Joya de Cerén
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How it came to be
In 1976 a bulldozer clearing ground for grain silos in El Salvador's Zapotitán valley struck an earthen building. It was Joya de Cerén. Payson Sheets, an anthropologist at the University of Colorado, investigated the site in 1978 and 1980.
Around AD 600 the nearby Loma Caldera volcano erupted, and the village was buried under thick ash within hours. Because the ash was cool and fell fast, tools, pots, sleeping mats, maize fields, an herb garden and jars full of beans stayed where they had been used. The earliest known manioc field at any archaeological site in the New World was also found here. No human remains have been found, and the villagers are thought to have escaped.
Eighteen structures have been identified and ten excavated, among them a communal building, houses, storehouses, a kitchen, a sweat bath and buildings for festivals and a shaman. Most Maya research deals with rulers and elites, but this site shows the daily life of ordinary farmers. Often called the Pompeii of the Americas, it was inscribed in 1993.
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