Recent discoveries and expanded analyses have led many archeologists and cultural anthropologists studying Mayan history to conclude that the center of Mayan civilization was Belize. Our nation is a treasure trove of ancient Mayan temples and artifacts, and popular belief is that only a few have been uncovered. Presently there are about 20 discovered Mayan sites, and one more will soon be added to the list. Today our news team was in the village of San Estevan where serious excavation is already underway. Here’s the story.

(Footage of the skeleton)

This discovery is just part of what undergraduate students from the University of Albany in New York have uncovered so far. While the items being uncovered are enough to create serious excitement, the Assistant Professor from the Department of Anthropology at the university says that the main objective of the trip will be to determine the earliest settlement in the community.

Robert Rosengwig Ph. D. - University of Albany  

“I have a group of twenty undergraduate students from the university that are here taking a field class, learning how to excavate. We have a number of research objectives and we are looking at the earliest settlement of the San Estevan site so we are trying to find the first people that lived at the site and track their lifestyle through the emergence of the first dates, when the first big mounds were built. So we have come down and we have started to make some excavations on the number of the mounds that are found all around the site core, or the pyramid that is behind us and we are taking the excavation down level by level.”   

The students are presently digging at the mounds surrounding the main site, which is this green mound. Not far from here is where two skeletons have been found, and by examining the remains it can be concluded that the settlement dates back to the pre- classic period.

Robert Rosengwig Ph.D. - University of Albany 

“The excavation is down level by level, the excavation that we are just looking at that the road cut through it looks that it was occupied from the pre classic period to the classic period. As we can see there are levels and levels of floor from people who were trying to build their homes higher and higher trying to get away form the flood zone just as people today. The earliest occupation was from about 800 BC so about 2800 years ago and it continued right through the classic period up to about 800-900 years ago. That was the occupation of this mound and all the mounds around.”      

All the items found are being documented at the community center which has been turned into a laboratory; among those items are pottery, tools and precious stones that were used by the Maya.

Robert Rosengwig Ph.D. - University of Albany 

“We are currently exposing three human burials that were encountered in the top most plasters surface, one of which had a ceramic vessel over its face a little broken up but we’ve collected that brought it to the lab and we are going to put it together. We found many plaster surfaces but some of our main research objectives are to look at the economics. How people made a living, how people fed themselves, the tools they used, the plants they ate, the animals they hunted. So we are carefully screening sifting through all the materials we excavate through small screen and retrieving the broken up stone tools and the broken pieces of pottery so back in our lab in the community center of San Estevan we have the bags and bags full of these remains documenting the remains of the common people and some of the elite, wealthier nobles that lived in the area as well.”

This is not the first time that the area has been excavated, since last year the professor and some of his students found some Mayan items in this high mound.

Robert Rosengwig Ph.D. - University of Albany 

“In the late 90’s when we were, myself and my wife, were in the area working we were working in the area of Progresso and Honey Camp Lagoon but living in the village of San Estevan and at that time there was a lot of bulldozing damage that occurred in the San Estevan site core so they exposed some of the earliest occupations. It was a shame that all of these things were destroyed but at the same time it opened a picture of the earliest occupation of the site. So started form 1997 we would come by and take a look and see what was going on and see what was exposed and then in 2002 we did some test pets some formal excavation nits down into the mound and documented some of the precise periods that the site was occupied.”  

The excavation site is located just a mile and a half away from the New River and according to the anthropologists it was one of the main Mayan sites connected to Lamanai and Cuello in the north, making it the meeting point of Mayan trade.

The team will be wrapping up the excavation on the 17^th of February. Before they leave the group will be giving a tour to children in San Estevan to create a greater appreciation of history.