UCLA to Help Study, Save Mayan Ruin : Archeology: Belize government appeals for help in preserving a site that survived long after the empire’s other cities collapsed.

UCLA archeologists called in by the government of Belize to investigate a major Mayan ruin have discovered an intriguing and unexpected mystery. The city of 10,000 inhabitants, called Xunantunich, survived and even prospered for 150 to 200 years after major cities all around it were flung into chaos in the collapse of the Maya empire about AD 800.

Although he as yet has no idea why the city remained stable while others around it were in turmoil, archeologist Richard M. Leventhal hopes that further excavations over the next few summers will help to explain not only how Xunantunich (pronounced Shoo-NAN-too-NEECH) survived, but also why the other cities fell. This has long been an issue of contention and puzzlement among Central American specialists.

Among the evidence supporting the city’s long stability and prosperity is a spectacular 30-by-9-foot frieze discovered on the side of the 130-foot-tall, pyramid-like Castillo at Xunantunich and dating from AD 900 to 1000. The frieze, which several researchers have said is magnificent, was constructed by the city’s ruling elite after the leaders of other nearby cities had fallen. The researchers also found ceramics from the same period that could only have been produced in a prosperous urban area.

Leventhal has also found a major problem at the Castillo, which despite its age is the second-tallest building in Belize: Huge cracks in its sides caused by earthquakes or settling threaten to bring the archeological landmark tumbling to the ground if it cannot be stabilized by specialists from the Getty Conservation Institute in Los Angeles.

Leventhal’s finds “are reinforcing the emerging idea that the collapse (of the Maya empire) wasn’t quite as dramatic as we had thought, not as all-inclusive and widespread,” said archeologist Peter S. Dunham of Cleveland State University, who recently reported the discovery of four Mayan cities in southern Belize.

“But the other sites where sizable populations (during the collapse) are documented are pretty much out in the peripheries of the cities and are much humbler abodes,” Dunham said. Xunantunich, he said, is the first instance in which the core of the city has been shown to survive. “It’s quite a find.”

Xunantunich, which is about 70 miles west of Belize City, was discovered in the 19th Century and has long been one of the major tourist attractions in the country. However, there have been few scientific excavations at the site, Leventhal said, so that relatively little has been known about it.

Researchers found another highly celebrated frieze on the east side of the Castillo in the 1950s. That plaster frieze has been a major attraction for tourists, but is deteriorating rapidly.

Leventhal was approached by the Belize government in 1990 to create and head a two-pronged project at Xunantunich: to research the history of the site and develop a better understanding of its role in the Maya empire, and to stabilize the site and make it more accessible to tourists but less susceptible to damage by them.

Xunantunich lies in a lush river valley that provides much of the food grown in Belize, as it probably did during the Classic Maya period from AD 250 to about AD 800 or 850. At the end of that period, most of the large Mayan centers, such as Caracol, Chichen Itza, Tikal and Dos Pilas collapsed and were abandoned.

Recent studies by archeologists such as Arthur Demaret of Vanderbilt University have shown that some of the cities, such as Dos Pilas, probably collapsed as a result of internecine warfare. But researchers have been unable to agree on an overall scenario for the end of the Classic period, citing other complications, such as ecological disruption and the failure of trade routes.

The discovery that Xunantunich survived that collapse complicates the development of such scenarios. Why it survived “is a question that a lot of us are going to have to come to better grips with,” Dunham said.

The evidence for the late survival of the city includes artifacts, especially ceramics, found at the site, and the frieze. “Based on their design, form and composition, and comparing them to products from other documented sites, we can date the material (ceramics) to between AD 900 and 1000,” Leventhal said.

“These ceramics were clearly produced in a complex, functioning Maya city,” he added.

Even more convincing is the frieze found on the west wall of the Castillo, which sits on a high plateau with a commanding view of the valley. It includes a three-dimensional figure of a Maya ruler, ancestor gods, shells, Earth monsters and dancing figures--images that, in the Mayan world view, symbolically linked Maya sovereigns with supernatural authority.

“The dating of the frieze reinforces our other findings and tells us that not only was this work constructed relatively late in Mayan history, but that the city was still capable of undertaking large architectural projects even while once-powerful neighboring cities were falling apart,” Leventhal said.

Because the frieze is very fragile, Leventhal reburied it for protection, using the earth that was removed in its discovery. A replica will be built for tourists.

The excavations also showed that the west face of the Castillo is laced with large vertical cracks, one to two inches across and extending as much as 30 feet into the interior. As a first step in preserving the temple, scientists under the direction of the Getty center are attempting to determine whether the cracks are still growing.

Leventhal plans to begin tunneling into the Castillo in 1995 and hopes that its interior, as well as other areas at the site that have not yet been explored, will yield a great deal more information about the site and about the downfall of the empire.

Ancient Mystrey UCLA archeologists have discovered that a Mayan ruin called Xunantunich survived and even proposered for 150 to 200 years after major cities all around it were flung into chaos in the fall of the Mayan empire around AD 800.