Cerro Palenque

Archaeologists cannot determine how the people who lived at Cerro Palenque would have identified themselves since unlike the Maya of Copan and far western Honduras, they left no writing.

The site today is found on top of the hill known as Cerro Palenque (232 meters above sea level), above the town of Santiago, near the confluence of the Ulua, Humuya (Comayagua) and Blanco rivers, and on several hilltops to the north.

Because of its location where the major rivers enter the valley from the south and southwest, Cerro Palenque was in a strategic position where it could have mediated access from the interior of the country to goods produced along the coast, and coming in trade with Belize and Yucatan.

The valley is formed by the Ulúa, Comayagua, and Chamelecón rivers, which provided natural transport routes into the rest of present Honduras as well as Central America.

The valley was agriculturally fertile, and had access through nearby supplies or long distance exchange to luxury goods like spondylus and other marine shells, copper (in the postClassic), feathers (especially quetzal), obsidian, jade, and turquoise.

Doris Stone included her analysis of the materials Popenoe excavated in her Archaeology of the North Coast of Honduras (1941) In 1979, John S. Henderson began a project authorized by the Honduran Institute of Anthropology and History (Instituto Hondureño de Antropología e Historia - IHAH) to survey and test more than 2400 square kilometers of the valley, to record all of the archaeological sites within it, and perform a series of excavations to understand the chronology of settlement (who lived where, when).

The earliest settlement of this city, in the site called CR-44, atop Cerro Palenque itself, is Late Classic (500-850 AD).

The valley itself remains an important resource area for the Maya of Yucatan and Belize for chocolate, feathers, and honey.