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The Chama Region

Chama Map

In 1916, Robert Burkitt's travels for the Penn Museum led him to Chama on the Chixoy River in the Alta Verapaz region of the highlands of Guatemala, a site which had flourished during the Late Classic (600- 800 CE).

"The mounds are burial mounds, in each of which, a number of people have been buried....The stone work has given way in all directions...the pottery and everything is embedded in a mass of stones and earth...to be picked away little by little with trowels."

-Robert Burkitt to George Gordon,
May 7, 1916.