Between the past and the present: the Ixil Maya and the discovery of rare mural paintings in Guatemala
Abstract
The Ixil Maya area is located in Quiche Department of the north-western part of the Guatemalan Highlands. It has witnessed a continuous occupation since the 1st millennium BC till today. This archaeologically interesting region has provided many important discoveries of rare cultural mixture, with distinct features typical for both Maya Highlands and more distant Lowlands. Recently, the scholarly interest has focused on Chajul where a few years ago, in one of the local houses, well preserved wall paintings dated to the Colonial period were exposed by the house owner during the process of its renovation. With this extraordinary finding a question emerged - are we able to confirm the cultural continuity between the pre-Columbian settlers and modem Ixil who claim «to be always here»? This paper presents a brief outline of the history of the Ixil Maya. It also presents results of some recent and preliminary studies conducted by Polish scholars in this region.
Metrics
References
1972 Encuesta sobre la cultura de los ladinos en Guatemala. 288 pp. Centro
editorial José Pineda Ibarra/Ministerio de Educación Pública, Ciudad de Guatemala.
Becquelin, Pierre, Alain Breton and Véronique Gervais
2001 Arqueología de la región de Nebaj, Guatemala. 301 pp. Cuadernos de
Estudios Guatemaltecos 5. Centro Francés de Estudios Mexicanos y Centroamericanos (CEMCAJ/Escuela de Historia de la Universidad de San Carlos de Guatemala/Ministerio de Asuntos Exteriores de Francia (CCCAC), México, D. F. /Ciudad de Guatemala.
Cardoza and Aragón, Luis
2008 Rabinal Achí. El varón de Rabinal: ballet-drama de los indios quichés de
Guatemala. 89 pp. Distribuidora Universal, Ciudad de Guatemala.
Colby, Benjamin N.
1969 Ixil country. A plural society in Highland Guatemala. 228 pp. University
of California Press, Berkeley.
1976 The anomalous Ixil - Bypassed by the Postclassic? American Antiquity
41 (1): 74-80.
Colby, Benjamin and Lore Colby
1981 The Daykeeper. The life and discourse of an Ixil diviner. 352 pp. Harvard
University Press, Cambridge (MA).
De Fuentes y Guzman, Francisco A.
1933 Recordación Florida. Discurso historial y demostración natural, material,
militar y política del reyno de Guatemala. Biblioteca Ghoatemala 6,7,8. Tipografía Nacional, Ciudad de Guatemala.
Frühsorge, Lars
2008 Murals from the Ixil area. Mexicon. Noticias y contribuciones sobre
Mesoamérica XXX (2): 31-32.
Hermes, Bernard and Juan Luis Velasquez
2014 Análisis de la cerámica arqueológica de Xacbal, Chajul, Quiche:
periodos Preclásico y Clásico Temprano. Contributions in New World Archaeology 6: 111 -134.
Lincoln, Jackson Stewart
1942 The Maya calendar of the Ixil of Guatemala. Contributions to American
Anthropology and History Vol. 7 No. 38: 97-128. Carnegie Institution of Washington, Washington D. C.
1945 An ethnological study of the Ixil Indians of the Guatemala highlands.
252 pp. Microfilm Collection of Manuscripts on Middle American Cultural Anthropology N° 1. University of Chicago Library, Chicago.
Smith, A. Ledyard and Alfred V. Kidder
1951 Excavations at Nebaj, Guatemala. 90 pp. Carnegie Institution of
Washington, Publication 594. Washington, D.C.
Stoll, David
1993 Between two armies in the Ixil towns of Guatemala. 383 pp. Columbia
University Press, New York.
Stoll, Otto
1884 Zur etnographie der Republik Guatemala. 175 pp. Druck und Verlag
von Orell Fiissli & Co., Zürich.
Termer, Franz
1958 Apuntes geográficos y etnográficos de la zona de Nebaj. Anales de la
Sociedad de Geografía e Historia de Guatemala 31: 150-166.
Van Akkeren, Ruud
2005 Ixil: lugar del jaguar. Historia y cosmovisión ixil. 117 pp. Cooperación
Alemana para el Desarrollo, Ciudad de Guatemala.
2007 La visión indígena de la conquista. 147 pp. Serviprensa, Ciudad de
Guatemala.
Velásquez, Juan Luis
2010 Xacbal y la sub región norte Ixil: Sotzil - Chel - Ilom, Chajul, El Quiche.
Proyecto de Rescate Arqueológico Xacbal. Unpublished report. Hidro Xacbal, S.A./Instituto de Antropología e Historia de Guatemala.
2012 Xacbal, Chajul, Quiche. In XXV Simposio de Investigaciones Arqueológicas en Guatemala (2011), edited by Barbara Arroyo, Lorena Paiz y Héctor Mejía, pp. 515-521. Museo Nacional de Arqueología y Etnología, Ciudad de Guatemala.
Zorich, Zach
2013 Maya mural miracle. Archaeology 66 (1): 18.
Copyright by PTSL © 2021. With all rights reserved unless otherwise noted. The Journal supports Open Access principles and practices in which research outputs are distributed online, free of cost or other access barriers. Creative Commons open access licenses are applied wherever possible. Creative Commons licensing is mandatory for future submissions.
