El Salvador's buried roots

By Diana Somerville

Contractors working for the government of El Salvador had just begun levelling a hill to build grain storage silos. As they laboured, the bulldozers unearthed the remains of a building. The clay floor they found was in such good condition that it took some time before anyone realised just how old it was. Further digging showed that the contractors had stumbled upon an entire village buried in layers of volcanic ash up to six metres deep. When it was unearthed in 1976, Ceren, named after a nearby village, had been preserved for almost 1400 years like a freeze-frame of a prehistoric civilisation - the Pompeii of the New World.

After nearly two decades of painstaking excavation, this site has yielded fascinating insights into the lives of the indigenous Indian people of Central America - the Meso-americans. The village is full of personal possessions, yet no human remains have been found. Piecing the evidence together, archaeologists now realise that the volcanic eruption that buried the site must have been preceded by an earthquake, giving villagers enough warning to make their escape. As they fled, searing steam and clouds of poisonous gas would have roared through the village at speeds of up to 200 kilometres an hour while 'bombs' of burning lava rained down, igniting thatched roofs.

Of mice and men
Ash from the volcano, now called Loma Caldera, has preserved a treasure trove of artefacts, including objects made from organic material, which rarely survive in the tropics. Palm and grass roofing, mats, baskets, string and stored grain have all been found. Even the insects and mice munching it at the time of the eruption have been preserved. Just as importantly, two sacred buildings excavated last year have provided the first clues about religion at village level at a time when Mayan culture was approaching its zenith.

Now Ceren, long a source of pride for the people of El Salvador, has received international recognition. In December 1993, it was listed as a World Heritage Site under the UN's World Heritage Convention - one of only a handful of archaeological sites to receive this honour. This has attracted a grant of around $30 000 to help with its preservation, and excavators will be able to call on an army of UN experts for advice and assistance in their conservation efforts.

There is much work still to be done, and the team, led by Payson Sheets, an anthropologist from the University of Colorado at Boulder, can only work for a few months each year. The digs take place in the rainy season - from June to the first week of August - when temperatures are comfortable for outdoor work. 'We first put a permanent roof over everything we're excavating to provide protection from sun and rain,' says Sheets. The aim is to keep a balance between moisture and desiccation. Rain can wash away subtle details preserved in the moist ash; equally serious, objects that dry out too quickly will crack. Outside the rainy season, blistering heat and low humidity make excavation impossible.

So far, 11 houses have been excavated. The largest measures 8 metres by 5 metres, the average about 4 metres square. All were surrounded by gardens, the imprints of which have been minutely preserved in volcanic ash. The houses have broad, overhanging, thatched roofs, often with more roofed outdoor area than covered interior space, indicating the importance of outdoor life in this tropical climate. Each has an inner room with a sleeping bench that would have been cleared off for daytime activities and another room, walled on three sides and open to the north, creating a cool, semi-enclosed space. Even the most basic homes had a separate storehouse and a kitchen with a hearth for cooking. 'One house also had a workshop where men apparently shaped tools,' says Sheets.

Personal possessions reveal as much about the lifestyle of these people as do the buildings they inhabited. Many of their household implements differ little from the items still used in rural areas today. Sheets and his team have unearthed painted and scraped slipware - pottery which has been decorated with semiliquid clay - including cooking vessels and storage jars; other finds have included decorated gourds, spindles for making thread, and pieces of cloth and twine. Villagers clearly used bone tools and shards of the volcanic 'glass' knows as obsidian for cutting. They cultivated a wide variety of grains still typical of the region, including corn, cassava, squash and chillies, and kept dogs and ducks.

One surprise was how the buildings at Ceren were constructed. Most are made of bajareque, a form of wattle and daub no longer used in the region. A series of parallel poles about 15 metres apart are lashed together with a horizontal latticework and then covered with a stucco-like clay coating. 'It's far better in an earthquake than the adobe bricks now used,' says Sheets.

Earthquake-proof construction
A typical adobe brick weighs around 18 kilograms. Any tremor in this earthquake-prone region transforms each brick into a potentially lethal missile. Under similar conditions, the flexible bajareque would simply shed small chunks of its mud covering. Sheets is intrigued by the fact that, whether they were aware of it or not, these prehistoric people used the most efficient and earthquake-proof form of construction. He deplores the fact that in the 16th century, under Spanish influence, this inexpensive and structurally superior material came to be seen as outdated. Sheets hopes to reintroduce bajareque to El Salvador.

It is not only details of life's practicalities that are emerging from Ceren. Information from last season's digs is shaping views about Mesoamerican religion at the village level. The finds at Ceren show that the Indian peasant religion in Central America seems to have survived largely untouched by the fall of Mayan culture around 1100 years ago, the subsequent advent of the Aztecs, who brought imperial rule to the area, and the Spanish conquest following the arrival in Mexico of Hernan Cortes in 1519. Temples and pyramids - monuments to the beliefs of the rich and famous - have ensured that religion as it was practised among the Mayan and Aztec elite is fairly well understood. But Sheets points out that, until now, there has been no evidence of religious life at the village level.

Two buildings at Ceren are changing all that. These sacred buildings both open to the east. They are painted white inside and out and decorated with red, in contrast to the natural orange-beige clay colour of the unadorned structures. They are also distinguished by the absence of the trappings of secular life - no crops or drainage ditches surrounded them.

The first to be unearthed - given the pragmatic designation 'Structure 10' - seems to have been the focal point for a religious group. The easternmost part of the building comprises a cooking area with two hearths and a waist-high wall forming a sort of bar for serving food. As is still common in this region, rituals undoubtedly lasted for days, and providing food was an integral part of religious ceremonies. 'These people knew how to celebrate,' says Sheets.

Ancient brotherhood
Other finds in Structure 10 include numerous earthenware vessels for food storage and serving, as well as ritual items such as musical instruments, ceremonial clothing, incense and candles. Today, religious associations called cofradias (literally, 'brotherhoods') thrive in traditional areas of Central America. But it was a surprise to find signs that such associations existed as long as 1400 years ago. Previously, many historians believed that the whole concept of religious associations was introduced by the Spanish. It is becoming clear that today's cofradias are an amalgam of traditional Meso-american practice and ideas introduced during the Spanish conquest.

The second religious building unearthed at Ceren last year, Structure 12, is distinguished by ten columns where most have only four. Its structure is correspondingly more complex: a large enclosure is annexed to two main chambers. Other architectural features indicate that this may have been where the healer or shaman of the village practised. Its maze-like entrance is similar to those found in many ancient sacred buildings worldwide. To enter the inner sanctum of Structure 12, a visitor must turn left, crouch down to duck through a small doorway, turn right, then crouch again to pass through a second doorway.

Sacred objects
In the inner sanctum is a special window with a lattice framework made from poles coated in clay and then painted white. This would have allowed some air and light to enter the room, but its main purpose was probably for communication. 'People outside could hear what was going on - predictions, perhaps, from the shaman inside,' explains Sheets. Strange niches built into the walls hold artefacts that look like offerings or perhaps payments for services. These include a tiny collection of minerals, a miniature pot with cinnabar (mercuric sulphide) pigment, a flat stone for grinding grain known as a metate, and an elaborately painted gourd.

Further clues about Structure 12 come from sacred objects found inside. These bear a striking resemblance to modern sacred artefacts associated with the deities and spirits of healing and fertility. 'The most common objects are deer, alligators, monkeys and large ocean birds,' says Sheets. A deer-skull headdress found in the rafters of Structure 12 is a fine example: complete with antlers, remnants of red and white paint and a cord so that it could be worn as a mask, the skull is similar to those still used in rituals today.
The uses of the other sacred objects - including an unusual oval ceramic pot in the form of an alligator and the bone from a deer's shoulder blade, rounded at one end - are more obscure. 'Obsidian blades with traces of human protein are evidence of human blood sacrifice,' says Sheets. 'Ritual bloodletting is still done in traditional Mayan communities today, but the blades used now are of bottle glass, rather than volcanic obsidian.'

There is no way of telling how shamanistic practices 1400 years ago differed from those today. Were there both male and female shamans working mostly part-time, as is the case among Mayan people today? Were they called on to perform rituals as varied as curing illness, consecrating new houses, making rain and improving harvests, as they are now? Excavations at Ceren have, however, revealed a sauna, signifying that shamanistic cures then involved ritual sweat baths as they still do.

Beyond party politics
Ceren's sauna is also intriguing in its own right. It is an architectural masterpiece with a striking earthen dome roof covering the building. Largely impermeable, to keep in steam and heat, this earthen structure was protected from wind and rain by a thatched outer layer. Before its discovery, anthropologists believed that the skills needed to construct domes were introduced to the New World by the Spanish - but the Spanish did not arrive until more than 900 years after Ceren was buried. Inside the sauna, a central fireplace is surrounded by lounging platforms that provide enough space for more than a dozen people at a time to take a sauna.

A museum at Ceren has attracted as many as 6000 visitors a day, mostly Salvadorians eager to learn how their forebears lived. 'The people of El Salvador see this as a direct line to their ancestors,' says Sheets. He explains how ancient sites are considered to be beyond party factionalism and political ideology - they represent the roots of all Salvadorians. This is illustrated by the fact that last year the University of Colorado and Concultura, part of the Salvadorian ministry of education, received the Laurel Oro - El Salvador's equivalent of the Nobel prize - for their work at Ceren. The prize usually goes to an individual artist - a composer for an outstanding symphony, perhaps, or a sculptor for a lifetime's work. It is El Salvador's highest recognition for cultural excellence.

Diana Somerville, a writer based in Boulder, Colorado, specialises in science and health issues.
From issue 1926 of New Scientist magazine, 21 May 1994, page 30