The monuments, sculptures, jades, and other treasures recovered by the Vanderbilt University and National Geographic Cancuen Archaeological Project are now on exhibit in a museum tour in Europe. Currently, treasures recovered from the royal palace, ballcourts, and artisans workshops of this ancient Classic Maya site (dating from AD 650 to 800) are on display in the exhibit “Cancuen: The Mystery of the Lost Maya City” at the Didrichsen Museum in Helsinki, Finland. In April the exhibit will move for one year to the National Ethnographic Museum of Sweden in Stockholm. From there it will continue to other venues in Europe and the United States before returning to Guatemala to become a permanent exhibit in the National Museum of Archaeology and Ethnography of Guatemala.
The highlights of the exhibit are beautifully carved stone panels and huge altars, some recovered from the 2003-2004 pursuit and arrest of a looter’s gang by project members and agents of the SIC (Guatemala’s FBI).
In Scandinavia the exhibit, heavily covered in television and newspapers there, is breaking historic attendance records. The findings from Cancuen are being featured in documentaries in Europe and an upcoming National Geographic television special in the United States.