MERIDA.- Archaeologists working along the Maya Train Freight project have uncovered and preserved a previously unknown Maya settlement in Yucat醤, offering a rare look at the lives of people who lived far from the palaces and ceremonial centers that usually dominate the archaeological record.

The site, known as K’oxol Ja’ II, was discovered in mid-2025 during salvage archaeology at the Progreso Multimodal Terminal, a component of the Maya Train Freight project. Mexico’s National Institute of Anthropology and History, or INAH, has now completed fieldwork there and established a protection zone designed to preserve the settlement’s 21 structures for future study.

Ceramic evidence suggests K’oxol Ja’ II was occupied over a long span, from around 400 BC to AD 900, covering the regional Preclassic through the Late Classic period.

Unlike the monumental architecture associated with Maya rulers and priests, K’oxol Ja’ II appears to have been primarily residential. Spread across approximately 2,257 square meters, the site contains building foundations and other architectural remains associated with ancient homes, along with water features and ritual deposits.

For researchers, that makes the settlement especially valuable.

Much of what is popularly known about the ancient Maya comes from large ceremonial centers, monumental inscriptions and elite architecture. K’oxol Ja’ II instead preserves traces of everyday life — the houses people occupied, the water they managed and the objects they used.





Mexico’s Secretary of Culture, Claudia Curiel de Icaza, said the discovery demonstrates how archaeological salvage can turn major infrastructure projects into opportunities for research and preservation.

She noted that INAH’s work made it possible not only to study a previously unknown settlement, but also to leave its 21 structures in place so future archaeologists can return to them.

One of the most revealing aspects of the site is its relationship with water.

David Medina Arona, field director at the Progreso terminal, said the site’s Maya name combines k’ oxol, meaning mosquito, and ja’, meaning water — roughly “water of the mosquitoes.”

The name is particularly fitting given the settlement’s apparent dependence on nearby water sources. Archaeologists found evidence that residents modified access to the site’s main cenote by constructing a curb around its opening, probably to regulate access and make the water easier to use.

The presence of permanent and seasonal water sources suggests that water management may have played an important role in the life of the settlement.

Researchers believe K’oxol Ja’ II may have occupied an intermediate position within the region’s settlement network. Its larger political or administrative center may have been El Chiik, another archaeological site located to the northwest and also discovered during salvage work connected to the Maya Train Freight project.

The excavation also produced some unexpected absences.

Very little pottery was recovered, leading archaeologists to suggest that many of the objects used in daily life may have been made from organic materials that did not survive. No human burials were found in the excavated areas either.

Medina Arona said the coastal geology may help explain that absence. Houses at the settlement appear to have been built almost directly on bedrock, with relatively shallow construction fills. That would have made it difficult to bury individuals beneath domestic floors, a practice documented at other Maya sites.

Fieldwork has now ended, but research continues in the laboratory. Specialists are studying ceramics, stone tools, sediments and other materials recovered during the project.

Two ritual offerings were found and removed for safekeeping. Both appear to have been placed as foundation consecrations, suggesting that even modest domestic structures were embedded in ritual practices.

The 21 structures themselves have been cleaned and their walls stabilized. Protective fencing has also been installed around the site.

INAH and Mexico’s Ministry of National Defense, which is responsible for construction of the Progreso Multimodal Terminal, agreed to establish a formal protection zone so that K’oxol Ja’ II can remain preserved in situ rather than being dismantled or relocated.

For Medina Arona, the significance of the site lies precisely in its modest character.

“These are sites that complete the picture of the Maya people,” he said, noting that attention often goes to great pyramids and urban centers while the lives of ordinary people remain less visible.

K’oxol Ja’ II offers another kind of archaeological record — one built from house foundations, water management, fragments of material culture and small ritual deposits.

It is, in other words, a reminder that the history of the Maya was not written only in stone monuments and royal inscriptions. Much of it survives in the quieter traces of people who left no texts behind, but whose lives can still be reconstructed through the archaeology of the everyday.