Event: Pizza Talk: " 19th Century Archaeology Meets Sacred Landscape: A Second Look at Quen Santo"

Speaker: James Brady, Cal State University, Los Angeles

During the last decade of the 19th century, four cave studies of exceptional quality were produced. The best was Eduard Seler’s report on Quen Santo in Huehuetenango, Guatemala because of the exceptional finds still associated with the cave at that time. As a grad student at UCLA, Brady became fascinated with the site after Ted Gutman of the Friends of Archaeology translated the report from German. In 2006 new road construction opened this remote area of the Maya Highlands and permitted a restudy of the caves. Combining 21st century cave archaeology with Seler’s 19th century reporting provides rich portrait of an important Chuj Maya pilgrimage site.