Ph.D. Candidate Jacob Welch’s collaborative restoration with Mexico’s National Conservation of Cultural Patrimony

April 13, 2021

Mexico’s Coordinación Nacional de Conservación del Patrimonio Cultural (CNCPC) recently published a bulletin (also reviewed in the Smithsonian Magazine)  highlighting the conservation of a “human-sized” stucco sculpture first identified and researched by graduate student Jacob Welch. The ancient Maya modeled this sculpture of a deity portrait onto the façade of a Late Preclassic (300 BCE-250 CE) structure, and conservation of the sculpture and the adjacent staircase occurred alongside Welch’s excavations. Welch later collaborated with the CNCPC led conservation project in 2019 led by Dr. Alejandra Alonso Olvera and implemented by María Teresa Ramírez Miranda, which prepared the sculpture for an indefinite reburial.