El Pilar is an ancient Maya city center located on the

Belize Belize is a country on the north-eastern coast of Central America. It is bordered by Mexico to the north, the Caribbean Sea to the east, and Guatemala to the west and south. It also shares a maritime boundary with Honduras to the southeast. P ...

Guatemala Guatemala, officially the Republic of Guatemala, is a country in Central America. It is bordered to the north and west by Mexico, to the northeast by Belize, to the east by Honduras, and to the southeast by El Salvador. It is hydrologically b ...

border. The site is located north of San Ignacio, Belize and can be accessed through the San Ignacio and

Bullet Tree Falls Bullet Tree Falls is a village located along the Mopan River in Cayo District, Belize. It lies approximately five kilometers (three miles) northwest of San Ignacio, Belize, San Ignacio. According to the 2010 census, Bullet Tree Falls has a populati ...

on the Belize River. The name "El Pilar" is Spanish for "watering basin", reflecting the abundance of streams around the site and below its escarpment, which is rare in the Maya area. The monuments of El Pilar are at the center of a protected area known as El Pilar Archeological Reserve for Maya Flora and Fauna, declared a cultural monument in both Belize and Guatemala in 1998. El Pilar is the largest Maya site in the Belize River area with over 25 plazas and hundreds of other major buildings, covering about .

Archeological discovery

Archaeologist Anabel Ford first mapped El Pilar in 1983 in the course of her Belize River Archaeological Settlement Survey or BRASS project. Settlement patterns in the region suggest a hierarchy of community size and composition that was directly related to

farmland Agricultural land is typically land ''devoted to'' agriculture, the systematic and controlled use of other forms of lifeparticularly the rearing of livestock and production of cropsto produce food for humans. It is generally synonymous with bot ...

. One of the most extensive areas was of farmlands discovered at El Pilar, north of the Belize River on the edge of the major upland escarpment that leads to the major center of

Tikal Tikal (; ''Tik'al'' in modern Mayan orthography) is the ruin of an ancient city, which was likely to have been called Yax Mutal, found in a rainforest in Guatemala. It is one of the largest archaeological sites and urban centers of the Pre-Col ...

History

Since 1993, a major

archaeological field survey In archaeology, survey or field survey is a type of field research by which archaeologists (often landscape archaeologists) search for archaeological sites and collect information about the location, distribution and organization of past human ...

excavation project marked the initial examination of El Pilar. Under the direction of Anabel Ford, the detailed map was executed with engineering survey instruments and excavations focused on access ways, stairs, and doorways. When the monuments were mapped, the team verified the

causeway A causeway is a track, road or railway on the upper point of an embankment across "a low, or wet place, or piece of water". It can be constructed of earth, masonry, wood, or concrete. One of the earliest known wooden causeways is the Sweet T ...

system that linked from the east to the west uniting one ancient Maya center in two modern nations: Belize and Guatemala. Later excavations tunneled into major temple revealing a 2000 years construction history. Ford and her team are currently working with

Lidar Lidar (, also LIDAR, an acronym of "light detection and ranging" or "laser imaging, detection, and ranging") is a method for determining ranging, ranges by targeting an object or a surface with a laser and measuring the time for the reflected li ...

in order to map the area more extensively. The city grew from Middle Preclassic period (800 BC), with the first small temples and plazas identified in the main eastern temple of Plaza Copal. The civic area was expanded, reaching its greatest extent before 1000 AD. At its height in the Late Classic, the total population of El Pilar is estimated to have exceeded 180,000. Ford and her team have excavated many of the plazas, temples and palaces of the monumental civic area. Surrounding the monuments is the residence that made up the ancient Maya community. Tzunu’un, a residential unit discovered, mapped and tested in 1984, became the focus of a major investigation that excavated, exposed, and consolidated an elite Maya house. This is the only archaeological house that the public has access to today. Working with Master Maya forest gardeners, the team has developed a forest garden around the house site. The forest gardens of El Pilar are now maintained by the Maya farmers as part of the El Pilar Forest Garden Network.

Conservation and ecotourism

The El Pilar Archeological Reserve for Maya Flora and Fauna is open to the public and has a series of trails providing access throughout the site. Tourists can take a taxi from

directly into the Maya site. Intrepid visitors can experience both ancient and contemporary aspects of Maya life promoting Maya culture in the area. There is an active initiative to make El Pilar of Belize and Guatemala the first archaeological

peace park A transboundary protected area (TBPA) is an ecological protected area that spans boundaries of more than one country or sub-national entity. Such areas are also known as transfrontier conservation areas (TFCAs) or peace parks. TBPAs exist in ma ...

in the world. While El Pilar is protected in Belize and Guatemala and rangers are on site, it remains under threat by looters and was placed on the World Monument Fund's 1996 list of 100 Most Endangered Sites in the World. Ford’s conservation strategy, called Archaeology Under the Canopy, promotes the conservation of ancient Maya monuments in the context of their natural environmental context. Sheltered under the forest canopy after 1000 years of neglect, El Pilar and all the Maya monuments are best maintained in the shade. This preserves Maya cultural heritage along with the forest gardens the Maya created.

Notes

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References

{{Maya sites Maya sites in Belize Pilar Former populated places in Belize Former populated places in Guatemala Protected areas of Belize Protected areas of Guatemala Archaeological sites in Guatemala