4 Archaeologists Plan Exploration Of Ancient Mayan Civilizations

Four University archaeologists will begin full-scale excavations at an important center of prehistoric Maya civilization this month in the Guatelmalan jungle. The project, expected to last from three to five years, may solve long-standing problems concerning Maya life and habits.

Gordon R. Willey, Bowditch Professor of Central American and Mexican Archaeology, will direct the work, which is financed by a National Science Foundation grant. His chief assistant will be A. Ledyard Smith, Assistant Curator of Middle American Archaeology at the Peabody Museum. Two students, John A. Graham 1G and Albert H. Norweb '59 will complete the group.

The site of the diggings, the Altar de Sacrificios, is near the meeting of the Rio Pasion and the Rio Choxy, in the Department of Peten. Although a Peabody Museum expedition discovered the center in 1895, Professor Willey made the preliminary explorations only last year.

Little is known about Altar de Sacrificios except that it was inhabited as far back as 500 B.C. Most of the objects and buildings found near the site date from the golden period of Maya history in the first century A.D.

Willey hopes to begin excavating in 1960. The diggings may resolve at least the questions of the pattern of Maya cities and the reason for the Mayas' sudden disappearance from the area.

Willey, director of the Maya program at the Peabody Museum since 1949, and Norweb also plan to spend some time on an archaeological survey in Nicaragua.