admin Archaeologists from the National Institute of Anthropology and History (Inah) have discovered a Mayan tomb containing the remains of a sacrificial offering along with a jade ring.
This discovery was made during excavations in the Mayan city of El Tigre, also known as Itzamkanac (meaning “place of the snake-lizard”), located in the Mexican state of Cameche, near Rio Candelaria.
El Tigre was first inhabited in the Middle Ages (600 – 300 BC) until around 1557 after the Spanish conquest. The city was once the polity of the Acalán Maya, a subgroup of the Chontal Maya or Putún Maya.
According to some historians, El Tigre is where Cuauhtémoc, the last free ruler of the Aztec Empire, was executed by order of Hernán Cortés.
Recent excavations on Platform 1E, located west of the main pyramid temple, have revealed the remains of a human burial placed in a ceramic urn as part of a ritual Shipped with other large ceramic containers and bowls.
Examination of the skeleton revealed that it was a young man placed in a crouching position, who was sacrificed and buried during the Late Classic period (600-800 AD) while still wearing a jade ring.
Jade is a rare material in pre-Columbian Central America. This means that Jade is largely an elite commodity and highly symbolic beyond its material value. Jade is associated with the sun and wind, but it is also associated with symbols of life and death and is therefore of great religious and spiritual importance in rituals, excavations at El Tigre were carried out as part of the Maya Train Project to improve archaeological sites of the Mexican Government’s Ministry of Culture.
Header Image Credit : INAH Campeche
