[Archport] Discovery of exceptionally well preserved buildings may help explain Mayan collapse

[Alexandre Monteiro <no.arame@gmail.com>]

Discovery of exceptionally well preserved buildings may help explain
Mayan collapse


Southeast Asia News, 21/09/2009

Washington, September 21 (ANI): Archaeologists have uncovered two
abandoned pyramids and nine palaces frozen in time at the ancient site
of Kiuic (KIE-yuk), which may help unravel the mystery of the ancient
Maya.

They have explored the pyramids and, most intriguingly, plantation
palaces on the ridges ringing the centre.

Hidden in the hilly jungle, Kiuic was one of dozens of ancient Maya
centres abandoned in the Puuc region of Mexico's Yucatan about 10
centuries ago.

According to reports, the latest discoveries from the site may shed
light on the the moment of departure.

The people just walked away and left everything in place. Until now,
we had little evidence from the actual moment of abandonment, it's a
frozen moment in time, USA Today quoted archaeologist George Bey of
Millsaps College in Jackson Miss., co-director of the Labna-Kiuic
Regional Archaeological Project, as saying.

Bey and Tomas Gallareta, of Mexico's National Institute of Archaeology
and History, have previously found that the Maya had inhabited the
Puuc region since 500 B.C.

As to why they headed for the coast with their brethren is just part
of the mystery of the Maya collapse, say the archaeologists.

They say that new clues may come from Kiuic.

The pyramids and palaces they have explored look like latter-day
additions to Kiuic, built in the 9th century, just as Maya centres
farther south were being abandoned.

The influx of wealth (at Kiuic) may spring from immigration, Bey says,
as Maya headed north.

One pyramid was built atop what was originally a palace, allowing the
rulers of Kiuic to simultaneously celebrate their forebears and move
to fancier digs in the hills.

While exploring the hilltop palaces, five vaulted homes to the south
of the hilltop plaza and four to the north, the archaeologists found
tools, stone knives and axes, corn-grinder stones called metates
(muh-TAH-taze) and pots still sitting in place.

It was completely unexpected. It looks like they just turned the
metates on their sides and left things waiting for them to come back,
Bey says.

Their finds look very interesting and promising. If it indeed
represents rapid abandonment, it provides important implications about
the social circumstance at that time and promises detailed data on the
way people lived, says archaeologist Takeshi Inomata of the University
of Arizona, who is not part of the project.

I should add that the identification of rapid abandonment is not easy.
There are other types of deposits - particularly ritual deposits -
that result in very similar kinds of artifact assemblages, Inomata
cautions, by email.

Bey and colleagues presented some of their findings earlier this year
at the Society for American Archaeology meeting in Atlanta.

They hope to publish its results and dig further at Kiuic to prove
their finding of rapid abandonment there.

I think you could compare it to Pompeii, where people locked their
doors and fled, taking some things but leaving others, Bey says. (ANI)