by Princine Lewis
The long pursuit of a stolen ancient Maya sacred stone altar came to a dramatic conclusion this month with the conviction and imprisonment of the leaders of a looters’ ring, which was exposed as a result of a search led by Ingram Professor of Anthropology Arthur Demarest to recover the 1,200-year-old Maya treasure.

At the district attorney’s request, Demarest gave the prosecution’s closing statement to the jury, arguing for the looters’ conviction and state protection of the Q’eqchi Maya villagers who had testified against the gang. He also denounced U.S. and European collectors whose appetite for such archaeological treasures, he said, engenders violence and destruction at the ancient Maya sites.

The verdict was handed down at midnight June 3 in Santa Elena, the capital of the Petén jungle region of Guatemala. For nearly two decades, Demarest has explored the rainforests of Guatemala for clues to the history of the ancient Maya. Along the way, he has formed an alliance with the descendants of that once-powerful civilization to not only uncover but also preserve their proud heritage. That alliance paid off with the conviction and sentencing of the gang of looters.

Despite death threats, Demarest and the Maya villagers testified against the gang leaders, who were charged with stealing the ancient 600-pound Maya altar from a royal ball court at Cancuén, a mercantile port city during the Late Classic golden age of the Maya civilization (A.D. 600-830), located in the southwestern region of the Petén rainforest.

The altar portrays Cancuén’s King Taj Chan Ahk, one of the last great Maya rulers, playing ball against visiting rulers. The royal ball court was a ceremonial setting for ball games between the kings of the Cancuén dynasty and the rulers of other city-states. Clues from the hieroglyphic text on the recovered altar led Demarest’s team this spring to the location of yet another carved altar and a stone panel, both celebrating the alliances of the great king.

Demarest believes the villagers’ investment of time and labor in the community development project motivated them to risk their lives and the lives of their families to testify in the case.

“This outcome really shows that good things can happen when archaeologists engage the local community not only to discover the past but to plan for today and for the future,” Demarest said.

The verdict came after a year of dangerous investigations that exposed the network of looters and dealers of Maya artifacts. Demarest began working with Guatemalan officials to investigate the looting ring after four Maya elders visited his encampment in March 2003 with the news of the theft and the brutal beating of a local woman by a gang searching for the altar.

Guatemala’s Ministry of Culture and the Ecological and the Cultural Patrimony Division of S.I.C. (Servícios de Investigación Criminal, that country’s equivalent of the FBI) charged the three gang leaders with looting of a national monument, attempted sale of the monument and making death threats against Demarest and local residents. The three were convicted on the charges of looting and making death threats.

The local Q’eqchi’ Maya’s collaborations with Guatemala’s Ministry of Culture and Vanderbilt began with a humanitarian aid effort Demarest founded in 2001 in conjunction with the Cancuén Archaeological Project. That project, which he directs with Tomás Barrientos, is responsible for a number of major discoveries in the Petén rainforest. Both the archaeological and humanitarian projects are supported by Vanderbilt, and the humanitarian project is now directed by the international agency Counterpart International, the U.S. Agency for International Development and National Geographic’s Sustainable Tourism Program.

The humanitarian initiative takes the unusual approach of establishing formal co-management of the sites and the archaeological parks with local villages. The project trains residents of the impoverished Q’eqchi’ Maya villages near the Cancuén ruins to develop tourism and enhance their stewardship of the site, the surrounding area and other sites throughout the region. As a result, Maya have become tour guides, park rangers and managers of rustic inns, boat services and ecotourism enterprises, providing the villagers a stake in preserving the ancient sites. The project also helps provide basic health services, water, solar power and legal support.

Demarest credits these collaborations with leading to the recovery of the stone altar last October and the recent convictions.

“This conviction not only sends a message to looters and antiquities dealers. It shows the importance of empowering and aiding local cultures. The humanitarian project could be a model under which archaeologists would no longer do the ‘Indiana Jones’ thing and pop in and dig. Rather, they need to really engage the community in the process and the benefits of archaeology,” Demarest said.

Posted 6/23/04