First South-East Street, no number
Santo Domingo neighborhood, Centro neighborhood
Zip Code 30000, Comitán, Chiapas, Mexico
Shows the development of the Maya peoples that flourished in the highlands of Chiapas up to their peak in Chincultic and Tenam Puente. Presents a valuable collection of finds from this latter site in stone, bone, alabaster and shell.
The museum tells the pre-Hispanic history of the Chiapas highlands region. It opened in 1993 and it shares a space with the library of a building dating to 1944, whose porch is designed in a provincial version of Art Deco. The porticoed courtyard inside has a bust of the musician Esteban Alfonso García. The museum has one temporary and two permanent galleries. The displays cover: hunter-gatherer groups; early settlement, ceramics and the first hierarchical societies; the peak of Mayan culture and the consolidation of the great trading routes controlled by the city states, most notably Chinkultic and Tenam Puente; the development of the great centers during the Postclassic (900-1520) and the materials found at the excavations at Tenam Puente during the 1990s. The principal exhibits are stone, bone, alabaster and shell artifacts.
