Cihuatán is a major

pre-Columbian In the history of the Americas, the pre-Columbian era spans from the original settlement of North and South America in the Upper Paleolithic period through European colonization, which began with Christopher Columbus's voyage of 1492. Usually, ...

archaeological site in central

El Salvador El Salvador (; , meaning " The Saviour"), officially the Republic of El Salvador ( es, República de El Salvador), is a country in Central America. It is bordered on the northeast by Honduras, on the northwest by Guatemala, and on the south ...

.Proyecto Argueológico Cihuatán. Bruhns 1980, p. 6. It was a very large city located in the extreme south of the

Mesoamerica Mesoamerica is a historical region and cultural area in southern North America and most of Central America. It extends from approximately central Mexico through Belize, Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, and northern Costa Rica. Wit ...

n cultural area, and has been dated to the Early Postclassic period of

Mesoamerican chronology Mesoamerican chronology divides the history of prehispanic Mesoamerica into several periods: the Paleo-Indian (first human habitation until 3500 BCE); the Archaic (before 2600 BCE), the Preclassic or Formative (2500 BCE –&nb ...

(c. 950–1200 AD). Archaeological investigation of the site was undertaken in the mid to late 1970s by Karen Olsen Bruhns of San Francisco State University in conjunction with El Salvador's Administración de Patrimonio Cultural (Cultural Heritage Administration). By 1980, of the city had been mapped by the archaeological project, covering an area that included over 900 structures.Bruhns 1980, p. 6.

Location

Cihuatán is situated in the municipality of Aguilares, in the department of

San Salvador San Salvador (; ) is the capital and the largest city of El Salvador and its eponymous department. It is the country's political, cultural, educational and financial center. The Metropolitan Area of San Salvador, which comprises the capital it ...

,Amaroli and Amador 2003, p. 2. in central

Site history

Cihuatán was apparently established in the 8th or 9th century AD on a previously uninhabited site, and occupation was relatively brief, not lasting more than a century or so. The founding of the city coincides with the abandonment of major Classic period cities in the surrounding region, which had strong links to the

Maya Maya may refer to: Civilizations * Maya peoples, of southern Mexico and northern Central America ** Maya civilization, the historical civilization of the Maya peoples ** Maya language, the languages of the Maya peoples * Maya (Ethiopia), a popul ...

cities of

Honduras Honduras, officially the Republic of Honduras, is a country in Central America. The republic of Honduras is bordered to the west by Guatemala, to the southwest by El Salvador, to the southeast by Nicaragua, to the south by the Pacific Oce ...

. The founding of Cihuatán may have been a by-product of the disruption caused by the

Classic Maya collapse In archaeology, the classic Maya collapse is the decline of the Classic Maya civilization and the abandonment of Maya cities in the southern Maya lowlands of Mesoamerica between the 7th and 9th centuries. At Ceibal, the Preclassic Maya e ...

and corresponding shift in

trade routes A trade route is a logistical network identified as a series of pathways and stoppages used for the commercial transport of cargo. The term can also be used to refer to trade over bodies of water. Allowing goods to reach distant markets, a sing ...

. Although the ethnic identity of the site elite is unknown, the architectural style of the structures outside of the ceremonial core of the city is recognisably Maya.Amaroli and Olsen Bruhns 2013. About 100 to 150 years after it was founded, Cihuatán was destroyed by a massive fire that spread rapidly throughout the city. Excavated evidence indicates that those inhabitants that did not die in the flames fled, abandoning their belongings. Spear points were frequent finds in the burnt layers and human remains were found trapped in drains in the acropolis that dated to the time of the city's destruction.

Artifacts

Ceramics excavated at Cihuatán include large locally-produced ceramic effigies of central Mexican deities such as Tlaloc and

Xipe Totec In Aztec mythology and religion, Xipe Totec (; nci-IPA, Xīpe Totēc, ˈʃiːpe ˈtoteːk(ʷ)) or Xipetotec ("Our Lord the Flayed One") was a life-death-rebirth deity, god of agriculture, vegetation, the east, spring, goldsmiths, silversmith ...

, and are very similar in style to effigies recovered from Central Mexico and the

Gulf coast The Gulf Coast of the United States, also known as the Gulf South, is the coast, coastline along the Southern United States where they meet the Gulf of Mexico. The list of U.S. states and territories by coastline, coastal states that have a shor ...

. Locally-produced utilitarian ceramics are of a type common to the southern Mesoamerican region during the Early Postclassic. Other ceramics include spiked incense burners, small anthropomorphic figurines, wheeled figurines, and clay boxes. Both locally-produced and imported ceramics appear to have close affinities with ceramic styles from

Veracruz Veracruz (), formally Veracruz de Ignacio de la Llave (), officially the Free and Sovereign State of Veracruz de Ignacio de la Llave ( es, Estado Libre y Soberano de Veracruz de Ignacio de la Llave), is one of the 31 states which, along with Me ...

, on the Gulf coast of Mexico, and may have derived from them, although they are combined with strong local influences. Large quantities of obsidian artefacts were found at Cihuatán, in both residential and ceremonial contexts. These included obsidian cores, prismatic blades, and tools. Bifacial projectile points were also recovered, but were uncommon. These stone artefacts were typical of the Early Postclassic period.

Site description

Cihuatán was a very large Mesoamerican city. The city possessed two principal ceremonial centres, known respectively as the Eastern and Western Ceremonial Centres. In 1978 the Western Ceremonial Centre was cleared of vegetation and mapped. Excavations included a cluster of residential buildings that had been hastily abandoned due to fire, resulting in many of the household goods being preserved when the walls collapsed. The ceremonial architecture of the site core is of a pan-Mesoamerican style; outside of the ceremonial groups, the style is distinctively Maya. The Western Ceremonial Centre includes a large

pyramid A pyramid (from el, πυραμίς ') is a structure whose outer surfaces are triangular and converge to a single step at the top, making the shape roughly a pyramid in the geometric sense. The base of a pyramid can be trilateral, quadrilate ...

, a number of west-facing platforms that originally supported superstructures, and two I, heavily serifed

-shaped

Mesoamerican ballcourts A Mesoamerican ballcourt ( nah, tlachtli) is a large masonry structure of a type used in Mesoamerica for over 2,700 years to play the Mesoamerican ballgame, particularly the hip-ball version of the ballgame. More than 1,300 ballcourts have been i ...

. The excavator judged that the architectural styles of the Western Ceremonial Centre demonstrated the influence of Veracruz architectural styles.

Radiocarbon dating Radiocarbon dating (also referred to as carbon dating or carbon-14 dating) is a method for determining the age of an object containing organic material by using the properties of radiocarbon, a radioactive isotope of carbon. The method was de ...

suggests that the Western Ceremonial Centre was first built during the 8th or early-9th century AD. The Eastern Ceremonial Centre is contemporary with the Western Ceremonial Centre, but is architecturally distinct in both plan and style. NW 1/NW 3 was a residential cluster situated upon a long terrace. It consisted of two houses and two smaller structures, and their courtyards. The smaller structures may have been used to store

maize Maize ( ; ''Zea mays'' subsp. ''mays'', from es, maíz after tnq, mahiz), also known as corn (North American English, North American and Australian English), is a cereal grain first domesticated by indigenous peoples of Mexico, indigenous ...

. This group of buildings was abandoned due to fire, and many household objects were recovered ''in situ'', including large food storage jars, cooking pots, and decorated ceramics. Evidence for the manufacture of obsidian tools was excavated, and for the spinning of

cotton Cotton is a soft, fluffy staple fiber that grows in a boll, or protective case, around the seeds of the cotton plants of the genus '' Gossypium'' in the mallow family Malvaceae. The fiber is almost pure cellulose, and can contain minor pe ...

. P16 was a large structure situated on the West Terrace, in the centre of what was likely to have been the main marketplace in the city. Its construction style was similar to that of residential buildings, but it is likely to have served a specialist purpose. It had been burned, and contained ordinary domestic refuse. The south end of the building consisted of a very large workshop dedicated to the manufacture of obsidian woodworking tools. P22 was a small ceremonial platform located to the northwest of the Western Ceremonial Centre. It is badly preserved but was rectangular in form, with its entrance stairway on the west side.Bruhns 1980, p. 7.

Notes

References

*Amaroli, Paul; and Fabio E. Amador (2003)
Los Límites de Cihuatán: Reconocimiento arqueológico para determinar la extensión de la antigua ciudad
. San Salvador, El Salvador: Fundación Nacional de Arqueología de El Salvador. Retrieved on 11 April 2016. *Amaroli B., Paúl E.; and Olsen Bruhns, Karen (2013)
450 Years Too Soon: Mixteca-Puebla Style Polychrome Ceramics in El Salvador
. ''Anales del Instituto Investigaciones Estéticas'' nline Vol. 35, No. 103, pp. 231–249. Mexico City, Mexico: Universidad Autónoma de México. . Retrieved on 11 April 2016. *Bruhns, Karen Olsen (1980)
Investigations at Cihuatan: An Early Postclassic Town of El Salvador
''Mexicon'', Vol. 2, No. 1 (18 March 1980), pp. 6–8. . *Proyecto Arqueológico Cihuatán
Cihuatán: El Salvador's Ancient City
(San Francisco, California, US and San Salvador, El Salvador: San Francisco State University, with the Secrataría de Cultura and Fundación Nacional de Arqueología). Retrieved on 7 April 2016.