Construction Workers Find Maya Artifacts Under Street In Belize

Maya vessel unearthed from Burns Avenue in San Ignacio, Belize. Image credit Belize Institute of Archaeology.

Construction workers laying new pipes and cables on Burns Avenue in San Ignacio in western Belize have stumbled upon a cache of Maya artifacts dating back more than 2 thousand years. The pottery and human bones were unearthed during work that is part of a $2.7 million dollar beautification project in the small town. The workers were using an excavator to open trenches on the street on Saturday when they made the find. The area is home to the nearby Cahal Pech Maya Site.

Director of Belize Archaeology Dr. Jaime Awe in a statement to the media today explained the find:

“What we have here are three jars or ollas as they call them in Spanish and by the style of it, by the way they were made we know that they date to the late Pre-classic period or between 300 BC to about the birth of Christ so over 2000 years old. The type of artifacts that we are finding indicates household, not elite, not the rulers, they lived closer to downtown Cahal Pech Maya Ruin. This summer for instance we found this amazing tomb up at Cahal Pech that is where the wealthy and the real elite people lived. Out here the common folks like me and you. We are in the suburbs of Cahal Pech. A lot of times people think you go to Cahal Pech and that is all the site, that is downtown but the rest of the ancient city of Cahal Pech extended all the way to where the two rivers meet, across into Santa Elena, towards Bullet Tree Falls. It was a big community so these objects were found in one of the houses that belonged to that ancient city.

“As part of the infrastructural work, the construction workers  they were excavating down the middle of Burns Avenue to put in place storm drainage and also they are going to be burying some of the power lines and while doing that they came across this deposit of Maya artifacts. This happened on Saturday and the Belize Institute of Archaeology was informed and some of our staff arrived on the scene and since then we have met with the contractors and stopped the further excavation of this part of Burns Avenue and we are working closely with the contractors again and in the process we have started to find several other objects.  We now have some whole and some fragmented vessels. We have some stone tools and also some human remains. An interesting aspect about the artifacts discovered is  that we believe that they represent a few houses of the ancient Maya that were there way back before the birth of Christ as part of Cahal Pech and that sometime around that time these buildings may have been covered over by flood waters from the nearby Macal River and the people probably abandoned them and moved to higher ground.”

Belize archaeology researchers recovering a human skeleton from Maya site found under Burns Avenue, San Ignacio Belize. Image Credit Vanessa Chan.

The work supervisor Mr. Omar Tut told the media that:

“We are putting down the pipe that is going to take the water to the river and then we are going to get all the utilities, BEL, BTL and WASA, cable everything is going to go underground and we are going to pave it to make it nice and neat. We stopped because of the Maya artifacts that were found below. At the moment we are cooperating with the Archaeological Department to make everything be documented.”

Burns Avenue downtown San Ignacio Belize where Maya artifacts were discovered. Note construction workers at site of the discovery.

The Belize Institute of Archaeology has proposed that when the new Welcome Center in San Ignacio is completed, the Burns Avenue Maya Artifacts be placed there on permanent display. The Welcome Center is a project that will replace the old park and related buildings with a modern facility including modernised park, public auditorium, tourist information kiosks and space for tourism related activities. The project is under construction as part of the town center modernisation project that led to the discovery of the Maya artifacts.

Bob Jones and Belize girl with two of the Maya vessels discovered. Mr. Jones runs a tour company on Burns Avenue San Ignacio Belize.