Archaeological bookends in Copan Valley

COPAN RUINAS, Honduras - A short drive from the main Maya ruins at Copan, a forested hillside holds a cluster of mounds that Peabody Museum archaeologists believe date from near the end of the great Maya civilization that once dominated the region.

On April 17, 2007, Peabody Museum director and Bowditch Professor of Central American and Mexican Archaeology and Ethnology William Fash, along with director of the Corpus of Maya Hieroglyphic Inscriptions Program Barbara Fash and two Harvard graduate students, walked the site with Honduran government officials charged with regulating and overseeing archaeological activity in the Central American nation.

The site, called Rastrojon, provides a "before" look at an archaeological site, a bookend in time to compare with the simultaneously soaring and crumbling remains a short distance away in what was once the city center.

At the main ruins, a draw for tourists from around the world, generations of archaeologists have toiled, tunneling beneath the pyramid-like main acropolis, reconstructing tumbled stonework, and piecing together sculpture that once adorned the buildings and the carved stone pillars called stelae.