habitants abandoned the city they had occupied for almost two millennia.
Modern history
The first published account appeared in 1888, written by Gustav Bruhl. The German ethnologist and naturalist Karl Sapper described Stela 1 in 1894 after he saw it beside the road he was travelling. Max Vollmberg, a German artist, drew Stela 1 and noted some other monuments, which attracted the interest of Walter Lehmann.
In 1902 the eruption of the nearby Santiaguito volcano covered the site in a layer of volcanic ash that varies between 40 and 50 centimetres (16 and 20 in) thick.
Walter Lehmann began the study of the sculptures of Takalik Abaj in the 1920s. In January 1942 J. Eric S. Thompson visited the site with Ralph L. Roys and William Webb on behalf of the Carnegie Institution while undertaking a study of the Pacific Coast, publishing his accounts in 1943. Further investigations were undertaken by Suzanna Miles, Lee Parsons and Edwin M. Shook. Miles bestowed the name Abaj Takalik to the site, which appeared in her contributed chapter in volume 2 of the Handbook of Middle American Indians published 1965. Previously it had been known by various names, including San Isidro Piedra Parada and Santa Margarita, after the names of the plantations in which the site lies, and also by the name of Colomba, a village to the north in the department ofQuetzaltenango.
Excavations at the site in the 1970s were sponsored by the University of California, Berkeley. They began in 1976 and were undertaken by John A. Graham, Robert F. Heizer and Edwin M. Shook. This first season uncovered 40 new monuments, including Stela 5, to add to the dozen or so already known. Excavations by the University of California at Berkeley continued until 1981 and uncovered even more monuments in that time. From 1987 excavations have been continued by the Guatemalan Instituto de Antropología e Historia (IDAEH)
