P-28: Excavating a Possible Wind God Temple at Cihuatán

From June through December (with a hiatus for the wettest part of the rainy season) we excavated the round platform we had discovered in the high grass and brush in the southern part of the Western Ceremonial Center at Cihuatán in 2003. P-28 is located near one of the two known original entrances to the walled enclosure of the ceremonial center and its main entrance faces the main pyramid P-7, although it is not in close alignment. The central position of this unusual platform signals its importance to activities in the Western Ceremonial Center.

The Western Ceremonial Center of Cihuatán with P-28. The central location of this small circular platform is very clear from the map. It is roughly oriented towards the front stair of P-7, the main pyramid, and is close to both of the original entries to the walled ceremonial precinct. One of these is labeled, the other is a stair which ascends the wall exterior by P-23, a platform which may have functioned as a guard house. Upon clearing P-28 we could clearly see its circular shape and that it had been meant to have two stages. As we cleared and began the excavations it also became clear that this structure was not finished, although it, like all excavated structures known at Cihuatán, had been burned and abandoned.

P-28 cleared of some of its vegetation and ready to be explored.

The rains were not yet very heavy, so we began the investigations of P-28 in July, 2004. Here Feliciano (Chano) Torres clears the loose paving blocks which workmen over the years have picked up in the plaza and dumped in a pile on P-28 (this particular damage began only after lawnmowers were introduced to Cihuatán).

July 19, 2004. Pastor Gálvez and Chano lay out the first unit on top of P-28 while Karen takes notes. We decided to begin with a single unit on top of the platform.

Beginning the excavation. Karen and Chano watch while Pastor carefully picks the loose rock of the top of P-28

Pastor working on the first unit.

We soon discovered that P-28 had received the attention of a man who looted around Cihuatán in the 1960s. Here the looter's pit begins to appear, much to our dismay (we had hoped we would be the first to excavate and that there might have been an offering).

A vertical photograph of the cleared out looter's pit. It was raining at night and the water table was high; water oozing into the pit made a muddy puddle.

When you are working in the middle of a national park which has more than a thousand visitors a month, you must deal with public interest and care for the general security of the excavation. Paul had P-28 surrounded with yellow caution tape at a safe (for us) distance from the platform and then put up a bilingual sign explaining what was going on. We would like to thank the many, many people who came over to see the excavation and who neither interrupted our work nor entered the closed off area and messed with the excavation.

The structure's main entrance was apparently to be constructed upon a wide sloping fan-like element extending northeast from the height of the first stage a distance of almost 4m. The entrance itself is 2.38 m wide at the top. A second entrance to the structure, a simple opening in the wall the same width as the top of the fan, is directly across from the fan. We suspect that the fan was the base for projecting stairs with a wide balustrade. These are seen on other circular platforms in Mesoamerica at this time and may well have been a new and fashionable feature for Cihuatán

This photograph, taken when P-28 was half cleared, shows the curve of the basal platform. P-28 would have had three stages when completed.

P-28 was constructed by building the circle of the first stage, which then also served as a foundation for the exterior of the second stage. Inside two semi-circular walls had been constructed to hold the fill of the platform. This view is inside the walls and shows the back entrance to the platform.

The fill of the P-28 platform was unmodified rocks and earth. Some of the rocks were extremely large and took 2 or 3 men to move them. Here Chano and pastor move several of these large rocks out of the way.

The July investigations at P-28 told us what we would need to do for a full excavation. Consequently, we ceased after the test unit(s) and resumed excavation in November 2004 under Paul Amaroli's direction. Although the garrobo whose pursuit had led to some fairly major destruction of P-28 on the north side was long gone, we disturbed this handsome fellow, whose home was in the tumbled wall. Paul carefully relocated him to another suitable property nearby.

P-28 was constructed upon a preexisting floor made of pumice cobbles set close together. Pumice does not occur on the Cihuatán ridge, but we do not know yet exactly where the builders got it. Here is a detail showing the pumice flooring and the black lava block pavement of the plaza over it. No other building excavated in the Western Ceremonial Center seems to have this pumice sub-flooring. A series of tests showed the pumice extends at least 15 m. to the west.

Exposing the pumice sub flooring. Here the unit around the looter's pit (on the left with a pick sitting on it) was cleared to show us that the platform was built on a pre-existing pumice pavement.

An almena from the fill of P-28's. P-28 had much less artifactual material associated with it than did most other excavated structures at Cihuatán. Perhaps this is because it was not finished when the city was burned and so was never really in use. Most of what we found looks like workmen's trash or material swept up in cleaning the plaza around the platform. The workers apparently used the fill area of the platform as a convenient waste basket. Almenas are solid fired clay objects which are apparent T-shaped or cruciform. They are decorated with a brushed surface and/or a deep channel around their borders. Their function is not really known.

A piece of Tohil plumbate pottery from the P-28 fill tells us that this structure, like all the others at Cihuatán, was built during the Early Postclassic.

A piece of the leg of a ceramic feline and a fragment of muscovite from the P-28 fill. Muscovite occurs in the Acelhuate River. We found a muscovite ornament workshop at Carranza, just to the south of Cihuatán. Large ceramic feline statues have been found at Cihuatán and other Guazapa Phase sites. Unfortunately all whole examples have either disappeared (like the 20 felines Antonio Sol found in the little platform associated with the North Ball Court in 1929) or were looted and are hence without any real provenience.

Burned earth from the P-28. Like the rest of Cihuatán, P-28 was destroyed by burning. The conflagration was sufficiently hot to fire the clay of the fill several cm. deep (the red layer).

Calcined bone was found associated with P-28.

P-28 was going to be a 3 stage platform. The shot above left shows the back (west) entrance. P-7 is visible in the background above the trees. Above right: A vertical shot of Chano doing final cleaning for photographs. Lower left: The last day of excavations. Chano and Oscar Mina Chaverría do the final clean up for photographs. In this view from the north you can clearly see the large trench cut by garrobo (iguana) hunters trying to get the lizard out to take him home for dinner.Lower right: Anotherl view of P-28 from the northwest as the excavation nears its end. This shows clearly the circular platform with its large fan shaped entrance foundation on the east and a second entrance to the platform-perhaps a inset stair-on the west.

At the time of the Spanish invasions round temples were often dedicated to Quetzalcoatl-Ehécatl, the God of Wind. This picture of Ehécatl, (left) with his characteristic buccal mask, is from page 19 of the Borgia Codex , a precolumbian religious manuscript from central Mexico. However, if the platform was not to have a temple on it, it may have been intended as an installation for the gladiatorial sacrifice. This sacrifice was, in the late prehistoric period, often associated with the worship of Xipe Totec, Our Lord the Flayed One, a deity of political intimidation. Statues of Xipe Totec are relatively common in western El Salvador at this time. This painting of Xipe Totec (right), who is always shown as a living male wearing the inside out flayed skin of the sacrificial victim, is from page 25 of the Borgia Codex.

From the Codex Magliabecchiano, a colonial document, comes this illustration of the gladiatorial sacrifice. The victim, a captured warrior, is tied to a central stone and armed with cotton (or paper) weapons. One of the most important warriors of the capturing side would then fight with the victim, armed with genuine weapons. Here a Jaguar Knight, in the fancy cat suit costume of his order, is the victim's adversary. Note how the obsidian blades of the Jaguar Knight's club sword (macahuitl)are hidden with cotton balls. The victims club sword only has the cotton balls, not the deadly sharp blades. Once the victim was wounded, he would be taken to the temple and sacrificed by removing his heart. Then his skin was flayed from his body, a priest of Xipe donned it and danced and parade through the streets with his rattle staff. The Xipe Totec from the Borgia Codex above has a characteristic rattle staff.

This past dry season Paul Amaroli and Vladimir Avila continued mapping on the Acropolis, the huge ceremonial area just to the east of the Western Ceremonial Center at Cihuatán. This area is very little known. Charles Cecil and Karen Bruhns made a partial map -- partial because they were working in the rainy season and the vegetation covered everything but the largest structures -- in the late 1970s. In 1996 Concultura commissioned a high tech map of the two ceremonial centers from APSIS, but the data were lost and only a partial paper version remains, so we thought it might be a good idea to find out what exactly was on and around the Eastern Ceremonial Center. No excavation has been done there since Stanley Boggs excavated a small structure covered with a sherd dump in the 1960s. This excavation was never completely published and the notes, photographs and the excavated materials themselves have been lost, so there are a lot of very real questions about the nature of this area of monumental architecture. Along with the mapping, thanks to the Salvadoran Armed Forces, Paul and Vlad had the opportunity to take several helicopter flights over the area in the dry season and take photographs at the time of year when there is the least plant cover in the way.

Helicopter photograph of the Acropolis in April 2004. The monumental stair is visible on the left of the terraced hill with the palace directly to the right of it covering the upper part of the open area. Local inhabitants have denuded the Acropolis for firewood, leaving a fringe of trees on the west and north to conceal their depredations.

From these pictures and ground reconnaissance, it became evident that the Acropolis is a large natural hill which has been modified into an immense terraced platform with a large number of buildings on it (we still aren't sure quite how many as we haven't finished mapping). One of the structures on the Acropolis, located directly adjacent to the 30+m wide stairway that formed the main entrance to the area, is a large (33 x 24 m.) hollow rectangle. This is, so far, a unique structure at Cihuatán. Religious buildings are generally placed on stepped platforms and are small one or two roomed structures. Ordinary houses at Cihuatán are also on platforms, but on very low ones or they are placed on terraces. These houses are rectangular too, but are relatively small. A hollow rectangle does not look at all like either a religious structure or an ordinary house, but does resemble drawings of Aztec palaces made in the early colonial period . So in June 2004 we decided to do a test excavation to see if it was a palace and also to see if, like other buildings at Cihuatán, it had been burned. Excavations in unplowed areas of the site had showed us that the people at Cihuatán had probably grabbed the kids and the turkey and fled, never to return, leaving their belongings in place where they had been using them. If this was the case with the palace, we would have a unique opportunity to look at royal life in the 11th century AD.

Contour map of the palace area. The contours look sort of like a skull or, perhaps, a masked wrestler face so Karen decided we should call the palace Mictlantecpan ("the palace of death"), as Lucha Libre Tecpan is not very elegant ("tecpan" is the Nahuatl word for palace). We can't call it Cihuatecpan, because there already is one, an Aztec palace, nicely excavated by Susan Toby Evans, who has published a number of interesting articles about it.

We decided to put a 4x4m test pit in the interior southeast corner of the structure. Documents from central Mexico (admittedly 500 years later than Cihuatán) said that the royal family lived as far as possible from the entry and the public rooms. On the ground it looked like there had been entrances to an apparent central patio on the north and southwest corners. The eastern mound of the rectangle was also noticeably higher than the others and in ancient Mesoamerica the height of the building and the importance of its inhabitants were intimately connected (which is why temples are on the highest platforms of all!). We felt that an excavation in this area could tell us about construction, preservation, and might well give us some clues as to who lived in this palace, if it was, indeed, a palace. We did not want to start a major excavation in the rainy season because of weather and because we are going to need to seek funding for a project of this size.

The Perils of Excavation

Excavating in the rainy season is difficult, so we are planning our next excavations on the Acropolis for the dry months when we won't have to worry about protecting the area from the heavy rainfall.

  

A storm misses us but hits the Volcán de Guazapa to the south. Center and right: the storm in the distance looks like it is coming our way. We closed up operations earlier than usual on several occasions so that the excavated area would not get damaged by the rain. We covered the excavations with plastic to protect them.

Animal life is abundant at all times, but especially so in the rainy season. Here Vlad Avila has collected a scorpion and put it on his hat for safekeeping. Scorpions are common at Cihuatán, especially on the Acropolis.

Another peril of sorts was the arrival of unexpected visitors. This group was from the tourist bureau, trying to entertain an ecologist from Mundo Maya. The Acropolis is closed to visitors, but a lot of people seemed to find their way to us and then proceed to waste several hours of good digging time. Please remember: do not visit an excavation unless you are invited. Archaeological time and resources are limited and we really need to plan in advance for visitors both so that there is something interesting for them to see and so that they are not interrupting when something has to be done right away. Also, it is considered very bad manners to take photographs at an on-going excavation unless you have asked the director. We won't even mention "sneaking" a photograph.

  

Polychrome sherds and a decorated spindle whorl from the excavation.

 

In the final stages of the excavation we erected a more elaborate protective structure to protect the excavation from the weather as we needed to leave tthe unit unfilled until Concultura sent someone to look at it. Pastor designed this large tent to protect the entire excavation. Right, Paul and Pastor shelter from the rain before making a dash for the truck.

Encore: P-28

In March 2003 Karen and Paul discovered eight previously unknown structures in the Western Ceremonial Center. These have now been mapped and, having a few days digging time left, we decided to check out the most interesting (to us) of these structures: the low round platform P-28 (28th structure identified within the Western (Poniente) Ceremonial Center.

Circular structures are rare in Mesoamerica in general and are especially rare in El Salvador, where only a few are known. The position of this one in the walled ceremonial precinct close to the main pyramid suggested that it was an important feature of the monumental site center. We wanted to check out its state of preservation with an eye to reconstruction and also to see if it had had a structure on top or if it was simply a platform, perhaps for offerings or sacrifices. The platform had been used as a dumping ground for loose rock for years, so first we had to remove the overburden. We then placed a test pit in the center and came right down on a looter's pit. When cleared out this pit showed us that P-28 had an earlier structure under it and that the upper one had not been finished when Cihuatán was burned and abandoned. Because the West Ball Court also was in the process of being rebuilt at the time Cihuatán was burned and abandoned, it seems that the inhabitants were not expecting to be invaded.

  

Left: P-28 from the south. Center: Feliciano Torres helping with clearing P-28. The black blocks are the original paving of the Western Ceremonial Center plaza, stacked on the platform by workmen removing loose rock so they can mow the grass. Right: Pastor Gálvez setting out the test unit while Karen Bruhns takes some notes and Feliciano Torres watches.

Paul Amaroli, Feliciano Torres, Karen Bruhns, and Pastor Gálvez on P-28.

At Last, a Radiocarbon Date!

Of the two carbon samples collected at Carranza, one yielded a nice date for the destruction of the site (the other sample turned out to be modern, probably because of modern disturbance at the site). The good sample has given us a date of 890±40 BP which in calendar years (2 Sigma calibration) is AD 1030-1240. We think that the actual date should be at the earlier part of this range, owing to the occurrance of Tohil Plumbate in significent quantities in the site. Thank you, Beta Analytic and thank you, contributors to FUNDAR!

Excavations at La Vega de Mangal

General view of the site where the kiln was located.

 

Luis Alas, a local farmer, holds chunks of the kiln wall. Right, excavation of kiln

Exhibit on the Pipil of El Salvador

Dr. Rodrigo Brito, the President of FUNDAR and Dr. Gregorio Bello Suazo, the new Director of the Museo Nacional de Antropología "Dr. David. J. Guzmán" chatting after the opening of the Pipil exhibit.

A temporary exhibit opened on November 4, 2004, featuring the most famous ethnic group of El Salvador, the Pipil. The exhibit will be open until February 2005 in the Museo Nacional de Antropología Dr. David J. Guzmán, San Salvador. This exhibit, titled “Los Pipiles de El Salvador”, attempts to offer an overview of this group and its archaeological and historical background.

Because of earthquake damage to the old museum in San Salvador, materials from a lot of different excavations were stored at Cihuatán. We are hoping to rehabilitate the site house for a lab and for storage of Cihuatán materials and so, after some years of negotiating and planning, the stored materials were put into large sugar sacks (many of their original bags were broken or weak and we were trying to keep collections together) ready to be shipped to a storage facility at the archaeological site of San Andrés. Of course, this ended up happening at the same time as our excavations on the Acropolis!

More Work at Las Marías

As the dry season advanced Paul Amaroli and Vladimir Avila began site survey at Las Marías. At Las Marías, the lands belonging to the former Hacienda El Aguacate were surveyed. This area had not been avaiable for survey previously, although we had noted some structures on the air photos. Unfortunately much of El Aguacate has been deep plowed for cane planting and the structures are largely destroyed, both by plowing and by looting. Survey on the Loma de Querca, which is locally said to have many structures on it revealed 2 definite structures and several possible rock alignments, nothing more. The north end of the site is now well defined and the calzada has been followed downslope to the río Sucio, where there are badly destroyed remains of what may be stairs to the river. Problems with clearing up land titles so that Las Marías can be purchased and protected still continue.

Petroglyph Site in San José de Guayabal

New Discoveries at Cihuatán

The circular structure, P-28, is interesting because of the association of circular structures with Mexican deities, especially Ehécatl, the Late Postclassic Wind God and with the Xipe Totec gladiatorial sacrifice. Circular structures are known in the rest of El Salvador, but are not common. P-28, although looted in the 1960s, appears to be quite well preserved. It is one or two steps high, with the black lava paving of the ceremonial center preserved around much of its perimeter. Its orientation towards the western (main) stair of P-7 indicates that it was probably an important ceremonial structure. We hope to excavate P-28 in the near future.

 

Chepe Salguero at the entrance to the Western Ceremonial Center. Right, Karen Bruhns records the newly found circular platform, P-28.

Xipe Gets Washed and Ready to Go

There is Always a Lot of Work to Do

The Search for Xipe Totec, Part 2: Another Xipe!

 

The beginning of the excavation of Structure 2. This excavation began while all around the cane fields were being plowed, subsoiled, and replanted.

In early December, 2002, word came that the cane fields at Carranza were cleared and that it was time to get back to work. Paul and the workers from Cihuatán and Las Marías, with financial assistance from FUNDAR, started work in mid-December on Structure 2, the only structure remaining at Carranza. This turned out to be a T-shaped platform, a form typical of Guazapa Phase ritual or civic architecture. Only three other T-shaped structures have ever been excavated; none, for various reasons, has had either adequate analysis or publication of the materials associated with them, so the excavation of Structure 2 is an important landmark in Salvadoran archaeology.

 

Like Structure 1, Structure 2 was rebuilt once. The left hand photograph shows the shape of the mound and the two phases of construction. On the right, the T-shape of the temple begins to appear.

 

Left: A sherd of Cozatol and one of Tohil Plumbate found associated with Structure 2. Right: Also from Structure 2 is a piece of a Marihua Red-on-Buff bowl with a lamat (Venus) sign painted on its bottom. It has been thought that Marihua Red-on-Buff was the ceramic type associated with the historic Pipiles. Finding this painted ceramic in the same context as Cozatol and Tohil Plumbate clearly shows that it actually dates to some 500 years earlier than the Pipil. The lamat sign suggests the close relationship of the Guazapa Phase with the earlier Maya peoples of the region.

 

The broken incense burner of Structure 2 in situ. On the right a clod of burned adobe is evidence of how Structure 2 met its end.

On Friday, December 13 a major discovery was made. Paul was excavating in front of the stairs. Structure 2 revealed evidence that it too had been burned and parts of a spiked incense burner had appeared at the base of the stairs. All the other Guazapa Phase sites where some archaeological investigation has been carried out, Cihuatán, Las Marías, Santa María, and Structure 1 at Carranza, were burned and the incense burners of monumental structures were smashed on the stairs or thrown off the top at the time of burning. Apparently this was an indication of the invaders' disrespect for the deities of the place. However, in going a little deeper to see if there was more of the incense burner, an immense ritual deposit was uncovered. Unlike Structure 1, where the idol of Xipe was found broken, in situ, sometime before the destruction of the Carranza site, the life-sized idol of Xipe Totec in the temple of Structure 2, had been removed from the temple, carefully dismembered and buried in piles with hundreds of miniature vessels, a ladle incense burner, a large warrior figurine, and a number of unused (or used only once?) obsidian blades.

Everyone in the immediate vicinity came over to see what was happening.

  

Left to right: The offering begins to appear. The many miniature vessels (last count over 300) are very evident. Clearing off the piled pieces of Xipe and the offerings with him. Xipe's legs and his big foot in situ.

 

Chano Torres holds up one of Xipe's feet. The immense size of the feet is because the statue apparently was meant to stand alone. On the right is Xipe's other foot in situ.

 

Left to right: Xipe's arm and the ladle incense burner in situ. A worker holds Xipe's arm and the ladle incense burner, just after excavation.

 

A warrior figurine of a previously unknown type was found among the offerings. The head wears a feline helmet, seen in situ on the left. On the right Pastor Gálvez holds up the warrior head. This figurine had an olla-shaped body attached to a flat base.

   

Left to right: An outstanding feature of this offering was the hundreds of miniature vessels scattered over and around the pile of Xipe parts. A large number of forms are represented and some of these vessels were filled with red pigment. A tiny foot-shaped vessel is identical to larger ones in private collections. Modeled details show that this foot vase and the other miniature foot vases in the offering were meant to represent the feet of Xipe himself. A miniature tripod bowl contains a tiny cylindrical vase. Three of the many miniature disks found in the offering. These are all painted with the spiral that is Xipe's sign. A miniature disk from the same context but painted with the lamat sign. Xipe has not been previously associated with either the Maya prior to the very late prehispanic period or with Venus.

The work at Carranza was interrupted by the Christmas holiday, but has begun again. We hope to encounter the head of the Xipe idol in a continuation of this ritual deposit and hope to be able to associate the Xipe offering with one of the two phases of construction of Structure 2.

Structure 1 is no more. Local people had been helping themselves to the rock from it and then it was time for the subsoiler to come through. But the good news is that the owner of the site has decided to try to preserve Structure 2 and perhaps even restore it. It seems evident that Carranza is some sort of an outlying precinct or neighborhood of Cihuatán and, with the preservation of Structure 2 and the analysis of the many materials recovered in the excavations of the two temples, we may be able to relate the two sites as well as to understand more about what went on in the "interesting times" of the Early Postclassic in El Salvador.

  

The local people are well aware that there is free stone at Carranza. The stone is removed and sold to builders from the city. Then the subsoiler plows deeply and makes the soil loose and fine, so that it holds moisture better and the replanted cane sprouts immediately. It also destroys any buried features to a depth of over a meter.

Paul stands in the open space that once was Structure 1, one of the few known temples in ancient Mesoamerica to be found with its idol in primary context. Fortunately, Structure 1 was completely excavated prior to its destruction, one of the very few precolumbian structures to have been completely excavated in El Salvador. Carranza is important because, although there are other known Xipe idols from both Mexico and El Salvador, most were found by looters and cannot be dated nor attributed with any confidence to a specific site or structure.

Chano Torres shows where Oscar found the Tlalocs.

  

Left: Part of the original concentration of Tlaloc effgies found by Oscar Chaverría when plowing. These fragments and the rest of the material were taken clandestinely by a Mexican cousin who thought he could sell the materials in his own country. Center: Pieces of the newly found Tlaloc jars. Right: A newly excavated earspool. These Tlaloc effigies are considerably bigger than ones previously found at Las Marías or other Guazapa Phase sites.

The Tlaloc jars in the offering were much like this vessel, said to have been looted at Cihuatán.

 

Crew hanging around the excavation on July 12, 2002. Right: The offering was found smashed on this pavement, perhaps a floor inside or outside the building with the tuff blacks. The vessels were smashed by falling walls.

As we were excavating on July 13, a huge thunder storm came up. Tlaloc had arrived!

The surface remains of a workshop in which ornaments of a green colored stone were made were found by Paul during the excavations of Structure 1 at Carranza in January-May, 2002. This workshop is located near Structures 1 and 2, but not on any identifiable structure. Dr. Jean DeMouthe of the California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco has identified the sparkly light green stone used in the workshop as muscovite. This stone is soft and easy to work and was used to make such diverse ornaments as beads, inlays, ear spools and "axe gods" (although none of the more elaborate ornaments has been found by an archaeologist, they are relatively common in looted collections). Green stones were valuable to the Maya, although softer stones like this were less valuable, and a lot less rare, than jadeite.

Muscovite is generally associated with other metamorphic rocks and was probably mined by the ancient Carranzans from conglomerate, in which it would occur as cobbles or, perhaps more likely, they collected it from the nearby river bed where they could sort through the stones and pick out the greener, more desirable, hunks of rock to take home to the workshop. We have no plans to go looking for the riverine source since today the Acelhuate River is a major sewage outlet for San Salvador.

   

On May 18, 2002 the excavations at Carranza were brought to a (temporary, we hope) halt. The Xipe temple will not survive another plowing season.

On Sunday, April 28, 2002 Paul took his last pictures with the project digital camera before it was stolen. This is a decorated ox cart on its way to the fiesta of San Pedro Martir in Tutultepeque.

The excavations at Carranza continued through May 18 with 2 weeks off to deal with a serious problem: the assault of the team by three heavily armed men on April 29. All of our equipment was lost and the bandits even stole Paul’s shoes! Fortunately, no one was hurt, but this has been quite a setback and the sugar cane keeps growing. This last week of excavation has been with armed guards from Cihuatán protecting the crew in case the gang decides to try again. Fortunately, Rodrigo Brito, in a great act of faith, loaned his digital camera to the project to finish up with, so we do have pictures from the last days of excavation.

 

  

 

A concentration of sherds from a single incense burner was part of the destruction wreaked on Carranza. Right,Feliciano Torres hands up one of the sherds while Pastor Galvez watches.

    Stone artifacts are abundant at Carranza. Left to right: A green stone disk shaped bead and some pieces of chipping debris. All the green stone materials come from near Structure 1 where there seems to have been a workshop for making beads and pieces for mosaic inlays. A notched obsidian projectile point and the point of a finely worked chert blade, possibly the remains of a sacrificial knife, found in the vicinity of the stairway.

The National Museum's Xipe.

Xipe Totec (SHE-pay TO-tek), Our Lord the Flayed One, the lord of gold workers, was one of the oldest and most macabre of the ancient Mexican deities. Although images of Xipe are known from as early as the beginning of the Common Era, we know him best from the Aztec. Aztec rituals celebrating Xipe involved a type of gladiatorial combat in which a prisoner of war was tied to a huge stone with a rope so that he could move but not escape. He was then given useless weapons and fought a series of warriors until he was downed, his heart removed and his skin flayed from his corpse. In rites celebrating him a sacrificial victim was tied to a frame and shot with arrows so that his blood would fall upon the earth like the returning rains. Then his body was flayed and his skin was donned by a priest who performed a series of rituals, including dancing in the flayed skin and visiting houses asking for alms. This continued throughout the 20 days of the festival of Tlacaxipehualiztli ("The Flaying of Men"). Other people who dressed up in the flayed skins included people who suffered from skin diseases or problems with their eyes, both afflictions thought to have been sent by Xipe. Even the ruler of the Aztecs would dress in the skin of the flayed sacrifice.

Images of Xipe Totec show a person wearing the flayed off human skin, which is shown as wrinkled or scaled and painted yellow . Life to near-life sized statues of Xipe are characteristic of the Early Postclassic in Mexico and in El Salvador, but none has been found by archaeologists. According to the late archaeologist Stanley Boggs, two statues representing a seated Xipe were found near Lake Guija. They were found by looters and sold to a British diplomat, who smuggled them out of El Salvador and into oblivion. Luis Casasola, another Salvadoran archaeologist, has documented 2 statues of Xipe supposedly found near Cihuatán that are today, illegally, in the United States. Another head of Xipe, perhaps from an incense burner, is in a private collection in San Salvador. A single Xipe, heavily restored, is in the collection of the David J. Guzmán National Museum. It was bought nearly 50 years ago from a jeweler in Chalchuapa and was probably found in the vicinity. A number of hachas (stone models of ball players equipment) representing the head of Xipe have also been found in El Salvador.

A view of the Carranza site at the end of January.

Latest disasters at Las Marías

         
Fragments of two large Tlaloc jars were uncovered during plowing. In the center, the view from the main pyramid shows the central plaza converted to a watermelon patch. In the closeup the red flag warns off people who might cause the young vines to wilt ... among these dangerous people are those with evil eye and menstruating women. Note the platforms in the background, part of the monumental buildings surrounding the central plaza.

Explorations in the Main Pyramid at Cihuatán, November-December 2001

Excavation and Exploration at Las Marías April-July, 2001

Here Architect María Isaura Arauz, the Director of the Cultural Patrimony under Concultura, observes the bomb squad in action.

We had a exciting day in early July when we began to plan a small excavation to clarify the archaeological context of the offering that Don Chano had found in his patio. He told us that a mortar shell had fallen in that exact area in 1983, during the civil conflict. We called in the bomb squad of the Salvadoran army who were able to assure us, after a day of metal detecting, that the shell had disintegrated with age.

Return of Stolen Artifacts

In June we participated in the return of a shipment of looted Salvadoran artifacts that had been shipped to San Francisco, California by a local antiquities dealer. A sharp eyed Customs agent noted that the 42 artifacts were probably not modern crafts as claimed on the bill of lading and a seizure was made, with the materials being returned to Concultura. Karen Bruhns, who had made the original identification of the artifacts for US Customs, was present for their return. The artifacts will be on display at the new National Museum when it opens.

    

Mesa Redonda, June 2001

Cihuatán Suddenly Gets Very, Very Old!

Electrifying News!

Agreement Finalized, New Officers

FUNDAR has a new President: Dr. Rodrigo Brito. Other new officers are:

Vicepresident: Dr. Adolfo Payán
Secretary: Dr. Carlos Payés
Pro Secretary Dr. Angel Esteves Ulloa
Treasurer: Sra. Julia Barillas
Pro-Treasurer: Sr. José Panades
Sindical: Dr. José Luis Cabrera
Srta. Karla de León has joined FUNDAR as Projects Coordinator.

City Limits Survey

Here We Go