Naachtun: A Lost City of the Maya

Page 4 of 9

• 1. An abandoned city
• 2. Wartime affiliations
• 3. History of investigations
• 4. Gathering the evidence
• 5. The Kingdom of Masuul
• 6. Traces of ritual
• 7. Changing allegiances
• 8. Defensive fortifications
• 9. Find out more
• Print entire article

Gathering the evidence

In the mid 1970s, Eric von Euw, of the Corpus of Maya Hieroglyphic Inscriptions project at Harvard University, visited the site for a few days and made field drawings of several stelae. And in the 1990s, Nikolai Grube, of the University of Texas at Austin, also visited Naachtun, and recorded the inscriptions on several stelae. While von Euw illustrated many of the previously unknown stelae at the site, Grube discovered the ancient name of the Naachtun kingdom on Stela 1. According to Grube, the Classic period Maya of Naachtun called their kingdom Masuul.

The most recent visit was made in July 2002 by archaeologists Kathryn Reese-Taylor and Marc Zender, of the University of Calgary, and Ernesto Arredondo Leiva of Guatemala's Del Valle University. One of the principal aims of this trip was to investigate Naachtun with an eye to conducting a long-term archaeological project there, and after four days at the site it became clear that such a project was definitely called for.

NextPrevious