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Kaxil Uinic: Archival Investigations and Reconnaissance of the Historic Maya Village • Thompson (1963:238) reports that on his way back to San Jose from Guatemala he passed through the abandoned Maya village of Kaxil Uinic and then rested by the Rio Bravo “near a pleasant group of ruins.” He also describes Kaxil Uinic as the second group of ruins once you cross the river coming from San Jose (Thompson 1939:280). Therefore, he did not consider the pleasant group of ruins, which he dubbed Rio Bravo Ruins in his notes, to be the same as Kaxil Uinic. • If the road Thompson followed to Kaxil Uinic is the same road that cuts through Chan Chich today, then Chan Chich would have been the first group of ruins he came to across the river. The description of the Rio Bravo Ruins does not match Chan Chich; therefore, they are not the same site. • If he bothered to record the Rio Bravo Ruins, which are considerably smaller than Chan Chich, surely he would have recorded Chan Chich if he had seen it. • It is therefore more likely that Thompson followed a different route from San José and never saw Chan Chich. I suspect that he followed a more southerly route, one that would have passed through the Maya village, rather than the ruins, of Kaxil Uinic—the modern trail passes through the ruins, 500 m north of the aguada and historic village. Supporting this conclusion is Miller’s (1887:422) map of roads and villages in his report on the border survey. The road to San José travels in a southeasterly route from Kaxil Uinic village. With the ruins’ lying 500 m north of that starting point, even allowing for a large degree of error in Miller’s map, it seems unlikely that the road Thompson took in 1931 is the same road that connects the Kaxil Uinic ruins and Chan Chich today; that road runs almost due east-west. Conclusions The site Guderjan et al. (1991) recorded as E’kenha is most assuredly Thompson’s Kaxil Uinic, and for that reason I prefer to call it Kaxil Uinic ruins. I am equally confident that the aguada 500 m south of the ruins is the former site of the San Pedro Maya village of Kaxil Uinic (Figure 4.4). As reported in this volume by Harris and Sisneros, we have completed an initial assessment of the prehistoric site. We have, however, barely scratched the surface of the historic village. Despite the dense vegetation, the village site holds tremendous research potential. Additionally, it is possible that the area around the aguada has significant prehistoric Maya deposits as well. I have proposed elsewhere (Houk et al. 2012) that the aguada may be the source of the Cunil material found at Kaxil Uinic ruins (see Harris and Sisneros, this volume; Valdez and Houk, this volume). If that were the case, Kaxil Uinic’s aguada would provide fitting bookends to Maya archaeology in Belize, from the Early Preclassic period at one end of the chronological chart to the Colonial period at the other. 41
The 2012 Season of the Chan Chich Archaeological Project Figure 4.4. Map showing the locations of Chan Chich, Kaxil Uinic ruins, and Kaxil Uinic village. Based on Google Earth and GPS data collected by Matthew Harris. 42
Page 1 and 2: The 2012 Season of the Chan Chich A
Page 3 and 4: Contents Acknowledgments...........
Page 8 and 9: Return to Paradise: An Introduction
Page 10 and 11: An Introduction to the 2012 Chan Ch
Page 12 and 13: An Introduction to the 2012 Chan Ch
Page 14 and 15: Multi-sensor Archaeo-geophysical Su
Page 16 and 17: Archaeo-geophysical Survey of the U
Page 26 and 27: Chan Chich: 2012 Investigations of
Page 36: Chan Chich: 2012 Investigations of
Page 47: The 2012 Season of the Chan Chich A
Page 72 and 73: Preliminary Comments on the 2012 Ce
Page 80 and 81: The Chan Chich Archaeological Proje
Page 82 and 83: CCAP Digital Data Collection System
Page 90 and 91: Dear Dr. Thompson Matthew C. Harris
Page 92: Dear Dr. Thompson Figure 8.3. Scan

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