San Andrés, El Salvador

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Scale model of the Acropolis of San Andrés

Scale model of the pyramid well-known Structure 5 or like “the Bell” of San Andrés, located in the sector of the city known like Great Plaza

San Andrés is a pre-Hispanic site of El Salvador, whose long occupation began around the year 900 adC like a town agriculturist in the valley of Zapotitán of the department of La Libertad. This early establishment was vacated by the year 250 because of the enormous eruption of the boiler of Lago Ilopango, again was occupied in Century V, along with many other sites of the valley of Zapotitan. Between 600 and 900 dC San Andrés was the capital of señorío Mayan, host of a governing dynasty, with supremacy on the other establishments of Vale de Zapotitán.

The residential area so has not been studied. The investigations and excavations in San Andrés have become in center political-ceremonial and have revealed who a principle was divided in South Seat (from where they governed the governors) and the North Seat. In the year 600 the South Seat was filled up with marinates (leaving to a tunnel that conducia to the original seat) constructing the Acropolis in where are the ceremonial and political structures, in the South ends and it orients of the Acropolis are pyramids or structures: 1 (the main pyramid), 2, 3 and 4; in the North ends and the west is a series of quarters in where the governors lived (the last palaces of San Andrés) on who 2 have been reconstructed; to the south of the Acropolis of it finds structure 7 another ceremonial structure. In the North seat or Great Seat is the pyramid or structures (called the Bell of San 5 Andrés) which this united with the Acropolis atravez of structure 6 (structure that has form of L) around structure 5 are the structures where the commerce took.

Archaeology demonstrates that San Andrés Copán had forts contacts with and Teotihuacan, and that received goods dealt from as distant places as the present territories of Petén and Belize. San Andrés collapse like political center towards end of century IX. The last evidence of pre-Hispanic activity in the site was between the 900 years and 1200 like residential site that consists of a final layer with fragments of censers and ceramics painted with scenes of sacrifice in Mixteca-Puebla style, which belongs to a new cultural phase, named Guazapa, related to the pre-Hispanic city of Cihuatán.

After Spanish Conquista, the ruins of San Andrés were within a colonial property dedicated to the cattle ranch and the production of indigo (índigo). Thanks to the eruption of the Playón in 1658 dC, was buried and conserved almost intact the manufacture of indigo of the property. In 1996, the Government of El Salvador inaugurated the Archaeological Park San Andrés, in where the visitor can cross pyramids, the manufacture and the museum of site.