Skeletons at SUNY Plattsburgh

Professor uses campus as a home for the largest collection of ancient Maya skeletons

Story and photos by Christine Thompson

"There was one body too large to transport in a container, so I brought it back in a personal bag," Mark Cohen, archaeologist and professor at SUNY Plattsburgh, states. "I was going through customs in Florida. My bag went through the machine and the lady looked at me and said, 'Are those bones?' I said, 'yes.' She said, 'human bones?' I said, 'yes' again. She looked at me again, and then said, 'I'm going to have to call my supervisor.' I was ready with all my papers, though."

During the summer of 1980, Grant Jones, then a professor at Hamilton College, archaeologist Robert Kautz, Hamilton students, graduate students from other schools, and Mayan excavators began preliminary digs at the Tipu site in Belize. Jones had identified Tipu as a center for Mayan refugees based on research from other archaeologists and historians. "It was obvious to me that we should try to locate it, and if successful, begin a program of excavations at the site that would complement our historical knowledge," Jones says.

Locating the site required Jones to search through site records at the Department of Archaeology in Belmopan, Belize. This information led Jones to a description from the archaeologist Eric Thompson of a site called Negroman on the Belize River. The first summer in Tipu led the excavators to discover the remains of a Spanish colonial church. The finding of the church, which was determined to be Christian by the east-west orientation, and the structure of some surviving walls, confirmed that the site was Tipu. 

What they didn’t know after that summer was that they were about to uncover the largest Mayan burial site in the world. Cohen and his team spent five years in Tipu, Belize from 1983 to 1988 uncovering six hundred ancient Mayan bodies that Jones’ team had begun to uncover.
           
"The site was initially important as one of the first sites of the early post-Columbian contact in Central America, filling in what was already known from the historical records," Cohen says. Once Jones’ team realized they were uncovering a cemetery, Cohen became a key player. The site was excavated with the permission of the Mayans, the Belize government, the Jesuits, and all of the other people who helped, Cohen emphasizes.

"Because of the devastating effects of European diseases on post-contact Native Americans, studies of the health of the Mayans at that point were important."

One village that did work with the team on the excavation also shared their culture. Cohen says the team used to go to the village and hang out with them. "One of the guys' brothers died, and we went to the mourning," Cohen says. It was an interesting experience, he explains, noting that they went to the church, and they were the only men and non-Mayan people there. The women were there mourning, but the men were at the bars, he adds.

Aside from their interactions with the local Maya, each day was a mission to unearth complete skeletal remains, Cohen recalls mentioning rain and wind as environmental factors that may have halted or damaged their work.  His team spent approximately five days diligently working on the site. However, Cohen remembers there wasn’t much to do in the area anyway. "We brought everything with us. Our food, our water." The nearest town was more than 30 miles away and a journey on dirt roads to get to. If it had rained, forget traveling the roads, Cohen says. The roads would be virtual swimming pools, and even with 4X4 trucks, they might have not made it out.

The skeletons are being housed in an academic building at SUNY Plattsburgh. Each numbered piece is strategically placed among a collection of femurs, teeth, pelvic bones and fingers. The vertebrae disks of one skeleton tell the tale of severe lower back pain. Cohen pointed out the unusual porous spots on the skulls of some of the skeletons. These open pores suggest a hemoglobin mutation and a rare form of disease for ancient Mayans that predates the concept of old world diseases, the diseases brought over from Europe.

"Because of the devastating effects of European diseases on post-contact Native Americans, studies of the health of the Maya at that point were important," Cohen said. "But many of the important diseases in question do not show in skeletons except in their DNA." By extracting DNA from these bones, Cohen and biology Professor Nancy Elwess at SUNY Plattsburgh hope to learn more about the ancient Maya. In Cohen's perception, the work on the ancient DNA of these Mayan skeletons has generated new excitement about diseases, but also about the identity and social relationship of the skeletons whether it be the Maya or other Native Americans.

Other research has been done by three doctoral candidates from Indiana University and SUNY Albany, and approximately five to ten Master’s candidates have also worked with the Mayan skeletons. "I and the students involved were enormously excited at the prospect [of working at the site]," Cohen recalls. "I have made a lot of new friends among graduate students from other universities who came here to do doctoral dissertations and masters’ theses about the collection."

Just as Cohen has made friends among the visiting graduate students, students in Cohen's classes benefit from his lectures. "Dr. Cohen's excellence as a teacher, characterized by his comprehensive understanding of material and the ease and effectiveness of his transmission of his knowledge to students, which I encountered for the first time in that course, is something to which all other teachers should aspire, as are his commitment and openness to his students," said Robert Abel, a senior at SUNY Plattsburgh.

While there are no airport terminals or customs to deal with on the SUNY campus, Cohen keeps his family of 588 skeletons carefully locked away. "He's always made the anthropology department feel like more of a home than an office," Abel said. Who knows, perhaps the skeletons feel at home too.

Do you have any skeletons in your closet?