Archaeological Investigations on the Southern Platform of the Trogon Group in El Mirador

Summary

This is an abstract from the "From Origins to Collapses:  New Insights in the Cultural and Natural Processes of the Mirador-Calakmul Karst Basin" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Weston R. Hansen, Megan Whitehead, Richard D. Hansen

Archaeological excavations in the Trogon Group of the Tigre Complex in the Preclassic Maya site of El Mirador have yielded new information relevant to early architectural formats and burial practices of the Preclassic Maya. While excavations in the northern platform of Trogon yielded extensive evident of early Middle Preclassic occupation, the excavations on the southern Trogon platform revealed a series of thick stucco floors dating to the Middle and Late Preclassic periods with multiple large post holes. Below these floors were several small and unusual rectangular platforms covered with white stucco which had been modified by the addition of a thick stone fill forming walls about a meter high. Archaeological testing in the center of the northern stucco platform yielded two subsequent floors which had been cut with a circular pit, 70 cm in diameter, resembling a large post hole. However, the pit yielded poorly preserved and fragmented human remains of a single individual. No burial goods were recovered and the few Middle Preclassic ceramics were likely part of the fill. The complete absence of burial goods associated with such unique, early, architectural constructions is puzzling, and further technological analyses are on-going.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 90th Annual Meeting, Denver, CO (2025)   •
• From Origins to Collapses:  New Insights in the Cultural and Natural Processes of the Mirador-Calakmul Karst Basin

Keywords

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 53531