Overview

• University of Houston archaeologists have identified the tomb of Te K’ab Chaak, founder of Caracol’s dynasty, with a burial dated to around 350 AD.
• The chamber yielded eleven pottery vessels, carved bone tubes, jadeite jewelry, a fragmented mosaic jadeite death mask and Pacific spondylus shells.
• Burial practices and artifacts point to formal diplomatic and cultural connections with Teotihuacan at least three decades before the recorded 378 AD entrada event.
• This marks the first confirmed Maya king’s tomb at Caracol after more than 40 years of excavations by Arlen and Diane Chase in collaboration with Belize’s Institute of Archaeology.
• Ongoing work includes death mask reconstruction and ancient DNA and stable isotope analyses, with detailed results to be presented at an August conference on Maya–Teotihuacan interaction.