The Monument contains the highest known archaeological site density in the United States, with rich, well-preserved evidence of Native American cultures. The archeological record etched into this landscape is much more than isolated islands of architecture. This cultural landscape contains more than 8,300 recorded sites which reflect physical components of past human life: villages, field houses, check dams, reservoirs, great kivas, cliff dwellings, shrines, sacred springs, agricultural fields, petroglyphs and sweat lodges. Some areas have more than 100 sites per square mile. The number of sites is estimated to be up to 30,000.
Archaeological Mexico: A Guide to Ancient Cities and Sacred Sites books pdf file
During the 1920s, the entire Maya region, from the lowlands of the Yucatan peninsula to the highland region of Guatemala, cast a special spell over the first visitors to the region. Explorers, artists, writers, and travelers who visited ancient Maya cities for the first time wrote about the wonders they experienced for public audiences, sharing their adventures through newspaper articles and other media. Evans argues that the late nineteenth and early twentieth-century romance of the Maya in US public imaginations exploded not only from the thrill of fantastic archaeological discoveries, but also because of the invented historical narratives that linked Maya archaeology to a new generation of US Maya explorers and their attempts to claim the Maya past for their own uses (Evans 2004). Similarly, Gero and Root argue that representations of the archaeological past serve to legitimate and naturalize the present (Gero and Root 1990). Alma Reed and the team of Mason Spinden expedition represented different kinds of explorers; their respective reports for the New York Times reflected their distinct approaches to the question of the mystery of the ancient Maya. Nevertheless, both invented new identities for the ancient Maya, as either culturally familiar and foreign, and deployed those imagined identities in cultural support of US empire.
And, of course, he supports archaeology, which has already pumped millions of dollars into the local communities of the Petén, as the region is called. Some of the guards Hansen has hired are former looters. Most of the workers hired to help excavate the ancient cities participate in literacy classes run by the Mirador Basin Project, which has also provided local schools with computers and computer training, helped install water-purification filters in villages and trained local residents to be guides. The future of the basin ultimately depends on the local people and communities. 2ff7e9595c
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