Archaeologists from Spain and Mexico have returned this year to X'baatún, a pre-Hispanic Mayan paradise of difficult access located in the southeast of Mexico, to continue the season of work after the discovery of new structures in the cultural zone.
“This year we do two types of work: cleaning structures to make drone flights and obtain high-resolution information on how they were in volume, height and type of construction in the upper part of the Mayan buildings, as well as various surveys (of the new findings)”, explained the Spanish archaeologist Juan García Targa, co-director of the X'Baatún Project.
The pre-Hispanic site, whose name means "place where water is collected," is located inside the Oxhuatz natural park, in the municipality of Tekal de Venegas, in the east of the Mexican state of Yucatan.
The collaborator of the Local Architectural Heritage service of the Barcelona Provincial Council, said that the surveys they carry out focus on a complex housing structure with several rooms and many architectural elements of columns with a style "that could belong to a character of the Mayan elite ”.
The other three surveys correspond to a smaller and rectangular building, another structure that is on top of a cave and another rectangular one, which is visually transformed by the collapse.
A team of two Spanish experts in photogrammetry, Cristina Jiménez Fuentes and Xavier Sicart Chavarría, participate in the archaeological project to apply new technologies in the area, without putting at risk the newly discovered sites, which date back to 300 BC. until the Terminal Late Classic (800 to 1,000 AD).
Thanks to these technologies, archaeologists have been able to discover new buildings outside the Mayan city "of great importance", they have explained. As a starting point they had a map prepared in 2006 and now, thanks to drone flights, the researchers have a more precise orientation of the pre-Hispanic buildings that "allows them to know the typology, since there are large and complex structures, such as palaces , and other small ones of a ritual type”, the researchers have underlined.
One of the most prized discoveries this year is a small religious-like structure that sits on top of a cavity with access to water. Experts say that "this is very important for cultures, but in the Mayan more."
Cristina Jiménez, a master's degree in American History and Anthropology from the Complutense University of Madrid, stated that a dream is coming true at X'baatún: to dedicate herself to research into the Mayan culture taking advantage of new technologies.
In this way, the archaeological site remains almost virgin while powerful studies can be carried out on the volume and structure of the buildings, reconstructing them in 3D images.
Thus, X'baatún has become a site of great archaeological interest, with 34 registered buildings, but still with much more information about its composition and about the Maya to be discovered. Thanks to new technologies, each year the complex team of archaeologists will be one step closer to understanding what the culture that lived in this ancient pre-Hispanic paradise was like.
