July 7, 2015

Continuing Finds at the Mysterious Structure at El Pilar

The unusual structure found at the site of El Pilar in March, that had been detected by LiDAR, is now being excavated on the ground. There has been damage from looters and a lot of jungle vines that had to be cut through. They have uncovered the four terraces of the structure. The first two terraces were defensive and quarried into limestone to create vertical walls impossible to scale. The central temple at the top is oriented to the east. Several looters trenches have wreaked havoc on the structure, destroying the top of the temple and looters stole the stone that held murals. It will now be difficult to piece together the Maya plan for the site. Ceramics at the site go back to 1000 BCE-250 CE. The site of El Pilar has 2 excavated plazas and hundreds of structures over 120 acres. 20,000 people lived there. Excavations continue at the site.

Popular Archaeology has the report here with photos;
http://popular-archaeology.com/issue/summer-2015/article/mysterious-maya-citadel-begins-to-reveal-its-secrets

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