BYU's long-running archaeology program helps uncover ancient sculpture in Mexico

PROVO — For almost 60 years, researchers from a now BYU-run organization have scoured Mesoamerica for remnants of ancient civilizations and — as they have many times before — discovered another important artifact.

The 3,000-year-old stone monument — containing a corn god or central figure of some persuasion of power — was discovered in 2009 at Ojo de Agua, a site in southern Mexico within the state of Chiapas, with funding and participation from BYU's New World Archaeological Foundation (NWAF).

The finding was recently discussed in the cover article of December's issue of Mexicon, a peer-reviewed journal of Mesoamerican studies.

Emiliano Gallaga Murrieta, study co-author and director of the National Institute of Anthropology and History in Chiapas, said having the opportunity to visit the exact location of the monument's origins allowed the archaeologists often rare chance to study associated materials and better get a feel for the landscape of the finding.

"The style … is clearly Olmec and we think that the community who lived in Ojo de Agua was Olmec or related to them based on the material found, the style of the sculptures found and the time frame," Murrieta said.

Through these factors — as well as carbon dating done on the site — the stone monument has been dated somewhere between 1000 and 1100 B.C.

Predicted to have formerly resided near an ancient temple, Murrieta said the artifact — referred to as "monument 3," coming in the wake of two other local finds — was discovered accidentally by some local workers on the water canal of a banana plantation.

John Hodgson, an archaeologist at University of Wisconsin-Madison and one of the study's co-authors funded by the NWAF, was among the first to examine the monument made up of consolidated volcanic ash.

"After you do archaeology for a long time, when people describe a fantastic find to you, you learn to mentally downplay it in your mind before you see it to prepare yourself to be let down," Hodgson said. "When the monument was first described to me, I was told it was 'a giant warrior with a shield and a spear fighting tigers.' When you hear something like that you prepare yourself for seeing a rusty 1940s ad sign for chewing gum that was found in a trash pit. … In this case, even though not as described, I was not disappointed."

Though a definitive interpretation of the stone's carvings remains elusive, he said it might depict a ruler coming into power or a crude symbol of some more complex event, comparing it to the motifs in the Adam and Eve story, readily known to the people that saw it.