Ashen riches of a buried village.

• Author: Sheets, Payson
• Position: Excavation of El Salvador village that was buried in a volcanic eruption

Frozen in time under layers al volcanic deposits, El Salvador's Ceren provides a window to doily life in ancient Mesoamerica

In a thriving southern Mesoamerican village, in what is now El Salvador, villagers had become accustomed to the reliable and benign tropical seasonal climate and the fertile volcanic soils. They had successfully fed their families with corn, beans, squash, chilies, root crops, and tree nuts and fruits for many generations. They produced and stored sufficient food during the rainy season to feed themselves during the sixth-month dry season. In addition, each household built multiple, efficient structures with ample space, each with its own purpose, and made basic implements for its own use. Each household also overproduced at least one craft item to use for exchange with other households or for exchange for specialized products at the regional market in the nearby town of San Andres.

The predictable rhythm of dally life came to a catastrophic end, however, when a violent and concentrated volcanic eruption interred the village. Because it came from a buried vent, there were no obvious indications of volcanic risk in the immediate area. A small earthquake immediately preceding the eruption gave some warning, and there were probably steam emissions that indicated the danger was to the north of the village. People fled for their lives, presumably running south, leaving everything behind. But it was dark, and some of the ash was propelled by a wind velocity of between 30 and 120 miles per hour. Villagers apparently had at least a few minutes before the magma came into full contact with water from the Sucio River, which drains the Zapotitan Valley, and the eruption began in earnest. How many would have been able to escape in that time?

This village laid entombed in several feet of ash for fourteen hundred years. In 1976 a bulldozer uncovered a buried building, alerting scientists to a rare discovery: an archaeological bonanza of everyday and valuable items, virtually full inventories of artifacts in household and special-purpose buildings. The Ceren site, called Joya de Ceren by locals, is the best preserved ancient village ever found in the New World.

At the time of the eruption, Ceren had been occupied only for a century or two, by people who had moved back into the Zapotitan Valley and founded the village as a part of the natural and human recovery from the earlier Ilopango volcanic eruption. That earlier eruption, which occurred about 200 A.D., was a massive regional natural disaster, but the Loma Caldera eruption that buried the village of Ceren affected only a couple square miles.

Based on artifact patterns in the households, the eruption evidently occurred after the evening meal was served but...