Archaeologists pursue looters, recover Mayan altar

The latest story coming out of the jungle of Guatemala of plunder and violence in the illicit traffic of Maya antiquities has an all-too-familiar plot line, except for the ending.

Two years ago, looters fell on the palace ruins of the ancient city of Cancuen and made off with an elaborately carved stone altar, complete with writing and the image of a powerful king in the late eighth century.

The thieves tried to sell the relic to drug traffickers, the only people in the region with the kind of money they were asking.

When the gang had a falling out, first one band and then another seized the altar, at least once in a blaze of gunfire. An effort was made to get it across the Belize border and into the lucrative international market in antiquities, ill-gotten or otherwise.

Early this year, men wearing ski masks and brandishing submachine guns raided a village near the archaeological site, firing shots in the night and brutalizing a woman in an effort to capture the contested artifact.

Then the story took an unfamiliar turn, when archaeologists switched from scientific to criminal sleuthing and joined in a six-month pursuit of the looters with local villagers and Guatemalan undercover agents. This led last month to the recovery of the 600-pound Cancuen altar, announced on Wednesday by Vanderbilt University in Nashville and the National Geographic Society.

In a telephone with reporters, Arthur A. Demarest of Vanderbilt University, a leader of excavations at Cancuen (pronounced CAN-quinn) who participated in the recovery, called the limestone altar "a masterpiece of Maya art."

Its inscribed text, he added, will be "of great importance in understanding the final days of the kingdom at Cancuen and its greatest king," who has been identified as Taj Chan Ahk Ah Kalomte.

According to the society's statement, Guatemalan officials said this might be the first time an entire network of looters and dealers of Maya treasures had been exposed.

Claudia Gonzales Herrera, an assistant attorney general in charge of the case, said the arrests show that Guatemala "takes the defense of its ancient Maya heritage seriously."