Dos Pilas is a Pre-Columbian site of the Maya civilization located in what is now the department of Petén, Guatemala. It dates to the Late Classic Period, and was founded by an offshoot of the dynasty of the great city of Tikal in AD 629 in order to control trade routes in the Petexbatún region, particularly the Pasión River. In AD 648 Dos Pilas broke away from Tikal and became a vassal state of Calakmul, although the first two kings of Dos Pilas continued to use the same emblem glyph that Tikal did.
On June 12, 1970, the site was declared a National Monument according to Article 1210 of the Guatemalan Ministry of Education. The emblem glyph for the site and/or the polity of Dos Pilas is the same as that of Tikal, Mutal. Its exact meaning is obscure but the drawing suggests a hair knot.
Location
Dos Pilas is located in the Petexbatún region of the Petén Basin, in the southwest of the department of Petén, in northern Guatemala. It lies between the Pasión and the Salinas rivers. The site has an elevation of above mean sea level. a town on the banks of the Pasión River. Dos Pilas lies about east of the border with Mexico, to the southwest of the Maya ruins of Tikal, Lake Petexbatún and the Pasión River form a part of the drainage of the Usumacinta River.
Known rulers
thumb|Panel 10 from Dos Pilas was originally a stela from neighbouring [[Arroyo de Piedra that was moved to Dos Pilas and re-erected after Dos Pilas conquered that city.]]
{|class="wikitable"
! Name (or nickname)!!Ruled !!Alternative Names
|-
|Bʼalaj Chan Kʼawiil
| c. 648–695
| Ruler 1, Flint Sky, Flint Sky God K, Lightning Sky, Malah Chan Kʼawil
|-
|Itzamnaaj Bʼalam
| c. 695
| Shield Jaguar
|-
|Itzamnaaj Kʼawiil
| 24 March 698 – 22 October 726
| Ruler 2, Shield God K
|-
|Uchaʼan Kʼin Bʼalam
| 6 January 727 – 28 May 741
| Master of Sun Jaguar, Ruler 3, Scroll-head God K, Spangle-head, Jewelled Head
|-
|Kʼawiil Chan Kʼinich
|23 June 741 – 761
| Ruler 4, God K Sky, Mahkʼina
|}
Bʼalaj Chan Kʼawiil (Ruler 1) (c. 648–692+ Bʼalaj Chan Kʼawiil is known to have taken two wives, one of them from the nearby Petexbatún kingdom of Itzan. A daughter of Bʼalaj Chan Kʼawiil, Wak Chanil Ajaw, left Dos Pilas to found a dynasty at Naranjo.
Itzamnaaj Bʼalam (c. 697
Itzamnaaj Kʼawiil (Ruler 2) (698–726 "Master of Sun Jaguar" died in May 741, his death is recorded on Stela 1 at his twin capital of Aguateca where it is believed that he was buried, although his tomb has not yet been found.
Kʼawiil Chan Kʼinich (Ruler 4) (741–761+]]
Early history (pre-A.D. 629)
The early history of the Dos Pilas site is unclear; there are traces of an earlier indigenous dynasty predating the arrival of Bʼalaj Chan Kʼawiil from Tikal. With the establishment of the new kingdom, Dos Pilas advertised its origin by adopting the emblem glyph of Tikal as its own. In an extraordinary act of treachery for someone claiming to be of the Tikal royal family, he thereafter served as a loyal ally of Calakmul, Tikalʼs sworn enemy.
672: Recovered by Tikal
King Nuun Ujol Chaak of Tikal attacked and captured Dos Pilas in AD 672, driving Bʼalaj Chan Kʼawiil into a five-year exile, probably in Calakmul.
677: Restored to Calakmul
This exile was only ended in AD 677, on the same day that Calakmul celebrated a success over Tikal, revealing Bʼalaj Chan Kʼawiilʼs obvious dependency on his foreign overlord.
Tikal and Dos Pilas went to battle again in AD 679 and Tikal suffered a humiliating defeat by its smaller rival. Although Dos Pilas celebrated this as the victorious conclusion of the war, neither side had gained any real advantage over the other. For Dos Pilas, this battle represented the consolidation of its kingdom and the failure of Tikal to crush its splinter state before it gained a foothold. Balaj Chan Kʼawiil had a famous daughter with a second wife, this daughter was Lady Six Sky who was despatched to Naranjo to refound its obliterated dynasty. Balaj Chan Kʼawiil is known to have made several further visits to Calakmul; in 682 he celebrated a period ending ceremony there under Yuknoom the Great and in 686 he attended the enthroning of his successor, Yuknoom Yichʼaak Kʼakʼ.
695: Victory of Tikal over Calakmul
Calakmul and its allies suffered after the defeat of Calakmul by Tikal in 695, shifting the balance of power in the Maya lowlands. Around this time Balaj Chan Kʼawiil died and was succeeded by one of his sons, Itzamnaaj Balam, although the exact year is not clear from the hieroglyphic texts. After this victory Dos Pilas benefitted from tribute in the form of labour and wealth, resulting in the rapid expansion of the city. At about this time, the nearby site at Aguateca became a twin capital of the Dos Pilas kingdom, with victory monuments being erected simultaneously in both cities.
Collapse and abandonment
Ongoing conflict in the Maya region soon destabilised the whole area following the defeat of Dos Pilasʼ patron Calakmul and in 761 the city was dramatically abandoned after Tamarindito and other Petexbatún centres rebelled against their Dos Pilas overlord. A hieroglyphic stairway at Tamarindito mentions the enforced flight of Kʼawiil Chan Kʼinich, who was never mentioned again. The Dos Pilas royal family probably transported itself to the more defensible Aguateca, which lies only 10 km to the southeast. The violent end of Dos Pilas is evident from the smashed remains of a royal throne recovered from the Bat Palace. The monuments of Ixlú in the central Petén lakes region bear some hieroglyphic texts that closely resemble texts from Dos Pilas, suggesting that the lords of Ixlú may have been refugees from the collapse of the Petexbatún region.
A small group of refugees occupied Dos Pilas after its abandonment, throwing up hastily built defensive walls constructed from stone stripped from the deserted temples and palaces. This village was overrun and itself abandoned in the early years of the 9th century AD, at which point the history of Dos Pilas as a settlement ends.
Rediscovery and exploration
The ruins of Dos Pilas were first reported in 1953–4 by two brothers from Sayaxché, José and Lisandro Flores, but local residents probably already knew of their existence. Pierre Ivanoff lead an expedition to the site in 1960. He described the ruins, which he called Dos Pozos (two wells in Spanish) in his 1973 book Monuments of a Civilization: Maya, in which he claimed to have discovered the ruins.
Archaeologist Arthur Demarest of Vanderbilt University and Juan Antonio Valdés of the University of San Carlos of Guatemala started excavations at Dos Pilas in 1989. Hieroglyphic Stairway 4 was discovered in 1990 and a year later the tomb of Itzamnaaj Kʼawiil was excavated. The project continued through to 1994, supported by the National Geographic Society, the Instituto de Antropología e Historia (IDAEH - Institute of Anthropology and History), Vanderbilt University and several other organisations. Hieroglyphic inscriptions at the site have been identified as belonging to the Chʼolan Maya language.
The site is laid out around three monumental complexes aligned upon an east-west axis, in a form that is reminiscent of the Preclassic layouts at El Mirador and Nakbe in the far north of Petén.
thumb|right|Stela 5, Detail showing a jaguar skin
- LD-49 (also referred to as L5-49) is a large pyramid to the south of the plaza and is topped by three temple sanctuaries. The well-preserved Panel 10 is located part of the way up the east side of the pyramid.
- The palace of Bʼalaj Chan K’awiil was torn down by the last inhabitants of Dos Pilas in order to build defensive walls immediately prior to the abandonment of the city. Hieroglyphic Stairway 4 is located on the east side of the destroyed palace and was discovered when the defensive wall that crosses it was being excavated. Hieroglyphic Stairway 4 details the history of Bʼalaj Chan K’awiil and the founding of the Dos Pilas dynasty.
- A ball court lies at the northeast corner of the plaza. The structures forming its sides are designated as L4-16 and L4-17. These structures bear the heavily eroded Panel 11 and Panel 12, both of which show a standing lord wielding a spear. El Duende is the largest pyramid in the city, built by enlarging and terracing a natural hill some way from the site core, giving the impression of a single massive structure. The terraces supported five stelae and altar pairs, commissioned by Itzamnaaj Kʼawiil in the early 8th century AD. Smaller buildings flank the main platform. Only these major caves were excavated and the offerings recovered from these caves included a sizeable amount of Preclassic pottery. The strong Preclassic traces found in the caves would imply that the caves were important long before the warlike Dos Pilas state was founded in the Late Classic. All the major architecture at Dos Pilas dates from the Late Classic and is aligned with important cave systems, showing that the builders of the city incorporated a thousand-year-old sacred landscape into the design of their city. Although the seasonal flow of water has washed away almost all archaeological remains from the cave, archaeologists consider that the Cave of Bats was of ceremonial importance to the inhabitants of Dos Pilas due to the dramatic torrent that flows through it in the wet season. A thick cap of sterile yellow clay covers much of the floor of the main chamber, it appears to have been deliberately deposited in order to cover the entrance to the caveʼs longest tunnel, which passes underneath the El Duende pyramid and connects with the Cueva de Río El Duende. In the entrance of the cave were found large quantities of rubble, much of it consisting of finely dressed stone that had been stripped from nearby buildings and used to block the cave entrance. James E. Brady believes that the blocking of this sacred cave was a part of a termination ritual carried out by the conquerors of Dos Pilas, who also blocked the entrances of the Cueva de Sangre (Cave of Blood) and possibly the western entrance of the Cueva de Río El Duende, suggesting that the caves were enormously important.
The Cueva de Sangre (Cave of Blood) is located about 2 km east of the El Duende group, it has more than of tunnel running underneath a small hill. The cave has four entrances, two of which had been blocked with rubble as at Cueva de El Duende. The west entrance appears to have been the principal entrance used by the ancient inhabitants of Dos Pilas. A small building was built above this entrance, the function of this building must have been linked to the use of the cave itself. A stone wall enclosed both the cave entrance and the building itself. Preclassic ceramic fragments were found inside the Cueva de Sangre.