Bilbao (Guatemala)

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Monumental stone no. 19 is still on the premises of the finca - an attempt was made to split it. He shows three figures, of which the larger left figure seems to offer help to the emaciated right figure with a pronounced hip ornament and their companion.

Bilbao is an archaeological site in southern Guatemala . Together with other sites in the area ( El Baúl , El Castillo and several smaller sites) it is assigned to the Cotzumalhuapa culture , which in turn is subsumed under the umbrella term of the pre-Columbian "Pacific cultures", with none of the archaeologically interesting excavation sites directly on the Pacific coast lies.

Location and climate

The former coffee plantation of Finca Bilbao , after which the archaeological site is named, is located about 2 km north of the town of Santa Lucía Cotzumalguapa in the Escuintla department at an altitude of about 520  m . The area of ​​the finca, which is now partially built up or covered by sugar cane fields , is about 50 km (as the crow flies) from the Pacific coast. Due to the frequent rains and the nearby ocean, the prevailing climate is quite humid. The chain of volcanic mountains in the hinterland, including the Fuego , which often spews out ash clouds , contribute to the subtropical weather.

history

As in El Baúl , most of the monuments of the archaeological site of Bilbao are assigned to the late classical period (approx. 600 to 800 AD). Both sites covered - together with El Castillo - an area of ​​about 10 km², which was connected by 11 to 14 m wide, partially paved roads.

Some steles of the archaeological site of Bilbao were discovered and described in the middle of the 19th century. Through drawings by the Austrian traveler Dr. Habel from 1862 came across some monuments to the then director of the Berlin Ethnological Museum Adolf Bastian (1826–1905), who acquired them for the museum on a trip in 1876. In the years 1877/8 a German named Karl Hermann Berendt was involved in the recovery of some steles, which - in order to save weight - were sawn into panels. In 1881 these plates were shipped to Stettin, from where they were transported to Berlin , where they can be seen today in the Ethnological Museum - again supplemented to form steles.

Monuments

Only a few stones in relief are left on the grounds of the finca. All the rest are in museums, including the Ethnological Museum in Berlin. The four steles that came to Berlin are stylistically very uniform; even if they do not have any date glyphs, one can assume that they were created in a close temporal context. Two of the steles are surrounded by a frame; all four show bas-reliefs of ball players in the lower part and figures of gods, whose heads are much more sculptural and seem to protrude from the stone, in the upper sphere. The ball players all wear yoke stones (yugos) around their hips and rich headdresses; their heads and their bent left arms are raised to the sky, their hands are partially wrapped with protective straps. Between the lower level and the sphere of the gods, circular glyphs and / or speech bubble-like structures can be seen.

  • Stele No. 1

  • Stele No. 2

  • Stele No. 3

  • Stele No. 4

meaning

No (defeated) opponent is assigned to any of the four ball players; the central theme thus does not seem to be victory or defeat - and the often associated theme of human sacrifice ; rather, the contact between the earthly and the otherworldly world brought about by the game seems to play the central role.

The art of the Cotzumalhuapa culture differs from the contemporary artistic legacies of the Maya due to the wide range of topics and the lack of inscriptions and dates .

literature

  • Oswaldo Chinchilla Mazariegos: Las esculturas de Cotzumalguapa en el Museo Etnográfico de Berlin (digital version) . In: JP Laporte and H. Escobedo (eds.): X Simposio de Investigaciones Arqueológicas en Guatemala , Guatemala: Museo Nacional de Arqueología y Etnología 1996 pp. 214-226. [1] (Spanish)
  • Joyce Kelly (1996); An Archaeological Guide to Northern Central America: Belize, Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador . Norman, University of Oklahoma Press 1996, ISBN 0-8061-2858-5 . OCLC 34658843.
  • Lee A. Parsons: The Ballgame in the Southern Pacific Coast Cotzumalhuapa Region and Its Impact on Kaminaljuyu During the Middle Classic. In: Vernon Scarborough, David R. Wilcox (Eds.): The Mesoamerican Ballgame. Tucson, University of Arizona Press 1991, pp. 195-212. ISBN 0-8165-1360-0 . OCLC 51873028.

Web links

Commons : Bilbao  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Coordinates: 14 ° 20 ′ 59 "  N , 91 ° 1 ′ 40"  W.