Balamku

Balamku is a small Maya archaeological site located in the Mexican state of Campeche, within the Petén Basin. It features elaborate plaster facades dating to the Early Classic period. It has one of the largest surviving stucco friezes in the Maya world. Balamku was first occupied from around 300 BC. Its most important buildings date from AD 300–600. The most outstanding discovery so far at Balamku is an almost intact 16.8-metre (55 ft) long painted stucco frieze dating from AD 550–650.

Balamku is located 50 kilometres (31 mi) north of the ruins of the great Maya city of Calakmul, approximately the same distance west of Becan, 60 kilometres (37 mi) west of Xpujil and 12 kilometres (7.5 mi) southeast of the ruins of Nadzca'an. The ruins lie within an area referred to by archaeologists as the Campeche Petén, upon a poorly drained karstic plateau. The ruins are bordered on the east and west sides by seasonal swampland, known as bajos. The ruins are 3 kilometres (1.9 mi) north of the highway running from Chetumal to Escárcega, near the Conhuas ejido.

The ruins fall within a zone that is poorly understood archaeology, to the west of the Río Bec stylistic region; the architectural style of Balamku has more in common with the Petén tradition to the south, although Río Bec influences are also evident.

Balamku was occupied from about 300 BC, in the Late Preclassic, through to the Terminal Classic period, between 800 and 1000 AD. The earliest architecture in the site is found in the Central and South Groups, dating to the Late Preclassic to Early Classic transition.

The ruins were discovered in 1990 by Mexican archaeologist Florentino García Cruz in the company of INAH custodians, when they investigated a report of archaeological looting; they found a looters' trench that had partly uncovered a painted stucco frieze that had originally formed part of the upper facade of an Early Classic building. After initial rescue work, the site was formally excavated in 1994 to 1995 by a team headed by Mexican archaeologist Ramón Carrasco and including two French archaeologists, Claude Baudez and Jean Pierre Courau. Carrasco and his Mexican team concentrated on the Central Group while the French archaeologists investigated the South Group.

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