Maya Yucatán: An Artist's Journey

Chapter Eight: The Kiuic Archaeological Project

The House of Diamonds, Kiuic. Ancient Puuc cities used good cement. At Kiuic and other Puuc sites, buildings had a excellent chance of standing. They often do not crumble into heaps of debris, but break apart in big pieces. For one thousand years they have stood under the strain of tree roots and vegetation growing from their tops. The artist Frederick Catherwood visited the hamlet of Kiuic in 1841 and drew the trees growing from the summit of the House of Diamonds. 101 I had finally found my beautiful hills in Yucatán. The ancient city and the modern archaeological project of Kiuic is located in an uninhabited region of the Puuc Sierra, a low range of hills stretching from Maxcanú, an important modern Maya town in the northwest, down one hundred miles to its anchor at Peto, another historic Maya town to the southeast. Kiuic is nestled into this hilly region, and at the same time I was working at Chunchucmil I joined the new project in that ancient cultural area called the Puuc (pook). Being involved with the Kiuic Project held many side benefits, mostly the advantage of being close to Uxmal, visiting the old towns of the Mani and Convent Trails, and roaming all over the hill country. This area is densely populated with ancient ruined cities and, on the eastern flank of the hill range, with a vibrant modern Maya culture. In 2001 I was traveling with my colleague Michael Henninger. After visiting several Puuc sites on the way, we arrived in Oxkutzcab looking for George Bey and the Kiuic Project house. It took some asking around and a couple of false leads knocking on likely doors, but finally we saw the faded black Jeep Cherokee with a cow’s skull stuck chapter eight The Kiuic Archaeological Project A hidden palace at Kiuic. 102 / Chapter Eight to the front grill. George had told us to keep an eye out for it, since it belonged to Tomás Gallareta, the INAH archaeologist who was one of the codirectors of the Kiuic Project. The next day we were on the narrow Puuc road that wound down from the rich fruit orchards that begin near the Loltun Caverns and fill up the pockets of good soil in the hill valleys in that neighborhood. This road reminded me about how pleased I am to drive down an unfamiliar road. We pulled into Xul (shool), a strictly Maya town whose name I recognized from Stephens and Catherwood’s book. They had visited Kiuic and this region in 1841. I was still a bit unsure of the right bearing, but in downtown Xul I turned down a paved road that seemed promising. The maps of these areas are mostly noncommittal about locations of towns, so we passed through one little hamlet and we looked for the dirt road turnoff that George had told us about. Just when we thought we had gone too far, a little sign with an arrow pointing said: Kiwic.1 George or someone had left the gate unlocked for us, so after a mere three more miles on the dirt road, and passing gingerly over some substantial bedrock protrusions, we came down into the ruins. The South Temple at the Ulum Group, Kiuic. The Kiuic Archaeological Project / 103 Earlier that year George Bey had invited me to visit his new project at Kiuic. I knew that he and Bill Ringle had always worked together on excavation research, and here they had teamed up with Tomás Gallareta Negrón of INAH to initiate a new integrated research program at the ancient ruins. Their idea was to purchase the four thousand acres of uninhabited land that surrounded the ruins and bring in researchers from other disciplines, such as zoologists, botanists, and ecologists, geologists, and geographers, to conduct a thoroughgoing examination of the site and the local region. Along with the scientific research, they have established the land as a nature preserve and built up an educational component that brings students from the state and the nation as well as from the wider world to live and study in the preserve . To this end they have constructed a number of Maya-inspired buildings to house the institute and research facilities. This research preserve, now called Kaxil Kiuic, stands peacefully in a midcanopy, climax forest that has been out of cultivation since the 1840s. Unlike at Yaxuná and Chunchucmil...