INAH archaeologists indicated that the team is still in the first stage of the investigation.
Archaeologists from the National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH) have found a couple of housing platforms on the land of the Huapacal ranch. These give indications of a new pre-Hispanic Mayan settlement in the Chontalpa region of Tabasco, which did not appear in the Archaeological Atlas of Tabasco, which already numbered 1,730 vestiges of various kinds.
This was announced today by the Ministry of Culture through a statement in which this discovery was made during the supervision of the INAH to the work of introducing an oil and gas pipeline with an approximate length of three kilometers and a strip of seven meters. right of way, by Petróleos Mexicanos (Pemex).
The document quotes the coordinator of the archaeological salvage of the work, called “Tintal”, who affirms that the settlement is located between the important sites of “Huimango, explored in the 1950s, by Heinrich Berlin; and Comalcalco (at a distance of 10 kilometers), which has been the most studied, and with which it shares urban features, such as earthen architecture, typical of the Tabasco alluvial plain”.
At the moment, according to the specialist, the team is still in the first stage of the investigation, whose work will take two months, so they still do not have enough knowledge to “affirm that it is a single settlement of three kilometers long, coinciding with the project route or if they are two small sites”. It will be during the “office” phase when the information acquired is interpreted to specify either of the two possibilities.
These domestic platforms are “within the first 160 meters of the pipeline’s trajectory, and are currently being excavated for their timely registration, in order to determine their age.” However, the statement says that during surface surveys made by the archaeological team in charge, “a considerable concentration of ceramic materials has been detected in the final section of the journey, which is why it will also be excavated.”
The official document affirms that “the INAH, when going in front of the work, is able to request modifications to its route and, even, request that heavy machinery not be used in the area where the vestiges are located, which guarantees their protection and permanence for future studies”.
Source: OEM
