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Kaminaljuyú has been known for a long time and was visited by Alfred P. Maudslay at the end of the nineteenth century. He later published a plan of the site and a photograph of the mounds. Extensive excavations were undertaken at the site by the Carnegie Institution of Washington in 1936 and the work continued for several years. Reports were subsequently published on the excavation of Mounds Aand B (Kidder, Jennings, and Shook 1946), D-III–13 (Berlin 1952), and E-III-3 (Shook and Kidder 1952). Their efforts constitute the earliest major archaeological research on Kaminaljuyú, and all were last minute efforts to salvage structures in immediate danger of destruction. The results of these excavations should be considered as one of the great achievements of American archaeology because archaeological work at Kaminaljuyú established for the first time a long consecutive chronological sequence for an area within the Guatemala highlands and also one of the most complete local sequences in Mesoamerica. It modified concepts about the nature of the culture of the Preclassic, or Formative, period. At least half of the 200 mounds were discovered to be Preclassic in date, including some of the largest struc23 .0. Kaminaljuyú 453 tures of the site. The scale of the architecture and the wealth of tombs located within the mounds demonstrated conclusively that archaeologists had underestimated the size and degree of internal social differentiation of Preclassic societies . Prior to Kaminaljuyú, the Preclassic was conceived of as a period of socially homogeneous, sedentary folk agricultural societies. Mounds A and B were of Classic date and the association of Maya and Teotihuacán pottery in the same tomb completely altered the picture of the chronological interrelationships of the various Classic civilizations of Mesoamerica . Prior to the Carnegie excavations most researchers assumed that Classic Maya civilization started earlier and stimulated the growth of other Mesoamerican Classic civilizations. The excavations revealed the contemporaneity of the various regional cultures and in fact meant that much of the development of Teotihuacán was Preclassic in a chronological sense. This in turn has stimulated considerable controversy. A major discovery in Mounds A and B was the extraordinary impact of Teotihuacán on Kaminaljuyú in Classic times. The tombs contained copies of or imported Teotihuacán pottery and the pyramids that contained them T H E C A R N E G I E M A Y A 454 KAMINALJUYÚ were copies of Teotihuacán architecture, including the typical specialized tablero-talud moldings. This discovery immediately initiated a series of controversies. In the late 1960s, the Pennsylvania State University sponsored work at the site, directed by William T. Sanders and Joseph H. Michels. A series of monographs on the site was published by Pennsylvania State University in the 1970s. In 1994 Kaminaljuyú was made an archaeological park, and Guatemala Instituto de Antropología e Historia began a project on one of the few structures still standing. 23.1. ALFRED V. KIDDER AND OLIVER G. RICKETSON Kaminaljuyú YB 35:130–131, 1936 To the great aggregation of mounds on FincaArevalo, Finca Miraflores and other farms in the outskirts of Guatemala City, the above name has been given by the Sociedad de Geografía e Historia of Guatemala. At the suggestion of Lic.Antonio Villacorta, Minister of Public Education, excavations were undertaken at one of these mounds. The structure proved to consist of four small pyramids built one over the other, the innermost and the second of adobe, the third and fourth of tufa blocks laid in mud mortar. The eastern half of the complex was excavated, the operation yielding large rectangular pits lying immediately to the east of the mound. They contained the skeletons of persons of importance, accompanied by lavish offerings of implements, pottery, and jadeite ornaments . Some of the pottery appears to bear close resemblance to that of Uaxactún, some to that of Teotihuac án in Mexico. Final description of the pyramids and conclusions regarding the cultural relationships of the associated tomb material must await excavations planned for 1937, when, it is hoped, the remainder of the mound may be cleared and a fourth tomb, believed to lie below the second pyramid, may be investigated . An illustrated preliminary report has been issued as a press-release of the Institution. Mrs. Ricketson carried on studies of the early pottery collected in 1935 at the Finca Miraflores. 23.2. ALFRED V. KIDDER AND JESSE D. JENNINGS Guatemala Highlands YB 36:143–144, 1937 Kaminaljuyú, a great aggregation of mounds in the...

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