A New Drawing of La Florida Stela 1

Among the countless losses that the world faces during the COVID-19 Pandemic is the loss of archaeological research, as many projects have been put on hold to wait for safer conditions. La Florida is one of those projects, and we hope that we will be able to resume our work in 2022. In the meantime, I have been working remotely on the monuments of La Florida, using the photographs of various scholars, and collaborating with Mads Jorgensen and Guido Krempel. We have submitted an article for publication about Stela 1, but while we wait for the reviews to come back, here is my new drawing of the stela. Thanks to Mads’s observation, we believe it names Chakjal Chaahk, a Namaan ruler otherwise known from ceramic texts. I hope to have some new drawings done this summer of other monuments, working off new photos taken by Bruce Love in 2019.

My new drawing of La Florida Stela 1