Dr. Olivia Navarro-Farr, Director of Proyecto Arqueológico Waka´
"The standing figure was essentially decapitated. So, there was no head on it. Spearthrower Owl is mentioned on this. Sihyaj K'ahk' is mentioned on this. It seems very likely that Waka' played a much larger role, and a collaborative one, at the events of the entrada at Tikal than we originally thought. We are definitely seeing with recent evidence that the site, politically, was a very major player in the early classic period and in the late classic period. The waves that this will make in the community of Maya epigraphy, will be significant. It is going to be a very much studied and restudied and restudied monument because of the texts that are on it." — Dr. Olivia Navarro-Farr
Photos of Stela 51
More about the Stela 51 discovery and its significance to the broader understanding of Classic Maya history.
The Ministry of Culture and Sports of Guatemala has announced the discovery of the second earliest dated monument thus far discovered at the at the archaeological site of El Perú-Waka´, located in the Laguna del Tigre National Park, within the Maya Biosphere Reserve in Guatemala. This discovery was undertaken under the auspices of the Proyecto Arqueológico Waka' (PAW), directed by Dr. Olivia Navarro-Farr of The College of Wooster, Dr. Damien Marken of Bloomsburg University, and Ma. Juan Carlos Pérez Calderón, affiliated with the University of San Carlos of Guatemala.
Dr. Navarro-Farr is a Principal Investigator (PI) for the PAW and has been the director of archaeological investigations since 2003 at the building (Structure M13-1) where the stela was discovered. Dr. Navarro-Farr’s investigations at Structure M13-1 were undertaken collaboratively with Ma. Griselda Pérez Robles and Ma. Juan Carlos Pérez Calderón. Dr. Navarro-Farr is Associate Professor of Anthropology for the Department of Sociology and Anthropology and the Program in Archaeology at The College of Wooster in Wooster, Ohio. Ma. Griselda Pérez Robles and Ma. Juan Carlos Pérez Calderón are each affiliated with the University of San Carlos of Guatemala.
The stela was found broken in antiquity and was subsequently interred ritually within the interior of Structure M13-1, a monumental civic-ceremonial structure in the site center.
The monument was broken into two fragments: the lower section was discovered in 2019 and stands at 2.4 meters in height. This fragment features hieroglyphic inscriptions and the image of a person. In March of 2022, the second fragment was discovered. This section is 1.20 meters in height, and it was found behind the upright lower portion of the monument in the same network of excavation tunnels. This second fragment features the upper part of the face of the standing figure as well as a grand headdress with the imagery of a jaguar adorned with large feathers.
Stela 51 as a whole depicts a standing male dressed as a Teotihuacán warrior wearing a feline headdress and carrying a rectangular shield. Teotihuacán was a great city in the Valley of Mexico 800 km west of the Maya lowlands. According to retrospective history on Waka’ Stela 15, on January 8, 378 A.D. a famous Teotihuacán affiliated lord named Sihyaj K’ahk’ arrived at Waka’, a week before he arrived at Tikal 70 km to the east of it. The Tikal arrival date is given retrospectively on Tikal Stela 31. The Tikal arrival, termed “entrada” by scholars, marked a major change in government there. Many Maya centers acknowledged interaction with Teotihuacános after it and commemorated the Tikal arrival date. Stela 51 strengthens the evidence that Waka’ played a significant role in the events surrounding the “entrada” in the Maya lowlands. The monument includes hieroglyphic texts and references various events and individuals of the “entrada” era. It was dedicated originally in A.D. 435 and reset centuries later in its present location. Because of its recent discovery, its imagery and texts are currently under analysis and further information about Stela 51 will be released in due time.
"This upper section of this monument was buried and it was visible in a tunnel we excavated in 2012, just the edge of it in the cut of the tunnel. In 2019, we were excavating the architecture and it was getting to that point in the season when I needed to close that bit and then focus on something else but there was still time enough in the season so I thought, "Oh, let's work on this monument fragment that has been here... this has been on our to-do list for a long time." So, we excavated it and found the back side of a standing stela, which was kind of a shock." — Dr. Olivia Navarro-Farr
The site at El Perú-Waka'
The ancient city of Waka' is located within the confines of the Laguna del Tigre National Park which is the most extensive in Guatemala and is characterized by its immense biodiversity. It is home to a vast array of species including jaguars, tapirs, white-tailed deer, white turtles, and it is one of the only refuges for the scarlet macaw in the country. It is also the locus of a great number of archaeological zones of immense importance to Guatemala’s cultural patrimony.
Team also discovers a royal tomb at Proyecto Arqueológico Waka'
A Special Thank You
We are grateful to Manuel García, Godolfredo Cunil, Lorenzo Caal, Rafael Te, Cesar Te, Andrés Flores, Carlos Chiak, Amilton Pérez, Antonio Bo, Roger Alvarado, y Crisanto López for their immeasurable contributions to these excavations and for their heartfelt collaboration. We also express gratitude to Dilenia Ohaxaca, Gloria Salguero and Verali Méndez for their participation in the research. We also acknowledge the contributions to the research by Alyssa Henss '23, archaeology major at The College of Wooster. We express gratitude to the Ministerio de Cultura y Deportes of Guatemala (MCDG), to the Instituto de Antropología e Historia de Guatemala (IDAEH), to the Departamento de Monumentos Prehispánicos (DEMOPRE), to the Ejército Nacional de Guatemala, and to the Consejo Nacional de Áreas Protegidas (CONAP).
Dr. Navarro-Farr’s research was also supported by the Alphawood Foundation, the Hitz Foundation, the United States Department of the Interior, the Geo Ontological Development Society, the Waka’ Foundation, a Faculty Development Grant and Faculty Leave from The College of Wooster, David A. Freidel, Director Emeritus of the PAW Project and Professor of Anthropology at Washington University in St. Louis, and a Kendall-Rives Latin American Research Grant made available through The College of Wooster. Other support was received from La Fundación Patrimonio Cultural y Natural Maya, McClung Fund for International Research, Henry Luce III Fund for Distinguished Scholarship, and the Jerry Glick and The Jerome Glick Foundation.
About Olivia Navarro-Farr
Olivia Navarro-Farr is an Associate Professor of Anthropology and Archaeology and chair of the program in Archaeology at The College of Wooster.
Her research focuses on ancient Mesoamerica. She has conducted archaeological investigations in Belize, Mexico, and, since 2003 has directed an International Archaeological Research Project, Proyecto Arqueológico Waka’ (PAW) in Guatemala in collaboration with Juan Carlos Pérez and Damien Marken. She is a senior member of the Board of the Waka’ Foundation since 2016. Her own research concerns the site’s primary civic-ceremonial structure. Her interests include the archaeology of ritual, monumental architecture, site abandonment processes, and the role of royal women in Classic Maya statecraft. In 2012, Professor Navarro-Farr and colleagues discovered the tomb of one of the site’s most famous royal queens, Lady K’abel. The queen’s portrait is rendered on a stela on view at the Cleveland Museum of Art (Front Face of a Stela (Free-standing Stone with Relief), 692. Mesoamerica, Guatemala, Department of the Petén, El Perú (also known as Waka'), Maya people (AD 250-900). Limestone; 274.4 x 182.3 cm. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Purchase from the J. H. Wade Fund 1967.29).
She earned her B.A. at St. Mary’s University in San Antonio, and her M.A. and Ph.D. from Southern Methodist University in Dallas.
Recent Publications
(2022) Queens and Statecraft: Royal Women in the Heart of the Fire Shrine at El Perú-Waka’ (first author with Damien Marken, Mary Kate Kelly, Keith Eppich, Griselda Pérez Robles, and Juan Carlos Pérez) in 3,000 Years of War and Peace in the Maya Lowlands: Identity, Politics, and Violence. Geoffrey E. Braswell (Editor). Routledge, Abingdon.
(2021) [Report] Burial 61 at El Peru-Waka’s Structure M13-1 (first author with Griselda Pérez Robles, Juan Carlos Pérez Calderón, Damaris Menéndez Bolaños, Erin Patterson, and Keith Eppich) – Latin American Antiquity
(2020) Forest of Queens: The Legacy of Royal Calakmul Women at El Perú-Waka’s Central Civic-Ceremonial Temple (first author with Griselda Pérez Robles, Juan Carlos Pérez Calderón, and Keith Eppich) in A Forest of History: The Maya after the Emergence of Divine Kinship. Travis Stanton and M. Kathryn Brown (Editors) The University Press of Colorado, Boulder
(2020) Expanding the canon: Lady K'abel the Ix Kaloomte’ and the political narratives of classic Maya Queens. First author with Mary Kate Kelly, Michelle Rich, and Griselda Pérez Robles. Feminist Anthropology.
(2020) Science 101: Teaching Scientific Anthropology in the Age of “Alternative” Facts. In Open Rivers: Rethinking Water, Place, and Community. 16 (Winter 2020).
(2020) Inclusive Comparisons for Undergraduates in Archaeology: Representation and Diversity in and Beyond the Classroom. Society for American Archaeology: SAA Archaeological Record.
(2020) Ancient Maya Queenship: Generations of Crafting State Politics and Alliance Building from Kaanul to Waka’. (First author with David A. Freidel, Keith Eppich, and Griselda Pérez Robles). In Approaches to Ancient Maya Landscapes of the Ancient Maya. Brett A. Houk, Barbara Arroyo, and Terry Powis (Editors). The University Press of Florida, Gainesville.
(2014) Archaeology at El Perú-Waka’: Ancient Maya Performances of Ritual, Memory, and Power. (Editor with Michelle Rich). Native Peoples of the Americas series, University of Arizona Press, Tucson.