Exhibit on Mayan culture, civilization to open Saturday at Florida Museum

May 22, 2012

GAINESVILLE, Fla. — Visitors can explore an ancient Mayan civilization and culture in the Florida Museum of Natural History’s newest temporary exhibit, “An Early Maya City by the Sea: Daily Life and Ritual at Cerros, Belize,” opening Saturday.

The free exhibit will be displayed through Oct. 7.

“We hope visitors gain an appreciation for what came before us and connect to the Maya society on a personal level,” said Tina Choe, Florida Museum exhibit developer.

The exhibit illustrates how the city originally looked through 3-D maps and an aerial video. Visitors will also discover how the Maya of Cerros integrated religious rituals with daily life and view 45 artifacts on display for the first time, most dating from 350 B.C. to A.D. 300.

“It is an ideal opportunity for the public to see artifacts from the only large, scientifically excavated early Maya collection now in a U.S. museum collection,” said Susan Milbrath, the curator of Latin American art and archaeology at the Florida Museum.

The artifacts displayed in the exhibit were excavated by archaeologists working at Cerros in the 1970s and donated to the Florida Museum of Natural History by the Institute of Archaeology in Belize in 2009. The donation of more than 2,800 artifacts doubled the size of the Florida Museum’s Latin American archaeology collection. Thanks to a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the artifacts will also be added to an online catalog.