Mayan hojas from Cahal Pech discovered in Downtown San Ignacio

January 30, 2012 by HeritageDaily in Americas No Comments

Cahal Pech : Wiki Commons

A collection of mayan vessals and human remains have been discovered during the development of a 2.7 million dollar building project in San Ignacio.

The discovery was made whilst a contractor, who was doing some excavation work to lay underground pipes, stumbled across a huge hand-made vase. Discoveries of this nature are relatively common in the region and work continued until more vases were unearthed, some of which are pre-classic and dating from before the birth of Christ.

The vases are called hojas (spanish) and the form is representative of the late pre-classic period 300 BC to as far back as 2000 years old. The Belize Institute of Archaeology explained that the artefacts indicate households, not elite, not of nobility, but of the indeginious population that would have lived in the suburbs of the ancient site of Cahal Pech. In addition, archaeologists unearthed several human bones believed to be that of ancient mayans.

Jaime Awe – Director, Belize Institute of Archaeology said of the discovery ”It tells us that beneath the street; Burns Avenue in this case, there was at one time part of a settlement, we know that settlement was part of greater Cahal Pech and we think that the backhoe exposed probably one or two houses that were part of this ancient community”

Cahal Pech was a palacio home of an elite mayan family located in the Cayo District of Belize that was surrounded by a collection of structures. Most of the major construction dates to the Classic period, evidence of continuous habitation has been dated to as far back as 1200 BCE during the Early Middle Formative period (Early Middle Preclassic), making Cahal Pech one of the oldest recognizably Maya sites in Western Belize.

Cahal Pech rests high near the banks of the Macal River and is strategically located to overlook the confluence of the Macal River and the Mopan River. Overal, Cahal Pech is a collection of 34 structures, with the tallest temple being about 25 meters in height, situated around a central acropolis. The site was abandoned in the 9th century CE for unknown reasons.

The name Cahal Pech, meaning “Place of the Ticks”, was given when this site was fallow during the first archaeological studies in the 1950s, led by Linton Satterthwaite from the University of Pennsylvania Museum. It is now an archaeological reserve, and houses a small museum with artifacts from various ongoing excavations.

Awe, stated further “We are in the suburbs of Cahal Pech. Cahal Pech extended all the way to where the two rivers meet, across into Santa Elena, towards Bullett Tree, it was a big community so these objects were found in one of the houses that belong to that ancient city.”

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