GUATEMALA 13-century-old tomb holds powerful queen

Her skull and femur bones are believed to have been smashed in a ritual.
DALLAS MORNING NEWS
DALLAS -- An archaeologist has discovered the tomb of a powerful queen who ruled an ancient Maya city 13 centuries ago.
David Lee, a graduate student at Southern Methodist University, unearthed the royal tomb in mid-February in northwestern Guatemala. It is the most dramatic finding yet at the site of El Peru, or Waka, as it was known in ancient times.
Guatemalan archaeologist Hector Escobedo, who co-directs the excavations there, formally unveiled the discovery Wednesday evening in Flores, Guatemala, at a meeting with government officials and other representatives.
The royal skeleton -- minus the skull and femur bones -- lay on a stone platform, surrounded by two dozen ceramic pots and thousands of artifacts made of jade, shell, pearls and obsidian. The find is one of only a handful of queens' tombs known from the ancient Maya, said David Freidel of SMU, the dig's other leader.
Archaeologists discovered the tomb beneath an ancient palace, on the edge of one of Waka's main plazas. When digging a trench, Lee broke through the roof of the chamber to reveal the queen's resting place below.
"It's a pretty amazing thing," he said as he excavated the tomb late last month.
Signs of royalty
Several signs point to the woman's status as a queen, Freidel said.
For one, she had an elaborately carved jade ornament, called a "huunal" or "oneness" jewel, that may have been worn on a royal headdress. She also had a war helmet made of jade plaques, and fragments of stingray spines near her pelvis -- an allusion to the Maya practice of bloodletting from the genitals, which was considered a sign of royal stature.
To garner such tributes in death, the woman must have been as powerful as a king, Freidel said.
Decades or centuries after her death, she retained her mystique. Someone, or a group of people, re-entered her tomb and reverentially disturbed it.
What's likely
They may have removed her skull and femur bones at that time, perhaps even smashing them on the plaza outside in a ritualized ceremony, Freidel said.
No one bothered her from that point until this February, when Lee -- a former private investigator from Toronto -- stumbled onto her chamber.
The excavation's leaders immediately called the Guatemalan authorities, who dispatched a military guard to protect the dig. For two weeks, four archaeologists worked long hours to remove the queen's bones and as many of her belongings as possible.