A MAPPING ADVENTURE

By Ed Barnhart

As the crew of the Palenque Mapping Project, my team and I enter the forest each day with a feeling of anticipation. 1999 is our second year in a three-year project aiming to create the first complete map of the city's original dimensions. Not since the work of Franz Blom, in 1923, has a survey of this scale been attempted. Currently (August 1999), we are investigating one kilometer to the west of the ceremonial center, an area almost completely undocumented, but known to be full of structures. Each day that we survey we put together the story of Palenque's population.

    Hand in hand with the thrill of discovery come the dangers we face. The rugged mountains and valleys are covered in dense forest; much of the vegetation is virtually impassible without machete work, due to thick walls of thorn-laden underbrush. The city's ancient name, Lakam Ha (meaning Big Water in Maya), aptly describes its topographical setting. Rivers, arroyos and cascades make our progress slow, slippery and treacherous. We frequently find ourselves mapping along the tops of waterfalls, cliffs and crumbling temple tops. One of our greatest concerns is Palenque's abundance of poisonous snakes. Weekly we encounter at least one snake, usually over five feet in length. The most common is the Nawiaka, whose venom can kill within an hour if not neutralized immediately. Insects, while usually harmless, are an annoyance to be overcome. Tick removal is a nightly ritual.

    The mapping crew is small and our methods are simple. Four men wielding machetes clear a path, as we reconnaissance sections, generally using waterways as temporary boundaries. As we discover structures we draw them, using meter tapes and compasses. Once those initial drawings are made, we can plan a route for the survey equipment. Using an electronic transit on a tripod, beams of laser light are bounced off a rod-mounted prism to obtain three-dimensional coordinate points. The rod is placed on every corner, every visible architectural feature, and every geographical point of interest. When all possible points from a given transit station have been shot, the machine is moved farther out and the process is repeated. Meter by meter a data set of thousands of 3D points is acquired. Finally, back in the field office, the data are entered into survey and architectural design software to create the maps. The accuracy, thus far kept under 20 centimeters of error, is checked once in the field by circling the equipment back to known points and then double-checked by computer.

    Before the Palenque Mapping Project's inception in February of 1998, a total of 541 structures were known to exist at Palenque. As of June 1999, we had identified over 750. Based on our current progress we expect to map about 1,500 structures by the project's completion in August of 2000.

    While many of those structures will not be the large temples we find in Classic period Maya ceremonial centers, their collective character is revealing something every bit as important: The nature of Palenque's supporting population. Residential neighborhoods, criss-crossed by drains, canals, and aqueducts, cover the hills to the east and west of Palenque's central Palace for over a kilometer in each direction. By the project's end we will see Palenque not just as a city dominated by powerful elite and priestly classes, but as a complex urban center.