Motul de San José is an ancient Maya site (known anciently as Ik'a, 'Windy Water')Tokovinine, A., & Zender, M. (2012-09-23). Lords of Windy Water: The Royal Court of Motul de San José in Classic Maya Inscriptions. located just north of Lake Petén Itzá in the Petén Basin region of the southern Maya lowlands. It is a few kilometres from the modern village of San José, in Guatemala's northern department of Petén. A medium-sized civic-ceremonial centre, it was an important political and economic centre during the Late Classic period (AD 650–950).Foias 2000, p.773. Halperin 2008, p.114.
The site was first settled between 600 and 300 BC, in the latter portion of the Middle Preclassic period, when it most likely was a fairly small site. This Maya city then had a long and continuous occupational history until the Early Postclassic, up to around AD 1250, with peaks in the Late Preclassic and Late Classic periods.Moriarty 2004, pp.37-39. Motul de San José had begun to refer to Tikal as its overlord in the late 4th century AD; by the 7th century it had switched its allegiance to Calakmul, Tikal's great rival, before returning its allegiance to Tikal in the early 8th century. In the late 8th century Motul de San José appears to have been conquered by Dos Pilas, capital of the Petexbatún kingdom.
Most natural resources were easily available in the immediate vicinity of the city. The nearby port at La Trinidad de Nosotros was an important hub for the import of exotic goods and export of local products such as chert and ceramics. Other goods not immediately available were likely to have been provided by the city's satellite sites. The local area provided a number of different soils suitable for varied agricultural use, and the port at La Trinidad de Nosotros provided the city with freshwater products such as turtles, crocodiles and freshwater molluscs. Deer were hunted locally and provided an important source of protein for the upper class, while freshwater snails were the main source of protein for commoners.
Motul de San José has been identified as the source of Ik-style polychrome ceramics bearing painted scenes of the Late Classic Maya aristocracy involved in a variety of courtly activities.Reents-Budet et al 2007, pp.1417-1418. The Ik-style was characterised by hieroglyphs painted in a pink or pale red colour, scenes with dancers wearing masks, and the realistic representation of subjects as they appeared in life. The city was the capital of a polity that included various satellite sites of varying importance, including a port on the shore of Lake Petén Itzá.
Location Motul de San José is located from the north shore of Lake Petén Itzá, in the centre of the department of El Petén.Foias 2000, p.773. The nearest town is Flores, to the south, on the other side of the lake. The nearest villages are San José, away, and San Andrés, away, both are to the south of the site, on the northern shore of the lake. The archaeological site is connected to Nuevo San José, a northern expansion of San José, by a dirt road.Foias et al 1998a, p.9. It lies among land that has been cleared of forest within the last century and is now used to plant maize and graze cattle.Moriarty 2004, p.24.
Motul de San José lies on a limestone plateau at the northern edge of the fault depression that underlies the central lakes of the Petén Basin.Moriarty 2004, pp.23, 32. The local topography consists of ridges, generally running east–west or northeast–southwest alternating with lower-lying areas with clay soils. These low-lying areas tend to feed into drainage systems flowing into either Lake Petén Itzá itself or into the Akte River. The Kantetul River is a seasonal watercourse with its origin to the northeast of the site and flowing westwards into the Akte River, passing from the site core.Moriarty 2004, p.23. The Akte River in turn flows west into the San Pedro River, which flows northwest into Mexico where it joins the Usumacinta River and ultimately empties into the Gulf of Mexico. A mixture of ancient and modern agricultural terraces line the riverbank, north of the site core.Emery 1998, pp.63-64. Access to water was crucial for Maya cities, since much of the Maya lowlands have been described as a seasonal desert due to the combination of a prolonged dry season lasting between four and six months together with the limestone geography that makes surface water scarce.Drew 2002, p.239. In addition the Maya greatly preferred water to land transport and used canoes to trade extensively by river and sea, and access to river routes connected cities to extensive trade routes.Abbas Shatto 1998, pp.21-22.
Motul de San José lies within a dense cluster of smaller satellite sites.Moriarty 2004, p.32. It is to the southwest of the major Classic Period ruins of Tikal.Motul de San José Archaeological Project 2009. The site is about north of Guatemala City. The ruins are located on a hill about above mean sea level.
The site forms part of the Motul Ecological Park (Parque Ecológico Motul in Spanish), which is administered by Instituto de Antropología e Historia (IDAEH), the Guatemalan Institute of Anthropology and History), the University of San Carlos of Guatemala (USAC) and the local communities of San José and Nuevo San José.Foias et al 1998a, p.9. Deter-Wolf et al 1999, p.17. The park covers an area of approximately .Moriarty 2004, p.25.
Emblem glyph
Maya cities and kingdoms in the Classic Period were identified in hieroglyphic texts by a distinctive emblem glyph; they are essentially royal titles composed of three distinct parts – the glyphs representing k'uhul and ajau (meaning "divine" and "lord") followed by the name of the polity this person ruled over.Martin and Grube 2000, p.17. The decipherment of emblem glyphs was crucial to the interpreting the political makeup of Classic Period Maya civilization.Martin and Grube 2000, p.18.
The emblem glyph of Motul de San José contains the main sign ik, "breath" or "wind". It is found on monuments and ceramics from the 8th and 9th centuries. A vessel bearing this emblem and depicting king Lamaw Ek' was found as far away as Altar de Sacrificios. Analysis has revealed that it was manufactured in Motul de San José, indicating some form of interaction between these distant sites.Miller 1999, pp209-10. Reents-Budet et al 2007, p.1419.
Economy
The majority of basic natural resources were readily available in the immediate vicinity of the city, with local soils being suitable for the production of maize and mixed crops to support the local populace.Emery 2003, p.44. The subsidiary site of La Trinidad de Nosotros, located on the shore of Lake Petén Itzá some southeast of the site core, appears to have been an important port for the import and export of goods to and from Motul de San José.Emery 2003, p.40. Food resources not available in the immediate vicinity of the city were probably provided by the satellite sites dispersed at some distance from the site core, and La Trinidad is likely to have played an important part in supplying exotic goods to the city as well as freshwater foodstuffs such as crocodiles, fish and turtles. Chert nodules were locally available from the first ridges to the north of the lake. A chert workshop has been discovered in the northern sector of Motul de San José.Foias 2003, p.27. Ceramic figurines were produced in the Acropolis palace complex in Group C and also in a medium-sized palace complex in Group B, an elite plaza in Group E and also in two elite plazas in the northern part of the site.Foias 2003, pp.23, 27.
The small satellite site of Chak Maman Tok' several kilometers to the southwest of Motul de San José, appears to have been an important centre for the production of chert tools, with only a few other centres within the Maya lowlands manufacturing chert on such a scale. Although very small, Chak Maman Tok' probably played a major part within the economy of the Motul de San José polity.Moriarty & Castellanos 2007, p.6.
Differences in architectural style between elite residential complexes and in the activities carried out at them suggest that the aristocracy of Motul de San José was divided into several distinct classes, including the royal family resident in Group C, royal courtiers and low to middle rank nobles.
The Kantetul River, although now seasonal, is reported to have been a navigable water channel until relatively recently. During the height of Motul de San José's power, it may have provided an important link to the San Pedro River, a significant trade route in ancient times.
Ik style ceramics Motul de San José is possibly the source of the so-called "Ik-style" painted polychrome ceramics, a theory that has recently received additional support from archaeological excavations at the site.Moriarty 2004, p.21. Reents-Budet et al 2007, p.1417. These ceramic vessels, including finely painted plates and cylindrical vessels, were first associated with the then-unidentified site of Ik in the 1970s by the Emblem Glyph included in the hieroglyphic texts on them. The confirmation of Motul de San José as Ik came from investigations carried out from 1998 to 2004. Chemical analysis of Ik-style ceramics have revealed that they were not only produced in workshops in Motul itself but also in satellite sites in the vicinity.Reents-Budet et al 2007, p.1420.
The Ik-style ceramic corpus includes a set of features such as hieroglyphs painted in a pink or pale red colour and scenes with dancers wearing masks. One of the most distinctive features is the realistic representation of subjects as they appeared in life, something that is very rare in Mesoamerican art. The corpus is represented by more than 30 intact vessels, the majority of unknown provenance, which have been compared to ceramic fragments recovered from Motul de San José and its satellite sites. The subject matter of the vessels includes courtly life from the Petén region in the 8th century AD, such as diplomatic representations, feasting, bloodletting, scenes of warriors and the sacrifice of prisoners of war.
The variations in artistic style and chemical composition of the Ik-style ceramics suggests that they were produced in a number of workshops local to the Motul de San José area. They have been subdivided into five types, four from Motul de San José itself and one from one of its satellite sites. There are also various lower-quality examples that are presumed to have been manufactured in sites of lesser importance within the Motul de San José polity. The Ik-style ceramics are believed to have been produced in the period from 740–800 AD. In spite of differences, all the Ik-style ceramics are thought to have been made within a network of allied workshops dedicated to producing vessels for use in the banquets of the aristocracy of Motul de San José and of the petty nobility of the capital's satellites. The ceramics were distributed widely in the Maya region as gifts in order to seal alliances between the elites of various Maya kingdoms.Foias 1999, p.4.
Of particular note is that chemical analysis of ceramic fragments has revealed that the very same workshops not only produced the highest-quality Ik-style polychrome ceramics but also general low-quality ceramics for household use. High quality Ik-style ceramics made at Motul de San José have been excavated from across the Maya region, including Tikal and Uaxactún to the northeast of the city, Copán far to the south, and Altar de Sacrificios, Tamarindito and Seibal, in western Petén.Reents-Budet et al 2007, pp.1418-1419. Valdés et al 1995, p.421.