Kaminaljuyu, an archaeological site on the outskirts…

Kaminaljuyu, an archaeological site on the outskirts of Guatemala City and now largely encompassed by it, dominates the Maya highlands during the so-called Late Preclassic, beginning in 300.

Early relief sculpture there includes low-relief portraiture and accompanying hieroglyphic inscriptions (but the Kaminaljuyu texts, unlike later Maya ones, cannot yet be read).

Enormous obsidian beds lying twenty kilometers northwest of Guatemala City and known as El Chayal (Kakchikel Maya for "obsidian") are long presumed to have been the most important material basis for Kaminaljuyu's ascendance as the greatest polity in the Southern Maya Area as well as its continuation as the preeminent city in the SMA during the Classic period.

Distinctively black in color, obsidian from the Chayal beds found at sites throughout the Lowlands as well as the Southern Maya Area supports this assumption, although the specifics of control, whether formally under Kaminaljuyu's hegemony or more informally representing a vital material resource whose wealth accrued to the city more or less in direct relation to proximity, remain in the realm of speculation.