In this Book
- Before the Volcano Erupted: The Ancient Cerén Village in Central America
- Book
- 2002
- Published by: University of Texas Press
summary
On an August evening around AD 600, residents of the Cerén village in the Zapotitán Valley of what is now El Salvador were sitting down to their nightly meal when ground tremors and loud steam emissions warned of an impending volcanic eruption. The villagers fled, leaving their town to be buried under five meters of volcanic ash and forgotten until a bulldozer uncovered evidence of the extraordinarily preserved town in 1976. The most intact Precolumbian village in Latin America, Cerén has been called the "Pompeii of the New World." This book and its accompanying CD-ROM and website (ceren.colorado.edu) present complete and detailed reports of the excavations carried out at Cerén since 1978 by a multidisciplinary team of archaeologists, ethnographers, volcanologists, geophysicists, botanists, conservators, and others. The book is divided into sections that discuss the physical environment and resources, household structures and economy, special buildings and their uses, artifact analysis, and topical and theoretical issues. As the authors present and analyze Cerén’s houses and their goods, workshops, civic and religious buildings, kitchen gardens, planted fields, and garbage dumps, a new and much clearer picture of how commoners lived during the Maya Classic Period emerges. These findings constitute landmark contributions to the anthropology and archaeology of Central America.
Table of Contents
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- Chapter 4: Cer
- pp. 33-42
- PART TWO: Household Archaeology
- pp. 43-44
- Chapter 6 Household 2 at Cer
- pp. 58-71
- PART THREE: Special Buildings
- pp. 81-82
- Chapter 9: The Civic Complex
- pp. 83-88
- Chapter 12: Divination at Cer
- pp. 104-114
- PART FOUR: Artifacts
- pp. 115-116
- Chapter 13: Ceramics and Their Use at Cer
- pp. 117-138
- Chapter 15: Groundstone Artifacts in the Cer
- pp. 145-150
- PART FIVE: Topics and Issues of Cer
- pp. 167-168
- Chapter 18 The Conservation Program at Cer
- pp. 169-177
- Chapter 22: Summary and Conclusions
- pp. 197-206
- References
- pp. 209-220
Additional Information
ISBN
9780292798786
Related ISBN(s)
9780292777613
MARC Record
OCLC
55670326
Pages
238
Launched on MUSE
2012-01-01
Language
English
Open Access
No