📷 Mariordo (Mario Roberto Duran Ortiz) · CC BY-SA 3.0

Where in the world

El Salvador

Joya de Cerén

Maya · El Salvador

Field notes

civilizations: Maya
types: Village
occupied: 400 CE — 600 CE
country: El Salvador

The site

Joya de Cerén is a Classic-period Maya farming village in El Salvador's Zapotitán Valley, buried around 600 CE beneath the ashfall of the Loma Caldera eruption. That sudden burial earned it the name 'Pompeii of the Americas,' preserving houses, fields, and everyday objects in extraordinary detail. Excavations even uncovered a manioc field here, the first evidence of manioc cultivation known from any archaeological site in the New World.

Nearby sites