, a more independent Later Classic polity.
This presentation focuses on Sak Nikte’s transition away from the Kaanul hegemony after 750 CE and its subsequent reinvention as a regime of its own. In the regal palace, this transition is reflected in the closure of important buildings and the construction of a new royal court. Detailed architectural, artifactual, and geoarchaeological data illuminate how the late Sak Nikte’ ruling family designed a functional royal court organized around effective political communication, administration, and economic activities. Far from subdued, this later royal court harnessed its rich Kaanul heritage and expanded its regional network.
This talk ends with an overview of how this palace was abandoned, as the site’s political gravitas waned and it followed many of its neighbors into the Classic Maya collapse.
11:20 am
Dispersed but Connected: A Multi-Scalar Approach to Late Classic Lifeways and Communal Cohesion
Jocelyne Ponce, Middle American Research Institute, Tulane University
Lidar has revealed dispersed populations connected through diverse forms of infrastructure, yet material evidence provides a detailed perspective on how communities were socially and economically interconnected. This talk examines lifeways across the sparsely populated region of La Corona during the Late Classic period (ca. AD 600–900). Drawing on spatial, material, sourcing, macrobotanical, and zooarchaeological datasets, this talk examines three middle-scale communities situated within heuristically defined urban, peri-urban, and rural zones to explore mechanisms of socioeconomic cohesion at multiple scales. The results reveal broad similarities in socioeconomic organization, alongside meaningful differences in access to resources, participation in exchange networks, and craft activities. Most notably, the rural community exhibited a distinctive lifeway compared with the urban and peri-urban communities. These findings demonstrate that communities across La Corona’s dispersed landscape maintained interconnected but locally distinctive lifeways, highlighting settlement density as a socially meaningful dimension of Lowland Maya lifeways. More broadly, the results shed light on how Maya populations structured social networks and maintained regional cohesion across dispersed landscapes beyond physical infrastructure alone.
12:00 pm to 2:00 pm
Lunch
Lunch will be served at Cassatt Courtyard (between Jones Hall, #25 on Interactive Campus Map, and The Commons, #28 on the Interactive Campus Map) and the Green Leaf Conference Room in Jones Hall
12:00 pm to 2:00 pm
Books and Merchandise Sale
2:00 pm
À Table! Elucidating Ancient Maya Culinary Arts at La Corona, Guatemala, Through the Examination of Plant Remains
Clarissa Cagnato, Archéologie des Amériques (UMR 8096), CNRS/Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne
After more than two decades of research at La Corona, it is clear that various commensal events played an important role throughout the site’s history. Indeed, the preparation and presentation of food, along with the associated sensory experiences, serve as a powerful means of communication, not only evoking emotions and memories but also contributing to the cohesion of communities while at certain times accentuating social division. This talk will reveal that examining the archaeobotanical evidence obtained from these contexts, spanning the Early to Terminal Classic periods and including urban, peri-urban, and rural areas, can shed light on ancient Maya foodways but also provide valuable insight into their rituals, medicine, and the functional use of their natural resources. Furthermore, through this presentation, I will propose how this lowland community may have developed a unique culinary tradition and a distinct sense of place by leveraging a diverse array of locally available plants and potentially incorporating non-local species. These data, which are often invisible to the naked eye, further highlight La Corona’s uniqueness within the ancient Maya world.
2:40 pm
Understanding Maya Lithic Economies: The View from the La Corona Region
Rachel A. Horowitz, Washington State University
Past Maya economies provide information about how peoples across socio-economic classes interacted. Lithics, or stone tools, provide a unique view into past Maya economies, as they preserve well archaeologically and are reductive, allowing us to trace their production, use, and discard across the landscape. As such, we can use investigations of lithic production to shed light on aspects of past Maya economies. Investigations at La Corona and in the surrounding region provide an opportunity to examine the lithic economy within the site and to explore how political relationships among La Corona and nearby sites impacted their participation in regional economic networks. In this talk, I evaluate the role of residents of the La Corona region as producers and consumers of lithics produced on local and non-local raw material, using these data to place La Corona within lowland Maya economic networks.
3:20 pm
Coffee Break
3:40 pm
A Tale of Two Projects: Twenty Years of Archaeology at El Perú-Waka’ and La Corona
Damien B. Marken, Commonwealth University of Pennsylvania-Bloomsburg
In May 2005, archaeologists from the El Perú-Waka’ Regional Archaeological Project (PAW) and Wildlife Conservation Society personnel arrived at the little-known archaeological site of La Corona in northwestern Petén, Guatemala with the intent of identifying and matching on-site limestone monument “carcasses” to looted carved monument surfaces from the then-unlocated “Site Q.” While this initial five-day expedition failed to identify any monument carcasses, we did confirm La Corona as the ancestral Maya center of Sak Nik’ Te’, and the original home of many “Site Q” monuments.
In part due to this shared research history and in part due to their spatial proximity, archaeological investigations at Waka’ and Sak Nik’ Te’ have since witnessed considerable collaboration between the two projects. This ongoing intellectual exchange has yielded detailed insights not only into the historical and political interconnections between these places through their shared relationships with Kaanul dynasts, but also into broader economic and cultural ties among communities in western Petén. This paper will examine material similarities and differences between these two Classic Maya kingdoms to better situate both within the wider Maya world.
4:20 pm
Small City, Great Powers: La Corona’s Political Reinventions in the Ancient Maya World
Marcello A. Canuto, Middle American Research Institute, Tulane University
Why did La Corona, a Maya center in northwestern Guatemala, become indispensable to one of the ancient Americas’ most powerful dynasties? Originally named Sak Nikte’, La Corona occupied a strategic corridor between the Maya heartland and western river routes. Archaeology, hieroglyphic texts, and lidar reveal that its importance rested not on population or monumental scale, but on connections among people, places, and political ambitions.
This talk traces how La Corona developed from a community of founding families into an ally—and eventually a colonial extension—of the Kaanul, or “Snake,” dynasty. Sixth-century royal marriages, courtly visits, military obligations, imported wealth, and religious innovations deeply transformed local authority. Yet Kaanul control remained uneven. Lidar shows a compact, court-centered nucleus and strategically positioned elite nodes along communication routes, surrounded by dispersed farming communities that were never fully integrated into a territorial state.
When Kaanul power collapsed in the eighth century, La Corona did not simply disappear. Its rulers rearranged and preserved older monuments, converting memories of subordination into resources for renewed autonomy. La Corona therefore reveals how Maya hegemony worked: through relationships, selective control, and local adaptation rather than uniform conquest—and how small communities could help build, endure, and outlive great powers.
7:00 pm to 9:00 pm
Closing Reception