La Corona
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La Corona is an ancient Maya city in Guatemala's Petén department that was discovered in 1996 and later revealed to be the long-sought "Site Q", a prominent, undiscovered Maya city. "La Corona" means "the crown" in Spanish; the first archaeologists to study the site named it this after seeing a row of five temples that resembled a crown.
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[edit] Site Q
During the 1960s, looted Maya artifacts referring to a then-unknown city surfaced on the international antiquities market. Peter Mathews, then a Yale graduate student, dubbed it "Site Q", the Q being short for "que?" which means "what" in Spanish. Some researchers believed that the inscriptions referred to Calakmul, but the artistic style of the artifacts was different from anything that had been found there. An environmentalist studying scarlet macaws found La Corona in 1996, and a team from Harvard University's Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology investigated the site later that year. The team found references to Maya ball players who were featured on Site Q artifacts at La Corona, leading them to believe that La Corona was the lost city. Others were not convinced. In 2005 Marcello A. Canuto, a Yale researcher, found a panel in situ at La Corona that mentioned two Site Q rulers and had been quarried from the same rock as the Site Q artifacts, providing convincing evidence that La Corona was indeed Site Q.
[edit] La Corona
La Corona has been heavily looted, and many of the buildings are in poor condition. A main plaza has been identified, along with several temples. The Site Q inscriptions have led scholars to believe that La Corona and Calakmul were allies. Due to the recent discovery of the site, only a portion of the city has been excavated, although teams from various universities and the National Geographic Society are attached to the site.
[edit] References
- Katz, Abram (2005) "Long-Sought Maya City Found in Guatemala", National Geographic News, accessed September 20, 2006.
- Yale University press release (2005) "Long-Sought Maya City – Site Q – Found in Guatemala", Yale University Office of Public Affairs, accessed September 20, 2006.
