Construction of a Community: Recent Findings from Ceren, El Salvador

DOCUMENT Citation Only David Lentz. Venicia Slotten.

Archaeological investigations at Cerén, a Classic period Maya site in western El Salvador, have unearthed an abundance of carbonized bean remains, both Phaseolus vulgaris and P. lunatus. Surprisingly, the Cerén P. vulgaris bean remains were derived from both wild and domesticated populations. This find reveals that the Late Classic inhabitants continued to draw upon wild food sources even though they had clear access, as seen in the Cerén paleoethnobotanical record, to a full array of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Nan Gonlin.

The site of Cerén, El Salvador holds a unique place for Mesoamericanists conducting household archaeology. Its extraordinary preservation fuels the imagination like few other sites can. The fragile nature of this archaeological site requires hyper-alertness, combined with methods for properly extracting and preserving information. The material remains of this deep under-earth site come to light with only the most intensive of excavation methods, many of which are unlike those commonly used at...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Rachel Egan. Payson Sheets.

Built upon a fine white volcanic tephra from the eruption of the Ilopango caldera and buried under tephra from an eruption of Loma Caldera, the Maya village of Ceren affords a unique opportunity to explore geostratigraphy, volcanology, and chronology in relation to vulnerability and resilience. The sheer volume and scale of the eruption of Ilopango caldera, known as Tierra Blanca Joven (TBJ), would have had decimated not only the Zapotitán valley in which Ceren is located, but also all of El...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Venicia Slotten. David Lentz.

Paleoethnobotanical research conducted during the 2013 field season at Joya de Cerén in El Salvador focused on the analysis of plant remains found on the surface and associated features of an ancient Maya sacbe (causeway) that were well protected beneath tephra deposited by the volcanic eruption of Loma Caldera around AD 660. Plant remains were retrieved from the sacbe surface, adjacent drainage canals, and agricultural fields on either side of the sacbe. Because the plant remains found in...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Christine Dixon.

The exceptional preservation of the Classic Maya community of Cerén, El Salvador has afforded the opportunity to examine how one group of people constructed their built environment. The remarkably well- preserved site (public and domestic structures, earthen sacbe (road), agricultural fields, plant casts, and artifacts) greatly aids in our understanding of small-scale socio-political organization. This paper draws on data collected during the 2013 field season as well as earlier research. The...

DOCUMENT Full-Text Payson Sheets.

Research at the Ceren village archaeological site in 2013 and 2014 has made a variety of discoveries. The plant casts, made by pouring dental plaster into the voids, reveal much about agriculture in the middle of the rainy season some 1400 years ago. The maize plants were doubled over to dry the mature ears, but the Loma Caldera eruption occurred just before planting squash and beans. So what was that single mature squash plant doing in the milpa? What are the limits of preservation of weeds,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Alexandria Halmbacher.

Around A.D. 650 the Loma Caldera eruption entombed the Classic Period Maya village of Cerén in 4-6 meters of volcanic ash. This resulted in the exceptional preservation of structures, artifacts and botanical remains, providing archaeologists with a unique opportunity to study the household complexes and their related activities. However, much of the previous research concerning the households at Cerén has primarily focused on its economic activities. As a result, archaeologists have yet to...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Céline Lamb. Scott R. Hutson.

Long-standing research at sites like Cerén exemplifies the increased interest in rural households and settlements and the shift away from the elite-centric nature of many earlier projects in Maya archaeology. Our expanding knowledge of ancient Maya hinterlands has allowed us to consider the heterogeneity that these smaller settlements displayed and revise our western binary perspective of "urban versus rural". Recent investigations by members of the Ucí-Cansahcab Regional Integration Project...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Theresa Heindel.

Research on ancient Maya agriculture has historically been focused on seed crop cultivation, but the recent discovery of a Classic period manioc field near the site of Ceren, El Salvador has shed new light on the possibility of intensive root crop cultivation by the ancient Maya. Another root crop, however, Xanthosoma violaceum (colloquially known as "malanga"), was also encountered in a household garden. Through the use of multiple lines of evidence, I have compiled a summation of malanga’s...