- La Corona
La Corona is an ancient Maya city in
Guatemala 's Petén department that was discovered in1996 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.ite 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 fromHarvard University 'sPeabody 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. In2005 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.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.References
*Katz, Abram (2005) [http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2005/09/0929_050929_maya_siteq.html "Long-Sought Maya City Found in Guatemala"] , National Geographic News, accessed September 20, 2006.
*Yale University press release (2005) [http://www.yale.edu/opa/newsr/05-09-27-01.all.html "Long-Sought Maya City – Site Q – Found in Guatemala"] , Yale University Office of Public Affairs, accessed September 20, 2006.External links
* [http://www.davidrumsey.com/amica/amico686806-41726.html Royal Throne effigy artifact attributed to La Corona]
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