La Corona is the name given by archaeologists to an ancient

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 ...

court residence in Guatemala's Petén department that was discovered in 1996, and later identified as the long-sought "Site Q", the source of a long series of unprovenanced limestone reliefs of exceptional artistic quality. The site's Classical name appears to have been Sak-Nikte' ('White-Flower'). La Corona Relieve Juego de Pelota

The search for 'Site Q'

During the 1960s looted Maya reliefs referring to a then-unknown city surfaced on the international art market. One of these reliefs, showing a ball player, is now in the Chicago Art Institute; another is in the Dallas Museum of Art. Peter Mathews, then a Yale graduate student, dubbed the city "Site Q" (short for ''¿Qué?'' panish for "what?". Some researchers believed that the inscriptions referred to

Calakmul Calakmul (; also Kalakmul and other less frequent variants) is a Maya archaeological site in the Mexican state of Campeche, deep in the jungles of the greater Petén Basin region. It is from the Guatemalan border. Calakmul was one of the l ...

, but the artistic style of the artifacts was different from anything that had been found there. Santiago Billy and Carlos Catalan, environmentalists studying scarlet macaws, came upon the remote ruins in 1996, and

Ian Graham Ian James Alastair Graham OBE (12 November 1923 – 1 August 2017) was a British Mayanist whose explorations of Maya ruins in the jungles of Mexico, Guatemala, and Belize helped establish the ''Corpus of Maya Hieroglyphic Inscriptions'' publishe ...

and David Stuart from

Harvard University Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of highe ...

Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology The Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology is a museum affiliated with Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1866, the Peabody Museum is one of the oldest and largest museums focusing on anthropological material, wi ...

investigated the site the following year, naming the new site La Corona. Among the broken sculptures left by looters, Stuart found textual references to a place name and to historical figures that were featured on Site Q artifacts, leading him to believe that La Corona was Site Q. In 2005 Marcello A. Canuto, then a

Yale Yale University is a private research university in New Haven, Connecticut. Established in 1701 as the Collegiate School, it is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and among the most prestigious in the wor ...

professor, found a panel in situ at La Corona that mentioned two Site Q rulers. The panel had been quarried from the same rock as the Site Q artifacts, providing convincing evidence that La Corona was indeed Site Q.

Recent research

Since 2008, the site has been investigated by th
La Corona Archaeological Project (PRALC)
co-directed by Marcello A. Canuto (Director
Middle American Research Institute
at Tulane University) and Tomás Barrientos (Director, Dept. of Archaeology, Universidad del Valle de Guatemala). In April 2012, PRALC discovered a row of 12 staircase risers with many different relief scenes; another 10 sculpted risers were found looted from their original context but then discarded for being too eroded to be worth selling on the illicit antiquities market. The texts of these newly discovered panels contain important historical information about political events in the Classic period; one of the panels (Hieroglyphic Staircase 2, Block 5) contains a reference to 4 Ahau 3 K'ank'in, the notorious 13th baktun-ending.

La Corona and its history

Research focuses on the relationship between the powerful kingdom of

and La Corona. A famous sculpted panel (now in the Dallas Museum of Art) depicts two large palanquins each carrying a royal woman from Calakmul, one standing in a temple pavilion, the other overshadowed by a supernatural protector; the text, however, refers to three women who came from Calakmul's ruling dynasty to marry the kings of La Corona. Maya Royal throne effigy DMA 1988-15-McD

Maya Royal throne effigy DMA 1988-15-McD

In AD 721, a daughter of the Calakmul king ( Yuknoom Took' K'awiil) was married off to a king of La Corona. Four decades earlier, in 679 AD, a daughter of Calakmul's powerful Yuknoom Ch'een had already been given in marriage to a La Corona king. Another, newly discovered relief mentions a visit in between these two dates, in 696, by another Calakmul king ( Yuknoom Yich'aak K'ahk'), following Calakmul's defeat by Tikal.

Tours

Marcello Canuto leads tours to La Corona fo
Far Horizons Archaeological and Cultural trips

Bibliography

*Bueche, Paula, 'Maya Scholar Deciphers Meaning of Newly Discovered Monument That Refers to 2012'. ''Know'' (online), June 28, 2012 *Freidel, David, and Stanley Guenther, 'Bearers of War and Creation', ''Archaeology'' (online), January 23, 2003 *Katz, Abram (2005) "Long-Sought Maya City Found in Guatemala"], National Geographic News, accessed September 20, 2006 *Martin, Simon, and Nikolai Grube, ''Chronicle of the Maya Kings and Queens''. Thames&Hudson *Yale University press release (2005) "Long-Sought Maya City – Site Q – Found in Guatemala"], Yale University Office of Public Affairs, accessed September 20, 2006

References

External links

'Bearers of War and Creation'
* ttp://mari.tulane.edu/PRALC/ MARI La Corona Archaeological Project {{maya sites

Corona Corona (from the Latin for 'crown') most commonly refers to: * Stellar corona, the outer atmosphere of the Sun or another star * Corona (beer), a Mexican beer * Corona, informal term for the coronavirus SARS-CoV-2, which causes the COVID-19 di ...

Archaeological sites in Guatemala Former populated places in Guatemala