Welcome to El Gigante
El Gigante is a large rock shelter between Marcala and La Esperanza in western Honduras. Doctoral candidate Timothy Scheffler is the archaeologist investigating this site under the sponsorship of the Instituto Hondureño de Antropología e Historia and Penn State University.
Map
showing location of El Gigante. This is a rather large rock
shelter, but rumors are that large bones were found in this rock shelter, bones
that local residents thought were the bones of a large human, a giant.
Perhaps we shall never know for certain.
The interior of this rock shelter is very dry, an excellent environment for preservation of items of interest to archaeologists. Timothy will no doubt have some exciting discoveries to report once he has had time to study results of his 2000 field season's excavation.
View from southeast of Estanzuela. El Gigante is in the rock face, center far right of this photo.
The center of this blown up section of the previous photo.
El Gigante is up ahead. The rock is ash-flow
tuffs of the Padre
Miguel group.
Ángel,
Timothy and Santiago. Ángel lives in Estanzuela and guards the
site. There is no evidence of anything of value to "art
collectors" here, but high school students on an outing added graffiti to
rock art areas. ¡Qúe mala impresión!
Filling in the excavation raises a lot of dust.
Composite of 3 wide angle shots shows main chamber of El Gigante.
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