During the summer 2002 field season, a team of Lehigh students led by Professor David Small performed excavations on a site located in the center of a political, military, and religious power. This region is today known as the Lower Cacaulapa Valley, and the site studied here is the largest of 39 sites in the valley, known as El Coyote. This webpage is designed to provide the viewer with an overview of our findings, promote interest in the LCV area, and provide a plan for further excavations.

El Coyote is located near the current town of Petoa, in the Lower Cacaulapa Valley. The area of El Coyote itself has been surveyed and occupies .6 square kilometers and is 12 times larger than any other such site in the valley. It contains at least 256 recorded buildings of including a monumental core that is made of 28 separate platforms. (Urban, Schortman, Ausec, 2000).

We began working at operation 35, El Coyote, on Monday, 10 June 2002. Our main goal behind this archaeological dig was to acquaint ourselves with the methods and techniques used in excavating sites. Other goals included finding artifacts that would help us determine what time period the building was from, hence what time period the people lived in. We wanted to see what the things we found would indicate about the way people lived in this area.

We went about this in ways outlined by the manual given to us by the Kenyon project, by ways directed to us by Dr. David Small as well as by our own growing knowledge. We began by clearing away the greenery. Then we established two intersecting trenches, one going North/South and the other going East/West. Afterwards, we began our excavating with the help of workers- Mario, Manuel, Osmond and Wilmer.

Excavations resulted in evidence of stone tool production, fine ceramics, jewlery, and bifaces. All indicative of elite occupation of the structure.

Planned for the Summer 2003 field season is an excavation of the rural site known as Rio Rancho. This site is located between the two urban centers of El Coyote and Las Canoas. Goals for this excavation will be to determine the relationship between this rural site and the two urban centers around it.

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