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Despite an explosive proliferation of field research and its reporting for the far northern Campeche and western Yucatan coastal plain and western Puuc zone over the last two decades (see Braswell 2012), the central coastal plain of Campeche between the Rio Champoton on the south and the offshore Isla Jaina site and Chunchucmil remains sorely underreported in reasonably accessible sources.1This study is a modest effort to address this problem by making available a short but comprehensive local synopsis developed around one season's findings at the central coastal plain center, Acanmul, located some 25 km north of Campeche. Also incorporating germane data from several complementary survey seasons (Williams Beck 2001, 2003a; Williams Beck and López de la Rosa 1999) and an INAH Centro Regional de Campeche (CRC) restoration program (Ojeda Mas 2007, 2010), the authors hope this article will provide a useful comparative resource for the ever increasing numbers of investigators working in the northernmost Maya lowlands.
In late 2001 the authors were invited by Lorraine Williams Beck of the Universidad Autónoma de Campeche (UAC), Mexico to participate in her ongoing research project, "Proyecto Historia Regional Diacrónica El Cuyo, Acanmul y San Francisco de Campeche," through a program of excavations at the central western Campeche Gulf Coast site, Acanmul. This eventually resulted in a brief collaboration involving San Diego State University and UAC researchers between early 2003 and late 2005. Here we report on the objectives, results, and tentative interpretations of the major joint season of field investigations in 2004. Additional earlier investigations by Williams Beck will be reported on by her separately.
Acanmul is located at 19° 54' North Latitude; 90° 19' West Longitude within the lower Rio Verde Valley--historically known as the Rio Hontun (Roys 1957: Map 2)--approximately 25 km northeast of Ciudad Campeche and roughly 15 km inland from the current, ever ephemeral Campeche coastline (Figure 1). Edzna lies 36 km to the southeast, and Kanki, another site of major center stature (Benavides Castillo and Novelo Orsorno 2011; Zapata Peraza 1995), is 15 km to the northeast. Nine kilometers north-northwest are the ruins of Cansacbe, an extensive but severely stone-robbed site. Figure 1.
Areal map identifying sites referenced in...