October 29, 2007
Lyon College News Bureau

Dr. Gloria Everson, Lyon’s associate professor of anthropology, has “spent many months living in tents in the rainforest” with Dr. Norman Hammond.

And on Friday, Oct. 26, she introduced her colleague, friend and teacher to a capacity audience eager to hear him speak.

A respected expert in the field of archaeology, Dr. Norman Hammond, professor and chairman of the department of archaeology at Boston University, presented his program, “Exploring La Milpa: A Classic Maya City in Belize,” in the Sanders Lecture Hall, located in the Derby Center.

His work in the long lost Maya city is part of an archaeological project funded by the National Geographic Society and Boston University. British archaeologist Sir Eric Thompson discovered La Milpa in 1938.

Hammond’s research interests include pre-Columbian archaeology, comparative archaeology and history of archaeology. His work deals with the emergence and decline of complex societies, exchange and the history of archaeology.

He has published fieldwork in North Africa, Afghanistan and Ecuador. His Mayan fieldwork has taken him to locales such as the Yucatan Peninsula, Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador and Belize.

Hammond was a research fellow at Cambridge University from 1967 to 1975, Bradford University from 1975 to 1977 and Rutgers University from 1977 to 1988. He’s also been a visiting professor at the University of California at Berkeley, China’s Jilin University, the Sorbonne and the University of Bonn.

He has also held a Dumbarton Oaks Fellowship and visiting fellowships at the universities of Oxford and Cambridge. Professor Hammond serves on the editorial boards of Ancient Mesoamerica and the Journal of Field Archaeology, and is an advisor to The Times of London.

Since 1968 Hammond has worked in the Maya lowlands, with interdisciplinary projects at Lubaantun, Nohmul, Cuello and currently La Milpa, a project he’s worked on since 1992.

Everson has worked with him at La Milpa since 1994, and even made a significant discovery of her own while there. While afield mapping the area, she discovered the site’s only still-standing stela, a stone monument used as a civic-ceremonial marker. All the other stelae on the site had long since fallen or had been intentionally struck down.

Hammond’s presentation included a series of photographs taken in the dense undergrowth of the rainforest, which long ago reclaimed the once thriving city. Since the Maya had no wheeled vehicles, or animals with which to pull them, the main roads of the time were mere paths through the foliage. The only major road was a 64-mile avenue in the northern half of the Yucatan Peninsula connecting the sites of Coba and Yaxuna, not near the Belize sites, probably made for ceremonial processions, Hammond told his enthralled audience

“Rivers were the true highways of the jungle,” he said in his cultured English accent. “The Maya ran trade up and down the rivers in log canoes.”

La Milpa, one of the largest cities of the ancient Maya, lies deep in the jungle of northwestern Belize and covers over 30 square miles of area. It was the third largest city in Belize, after Caracol to the south and nearby Lamanai.

Founded around 400 B.C., La Milpa prospered only until 500 A.D., when it declined, and then it flourished again, beginning a century later. It reached its peak between 750 and 850 A.D., with an estimated maximum population of 50,000.

Items found there indicate that the site was also briefly inhabited during subsequent periods, Hammond said.

Later Maya apparently lived there around 850 – 900 A.D., and again in the 16th and 17th centuries.

The city’s Great Plaza, one of the largest laid out in the Classic period, is surrounded by four pyramids, rising up to 80 feet in height, and long, narrow dwellings which may have served as residences and administrative offices.

The plaza also features two ball courts of the type found throughout the Maya world.

Hammond said “La Milpa” is the name given the city after its re-discovery. Though he and his team discovered hieroglyphs of the city’s original Mayan name, they are worn and incomplete, making it impossible to decipher the name.

“It’s very frustrating,” he said.

La Milpa gained some media exposure when Hammond and his team discovered a previously undisturbed tomb of a Maya king, believed to be named “Bird Jaguar,” or his successor, who lived around 450 A.D.

Buried with the king was a magnificent jade necklace, which lay across the king’s chest.

Why the great city was suddenly abandoned is a matter of speculation, Hammond told the audience. It showed no sign of hostile invasion. Perhaps lack of water made living there impossible, he suggested.

“In the end, we don’t know what happened,” Hammond said.

Dr. Norman Hammond presented a program in Derby Center's Sanders Lecture Hall on Friday. The program was sponsored by the College's Convocations Committee.