New Discoveries in Central America

First, from The National Post:

Mexican archaeologists unearth ancient 1,100-year-old burial chamber

Reuters Jul 19, 2012 – 6:02 PM ET

Archaeologists have discovered an ancient 1,100-year-old burial chamber at the archeological site of Atzompa, in the Mexican state of Oaxaca.

The funerary complex, consisting of three burial chambers, is different from the previously discovered finds in the region.

It was located inside a building designed exclusively to house a series of tombs placed vertically, one above another, and unlike the ones found so far, they are not underground, according to the National Institute of Anthropology and History.

That's it for the text.  There are several photographs.

And, from The National Geographic:

"Dramatic" New Maya Temple Found, Covered With Giant Faces

Archaeological "gold mine" illuminates connection between king and sun god.

Ker Than

for National Geographic News

Published July 20, 2012

Some 1,600 years ago, the Temple of the Night Sun was a blood-red beacon visible for miles and adorned with giant masks of the Maya sun god as a shark, blood drinker, and jaguar.

Long since lost to the Guatemalan jungle, the temple is finally showing its faces to archaeologists, and revealing new clues about the rivalrous kingdoms of the Maya.

The Maya sun god as shark-man—one of his several guises on a newfound monument in Guatemala.

Photograph courtesy Edwin Román, Brown University

Unlike the relatively centralized Aztec and Inca empires, the Maya civilization—which spanned much of what are now Guatemala, Belize, and Mexico's Yucatán region (Maya map)—was a loose aggregation of city-states.

"This has been a growing awareness to us since the 1990s, when it became clear that a few kingdoms were more important than others," said Brown University archaeologist Stephen Houston, who announced the discovery of the new temple Thursday.

El Zotz, in what's now Guatemala, was one of the smaller kingdoms, but one apparently bent on making an big impression.

By 2010 archaeologists working on a hilltop near the ancient city center had discovered 45-foot-tall (13-meter-tall) Diablo Pyramid, Atop it they found a royal palace and a tomb, believed to hold the city's first ruler, who lived around A.D. 350 to 400.

Around the same time, Houston and a colleague spotted the first hints of the Temple of the Night Sun, behind the royal tomb on Diablo Pyramid. Only recently, though, have excavations uncovered the unprecedented artworks under centuries of overgrowth.

Rest of article.

Women Were Important in Mayan Society - Duh!

Women central part of pre-colonial Maya society

March 1, 2012 By Bettye Miller

(PhysOrg.com) -- Contrary to popular belief, women played a central role in Maya society before the arrival of Spanish explorers in the early 16th century, a University of California, Riverside, graduate student has discovered.

The finding is significant for modern Mayan women, whose status in society rapidly diminished under Spanish colonial rule and remains so today, according to Shankari Patel, a doctoral candidate in anthropology.

Patel’s groundbreaking research, which included extensive fieldwork in Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula and an examination of previously uncatalogued artifacts in the British Museum, has won her the 2011 Dissertation Award from the American Anthropological Association’s American Feminist Association and the AAA Minority Dissertation Fellowship. Patel expects to complete her dissertation, “Journey to the East: Pilgrimage, Politics, and Gender at Postclassic Yucatan,” and graduate in June.

The AFA described her reinterpretation of the archaeology and history of the Maya as “compelling.”
Patel, a native of Hawaii who grew up in Echo Park, Calif., said she became interested in the role of Maya women while touring the Yucatan Peninsula.

“Maya culture has been described by scholars as male-dominated. But I found many towns named for women, and female deities on the east coast of the Yucatan Peninsula,” she explained. “I started asking how women came to be removed from religious institutions and activities, and from the history of the region.”

Patel discovered that thousands of religious and other artifacts of Maya society were removed from the region, beginning with Spanish explorers who arrived in 1512, and later by British sailors. More than 2,000 objects from Isla Sacrificios, a small island off the coast of Vera Cruz that she contends was part of a female deity pilgrimage network in use from about 1100 to 1500, were delivered to the British Museum in 1844 and remained in crates. Fewer than a dozen of those items had been published or displayed in the museum. “We excavate so much, but not all of it gets analyzed,” she said.

After receiving permission from museum administrators and with research funding from UC MEXUS (University of California Institute for Mexico and the United States), Patel began a methodical examination of mountains of crates in a scene she likened to “Raiders of the Lost Ark.”

She found hundreds of spindle whorls — ceramic disks typically used for spinning and weaving, but in this case used in religious rituals — as well as female icons and figurines used in funerary rituals.
Artifacts at the British Museum and elsewhere in Europe provide evidence of the central role women played in Maya society before colonialization, Patel said, including priestess oracles along the Yucatan Peninsula’s east coast.

“Women lost their status and authority with the advent of colonialism,” she said. “The Spaniards didn’t understand female leaders and they squashed pagan religions. They branded women healers and diviners as witches. They talked about them as improper women who spoke for their men.

“Our society is so patriarchal, and archaeologists often don’t realize how that affects the way they look at the past. What we say about the past is important to the people who live there today. It’s political how you talk about people in the past. If you say women are subjugated today because they always have been, that’s a way of justifying what’s happening today. If you can show that was not true, that it happened because of colonialism, there is opportunity for new interpretations of history and for change to occur.”

Provided by University of California - Riverside

Massive Excavation of Mayan City to Begin

A city in the jungle, with only mounds cropping out beneath extensive vegetation, covers 11.5 square miles!  That's a big city for the time - estimated to have been built around 200 years before the birth of Christ!

Work to Uncover Massive Mayan City Begins
Bogota, Colombia | Nov 05, 2011 at 6:32 PM PDT

Thick vegetation covers the ground over the ruins of the large Mayan city. Mexican archaeologists have begun recovery of a great Mayan city buried under tons of earth and jungle in the area of Ichkabal on the Yucatan peninsula, according to the National Anthropology and History Institute (INAH).

Previous archaeological digs in Ichkabal have indicated existence of a vast Mayan settlement of buildings, the biggest roughly 650 feet wide at the base and 150 feet high. The buildings are believed to be part of a city covering about 11.5 square miles whose study will add important archaeological information to what is known about ancient Mayan civilization.

“This is a city whose construction began in preclassic times, 250 years before Christ,” INAH said. No architectural details are visible on the surface. All that can be seen are mounds covered by “the exuberant vegetation” of the area.

The site was discovered in 1995 by a local inhabitant, who revealed the existence of pre-Colombian vestiges to two Mexican archaeologists.

Rare Tomb of One, and Possibly Two Female Mayan Rulers Uncovered

Photo essay at National Geographic Online:

Pictures: Maya Royal Tombs Found With Rare Woman Ruler
Maya Royal Burial
Photograph courtesy Wiesław Koszkul, Nakum Archaeological Project

A woman ruler's skeleton—her head mysteriously placed between two bowls—is one of two royal burials recently found at the Maya ruins of Nakum in Guatemala.

The roughly 2,000-year-old tomb was found underneath another, 1,300-year-old tomb filled with treasures such as jade gorgets—normally used to protect the throat—beads, and ceremonial knives.

The upper tomb's corpse had been badly destroyed by rodents within the last few centuries, but the body was clearly that of another Maya ruler—perhaps another female, based on the small size of a ring found in that tomb.

The royal burials are the first discovered in Nakum, once a densely packed Maya center. Study co-author Wiesław Koszkul and colleagues have been investigating Nakum's surroundings, known as the Cultural Triangle, for decades.

"We think this structure was something like a mausoleum for the royal lineage for at least 400 years," said Koszkul, of the Jagiellonian University Institute of Archaeology in Krakow, Poland.

The Maya royal-tomb discoveries are described in the September issue of the journal Antiquity.

—Rachel Kaufman
Published September 22, 2011

Jade Jewelry

Photograph courtesy Robert Słaboński, Nakum Archaeological Project

This jade pectoral, or gorget, was worn as part of a larger necklace across the chest of the ruler buried in the upper tomb.

The glyphs on the gorget are a partial mystery: Simon Martin of the University of Pennsylvania translated the name of the person as Ixim Chan, or "Maize God-Snake." But the jade piece also contains the word "Yaxha," the name of a city 10.5 miles (17 kilometers) south of Nakum.

"We don't know how the pectoral reached Nakum. Maybe one king of Nakum brought the pectoral from Yaxha, or there is the possibility that Nakum was ruled from Yaxha," Koszkul said.

The style of the glyphs is 300 years older than the tomb itself, raising the possibility that the pectoral was kept as a family heirloom for three centuries, he added. [According to the tentative dating of the second, later tomb, that means the pectoral would have been dated to around the time of the older tomb beneath it.  And so why do these dudes think this is NOT a family jewel passed down from female ruler to female ruler?  Too advant garde a thought, perhaps?]

(See: "Pictures: Odd Maya Tomb Yields Jeweled Teeth, More.")

Published September 22, 2011

The Mask of the Red Queen

Sensational photo by Selkie - thank you! 

The Mask of the Red Queen and other priceless art objects/tableaus/murals are on temporary display in the Mexican National Museum in Mexico City.

From Artdaily.org
More than 1,000 Year-Old Archaeological Pieces from Palenque Studied and Restored
May 7, 2011

MEXICO CITY.- [Excerpted] Archaeological pieces created more than 1000 years ago, found at the ancient city of Palenque, Chiapas, such as the tableau of the Temple of the Cross (Templo de la Cruz), the mask of the Red Queen (Reina Roja) and a group of figurines that represent members of the Palenque dynasty, have been restored or studied parting from their display at the exhibition Six Ancient Cities of Mesoamerica at the National Museum of Anthropology, already visited by 33,400 persons.

Laura Filloy, curator of the hall dedicated to Palenque at the exhibit that will be open until June 2011, commented that this show has represented an opportunity of enhancing the value of artwork from Palenque that is part of the collection of the museums of Anthropology (MNA) and Palenque Site Museum, as well as the Community Museum at Emiliano Zapata, Tabasco.

The Mask of the Red Queen (Reina Roja)
Restorer Laura Filloy mentioned that although the funerary mask of the woman who wed Pakal II underwent restoration recently, conducted by expert Juan Alfonso Cruz, the fact of being exhibited favored new analyses.

“We took advantage of the mask being transported from Palenque Site Museum to Mexico City to conduct analyses with the support of Dr. Jose Luis Ruvalcaba, from the Institute of Physics of the UNAM, in order to study the mineral used to create it.

“Unlike other Maya funerary masks, made out of jade and jadeite, the mask of the Red Queen (made near 672 AD and discovered in 1994) was made with an unknown type of malachite; we want to know where Palenque people found it, although there are unexplored mines near Palenque that were exploited not too long ago”, explained the specialist who works at the Restoration Area of the National Museum of Anthropology.

Will "Broken Mayan Code" Reveal Tons of Golden Treasure?

I can't resist posting this story, LOL!  Well - you never know.  One of these days one of these old treasure legends just might be proven true...

Archaeology
Cracked Mayan Code May Point to 8 Tons of Lost Treasure

Published March 01, 2011
| Fox News Latino

It's a treasure hunt even Indiana Jones would be proud of.

Buried beneath a lake in Guatamala sits a fortune in lost treasure -- Mayan gold to be precise -- and a group of German archaeologists has just set off to find it. Their only guidance, a freshly decoded ancient book containing a map to the treasure.

It sounds like a movie, but it's very much real, reported FoxNews Latino. Joachim Rittsteig, an expert in Mayan writing who is heading up the mission to Guatemala's Lake Izabal, the site reported. Rittsteig claims to have cracked the famous Dresden Codex, a pre-Columbian Maya book possibly from the 11th century, and discovered in its pages specific information that leads to a treasure in the lake.

"The Dresden Codex leads to a giant treasure of eight tons of pure gold," said Rittsteig, who has spent more than 40 years studying the document. According to the German newspaper Bild, which is sponsoring the expedition, two reporters from the publication, a photographer, a television camera, and a professional diver will visit Izabal in an attempt to find the gold.

A professor emeritus at Dresden University and author of various publications about the Maya culture, Rittsteig stressed that the information is in the Codex.

"Page 52 talks about the Maya capital of Atlan, which was ruined by an earthquake on October 30th in the year 666 BC," he said. "In this city, they kept 2,156 gold tablets on which the Maya recorded their laws."

Lifestyle
Cracked Mayan Code May Pave Way to Lost Gold

Published March 01, 2011
| Fox News Latino

Led by Joachim Rittsteig, an expert in Mayan writing, a group of scientists and journalists left Germany Tuesday, on a mission to Guatemala in search of a lost Maya treasure allegedly submerged under Lake Izabal.

According to the German newspaper Bild, which sponsored the expedition, the expedition includes two reporters from the publication, a photographer, a television camera, and a professional diver who will submerge into Lake Izabal in an attempt to find eight tons of gold said to have been lost there.

The expedition is led by Joachim Rittsteig, an expert in Mayan writing, who claims to have cracked the famous Dresden Codex and discovered specific information in one of its chapters that leads to a treasure in Lake Izabal.

"The Dresden Codex leads to a giant treasure of eight tons of pure gold," said Rittsteig, who has spent more than 40 years studying the document, to Bild.

A professor emeritus at Dresden University and author of various publications about the Maya culture, Rittsteig stressed that "page 52 talks about the Maya capital of Atlan, which was ruined by an earthquake on October 30th in the year 666 BC. In this city, they kept 2,156 gold tablets on which the Maya recorded their laws."

The treasure sank, along with the city, into the waters of Lake Izabal, located in eastern Guatemala. But the German academic claims to have found the remains thanks to radar images taken in the area.

Rittsteig calculates that "just the gold in the tablets is estimated to be currently worth up to 211 million euros (290 million dollars)."

The Dresden Codex, drafted in the year 1250 AD by Mayan priests, is one of the four major documents that remain from that culture. It has been housed by the Saxon State Library in East Germany for the last 272 years.

The code was discovered in 1739 in the possession of a wealthy man in Vienna, though no one knows how he got a hold of it. He then donated it to the Dresden Library, where it is kept under bullet-proof glass in a room with other treasured documents.

Joachim Rittsteig has dedicated most of his entire life to decoding the codex, which is composed of 74 pages, 3.56 meters long with 74 distinct hieroglyphics.

The Dresden Codex contains much of what is known of Mayan Culture, including their understanding of astrology, medicine and even the end of the world. In the last chapter, the codex describes the coming apocalypse, which it says will take place on December 12th, 2012.

Translation by Fox News Latino from EFE.

4th Century CE Well Preserved Mayan Tomb Discovered

An astonishingly well preserved tomb is discovered - hope they have armed guards and get all the goodies documents on site and out of there before the looters and robbers appear.  I don't know what they can do to keep the tomb paintings safe short of cuttimg them out and shipping them under guard to the nearest museum. 

Archaeologists Discover Mayan Royal Tomb
The tomb was found near the El Diablo pyramid in the city of El Zotz, in Guatemala
By Smaranda Biliuti, News Editor
July 17th, 2010, 07:56 GMT

A team of archaeologists from Brown University, lead by Dupee Family Professor of Social Science and professor of anthropology, Stephen Houston, found an ancient tomb of a Mayan king. The small room also contains remains of what are believed to be six children and a multitude of ceramics, carvings and textiles.
This tomb is dated between 350 and 400 AD and scientists believe that the Mayan king buried inside it might have been the founder of a dynasty. Houston's team knew that there was a small temple built in the locations of the diggings, a tribute to the sun god and figure of Mayan supremacy, still they were surprised by what they discovered.

“When we sunk a pit into the small chamber of the temple, we hit almost immediately a series of 'caches' -- blood-red bowls containing human fingers and teeth, all wrapped in some kind of organic substance that left an impression in the plaster. We then dug through layer after layer of flat stones, alternating with mud, which probably is what kept the tomb so intact and airtight,” remembers professor Houston.

On May 29, the team had the chance of seeing the Mayan treasures with their own eyes. After the final earthen layer was removed, a cavity was discovered and in the light of a bare light bulb they saw a rainbow of colors as the tomb was covered in paintings, pieces of wood, textiles and many organics Houston had never seen before. “When we opened the tomb,” he said, “I poked my head in and there was still, to my astonishment, a smell of putrification and a chill that went to my bones. The chamber had been so well sealed, for over 1600 years, that no air and little water had entered.”

The tomb was rather small, 6 feet high, 12 feet long and 4 feet wide. Even though Andrew Scherer, assistant professor of anthropology at Brown and bone analyst has not yet confirmed the findings inside the tomb, it appears to have held and adult male and six children, probably sacrificed at the man's death.

As for the man's identity, Houston says that “these items are artistic riches, extraordinarily preserved from a key time in Maya history. From the tomb's position, time, richness, and repeated constructions atop the tomb, we believe this is very likely the founder of a dynasty.” He added that a lot of work was still to be done. “Remember, we've only been out of the field for a few weeks and we're still catching our breath after a very difficult, technical excavation. Royal tombs are hugely dense with information and require years of study to understand. No other deposits come close,” he added.

The news of the discovery was made public two days ago (on Thursday) at a press conference in Guatemala City.

Headless Man's Tomb

Poor soul.

From news.nationalgeographic.com
Headless Man's Tomb Found Under Maya Torture Mural
"Material evidence" of the ancient images at Mexico's Bonampak site?
John Roach

for National Geographic News
Published March 12, 2010

The tomb of a headless man adorned with jade has been discovered beneath an ancient Mexican chamber famously painted with scenes of torture.

Found under the Temple of Murals at the Maya site of Bonampak, the man was either a captive warrior who was sacrificed—perhaps one of the victims in the mural—or a relative of the city's ruler, scientists speculate (interactive map of the Maya Empire).

Whoever he was, "the place of the burial tells us that the person buried there was special," said anthropologist Emiliano Gallaga Murrieta via e-mail.

Rest of story. 

Mayan Figurehead Found in Guatemala

Valencian archaeologists find Mayan figurehead in Guatemala
By: ThinkSpain, Monday, January 25, 2010

A group of investigators from the Universidad Politécnica de Valencia and the Universidad de Valencia working deep in the jungles of Guatemala have found a decorated Mayan figurehead dating back to between 300 and 600 AD.

The figurehead, which has remained buried for centuries under the dense vegetation which covers the archaeological ruins at Chilonché in the northern part of Guatemala, appears to pre-date the other remains at the site by some considerable amount of time.

Gaspar Muñoz Cosme, from the Universidad Politécnica de Valencia, said that the discovery "gives us some very important scientific data which affords us a greater understanding of the architecture of this era and the ancient Mayan people".

The stuccoed figurehead measures some 2.8m by 3m at the base and rises to a height of 1.5m and has been preserved in excellent condition, even conserving some of its original colours. It was found inside one of the numerous tunnels at the site, which have been built by looters who steal artefacts from the ruins to sell on the black market.

As soon as they made the find, the team from Valencia alerted the Guatemalan authorities of its importance to ensure greater security around the site and to try to combat the frequent looting in the area. As specialists in the conservation and restoration of stuccoed artefacts, the team has also made their expertise available to archaeologists in Guatemala.

Gaspar Muñoz described the find as "spectacular" and added that they hoped to find another similar figurehead as these items were usually built symmetrically by the Mayans.

These Mayan ruins are buried deep in the Departament of El Petén, the Guatemala's northenmost region and the area considered by experts to be the heart of the ancient Mayan culture, close to cities like Naranjo, Nakum and the better known Tikal.

Image of Mayan 'Ruler' Uncovered in Lagartero

Story from Art Daily; image from European PressPhoto Agency. 1000-Year-Old Monument with Image of Mayan Ruler Found MEXICO CITY (EFE).- A 1000-year-old stele with the sculpted image of a Mayan ruler was found in the archaeological area of Lagartero in the southern Mexican state of Chiapas, the National Anthropology and History Institute, or INAH, said. In the bas-relief sculpture the Mayan ruler rises above an individual who lies at his feet, "a scene representing the seizing of power by one Maya group from another," INAH said, adding that the archaeological area of Lagartero will be open to the public this year. INAH experts found the stone monument in late 2009 at the 10th section of Pyramid 4 in Lagartero, the source said. Archaeologist Sonia Rivero Torres, who heads the Lagartero archaeological project, said that the stele or commemorative monument - the first to be found complete on the site - measures 2 meters (6 1/2 feet) long, 55 centimeters (22 inches) wide and 6 centimeters (2 1/3 inches) thick. The stele was sculpted in metamorphic rock, known locally as "heart of stone." "In the pre-Colombian monument the profile image of a Mayan ruler is seen standing over a bench carrying a bag of incense in one hand and dressed in a loincloth bound with a sash and wearing sandals and a feather headdress. "At his feet, lying on his back on the bench, lies another, smaller person with his torso opened as a sign of sacrifice or of being overthrown," the archaeologist said. The expert added that the stele was discovered while exploring a rectangular stone casket, which had possibly been plundered in pre-Columbian times since no bones were found inside. The archaeologists also found, when they went down to a lower level of the pyramid, a pair of large earthenware pots, broken but complete, one of which contained an smaller, unbroken pot. Together with these ceramics was a polychrome plate and a black vase with a zoopmorphic lid that contained a rich offering of jade objects, notable among which were two earflaps, a jointed turtle and a beaded necklace. Another box was found in the fifth section of Pyramid 4, from which 40 vessels of different shapes, zoomorphic vases and a few human bones were recovered, INAH said. Lagartero's pre-Columbian ceremonial center extends the length and breadth of the 8 hectares (2 1/2 acres) that make up the islet of El Limonar, the biggest of the 11 dotting the lakes of Lagos de Colon, in the community of Cristobal Colon in the municipality of La Trinitaria, Chiapas. Lagartero is known to have been occupied from the Classical Period to the Early Post-Classical Period, which is to say from 300 A.D. to 1200 A.D. Given its strategic wetlands location, the habitat of fresh-water species like the alligator, the Maya settlement controlled the area's natural resources and could also restrict access by water. Lagartero was a key point for trading goods and products between the highlands of Guatemala and Mexico's central plateau. Archaeologists working at the site have uncovered an enclosed ball-playing court together with its five altars, along with a series of architectural structures, INAH said. EFE

Mysterious Ruins May Explain Maya Exodus

From USA Today Mysterious ruins may help explain Mayan collapse ('9/21/2009 2:53 AM')) 17h 52m ago By Dan Vergano, USA TODAY Ringing two abandoned pyramids are nine palaces "frozen in time" that may help unravel the mystery of the ancient Maya, reports an archaeological team. Hidden in the hilly jungle, the ancient site of Kiuic (KIE-yuk) was one of dozens of ancient Maya centers abandoned in the Puuc region of Mexico's Yucatan about 10 centuries ago. The latest discoveries from the site may capture the moment of departure. "The people just walked away and left everything in place," says archaeologist George Bey of Millsaps College in Jackson Miss., co-director of the Labna-Kiuic Regional Archaeological Project. "Until now, we had little evidence from the actual moment of abandonment, it's a frozen moment in time." The ancient, or "classic" Maya were part of a Central American civilization best known for stepped pyramids, beautiful carvings and murals and the widespread abandonment of cities around 900 A.D. in southern Mexico, Guatemala, Belize and El Salvador. They headed for the northern Yucatan, where Spanish conquistadors met their descendants in the 1500s (6 million modern Maya still live in Central America today). Past work by the team, led by Bey and Tomas Gallareta of Mexico's National Institute of Archaeology and History, shows the Maya had inhabited the Puuc region since 500 B.C. So why they headed for the coast with their brethren is just part of the mystery of the Maya collapse. New clues may come from Kiuic, where the archaeologists explored two pyramids and, most intriguingly, plantation palaces on the ridges ringing the center. Of particular interst: a hilltop complex nicknamed "Stairway to Heaven" by Gallareta (that's "Escalera al Cieloa" for Spanish-speaking Led Zeppelin fans) because of a long staircase leading from Kiuic to a central plaza nearly a mile away. Rest of article.

Sacred Mayan Pools to Be Explored

About time! Well, actually, I know that funding is a perennial problem for archaeological projects and particularly digs like this, in Central and South America. Seems people just aren't that interested. I suggest, though, that everone pay attention to local stories and legends about sacred water - whether pools, rivers, lakes, streams or tiny trickles of water out of a cave or rock face. These are often places of the Goddess. Story from UPI.com Scientists to Explore Sacred Mayan Pools Published: Sept. 9, 2009 at 1:24 PM CHAMPAIGN, Ill., Sept. 9 (UPI) -- A University of Illinois archaeologist says she will lead a team that will be the first to explore the sacred pools of the southern Mayan lowlands in Belize. Professor Lisa Lucero said she will lead a team of expert divers, a geochemist and an archaeologist in the expedition, funded by the National Geographic Society, to investigate the cultural significance and environmental history and condition of three of the 23 pools of Cara Blanca, in central Belize. The groundwater-filled sinkholes in limestone bedrock, called cenotes, were treated as sacred sites by the Maya, Lucero said. The cenotes vary in depth from approximately 15 feet to more than 165 feet. "Any openings in the earth were considered portals to the underworld, into which the ancient Maya left offerings," she said. "We know from ethnographic accounts that Maya collected sacred water from these sacred places, mostly from caves," Lucero said, noting the Maya also left elaborate offerings in the lakes and pools. Patricia Beddows, a lecturer of earth and planetary sciences at Northwestern University and an expert diver, will explore the geochemistry and hydrology of the pools in Belize. The researchers will videotape and map the pools and any artifacts they find. © 2009 United Press International, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

The Mayans Suffered for Their Beauty

Whoever said "beauty is in the eye of the beholder" sure had that right! Reading about these "beauty" treatments made me feel queasy. Come to think of it, watching "The Swan" and "Extreme Makeover" made me queasy, too. From The Times Online January 13, 2009 Norman Hammond, Archaeology Correspondent We may think we make sufficient sacrifices for our idea of beauty, what with false eyelashes, body perforations supporting various bits of metalwork from earrings to tongue studs, toupees and hair extensions, Spanx and padded bras. The Ancient Maya went much farther, however, reshaping their children’s skulls and inlaying their own teeth with jade. “The Maya went to extreme lengths to transform their bodies,” Professor Mary Miller reports in the new year issue of Archaeology, the US journal. “They invested vast wealth and endured unspeakable pain to make themselves beautiful.” As an example, Professor Miller cites K’inich Janaab’ Pakal, who ruled the western Maya city of Palenque from AD615 to 683, and after his death at the age of 80 was interred in a great carved sarcophagus below the Temple of the Inscriptions. His skeleton shows that soon after his birth, his head was strapped between two cradle-boards to compress it from back to front, not unlike the crystal-skulled aliens in the recent Indiana Jones film. This left an indentation above his browline, which was emphasised by an artificial nasal bridge, probably of clay or plaster, built up on to his forehead. Although this does not survive in the burial, a stucco portrait head found below the sarcophagus shows it clearly. The head also shows that Pakal’s hair was cut in a series of bluntly trimmed tresses, with longer strands on top flopping forward, which Professor Miller interprets as imitating the leaves and corn silk on a maize plant: at the site of Cacaxtla, Maya-style murals show maize cobs on the plant as human heads. Pakal was shown as ever-youthful, like the maize that springs up anew each year. Pakal’s front teeth were filed into an inverted T-shape, marking him as also being the Sun God, something shown on his jade burial mask as well. For many Maya, notably those of the elite, dental decoration was seen as highly desirable. Teeth, especially the upper incisors and canines were filed and notched in a variety of designs, giving in some cases a distinctly crooked smile. Most striking, however, were the dental inlays: a shallow hole was drilled into the front face of the tooth enamel (using a reed or bone hollow drill and an abrasive such as sand or jade dust), sometimes reaching the dentine within. Small discs of jade, obsidian or haematite were then cemented into the holes: the plant adhesive was so powerful that many burials found by archaeologists today still have the inlays firmly in place. Up to three discs were inserted into a single tooth, and jade and the other materials were combined to give a flash of apple-green, dull red and shiny black across the mouth; inlays and filing were also combined. Dental decoration was probably applied as a rite of passage to adulthood, according to Professor Stephen Houston, of Brown University, Rhode Island. The Maya also painted their bodies, in life and in death. Narrative scenes on polychrome vases show pigments applied to face, chest and buttocks. In death, Pakal’s corpse was treated with alternating layers of red and black pigments, Professor Miller reports. Red to the Maya was the colour of the sunrise, black of the sunset, alternating with each other in the diurnal cycle. Some facial designs are in the form of long strings of dots, especially around the mouth, and when this is shown in sculpture or vase-painting it may be intended to show tattooing rather than just make-up. “Beauty was a way to display social, if not moral, value among the ancient Maya,” Professor Miller concludes. “The wealth they invested and pain they endured to create bodies that reflected their social beliefs make our modern-day obsession with beauty seem less excessive.” Archaeology Vol 62 No. 1: 36-42

Maya Mysteries

Was it really Yogi Berra who said "it ain't over until its over"? Amazingly, archaeologists are now learning just how true this is! This is what they get for being so uppity and close-minded. Duh! Article from USAtoday.com The mystery story of the Maya slowly reveals new twists Science Snapshot/Dan Vergano Don't tell Indiana Jones, but most archaeologists pack spades, not bullwhips, and big discoveries usually come after lots of digging, not looting. Maya discoveries in Mexico that are rewriting the history of this classic civilization, for example, are coming from years of careful digging, not looted idols. The classic Maya were part of a Central American civilization best known for stepped pyramids, beautiful carvings and murals and the widespread abandonment of cities around 900 A.D. in southern Mexico, Guatemala, Belize and El Salvador, leaving the Maya only the northern lowlands of the Yucatan peninsula. The conventional wisdom of this upheaval is that many Maya moved north at the time of this collapse, also colonizing the hilly "Puuc" region of the Yucatan for a short while, until those new cities collapsed as well. But that story of the Maya is wrong, suggests archaeologist George Bey of Millsaps College in Jackson, Miss., who is co-leading an investigation of the abandoned city of Kiuic with Mexican archaeologist Tomas Gallareta of Mexico's National Institute of Archaeology and History. "Our work indicates that instead the Puuc region was occupied for almost 2,000 years before the collapse in the south," says Bey, by e-mail. Over the last five years, Bey and his colleagues have started unearthing Maya cities in the Puuc region dating back to more than 800 B.C. "It is both the number of sites we are finding as well as that some of them produced large-scale monumental architecture — pyramids and an acropolis — while others have ball courts." At Kiuic, Bey's team has found a large platform that held at least two large ceremonial structures with ceramics. The cities dated back more than a millennium earlier than anyone had thought Maya cities existed in the region. "This is interesting stuff. The northern lowlands usually get the short end of the stick because all the well-known classic sites are in the southern lowlands," says Maya archaeologist Lisa Lucero of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, whose own research is in Belize. "There is no doubt that many people went north after the collapse, but, there is a fuller, longer story to the northern lowlands." The buildings, ceramics and trade items, such as Guatemalan obsidian and Olmec jade, found at Kiuic indicate these early cities of the Puuc were tied to Maya centers further south. Archaeologists had known that people lived in the region for a long time, he adds, but the complexity — large cities with hundreds of thousands of people living nearby — was unknown until recently. In 1980, only one site, Komchen, was known in the Puuc, and now there are hundreds, says Bey. "Part of the problem was that people didn't think it existed, so we were not, until recently, looking for it." The research paints a picture of the classic Maya civilization as one big connected society from antiquity, and the "collapse" looks more like a series of local catastrophes, rather than a single apocalyptic event (apologies to Mel Gibson for the Apocalypto reference.) "The public needs to understand that the so-called Maya collapse was not an overnight affair that resulted in the total disappearance of the Maya people. The collapse took place over a period of more than 200 years," says Bey. "The result was the breakdown of elite culture and the abandonment of their cities. However, millions of Maya continued to live in Mesoamerica, especially in the northern Maya lowland, as they do so today." Kiuic's abandonment sometime in the 10th Century is also part of the collapse story. Bey and his colleagues have found large grinding stones turned on their sides at the site, a regular practice for farmers planning to return to them — but more ominously, a large number of spear points as well. They plan to keep on digging into the mystery. "I believe there is an even earlier occupation than what we have defined thus far," Bey says, perhaps dating back before 1000 B.C. "I may be optimistic, but I think now that we are looking for it, it is only a matter of time."