El levantamiento topográfico y arquitectónico como fase preliminar a las intervenciones arqueológicas y de restauración sobre patrimonio maya

Abstract

From September 2004 until January 2005, an interdisciplinary, technical team from the Universidad Politécnica de Valencia, has been collecting data, interpreting, and making sketches of the archaeological site La Blanca, in Melchor de Mencos, Peten, Guatemala. This is part of Project La Blanca, a pilot project aimed to join the traditional archaeological and scientific methods with the restoration of cultural heritage with social development. This is done with the purpose of making the population from the surrounding area aware and learn to value the rich cultural heritage that they possess, insisting that through its protection and conservation there is, not only a historical need to recover identity, but also the possibility of social and economic improvement in the immediate area. The first step, before the archaeological work, is the process of graphic lifting in order to get to know better the architectural building, the object of study. A secure and flexible medium was sought for the information and conservation demands of the whole building and its possible restoration. The graphic material achieves two objectives: on the one hand to carry out a planimetric survey of the terrain, as complete and exhaustive as possible, that will allow an interpretation and formulation of hypothesis on the type of buildings that exist there, and on the other, to obtain graphic documentation gathering all data on the architectural elements that are visible today.