The annual Belize Archaeology Symposium opens on Wednesday and taking center stage will be Belize Director of the Institute of Archaeology and one of the authorities on Mayan studies in Meso-America, Dr. Jaime Awe. To get there, awe is taking a break from excavation work at the Cahal Pech site in the Cayo District. As we've reported, the work at Cahal Pech centers on the living areas for what was then the Mayan middle class. And while they don't expect to make the kind of discoveries that will grab international headlines, but last week, awe showed up one that will raise eyebrows. The remains of a human being found buried beneath what was once a large thatch structure.
Dr. Jaime Awe, Dir of Institute of Archaeology
"We also know that the Mayas used to bury their dead below the floors of their buildings and what we have here is a great example of that. As we were excavating down we found some skeleton materials and if you look, unfortunately its very poorly preserved, but this is where the skull is and we know that because you can see this bone right here is part of the mandeva and there are teeth, the mandeva is the lower jaw or jawbone, as we call it in Creole, and it goes like this. And here you can see they last more than the one at the top and then you can see some of the pre-molars right there. The rest of the jaw is down below. Then in front of the skull we found some rib bones which are right there.
What we think might be the case here is that the rest of the body may be beneath all that so we might have to excavate that in the next week.
There are some very interesting things here too though. You were asking earlier if there are changes, over time. Well at Cahal Pech just about all the burials that we find, have the head to the south and the feet to the north. This one is different. This is the first body we have found with head to the north and the rest of the body is down in the south. That might be just an example of changing patterns or cultural norms over time."
Dr. Awe will discuss that and other findings at the symposium which will be held at the Bliss Center.
