Quelepa

Quelepa, meaning "jaguar of rock" in the ancient Potón language is a major pre-Hispanic site in the eastern portion of the Mesoamerican culture area (outside and to the east of the Maya area). It lies in the eastern third of modern El Salvador, about 25 miles from the Pacific coast, on the banks of the Río San Esteban, a tributary of the Río Grande de San Miguel. Forty structures divided into two groups, east and west, by a small stream stretch along a little over one-half mile of the riverbank.

Major structures (in the east group), dated to the Early Classic Period, consist of large, 30-foot-high, stepped truncated pyramids with front ramps, built upon terraces that leveled areas of the sloped terrain. Terrace walls are of well-cut horizontally laid stones. There is a Late Classic I-shaped ball court at the site, and there are numerous low house mounds.

Quelepa was first occupied in the Late Formative Period (400–300 bce), and ceramic evidence, of the style called Usulutan, links it with the southeastern Maya area as far away as highland Guatemala. An early jaguar altar is stylistically related to sculpture from Izapa, Abaj Takalik, and Kaminaljuyú. Manos, metates (both used in grinding grain), and comals from the lowest levels of archaeological test excavations indicate early maize cultivation. The large terraced areas of Quelepa date to the Early Classic Period, and architecture includes the use of massive blocks of volcanic bedrock. The unusual arrangement of structures along terrace edges has been found at only two other sites.

In the Late Classic, about 600 ce, foreigners and governors related to Veracruz arrived, possibly by sea, and left their mark on both the ceramics and the architecture (west group) at Quelepa, where they built smaller structures, more tightly grouped, and of more coarse construction. About 900 ce, the site was finally abandoned. Quelepa's archaeological importance derives from the knowledge it supplies of the culture chronology of the easternmost part of Mesoamerica.

See alsoArchaeology; Precontact History: Mesoamerica.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Further reading: Edward Wyllys Andrews, The Archaeology of Quelepa, El Salvador, publication 42 of the Middle American Research Institute, Tulane University, New Orleans (1976).

Additional Bibliography

Cobos, Rafael. Síntesis de la arqueología de El Salvador (1850–1991). San Salvador: Dirección General de Publicaciones e Impresos, Consejo Nacional para la Cultura y Arte, Dirección General del Patrimonio Cultural, 1994.

Fowler, William R., and Federico Trujillo. El Salvador: Antiguas civilizaciones. San Salvador: Banco Agrícola Comercial de El Salvador, 1995.

Lange, Frederick W. Paths to Central American Prehistory. Niwot: University Press of Colorado, 1996.

                                 Walter R. T. Witschey