The Organization of Chipped-Stone Economies at Piedras Negras ...

of his father, if we can consider the stone renderings of Ruler 1 as a living effigy to that
same man.
The stelae system at Piedras Negras legitimized kingly status through the
depiction of rulers doing historically significant activities in front of the burial mounds of
their fathers. In the case of the South Group Plaza, the stelae of Ruler 1 and Ruler 2 were
placed opposite one another. The stelae of Ruler 1, then, “viewed” his son perform all of
the necessary war-related efforts and period completions that he himself had
accomplished in front of his own burial mound. The trend continued with Ruler 3, Ruler
4 and Ruler 5, but without the direct confrontational display created in the South Group.
A similar plan for stelae style and placement would follow for the next 100 years or so.
The symbolic connection with Central Mexico continues on the J-1 platform in
front of the acropolis where the stelae, two representing kings in full Central Mexican
regalia, are placed in front of an architectural representation of Teotihuacan-style
mountains (Figure 3.1). When viewed from the West Group Plaza, all of the standing
kings and queens depicted on the stelae are symbolically situated in Central Mexico,
possibly as a mythical place of origin. The importance of these patterns for the present
study is that Central Mexican symbols are often also used in the caches associated with
the monuments, pyramids, and platforms at Piedras Negras. The microcrystalline quartz
and obsidian eccentrics of the O-13 Pyramid are a good example of this, where effigy
atlatl points, a form typical to caches at Teotihuacan itself, are a main component of the
cache goods. Figure 3.2 depicts a large biface, which is often called an effigy atlatl dart-
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