Just west of the main entrance to Palenque, you'll meet Group IV, an unromantic name provided by the archaeologists who excavated Palenque. Group IV is believed to have been the residence of an important military chief in Palenque. In the central structure, in the 1950s, archaeologists found a stone tablet, the Tablet of the Slaves, which helped the identification of the purpose of these buildings, and to date this complex at AD 730.
Group IV includes the elite residential complex belonging to the military chief, arranged around a roughly rectangular plaza. The main buildings are three structures, rising from a platform that marks the west side of the Main Plaza.