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Long-Sought Maya City
— Site Q —
Found in Guatemala

DALLAS (SMU) — A team of scientists from SMU and Yale University have found incontrovertible proof of Site Q, a long-speculated Mayan city, during a mission to the northwest Peten region of Guatemala.

The proof—an in-situ panel carved with over 140 hieroglyphs that fill in the missing key to 30-year chapter in Classic Maya —was found in a little known ancient royal center called La Corona.

In 1997, an earlier expedition headed by Ian Graham of Harvard's Peabody Museum and David Stuart, now at the University of Texas at Austin, found evidence at La Corona that led them to suggest first that La Corona was Site Q. Research since then has helped confirm their initial ideas and this finding provides the incontrovertible evidence.

SMU graduate student and epigrapher Stanley Guenter and ecologist Santiago Billy study the panels(top). Stanley cleans one of the two glyph blocks (bottom left). Stanley cleans the leftside block that depicts king K'inich Yook of Sak Nikte.'
(click images to see larger versions)

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“This is the first time an overland route has been discovered that links the capital of the Classic Maya world to its vassal cities in the southern lowlands of Guatemala,” said SMU Anthropology Professor David Freidel, who is also excavating the royal city of Waka. “The existence of an ancient ‘royal road’ linking these Maya cities reinforces the need to preserve and defend this fragile forest for further discovery and ecotourism.”

Roughly 40 years ago, the antiquities market was flooded with many exquisitely carved monuments of apparent Mayan origin. Many were purchased for private and museum collections despite a lack of provenance. Because of their similar style and shared subject matter, it was suggested that they came from some still unknown site located somewhere in the Peten lowlands. This site called Site Q — an abbreviation of the Spanish “ ¿que? ” or “ which? ” —has been the target of many expeditions

The expedition to Guatemala this past April was to set up camp for an in-depth study later this year. On their last day in camp, Canuto and his team happened upon what they believe to be one of the monuments of site Q.

“This panel exactly mirrors the style, size, subject matter, and historical chronology of the Site Q texts,” said Marcello Canuto, professor of archaeology at Yale University. “This discovery, therefore, concludes one of the longest and widest hunts for a Maya city in the history of the discipline.”

In addition to confirming the existence and location of Site Q, the find is one of the longest hieroglyphic text discovered in Guatemala in the last several decades. Canuto also noted that the two blocks making up the panel appeared to be in their original location in a temple platform and were in no way damaged or looted.

The group will be returning to Guatemala to continue the study, which was supported in part by the National Geographic Society, the El Perú-Waka’ Archaeological Project directed by Dr. David Freidel and Dr. Héctor Escobedo, and the Wildlife Conservation Society.

Other SMU researchers included a mapping team of Damien Marken and Lia Tsesmeli, and an epigrapher Stanley Guenter. Logistics for the expedition were carried out by Roan McNabb of the Wildlife Conservation Society, and Salvador Lopez, head of the department of Monumentos Prehispánicos of the Guatemalan Instituto de Antropologia e Historia (IDAEH).

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News Media Contacts:
Meredith Dickenson
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   mmdicken@smu.edu
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Janet Rettig Emanuel
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    janet.emanuel@yale.edu

Long-Sought Maya City — Site Q — Found in Guatemala

Long-Sought Maya City
— Site Q —
Found in Guatemala