Protecting Sacred Space: Rosalila's Eccentric Chert Cache at Copan and Eccentrics among the Classic Maya

Among the most striking and enigmatic objects of the Classic Maya are the chipped stone artifacts commonly referred to as eccentric flints. These have been the focus of research among Maya scholars for close to a century. Unfortunately, most elaborate eccentrics in museums and private collections were looted and thus are lacking in information about their archaeological context and dating. Therefore most remain as intricately elaborate, enigmatic artifacts, with their meaning, iconography, and objectives of manufacture and placement forever hidden from scholarship. This study focuses on a cache of nine eccentrics and three bifaces placed within the Rosalila structure at Copan, Honduras, and excavated in 1990. The nine are the largest and most elaborate set of eccentrics ever excavated in the Maya area, and because they required extraordinary skill, indicting their unusual importance, their manufacture is considered here in detail. Given that eccentrics were complex representations of Maya art, this study provides the interpretive iconographic context of elaborate eccentrics in Mesoamerica in general and of these nine eccentrics from the Rosalila cache in particular.