Kaminaljuyu | EPFL Graph Search

Are you an EPFL student looking for a semester project?

Work with us on data science and visualisation projects, and deploy your project as an app on top of GraphSearch.

Kaminaljuyu (pronounced kæminælˈhuːjuː; from Kʼicheʼʼ, "The Hill of the Dead") is a Pre-Columbian site of the Maya civilization located in Guatemala City. Primarily occupied from 1500 BC to 1200 AD, it has been described as one of the greatest archaeological sites in the New World, although the extant remains are distinctly unimpressive. Debate continues about its size, integration, and role in the surrounding Valley of Guatemala and the Southern Maya area. Kaminaljuyu, when first mapped scientifically, comprised some 200 platforms and pyramidal mounds. The site was largely swallowed up by real estate developments. A portion of the Classic Period center is preserved as a 0.5 square km parka fraction of the original ruins field size of around 5 km. The extant remains are distinctly unimpressive and are in a state of destruction with almost daily erasure of material. This is due to their location beneath urbanization and because they were constructed of hardened adobe, weaker than the limestone used to build in the Maya Lowlands. Over the past 100 years, more than fifty archaeological projects, large and small, have been mounted at Kaminaljuyu. In addition to excavations, scholars such as Alfred Maudslay and Samuel K. Lothrop have recorded sculptures and made maps of the site. In 1925 Manuel Gamio undertook limited excavations, finding deep cultural deposits yielding potsherds and clay figurines from what later was called the "Middle Cultures" of Mesoamerica (from 1500 BC to 150 AD). A decade later, the importance of the site was confirmed when a local football club began cutting away the edges of two inconspicuous mounds to lengthen their practice field, discovering an impressive buried structure. Lic. J. Antonio Villacorta C., the Minister of Public Education in Guatemala City, requested archaeologists Alfred Kidder, Jesse Jennings and Edwin Shook to investigate. Villacorta gave the site its name from a Kʼicheʼ word meaning "mounds of the ancestors." When first mapped scientifically by E. M.

About this result

This page is automatically generated and may contain information that is not correct, complete, up-to-date, or relevant to your search query. The same applies to every other page on this website. Please make sure to verify the information with EPFL's official sources.

Related concepts (16)

Kaminaljuyu

Mesoamerica

Mesoamerica is a historical region and cultural area that begins in the southern part of North America and extends to most of Central America, thus comprising the lands of central Mexico, Belize, and Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, and Nicaragua, and northern Costa Rica. In the pre-Columbian era, many societies flourished in Mesoamerica for more than 3,000 years before the Spanish colonization of the Americas begun at Hispaniola island in 1493.

Maya civilization

The Maya civilization (ˈmaɪə) was a Mesoamerican civilization that existed from antiquity to the early modern period. It is known by its ancient temples and glyphs (script). The Maya script is the most sophisticated and highly developed writing system in the pre-Columbian Americas. The civilization is also noted for its art, architecture, mathematics, calendar, and astronomical system. The Maya civilization developed in the Maya Region, an area that today comprises southeastern Mexico, all of Guatemala and Belize, and the western portions of Honduras and El Salvador.