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Contractors working for the government of El Salvador had just begun
levelling a hill to build grain storage silos. As they laboured, the bulldozers
unearthed the remains of a building. The clay floor they found was in such
good condition that it took some time before anyone realised just how old
it was. Further digging showed that the contractors had stumbled upon an
entire village buried in layers of volcanic ash up to six metres deep. When
it was unearthed in 1976, Ceren, named after a nearby village, had been
preserved for almost 1400 years like a freeze-frame of a prehistoric civilisation
– the Pompeii of the New World.

After nearly two decades of painstaking excavation, this site has yielded
fascinating insights into the lives of the indigenous Indian people of Central
America – the Meso-americans. The village is full of personal possessions,
yet no human remains have been found. Piecing the evidence together, archaeologists
now realise that the volcanic eruption that buried the site must have been
preceded by an earthquake, giving villagers enough warning to make their
escape. As they fled, searing steam and clouds of poisonous gas would have
roared through the village at speeds of up to 200 kilometres an hour while
‘bombs’ of burning lava rained down, igniting thatched roofs.

Of mice and men

Ash from the volcano, now called Loma Caldera, has preserved a treasure
trove of artefacts, including objects made from organic material, which
rarely survive in the tropics. Palm and grass roofing, mats, baskets, string
and stored grain have all been found. Even the insects and mice munching
it at the time of the eruption have been preserved. Just as importantly,
two sacred buildings excavated last year have provided the first clues
about religion at village level at a time when Mayan culture was approaching
its zenith.

Now Ceren, long a source of pride for the people of El Salvador, has
received international recognition. In December 1993, it was listed as a
World Heritage Site under the UN’s World Heritage Convention – one of only
a handful of archaeological sites to receive this honour. This has attracted
a grant of around $30 000 to help with its preservation, and excavators
will be able to call on an army of UN experts for advice and assistance
in their conservation efforts.

There is much work still to be done, and the team, led by Payson Sheets,
an anthropologist from the University of Colorado at Boulder, can only work
for a few months each year. The digs take place in the rainy season – from
June to the first week of August – when temperatures are comfortable for
outdoor work. ‘We first put a permanent roof over everything we’re excavating
to provide protection from sun and rain,’ says Sheets. The aim is to keep
a balance between moisture and desiccation. Rain can wash away subtle details
preserved in the moist ash; equally serious, objects that dry out too quickly
will crack. Outside the rainy season, blistering heat and low humidity make
excavation impossible.

So far, 11 houses have been excavated. The largest measures 8 metres
by 5 metres, the average about 4 metres square. All were surrounded by gardens,
the imprints of which have been minutely preserved in volcanic ash. The
houses have broad, overhanging, thatched roofs, often with more roofed
outdoor area than covered interior space, indicating the importance of outdoor
life in this tropical climate. Each has an inner room with a sleeping bench
that would have been cleared off for daytime activities and another room,
walled on three sides and open to the north, creating a cool, semi-enclosed
space. Even the most basic homes had a separate storehouse and a kitchen
with a hearth for cooking. ‘One house also had a workshop where men apparently
shaped tools,’ says Sheets.

Personal possessions reveal as much about the lifestyle of these people
as do the buildings they inhabited. Many of their household implements differ
little from the items still used in rural areas today. Sheets and his team
have unearthed painted and scraped slipware – pottery which has been decorated
with semiliquid clay – including cooking vessels and storage jars; other
finds have included decorated gourds, spindles for making thread, and pieces
of cloth and twine. Villagers clearly used bone tools and shards of the
volcanic ‘glass’ knows as obsidian for cutting. They cultivated a wide
variety of grains still typical of the region, including corn, cassava,
squash and chillies, and kept dogs and ducks.

One surprise was how the buildings at Ceren were constructed. Most are
made of bajareque, a form of wattle and daub no longer used in the region.
A series of parallel poles about 15 metres apart are lashed together with
a horizontal latticework and then covered with a stucco-like clay coating.
‘It’s far better in an earthquake than the adobe bricks now used,’ says
Sheets.

Earthquake-proof construction

A typical adobe brick weighs around 18 kilograms. Any tremor in this
earthquake-prone region transforms each brick into a potentially lethal
missile. Under similar conditions, the flexible bajareque would simply shed
small chunks of its mud covering. Sheets is intrigued by the fact that,
whether they were aware of it or not, these prehistoric people used the
most efficient and earthquake-proof form of construction. He deplores the
fact that in the 16th century, under Spanish influence, this inexpensive
and structurally superior material came to be seen as outdated. Sheets hopes
to reintroduce bajareque to El Salvador.

It is not only details of life’s practicalities that are emerging from
Ceren. Information from last season’s digs is shaping views about Mesoamerican
religion at the village level. The finds at Ceren show that the Indian peasant
religion in Central America seems to have survived largely untouched by
the fall of Mayan culture around 1100 years ago, the subsequent advent of
the Aztecs, who brought imperial rule to the area, and the Spanish conquest
following the arrival in Mexico of Hernan Cortes in 1519. Temples and pyramids
– monuments to the beliefs of the rich and famous – have ensured that religion
as it was practised among the Mayan and Aztec elite is fairly well understood.
But Sheets points out that, until now, there has been no evidence of religious
life at the village level.

Two buildings at Ceren are changing all that. These sacred buildings
both open to the east. They are painted white inside and out and decorated
with red, in contrast to the natural orange-beige clay colour of the unadorned
structures. They are also distinguished by the absence of the trappings
of secular life – no crops or drainage ditches surrounded them.

The first to be unearthed – given the pragmatic designation ‘Structure
10′ – seems to have been the focal point for a religious group. The easternmost
part of the building comprises a cooking area with two hearths and a waist-high
wall forming a sort of bar for serving food. As is still common in this
region, rituals undoubtedly lasted for days, and providing food was an integral
part of religious ceremonies. ‘These people knew how to celebrate,’ says
Sheets.

Ancient brotherhood

Other finds in Structure 10 include numerous earthenware vessels for
food storage and serving, as well as ritual items such as musical instruments,
ceremonial clothing, incense and candles. Today, religious associations
called cofradias (literally, ‘brotherhoods’) thrive in traditional areas
of Central America. But it was a surprise to find signs that such associations
existed as long as 1400 years ago. Previously, many historians believed
that the whole concept of religious associations was introduced by the Spanish.
It is becoming clear that today’s cofradias are an amalgam of traditional
Meso-american practice and ideas introduced during the Spanish conquest.

The second religious building unearthed at Ceren last year, Structure
12, is distinguished by ten columns where most have only four. Its structure
is correspondingly more complex: a large enclosure is annexed to two main
chambers. Other architectural features indicate that this may have been
where the healer or shaman of the village practised. Its maze-like entrance
is similar to those found in many ancient sacred buildings worldwide. To
enter the inner sanctum of Structure 12, a visitor must turn left, crouch
down to duck through a small doorway, turn right, then crouch again to pass
through a second doorway.

Sacred objects

In the inner sanctum is a special window with a lattice framework made
from poles coated in clay and then painted white. This would have allowed
some air and light to enter the room, but its main purpose was probably
for communication. ‘People outside could hear what was going on – predictions,
perhaps, from the shaman inside,’ explains Sheets. Strange niches built
into the walls hold artefacts that look like offerings or perhaps payments
for services. These include a tiny collection of minerals, a miniature pot
with cinnabar (mercuric sulphide) pigment, a flat stone for grinding grain
known as a metate, and an elaborately painted gourd.

Further clues about Structure 12 come from sacred objects found inside.
These bear a striking resemblance to modern sacred artefacts associated
with the deities and spirits of healing and fertility. ‘The most common
objects are deer, alligators, monkeys and large ocean birds,’ says Sheets.
A deer-skull headdress found in the rafters of Structure 12 is a fine example:
complete with antlers, remnants of red and white paint and a cord so that
it could be worn as a mask, the skull is similar to those still used in
rituals today.

The uses of the other sacred objects – including an unusual oval ceramic
pot in the form of an alligator and the bone from a deer’s shoulder blade,
rounded at one end – are more obscure. ‘Obsidian blades with traces of human
protein are evidence of human blood sacrifice,’ says Sheets. ‘Ritual bloodletting
is still done in traditional Mayan communities today, but the blades used
now are of bottle glass, rather than volcanic obsidian.’

There is no way of telling how shamanistic practices 1400 years ago
differed from those today. Were there both male and female shamans working
mostly part-time, as is the case among Mayan people today? Were they called
on to perform rituals as varied as curing illness, consecrating new houses,
making rain and improving harvests, as they are now? Excavations at Ceren
have, however, revealed a sauna, signifying that shamanistic cures then
involved ritual sweat baths as they still do.

Beyond party politics

Ceren’s sauna is also intriguing in its own right. It is an architectural
masterpiece with a striking earthen dome roof covering the building. Largely
impermeable, to keep in steam and heat, this earthen structure was protected
from wind and rain by a thatched outer layer. Before its discovery, anthropologists
believed that the skills needed to construct domes were introduced to the
New World by the Spanish – but the Spanish did not arrive until more than
900 years after Ceren was buried. Inside the sauna, a central fireplace
is surrounded by lounging platforms that provide enough space for more than
a dozen people at a time to take a sauna.

A museum at Ceren has attracted as many as 6000 visitors a day, mostly
Salvadorians eager to learn how their forebears lived. ‘The people of El
Salvador see this as a direct line to their ancestors,’ says Sheets. He
explains how ancient sites are considered to be beyond party factionalism
and political ideology – they represent the roots of all Salvadorians. This
is illustrated by the fact that last year the University of Colorado and
Concultura, part of the Salvadorian ministry of education, received the
Laurel Oro – El Salvador’s equivalent of the Nobel prize – for their work
at Ceren. The prize usually goes to an individual artist – a composer for
an outstanding symphony, perhaps, or a sculptor for a lifetime’s work.
It is El Salvador’s highest recognition for cultural excellence.

Diana Somerville, a writer based in Boulder, Colorado, specialises in
science and health issues.