Archaeology & Ale: James Meierhoff

In 1879 the Guatemalan Secretary of Agriculture Salvador Valenzuela saw the damage at Tikal caused by the removal of carved wooden lintels and observed that; “The beams of the doors of these [temples]… were pulled out by a foreign doctor [Gustave Bernoulli] the year before last, and that which time and nature could not destroy with the great trees that had grown there this man has done…”. Astonishingly, Valenzuela’s next course of action was to perform the same deed that he was condemning Bernoulli for; “As that doctor of whom I spoke had done, I pulled out the lintels of the principal door of this building…”. Valenzuela’s report of his exploration of Petén in 1879 and subsequent admission of removing a lintel from Tikal was rediscovered too late for its inclusion in the Tikal Project’s initial analysis of the missing beams and has since been overlooked. If Valenzuela indeed removed a lintel from Tikal as he claimed, which lintel did he take? From which structure? Where is it today? This presentation summarizes the ancient carved wooden lintels from Tikal and presents an overview of the history of their removal (and destruction) during the 19 th and early 20 th centuries. The presentation will review our current understanding of Tikal’s carved wooden lintels and follows documentary and archaeological evidence that Tikal had yet another carved wooden monument, now lost, and where it may have been located at Tikal. My research into the looting of Tikal’s carved lintels challenges earlier assumptions that all the outer lintels of Tikal’s Great Temples were plain and presents overlooked evidence that Valenzuela removed carved wooden beams from Temple III Lintel 1 of Tikal. More Info below.