Archaeology Magazine - January/February 1985 - 37

reported on here. This present work has also discovered that J.E.S. Thompson, perhaps the best
known Maya archaeologist, had unknowingly tested
two E Groups in the 1920s at Cahal Pichik and
Hatzcab Ceel in the Mountain Cow region of Belize.
Two E Groups, in fact, and possibly a third, are
known in the Tayasal-Paxcaman Zone. The two that
are definitely known occur at the sites of Cenote
and Paxcaman in the eastern part of the zone; the
third possible one occurs at Tayasal itself, but the
western structure of this group was partially dismantled by later building activity. If this construction does indeed prove to be another E Group, it
would indicate that the population at Tayasal eventually joined their eastern neighbors in the acquisition of such an assemblage; for the E Groups at
Cenote and Paxcaman stylistically predate the one
at Tayasal, and the E Group at Cenote has proved
upon excavation to be even earlier than the one found
at Uaxactun (which is similar to the one at Tayasal).
The E Group at Cenote, then, the only one excavated in the Tayasal-Paxcaman Zone to date, thus
becomes the only available and intensively excavated example in the Maya area other than the
original one at Uaxactun. Significantly, it also constitutes a variant on the chronologically later one at
Uaxactun inasmuch as it has a high central structure flanked by wings which are tipped with two
other smaller structures, and the whole of the eastern
construction is 93 meters long. In contrast, the
eastern building in the E Group at Uaxactun is
70 meters long, and supports three buildings of
roughly equal size atop a single platform surface.
Perhaps even more significantly, the appearance
of the E Groups at Cenote and Paxcaman correspond to the florescence of both of these sites during
the Early Classic period. In contrast, Tayasal experienced a marked depression in civic-ceremonial
construction at this time. But the various material
changes occurring in the southern Lowlands during
this epoch very strongly suggest that the E Group
must have had more than astronomical significance
for the Early Classic Maya; indeed, its large-scale
and open form as well as its important central
positioning at sites where it occurs indicate that
whatever activities were performed here were public
and may have involved much of the local population.
The excavations at the Cenote E Group produced
burials in the main building of the eastern construction as well as caches containing tetrapod vessels,
markers of a poorly understood ceramic subcomplex
dating to the transition between the Preclassic and
Classic periods. At one point, such distinctive
ceramics were interpreted as representing an influx
of foreign people into the Maya area; the sequence
recovered from the Tayasal-Paxcaman Zone, however,
indicates that such items developed from earlier
Late Preclassic antecedents and were of strictly
ritual importance. The indigenous nature of both
the architectural complex and the specialized ceramics suggested by the Cenote data contrasts
greatly with those who would see the development
of the Maya heartland as due to influxes of people
from the southeastern Maya periphery. Finally,
the appearance of the stela cult in the zone was also
contemporary with the development of E Groups

and the distinctive vessels just mentioned. In the
earliest phases of this cult, plain monuments were
mounted on the summits of small platforms. This
conjunction of specialized architectural groups,
stone monuments, and particular ceramics does not
occur uniformly throughout the Maya heartland;
where it does occur, however, it represents a crystalization of a new Maya society. This reformulation
soon transformed the Southern Lowlands into
what is recognized archaeologically as the Early
Classic period.
It was also supposed earlier that the presence of
an E Group was a prime indicator of major site
status- especially for the Late Classic period. The
more recent research, however, has demonstrated
that, contrary to this assumption, E Groups are
generally much earlier in date and associated with
the onset of the Early Classic period; it would also
appear that the E Group fell into disuse during the
Late Classic period, being replaced by a different
constellation of Maya architecture, predominant
among which was the acropolis and the Plaza Plan 2.
This more recent work has also shown that E Groups
were more widespread than was previously believed.
Both the distribution of E Groups in the Central
Peten and their association with sites lacking carved
stelae and vaulted architecture contradict the assumption that only sites very high in the Maya
social hierarchy would have had E Groups.
While the presence of an E Group is indeed
significant, what it may really reflect is a developmental trend experienced by many southern Lowland sites during the Late Preclassic through Early
Classic periods. That the assemblage is limited in
distribution to the Maya heartland, in fact, may be
a useful indicator for defining spatial boundaries of
Early Classic Maya civilization. The non-appearance
of this grouping in the northern Maya lowlands is
Composite photograph of Late Classic polychrome bowls,
the central one illustrating a bird motif, from several Late
Classic burials in the Tayasal-Paxcaman Zone. Height
of central bowl, 6. 7 centimeters .

Archaeology Magazine - January/February 1985

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Archaeology Magazine - January/February 1985