Vanderbilt archaeologists unearth buried Maya royal palace
By David F. Salisbury
Sept. 6, 2000
A team of archaeologists from the United States and Guatemala has determined that a structure
previously identified as a minor palace is not only one of the largest and most elaborate
residences of ancient Maya kings discovered but also one of the best preserved.
“With more than 170 rooms built around 11 courtyards in three stories, this eighth century royal
palace is about the same size as the central acropolis in Tikal (Guatemala),” says Arthur
Demarest, the archaeologist from Vanderbilt University who heads the expedition with Tomas
Barrientos from the Universidad del Valle in Guatemala. “But what is most incredible about this
site is that most of the palace is buried virtually intact. No one has found anything like this since
the turn of the century.”
The vegetation-covered royal palace sits in the center of the ruins of an ancient city named
Cancuén, which means “place of serpents.” It is located in a remote area of the Petén rainforest
of Guatemala that has been largely overlooked by archaeologists. The expedition that has begun
to map and excavate the site is sponsored by Guatemala’s Institute of Anthropology and History,
the National Geographic Society and Vanderbilt University.
Cancuén was first visited by archaeologists in 1905, but they characterized it as a minor center;
the expedition went within 100 meters of the palace but didn’t see it because it was covered in
dense jungle vegetation. The site was visited again briefly in the 1960’s by a group of Harvard
graduate students, who first identified the palace. Their sketches and maps, however,
underestimated the size of the palace and covered only a small fraction of the ancient city’s
actual extent.
“These underestimates are quite understandable,” says Demarest. “To the untrained eye, the
palace looks just like a great, jungle-covered hill. Even to archaeologists much of the palace
appeared to be high, solid platforms.”
He says the scale and importance of Cancuén were unrecognized for so long for several reasons.
It is situated in a region bordering the Guatemalan highlands that has been largely overlooked by
archaeologists because the sites do have the tall temples that signal major ruins in other areas.
An area of about two square kilometers around the palace was paved with stone. This kept the
farmers away and, over time, jungle trees pushed through the stones and established an island of
dense rainforest. The walls of the 270,000-square foot palace are built of solid limestone masonry
and did not collapse when enveloped by the jungle, unlike the more typical Maya structures made
from concrete and mud.
The palace was so well camouflaged that Demarest and his colleagues did not recognize its true
size for their first two weeks at the site. Like previous visitors, they also thought large parts of the
palace were solid platforms. Then, one day when walking along the ruin’s highest level, Demarest
fell up to his armpits into vegetation filling one of the courtyards. “That’s when I realized the entire
hill was a three-story building and we were walking on top of the roof,” he says.
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Vanderbilt archaeologists unearth buried Maya royal palace
The archaeologists visited Cancuén in 1999 to follow up a lead from a 10-year dig in northern
Guatemala. Excavations at Dos Pilas and several other sites had given them a wealth of
information about a highly militaristic city-state called Petexbatun.
Among the Petexbatun records, they found a description of a marriage alliance between a Dos
Pilas prince and a Cancuén princess. The small palace where the princess lived was one of Dos
Pilas site’s most exquisite structures. “It looks as if the princess brought her own artisans,
because the stonework on her palace is just like that at Cancuén and far superior to anything in
the Petexbatun region,” Demarest says.
At Cancuén, where the archaeologists expected to find a minor center, they were surprised to find
evidence of a much larger, richer and more powerful kingdom, one based on control of the trade
in precious commodities: jade, pyrite for making mirrors and obsidian for razor and knife blades.
Thousands of people apparently lived at the center during its peak.
The palace was surrounded by the homes and workshops of artisans, which the archaeologists
have explored. “Even the workmen at Cancuén were well-to-do. They had teeth filled with jade
inlays and were buried with fine ceramic figurines with beautiful headdresses,” Demarest says.
While the archaeologists were mapping the site, Guatemalan epigrapher Federico Fahsen was
reconstructing the history of the site by deciphering its monuments. The city’s statuary had been
looted in the past, so he tracked down some of it in private and public collections. The story he
has found is likely to cause major revisions in the scholarly views of Maya civilization.
Cancuén was ruled by one of the oldest Maya dynasties, one that was already well established
by 300 A.D. So far, the researchers have found no evidence that Cancuén conducted any major
wars with its neighbors. Instead, Cancuén’s rulers appear to have been single-mindedly
dedicated to commerce. Their location, at the beginning of the navigable stretch of the Pasion
River, the major waterway used by the Maya, allowed them to control the trade in precious
commodities between the Guatemalan highlands and the jungle lowlands. The record shows that
they used their wealth to form alliances throughout the Maya world. The researchers think that
the palace had such a large number of rooms to house visiting royalty from their many allies.
The fact that Cancuén appears to have prospered for hundreds of years without warfare and that
commerce appeared to play a far more important role in everyday life than religion contradicts the
widespread view among scholars that religion and warfare were the sources of power for Maya
kings, particularly toward the end of their dominance, after about 600 A.D.
“I have a book in press that I’ll have to revise,” says Demarest. “It just goes to show that you can’t
believe everything you read on one dynasty’s monuments.”
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