GAXN] MAYA INDIANS OF YUCATAN AND BRITISH HONDURAS 



S5 



on the ground level. All the buildings arc in ruins, all are raised 

 more or less on stone platforms above the ground level, and all 

 show traces of having been covered with stucco, both internally and 

 externally. In some cases tliis stucco is very beautifully decorated 

 in colored devices, as in the mound already described at Santa Rita; ^ 

 in others the stucco is molded in various designs and ornaments, 

 which may or may not be colored, as in the mound at Pueblo Nuevo 

 on the Rio Nuevo, presently to be described. Most of these mounds 

 contain notliing except the building wliich they cover, but some had 



Fig. 30.— DetaUs of Mound No. 9. 



been used as burial places, the interments evidently having taken 

 place after the buikhng had been covered in, as they are found 

 irregularly distributed tlu'ough the loose superstructure which forms 

 the cap of the mound, quite close to the surface.^ 



1 Gann, Mounds in Northern Honduras, pp. 666-680. 



2 The interments which are found, superflcially placed in mounds which cover buildings, were probably 

 of later date, as Landa distinctly states that the owner was buried witliin Iiis house. " Enterravanlos 

 dentro en sus casas o a las cspaldas della.s" CLanda, op cit., p. 196). Moreover, more than one of these 

 superficial interments are foimd in mounds covering buildings, and, lastly, human remains have been 

 found beneath the floors of ruined houses, where one would naturally expect to find them. 



