INSCRIPTIONS OF THE EARLY PERIOD. 103 
Maria Melendrez gives the following account of the breaking of this 
monument. In the spring of 1874 a Colonel Vicente Solis came to the 
village from Santa Rosa, the capital of the Department of Copan, with 
troops, pursuing some political malefactors who were fleeing toward the 
Guatemalan frontier. While at the village he tried to move Stela 7 from 
where it lay in the bush to the plaza for re-erection, but his men succeeded 
only in dragging it a few meters before it broke in two and it was left in 
the bush where it was. Clementino Lopez later acquired this property, and 
it was under the back portal of his house that the writer first saw this stela 
in IQIO. 
The original provenance of Stela 7, however, has been established by the 
discovery of the foundation-stone (and the chamber underneath) upon 
which this monument rested. This important discovery has already received 
some attention in connection with the de- 
scription of Stela 24 (pp. 78-80), and its con- 
sideration will be resumed here. 
The mound of Stela 7 is about 50 meters 
southwest of the southwestern corner of the 
village plaza (see figure 22, F). By far 
the greater part of it lies in the property of 
Clementino Lopez (see figure 22), but the 
northwest corner is on the lot of Domingo 
Hernandez and the northeast corner on the 
lot of Florencio Lemos. It is 27 meters long 
north and south, 17 meters wide east and west, 
and 70 cm. high. The southwest corner of the 
foundation-stone of Stela 7 (figure 18, a) is 13.5 
meters from the southern side of the mound 
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LEGEND. 
Limits of upper pavement. 
Probable limits of lower pavement. 
Higher platform, 
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meters samen 
Fic. 18.—Plan of mound of Stela 7 show- 
and 4.33 meters from the eastern side. Stela 
7 itself (figure 18, b), from the best informa- 
tion available, was found lying on the ground 
2 meters west of its foundation-stone, appar- 
ently just where it had fallen. 
ing location of Stela 7: a, foundation- 
stone of Stela 7; b, Stela 7; c, stone 
platform at northwest corner; d, lower 
pavement not found this far south; e, 
cache of worked jades found at this 
point; f, Fragment V’14 found in cru- 
ciform chamber underneath founda- 
tion-stone of Stela 7. 
The accidental discovery of this foundation-stone, together with a frag- 
ment of Stela 24 and a small round altar, in 1916, was by no means the first 
of its kind, but the culmination of a long series of similar discoveries, such as 
archaic stele and altars traceable to this mound, numerous smaller archaic 
fragments found in the walls of houses and pavements in the immediate 
vicinity, etc., all of which made it practically certain that formerly there 
had been here an important early center of occupation, possibly even the 
very earliest settlement in the valley. Indeed, this mound had become so 
important because of these several discoveries that its examination became 
imperative, and in 1919 the writer excavated the northern half. (See 
figure 18.) 
