SAA Slides, GIScience and Temple of the Cross

Hello friends. The FTP site where I had previously stored several of the links in my last post is no longer working, so I have uploaded my files to another Internet location (Google Docs) and I have now updated my previous blog posting as can be seen below.

Here is the slide presentation that I created for the 2009 Society of American Archaeologists Conference in Atlanta:

Here is the new link to the Palenque Flyover:

Cache Configuration - Temple of Cross

The above map displays all the caches that have been excavated as of this date, inside the Temple of the Cross sanctuary and Temple building.  The colors correspond to the names of the explorer or archaeologist that discovered them. I have superimposed a drawing of the "principal bird deity" (Titiana Proskouriakoff''s reconstruction) onto the cornice of the inner sanctuary.  The results are an interesting configuration.  You might need to enlarge the map to see this bird better. From this perspective, it looks as though there is a correlation between the location of the purple caches and the wings of the bird deity.  If you assume that the bird is diving down, he also might be headed for the purple cache (one directly in front of him) and three yellow caches, perhaps scooping them up as he dives.

This is the complete reconstructed drawing that Tatiana did of the sanctuary.  Isn't it amazing? But now you can see that the purple caches under the wings also correlate to the location of the two figures under each wing.  Perhaps those caches were meant for them.  The figure on the right is the deity commonly called "God L" and the one on the left is K'inich Kan B'ahlam dressed in the guise of an ancient ancestor (Stuart 2006).