I’m currently starting a new archaeological project at Tzikin Tzakan, a Classic Maya center near the modern border between Guatemala and Belize. Together with his wife, Alfred Maudslay visited the site (which he calls Takinsakún) in the 1890s and described the palace as a house that “measured 118 feet in length, and contained two long parallel chambers running the whole length of the house, each 9 feet wide and 16 feet 9 inches high.” While other scholars like Teobert Maler reference the site or a nearby settlement in their maps, nobody seemingly visited it again until William Bullard conducted his survey of the northeastern Peten in the 1950s. Now called Tikinchakan, the site features in central place analyses (e.g., in Kent Flannery’s famous “The Cultural Evolution of Civilizations”). Yet, no archaeological investigations followed until I started the Tzikin Tzakan archaeological project (PATT after its Spanish initials). In 2021, Paul Graf began investigations in the periphery near the modern hamlet of Vuelta Grande. In 2022, my team opened the first test pits in the center and started a detailed map. Apart from the archaeological investigations, PATT also studies the national reserve that surrounds the site. In 2022, Liszt Kern finished two tree transects and identified each tree. At last, Ivannoe Fajardo headed our community outreach. He gave talks to schoolchildren in La Pólvora, Vuelta Grande, and Cidabenque. We also invited three groups of schoolchildren – often accompanied by their mothers – to the site. Many locals turned out to be curious about our work. While they have heard about Tzikin Tzakan, very few have actually visited it. We hope to raise local awareness in the next years!

The Classic Maya center of Tzikin Tzakan in the eastern Maya lowlands, close to the modern town of Melchor de Mencos.

Current entrance to Tzikin Tzakan.

The field crew of the 2022 PATT season.

Ivannoe Fajardo, Mónica de León (who took the photos), and I interview Don Cristóbal and his wife, the oldest living members of La Pólvora, a village close to Tzikin Tzakan.