Wajxaklajun (pronounced ) (also known as Ystapalapán, Yolk'u, El Calvario, Carvao and Curvao) is a ruin of the ancient Maya civilization situated adjacent to the modern town of San Mateo Ixtatán, in the Huehuetenango Department of Guatemala. Wajxaklajun is considered to be the most important archaeological site in the San Mateo Ixtatán area. The site has been dated to the Classic period (c. 250–900 AD). The Chuj Maya consider the city to have been built by their ancestors. The site has similarities with other nearby highland Maya ruins; it is unusual for the presence of a number of stelae, a feature more associated with lowland sites during the Classic period, probably indicating some level of exchange with lowland cities.
Etymology
Wajxaklajun means "eighteen" in the Chuj language; this has been interpreted as deriving from the site originally consisting of eighteen mounds. This is a modern interpretation however, and it is possible that the name originally derived from a Maya calendrical name. A longer form of the name has been recorded as Chonjab' Tepan Wajxaklajun; this translates as "town and temple eighteen", from chonhap "town", and tepan "church". Alternative names for the site include Yolk'u (meaning "in the sun") and El Calvario, sometimes contracted to Carvao, or Curvao. At the time of the Spanish conquest of Guatemala, Wajxaklajun was given the Nahuatl name Ystapalapán (meaning "place of salt"); this was later modified to Ystatlan ("abundance of salt" in Nahuatl).
Location
Wajxaklajun is situated upon a ridge in the Cuchumatanes range, at an altitude of , immediately to the east of the town of San Mateo Ixtatán, within the Huehuetenango Department of Guatemala. Wajxaklajun is east of the Classic-period site of Quen Santo, and is from Chinkultic.
Interactions with neighbouring groups
The site is likely to have had trade links with highland Chiapas, in Mexico, and indirectly with the Maya lowlands. The Chuj are believed to have traded salt from the local springs with the Tojolabal Maya in return for cacao. Local tradition holds that the Chuj captured the salt springs from the Tojolabal in battle.
Site description
The main axis of the site has an orientation of S 52° E, aligned along the spur occupied by the ruins. The site is distributed over three different levels, consisting of the ground level of the ridge, an area of elevated terrain to the northeast, and a depression to the southwest. The elevation and the depression were both natural features that were incorporated into the pre-Columbian town. Several range structures are situated upon the northeastern portion of the ridge, and upon the elevation, with a view across the valley to nearby salt springs. The slope occupying the southwestern portion of the site was modified with the construction of five stepped platforms, in a similar manner to that of Mesoamerican pyramids. The lower portion of the site supports a large structure that was probably a pyramid.
Unusually, Wajxaklajun possesses a number of stelae. Stelae were rarely erected in the highlands after the Preclassic period, and their presence at the site may indicate contacts with the Maya lowlands, where a strong tradition of raising stelae existed during the Classic period. Wajxaklajun is close to Quen Santo, a Classic-period site with hieroglyphic inscriptions.
The first modern investigator to mention the ruins was Franz Termer, a German who visited the site in 1926, and mentioned it in print the following year. La Farge and Byres published a detailed description of the site in 1931. Investigators in the first half of the 20th century identified close similarities between Wajxaklajun and nearby sites in Chiapas, such as Tenam Puente and Chinkultic, as well as similarities with Zaculeu, the Mam capital, near modern Huehuetenango city.
La Farge and Byres described the site in terms of three levels.