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A 1,700-year-old tomb belonging to a previously unknown Maya ruler has been discovered in northern Guatemala.
The site of Chochkitam – a medium- sized Maya city with a monumental centre covering an area of c.1km2 – has been known since the early 20th century, but no formal excavations had been undertaken at the site until 2019, when investigations were launched as part of a project led by Professor Francisco Estrada- Belli from Tulane University, USA.
Unfortunately, much of the site has been subject to looting in the past. However, in 2021 Estrada-Belli’s team conducted a LiDAR survey of the site that identified the looters’ tunnels in the structure containing the tomb; they also spotted an area that it seemed the looters had missed. When excavations were carried out, the archaeologists were delighted to discover an untouched burial 7m into the structure, just 2m from where looters had stopped digging. The stone lid of the coffin had fallen in and some natural decay had occurred, but otherwise the burial was in pristine condition.
Inside the coffin lay the skeleton of the deceased in a state of partial preservation. What made the burial particularly striking though, were the funerary goods found by the individual’s head and waist, which included a spectacular jade mosaic mask, two engraved human femur bones (originating from an individual other than the deceased), and a collection of Spondylus shells – the use of which was reserved for Maya royalty – as well as several ceramic vessels, and a stingray spine (indicating that the deceased was male).
The mosaic mask, which has been painstakingly pieced back together by conservators, is an important type of sacred object associated with royal Maya burials. A small number of other examples are known, but it is extremely rare to find one in situ during archaeological excavations. Such masks often depicted deities or ancestors; researchers think that this particular mask, with its sharp teeth and spiral eyes, was intended to represent the Maya storm god.
The engraved bones are an unusual discovery, too: only a few similar examples have been discovered to date. Remarkably, one of the bones depicts a man holding a jade mask exactly like the one in the tomb, and is therefore believed to represent the ruler buried here. The writing on the bones offers further clues to the individual’s identity, including his name (Itzam Kokaj Bahlam: ‘sun god/ bird/ jaguar’) and references to his father and grandfather, linking him to the larger Maya site of Tikal, also in the Petén region of Guatemala, as well as the important Mesoamerican site of Teotihuacán in modern-day Mexico. Radiocarbon dating places the burial around AD 350, indicating that this is the tomb of a previously unknown king who ruled during the height of the Maya civilisation, the Maya Classic period (c.AD 250-900).
These exceptional discoveries offer a window into a key period of time at a site about which we know relatively little, demonstrating the wealth and power of its king, as well as its connections to other sites in Mesoamerica. The team has been working for the last few years to preserve, scan, photograph, and study the finds from the burial, and now plan to carry out DNA analysis of the bones, as well as conducting further archaeological investigations at the site in the future.
Text: Amy Brunskill / Images: Francisco Estrada-Belli/Tulane University
