https://youtu.be/CJmjF51pg_g

A private collection of hundreds of pre-Spanish artefacts some of which are over 3000 years old that belonged to a primary school teacher has been handed over to Mexican archaeologists by his daughter after his death.

The collection was amassed by Ignacio Mora during the 1950s and 1960s when local residents in the municipalities of Petatlan and Zihuatanejo in the Mexican state of Guerrero used to give him figures, pots, wooden spindles, and other items found around the present-day Mesoamerican archaeological site of Xihuacan.

Over the two decades, the teacher collected 969 pieces which have now been handed over to archaeologists at the Xihuacan site in the small village of La Soledad de Maciel by his daughter Guadalupe Mora Luviano who decided to donate the pieces after his death.

Researcher Rodolfo Lobato Rodriguez said in a press statement obtained by Real Press that the pieces cover a 3,000-year period from the Preclassic Maya period (around 1,200 BC) to the Early Postclassic period (around 1,350 AD) when the region lost importance due to huge floods.

The teacher’s collection contains nearly 600 fragments of anthropomorphic figures, 41 small pots dedicated to a water goddess, around 10 complete pots, bowls, mud beads, spinning tools, mud counterweights used in fishing nets, whistles, and badges with the image of a goddess.

The collection also boasted fertility figures and decorations used to scarify shoulders as well as tattoo designs used on hips and faces.

Lobato Rodriguez, researcher at the National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH) in Guerrero, said the donated collection contains important pieces “in the big puzzle of our prehispanic past in Costa Grande (in Guerrero)”.

Xihuacan’s ceremonial centre was built around 450 AD using astronomical elements such as the Sun, Venus, and the North Star.

The teacher’s collection will be temporarily exhibited at the archaeological site with details about their background.