“Beyond Te’ Kab Chaak: Implications from Finding Caracol’s First Dynastic Founder”
with Adrian S.Z. Chase,
currently holding the Doris Stone Postdoctoral Fellowship at Tulane University, .
PhD in Anthropology (focus in Archaeology), Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ
The 2025 field season at Caracol returned to the Northeastern Acropolis, just east of Caana, and made a tremendous discovery. The project discovered the tomb of Te’ Kab Chaak the founder of Caracol’s first ruling dynasty. His tomb sat barely 50cm from the limits of the 2016 excavation into the eastern building, in alignment with the Teotihuacan burial from 2010, and aligned with other important burials and ritual deposits. Firmly identifying the elderly man buried here sheds light on early history at Caracol, but also raises many more questions about subsequent governance and political dynamics. Te’ Kab Chaak remained important for generations. Later rulers Tutum Yohl K’inich Tz’uutz’ (Kan II) and Joy K’awil invoked him during their own times of transition, creating temporal bridges between the founding of rulership in 331, the founding of K’antu’ by 642, and the founding of revived rulership in 799 CE. However, these three important events highlight only short centralizations of power within the much larger political system of council rule and distributed power. Finding Te’ Kab Chaak at Caracol represents a pivotal discovery with many future implications for ancient Maya systems of governance.
