Looted 1500-Year-Old Maya Temple Facade To Be Fully Restored
BY FRANCESCA ATON
June 10, 2022 2:42pm
Conservator Sergio González García with the relief at the Museo Nacional de Antropología, Mexico City.
PHOTO MELITON TAPIA; COURTESY NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF ANTHROPOLOGY AND HISTORY
An ancient Maya temple facade that was looted from the jungle in the 1960s and once offered to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York is undergoing restoration by Mexico’s National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH).
Dating to approximately 450–600 CE, the 30-foot-long, two-ton stucco relief is believed to depict either a maize god or an unknown governor. The figure is shown in a feathered headdress flanked by two elder gods holding symbolic glyphs. The piece was believed to be intentionally buried by the Maya and was later extracted from the Late Classic archaeological site Placeres around 1968.
Placeres was discovered among the Campeche jungles by American archaeologist and government spy Sylvanus Morley in the 1940s. Morley spearheaded significant field work in Mexico and Central America, including some of the first excavations at the renowned Maya site Chichén Itzá from the 1920s through the late 1940s.
Conservators, whose efforts on the stucco relief began in 2018, are currently working to piece the fragments together and remove a protective polymer that looters had applied to prevent disintegration. That process included stabilizing the relief using a metal framework. The team hopes to restore the frieze as close as possible to its original polychrome.
More:
https://www.artnews.com/art-news/news/looted-1500-year-old-maya-temple-facade-to-be-fully-restored-1234631519/
