The Jolja’ Cave Project

Regional Archaeological Reports

Archaeological investigations and reports on the Jolja’ region are limited. In the Tila Valley to the west, there is a site that once contained stelae (Roman Piña Chan 1967:83). One of these monuments includes the Long Count dates of 9.12.13.0.0 10 Ahau 3 Zotz (A.D. 685) and 10.0.0.0.0 7 Ahau 18 Zip (A.D. 840). Another Late Classic site is located at Chuctiepa’ (Cutiepa) some 26 km south west of Jolja’ (Blom and La Farge 1926-27:215). It contained an eroded hieroglyphic altar and a stela that is in the round style found at both Toniná and Palenque.

A preliminary survey of the Tumbalá, Tila and Yajalón regions was conducted by Carlos Navarrete, Eduardo Martínez and Adolfo Muñoz in the early 1970s but their data have not been published. It is known that they visited both Jolja’ and another cave near the village of Yaleltsemen, which is located on a mountain at the southern extreme of the Yajalón valley. Yaleltsemen Cave contains a Late Classic hieroglyphic text and a painting of a young lord (Thompson 1975; Becquelin and Baudez 1982:2:601; Stone 1995:91). A place name in the Yaleltsemen text matches one found at Jolja’ (David Stuart, personal communication 2000).

It is noted in the 1939 Atlas of Chiapas and the 1967 Atlas Arqueológico de la República Mexicana (Roman Piña Chan 1967:58) that a cave near the community of El Porvenir contained pre-Columbian pottery and human skulls. El Porvenir is approximately 1.5 km higher up the mountain from Jolja’. Although the project has yet to visit this cave, Dr. Eduardo Escalona Luna, who was the resident medical doctor at El Porvenir at the time of our field work, informed us that El Porvenir residents still perform rituals there. In 2001, he attended such a ritual on the Day of the Cross (May 3).

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