Editing Mayapan (section)

==Excavations and investigations==
[[File:Mayapan chac.JPG|thumb|The Templo Redondo with a Mayan carving in the foreground.]]
In 1841 John L. Stephens was the first to document parts of the Mayapan site with two important illustrations. The first was of the Q-152 round temple, and the second was of the Pyramid of Kukulkan. He was the first in a long string of explorers who drew the ruins of Mayapan. The first large-scale archeological site surveys were not conducted until 1938 by R.T. Patton. These surveys mapped the main plaza group and the city wall, and were the basis of later maps (Russell 2008).

In the 1950s, archaeologists of the [[Carnegie Institution]], including [[A. L. Smith]], Robert Smith, [[Tatiana Proskouriakoff]], [[Edwin Shook]], [[Karl Ruppert]] and [[J. Eric Thompson]] conducted five years of intensive archeological investigations at Mayapan. Their work was published in a mimeographed series of ''Current Reports''. The ''Current Reports'' have recently been republished in their entirety by the University of Colorado Press (John Weeks 2009). The final report was published by the Carnegie Institution as ''Mayapan, Yucatan, Mexico'', by [[H. E. D. Pollock]], [[Ralph L. Roys]], A. L. Smith, and Tatiana Proskouriakoff (1962, Publication 619). Robert Smith published a two-volume monograph on ''The Pottery of Mayapan'' in 1971 (Papers of the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology 66, Harvard University).

In the early 1990s, [[Clifford T. Brown]] of [[Tulane University]] carried out excavations in the residential zones of Mayapan as part of his doctoral dissertation research. Several years later, the [[National Institute of Anthropology and History]] (INAH) of Mexico began extensive architectural excavations and consolidation under the direction of archaeologist [[Carlos Peraza Lope]]. This work continues to the present. It has resulted in the discovery of many important artifacts, murals, stuccoes, and architectural elements.

From 2001 to 2009, further investigations were begun at the site by a team under the direction of Dr. [[Marilyn Masson]] from the [[State University New York at Albany]], Carlos Peraza Lope of INAH, and Timothy S. Hare of [[Morehead State University]]. This "Economic Foundations of Mayapan" (PEMY) Project performed mapping, surface survey and collection, test-pitting, and horizontal excavation across the city. Major findings of this project include the identification of diverse occupational specialization among the city's commoners, who worked as craftsmen, conscripted military personnel, farmers, and domestic servants. Great variation is now recognized in the types of work performed by commoners of different households and their degrees of affluence. This project has also identified a probable major market plaza in Square K (between the site center and major north gate D); Richard Terry, Bruce Dahlin, and Daniel Bair have analyzed soil samples from this location to test the function of this locality. In 2008 and 2009, the PEMY project focused excavations on an outlying ceremonial group by the far eastern city gate (Gate H), known as ''Itzmal Ch'en,'' as part of its study of the economic and social links between governing elites and distant neighborhoods within the city.