360 



CARNEGIE INSTITUTION OF WASHINGTON. 



1. Two new sites, Uolantun/ four miles south of Tikal in northern 

 central Peten, and Ixlu^ at the western end of Lake Peten Itza. 



2. Seventeen new Initial Series. 



3. Twenty-one new monuments.^ 



4. Thirty newly deciphered dates.* 

 The seventeen new Initial Series are: 



Note. — Stela 23 has two Initial Series, but one is entirely destroyed 

 except for the Initial Series introducing glyph. 



Perhaps the most important discovery of the field season was the 

 decipherment of the Initial Series on Stela 25 at Naranjo as 8.5.18.4.0, 

 which makes it the earliest historical Initial Series yet reported 

 anywhere. (See figure la.) This early Baktun 8^ date, although 

 it does not represent the contemporaneous date of this monument,^ 

 nevertheless antedates the Initial Series on the Tuxtla Statuette 



^This Maya word means uolan, "something which has been rounded," tun, "stone," uolantun, 

 "stone which has been rounded." This site was so named because of a unique feature presented 

 by the single monument found there. This monument had been broken in ancient times and 

 the top fragment, a piece 23^ feet long, had been reshaped to serve as a round altar for the larger 

 bottom piece, hence ihe name "stone which has been rounded." 



^Ixlu is the Maya word for a certain fish found in Lake Peten Itza, after which the arroyo 

 running into the eastern end of the lake is named. As this second site is just north of the north 

 bank of the Ixlu Arroyo it has been given the same name. 



^This total includes the two new monuments (a stela and a lintel) found by Dr. Guthe early in 

 April at Tayasal. 



^This total includes 18 new Period Ending dates, and 12 out of the 17 new Initial Series, the 

 remaining 5 new Initial Series not having been surely deciphered as yet. 



^ Mr. Gates has suggebted this word for the 144,C00-day period, heretofore known as the 

 cycle. It is composed of the Maya word hak, meaning 400, according to Father Maria P. Beltran 

 de Santa Rosa (Arte del idioma Maya, p. 201), and tun, the word for the 360-day period. An 

 analogue for this exists in the word for the 7,200-day period, katun, generally assumed to be a 

 contraction for kaltun, kal being the word for twenty. The word hotun, which has been suggested 

 for the 1,800-day period, is derived in the same way, ho being the Maya for five, and hotun five 

 times the tun or the 1,800-day period. 



* The conlemporaneous date of Stela 25 at Naranjo is 9.9.0.0.0, 445 years later than the date 

 of its Initial Series, which is still 20 years earlier than the earliest contemporaneous date pre- 

 viously reported at this site, i. e., 9.10.0.0.0 on the reused lintel found in the Hieroglyphic Stairway. 



