part of the country known as Petén. The highlands area is the mountainous and volcanic region that lies between the Pacific piedmont and Petén.

The history of Guatemala begins with its conquest in 1524 by Pedro de Alvarado, a trusted captain under Hernán Cortés in the conquest of Mexico. However, the area of Peten, occupied by groups such as the Maya Itzá, was not subdued until 1697. The country remained a Spanish colony until it gained independence, along with the rest of Central America, in 1821.

Precursors to Archaeological Exploration

Various letters and reports of the Spanish conquerors (e.g., Pedro de Alvarado and Bernal Diaz del Castillo) and early chroniclers described the Cakchiquel capital of Iximche and the Quiche capital of Utatlan in the highlands. Cortés wrote of various villages, such as Tayasal in Petén and Nito around Lake Izabal, on his march through the lowlands en route to Honduras in 1524 and 1525. All of these centers were abandoned by the inhabitants shortly thereafter. A few documents written by the Quiches and Cakchiquels in the early colonial period survive, including the Popol Vuh and the Memorial de Tecpan Atitlan, and these provide important information regarding these peoples’ pre-Columbian history, their early migrations to Guatemala, and their worldview in general. Early land titles also contained references to events prior to the conquest. Reports by the clergy often provided valuable descriptions of native life, among them those by Bartolome de Las Casas in the 1550s, Bartolome de Fuensalida, and Juan de Orbita (1618–1619), and Andres de Avendaño y Loyola (1695–1696), as well as reports by the clergy to the various religious orders, such as those by Francisco Ximenez at the end of the seventeenth century.

The native population declined rapidly after the Spanish conquest, largely due to exposure to European diseases and the harsh conditions imposed by heavy labor in construction and agriculture. Christianization was achieved rapidly, and the influence of Christianity was seen in the native writings. These often reflected the biblical notions of the Spanish regarding the origins of the Americans, including the idea that they were descendants of one of the Lost Tribes of Israel. One exception was the work of Francisco Antonio Fuentes y Guzman who, writing in the 1700s, used the native documents and maps of the ancient centers to highlight the achievements and illustrious past of the former inhabitants and to show that the Guatemalan Indians of his day were descendants of those people (Fuentes y Guzman 1933, 2: 211, 3: 199).

The Enlightenment of the eighteenth century was reflected in Guatemala by a new interest in archaeological remains. The inclusion of Naples, Italy, in the Spanish domain during the reign of Carlos III awakened this interest and inspired the colonial authorities in Guatemala to carry out the first archaeological explorations on record. Between 1784 and 1789 three investigations were carried out in palenque and Chiapas, which today are part of mexico but at that time were still part of Guatemala. The reports, maps, and drawings from the third expedition were published in London in 1822 and circulated among the intellectuals of the era. The first museum in Guatemala, exhibiting both natural and archaeological specimens, was established by the Sociedad Economica in 1797. It functioned until 1801, when it was closed by the Spanish government on the pretext that it was involved in political movements toward independence from Spain (Lujan 1972, 354, 360).

Guatemala succeeded in obtaining its independence in 1821, along with the rest of Central America. In 1832, after a period of turbulence and civil wars, the government of Guatemala under Mariano Galvez organized an investigation of the archaeological sites of Utatlan and Iximche in order to put together an atlas and recapitulation of the history of the country. Galvez also reinstalled the Sociedad Economica and ordered that a new archaeological museum be established under its aegis (Lujan 1972, 364).

With independence from Spain, Guatemala experienced heightened interaction with the outside world, including the United States, England, France, and other European countries. During the time of the Federal Republic of Central