16.4458°N, 90.2958°W.
Dos Pilas is a Late Classic Maya city in the Petexbatun region of the Peten, Guatemala, founded in 629 CE as a Tikal-allied frontier outpost and rapidly transformed into the capital of an aggressive expansionist polity. The city was ruled by the Petexbatun dynasty whose founder was a younger relative of Tikal's royal house. The Dos Pilas hieroglyphic stairway, deciphered through work by David Stuart and others, records a series of military victories over Tikal itself in the 670s and 680s — among the most dramatic political reversals in the Classic Maya record. The city was constructed of limestone in a series of palace plazas, ceremonial pyramids, and a defensive wall system erected hastily in the final decades before the city's collapse around 760 CE. Arthur Demarest directed the long-running Vanderbilt project that recovered the site's history.
The hieroglyphic stairway remains in place on the main acropolis, its carved blocks naming each captured rival lord by date and place.