John Keshishian 
The volcanic axis of Central America 
includes Pacaya, a volcano located 
near Guatemala City. In the 1960s, 
ash from Pacaya 's relatively small 
eruptions was deposited as far 
away as Tikal, in the lowlands. 
tional plots outside the village, perhaps 
using the slash-and-burn technique to 
clear land on the hillslopes nearby. Fu- 
ture research is planned to look for and 
document such extensive agriculture 
outside the village. 
A farmhouse we excavated in 1978 
was constructed by mounding and 
smoothing a clay platform, which was 
then fired as one large brick by building 
fires all over it. Columns and walls of 
clay were constructed next and a roof of 
palm thatch added. The columns are 
enigmatic, as the roof was supported, 
not by them, but by vertical poles com- 
ing out of the walls. I should point out 
we did not excavate the entire house be- 
cause its northern portion had been 
bulldozed in 1976, when the Salvador- 
an government was constructing a 
grain-storage silo complex. Local peo- 
ple who observed the bulldozing re- 
ported seeing a number of bodies on the 
floor of the house, clustered around a 
few polychrome pottery vessels. If this 
description is accurate, it could be that 
the Maya residents gathered around 
their ritual pottery for a final ceremony 
to try to save themselves from the erup- 
tion of Laguna Caldera. 
There were various activity areas 
within the farmhouse. In the pantry, we 
found four large pottery storage jars — 
crushed by the tephra overburden — 
and a grooved stone maul. Two of the 
vessels were empty when we found 
them; they may have been empty that 
spring day or they may have contained 
liquid that did not preserve. The other 
two vessels contained small beans, frijo- 
les de arroz, which are still cultivated in 
the highlands today. 
One room contained a pottery-mak- 
ing area. On the floor was a lump of 
prepared potter’s clay, a lump of hema- 
tite (red iron oxide used for paint), and 
an andesite flake that was used as a pot- 
tery smoother. The family in this farm- 
house had polychrome vessels and 
apparently were making their own. 
They were also receiving some poly- 
chrome vessels from traders, brought 
from as far away as Copan, Honduras 
(70 miles to the north), and perhaps 
even from Costa Rica (360 miles south- 
east). These findings at a humble farm- 
house require reevaluation of the 
idea — subscribed to by many archeolo- 
gists who study the Maya — that fancy 
polychrome pottery is an indicator of 
high status. 
About thirteen feet west of the farm- 
house we found an outbuilding con- 
structed much the same way as the 
house, with a fired-clay floor and a 
palm-thatch roof, but without wattle 
and daub walls or interior partitions. 
The scatter of obsidian debris south of 
this structure indicates that it served as 
an area for manufacturing stone tools. 
Early Spanish accounts of the Maya 
identify this as a male activity, while 
the areas we found in the main farm- 
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