Mayan Ruin in Belize Excavated by UNM Students
An article by Karen Wentworth says that Keith Prufer, assistant professor in the Department of Anthropology at the University of New Mexico will be taking students to study a relatively small but active Mayan ruin in the lowlands of Belize. This ruin, called Uxbenka, like Tulum in the Yucatan Travel Movie, traded with other Mayan centers.
This year, thanks to a grant from the Alphawood Foundation, they will have electronic equipment to analyze the com position of artifacts they find in the Mayan ruin. “It should tell us where materials like the obsidian we are finding came from, because it was traded a long way. Some came from Mexico, some from Guatemala,” Prufer said. “We can work out trade routes and sources of materials with it.”
Professor Uses High Tech to Uncover Mayan Ruins
Gone are the days when anthropologists relied on the knowledge of modern-day Maya and chicklet harvesters to direct them to unexcavated Mayan ruins. Today, they can also use airplanes equipped with LIDAR or laser technology that allows them to comb the Yucatan jungle from above using remote sensing.
Copyright (c) 2010 Carol Chapman
All Rights Reserved
