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March 10, 2008

Brown archaeologist wins grant to study Mayan kingdom

PROVIDENCE -- For some of us "archaeology" means popcorn in hand and little more than the new Indiana Jones movie set to premiere this May. But a Brown University archaeologist has gotten financial backing to pursue a real-life quest in an exotic locale -- in May, it turns out.

Stephen Houston, the Dupee Family social science professor and director of anthropology graduate studies, has been awarded a $125,000 grant from National Endowment for the Humanities for study and excavation where the ancient Maya kingdom of El Zotz was located, the university announced today.

El Zotz, in northern Guatemala, sat at the crossroads of two Maya trade routes between 500 and 600 A.D, a university news release says. El Zotz is about a 40-minute walk west of Tikal, which is currently a big tourism draw. In contrast, El Zotz has not undergone much exploration.

"We're learning what happens when a giant stumbles, what happens on the edges of an empire when the empire goes into a nosedive," Houston stated. "The key is the inverse relationship with Tikal. We know from inscriptions that El Zotz had close bonds to Tikal's enemies, and that it was not a good place to farm, earn your keep, hunt. The settlement may have had purely a political motivation."

El Zotz also carries architectural heft, Houston said, as Mayans first made attempts at building a pyramid. And a wooden lintel survives, with engraved imagery and decipherable writing.

El Zotz opens a window into religious views, too, Houston said. "Inscriptions on pots show new types of cult or emphasis on a supernatural being connected to the dream states of kings: dreams as the essences of the soul," he stated. "There's a lot of tantalizing material that poses fascinating questions about the role of El Zotz in the development of Classic Maya civilization."

Houston has mapped the location, but the grant will allow three Brown graduate students, four or five Guatemalan archaeologists and two-dozen workers to travel to El Zotz for the first of three excavations.

-- projo.com staff writer Michael P. McKinney

Posted by Mike McKinney  at 12:43 PM | Permalink

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