Lentz will present his research, The Lost World of the Zapotitan Valley: Cerén and its Paleoecological Context, at the

78th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology

, held April 3-7 in Honolulu. More than 3,000 scientists from around the world attend the event to learn about research covering a broad range of topics and time periods.

THE SCIENTIFIC GIFTS OF VOLCANIC CATACLYSM

Cerén, now a UNESCO World Heritage Site known as

Joya de Cerén

, was discovered in El Salvador in the late 1970s when a governmental construction project unearthed what turned out to be ancient ceramic pottery and other clay structures. The initial archaeological excavation was directed by Payson Sheets, a faculty member at the University of Colorado and a friend of Lentz.

Cerén is sometimes called the Pompeii of Central America, and much like that doomed ancient Roman city, the wreckage of Cerén was remarkably well preserved by its volcanic burial shroud. So that bad news for the Cerén villagers became good news for archaeologists centuries later.

What this meant for me, is this site had all these plant remains lying on the ground, Lentz says. Not only do we find these plant remains well preserved, but we find them where the people left them more than a thousand years ago, and that is really extraordinary.

Lentz specializes in paleoethnobotany and oftentimes in his work  including at other Maya sites  hes left to interpret complex meaning from splinters of charred wood and hard nut fragments. The Mayas tropical environment, which isnt conducive to preserving plant remains, doesnt make things any easier.