Introduction

Tour the Dig Site

The Sweat Bath

Artifacts & The Find

Process of Digging

Piedras Negras is the largest Classic Maya city in the western Maya Lowlands, located on the Guatemalan bank of the Usumacinta River. Its existence, and the rich record of its sculptures and buildings, led to intensive fieldwork by the University Museum, University of Pennsylvania, in the 1930s and, more recently, to years of investigations by the Piedras Negras Project of Brigham Young University and the Universidad del Valle. During the spring of 1999, the Project completed its third field season, conducting 23 operations in a wide variety of locations. The goals of this fieldwork addressed a number of questions:

• When did the city as a concentrated settlement begin, and when did it end?
• Was its collapse a rapid one, provoked by attacks from its enemy, Yaxchilan?
• What was the complete sequence of its palaces? Did such facilities have quarters for servants and places for mundane activities such as food production?
• Does monumental architecture, especially of a mortuary nature, change considerably at the inception of the Late Classic period?
• What would intensive excavations in the near periphery reveal about the supporting landscape of Piedras Negras?
• Are earlier maps of the city reliable and complete?
• What can soil chemistry tell us about subsurface remains and ancient activities?

Where is Piedras Negras? See where Piedras Negras is on a map of the country of Guatemala.