with obsidian-tipped spears and other weapons. More sacrificial victims were discovered within the Pyramid of the Sun by another team. But these finds raised as many questions as they answered about the culture of Teotihuacan.

Then, last year, Sugiyama and Cabrera decided to tackle the Pyramid of the Moon. Like most Mesoamerican pyramids, this one was built like an onion. Explains Cowgill: "They would build a small pyramid, then build a larger one over it and then build a third one after that." As a result, the interior is almost solid dirt and rubble, with no distinct passageways. This makes the going slow and expensive. It took the archaeologists 3½ months to reach the burial chamber, which is about 90 ft. inside the pyramid.

It was worth the trouble. "No one has ever found a burial of this richness intact at Teotihuacan before," says Cowgill. Among the booty: two 1½-ft.-high greenstone statuettes; a couple of larger human figurines fashioned from obsidian; at least 15 doubleedged obsidian knives similar to those used in sacrifices; shell pendants in the form of human teeth; pyrite disks (which served as mirrors); the skeletons of two young felines (possibly jaguars) in the remnants of a wooden cage; and the scat-'q tered bones of at least seven large birds. z@ But it's the human bones that have" Spence's attention. Once they have been,, fully extricated, he will try to determine z, the individual's age and gender (probably I

male). He'll also look for evidence of dis-@ ease, malnutrition or developmental abnormalities as well as wounds, broken limbs or signs of hard labor and such status symbols as a deliberately shaped head or filed teeth. >@ The absence of lavish body ornaments, the >z' position of the skeleton's hand (which was, belatedly found behind its back, as if the arms had been tied) and the location of the burial chamber all suggest to Sugiyama that the individual was bound and sacrificed. "We thought [the skeleton] might be a ruler or a person of high status, but it may not turn out to be that," he cautions.

In the long run, the scientists say, the individual's social status and the richness of the offerings may not be as important as the burial's age, which places it in a crucial time period only a couple of centuries after the city was founded, "We know almost nothing about Teotihuacdn's early political history, so [this discovery] should shed a lot more light on that," says Cowgill.

But the real key to unraveling the secrets of Teotihuacdn is more digging-a lot more-and Sugiyama's team is still hard at work. Despite this impressive dis covery, says Cowgill, "95% of the city is still unexcavated. We're just scratching the surface." -Reported by Andrea Dorfmanl Now York