Hundreds of Mayan artifacts found in U.S. couple’s Guatemala home 

Guatemalan authorities found over 1,200 Mayan artifacts at the house of two U.S. citizens in the country after they were accused of smuggling archaeological pieces, authorities said on Thursday. 

On Wednesday, authorities found 722 large archaeological pieces and 500 smaller ones in the home of Allison Jolluck and Giorgio Salvidor Rossilli in Antigua Guatemala. Some of the pieces included items made of jade and basalt.

The couple was being investigated for crimes against Guatemala’s cultural heritage after they were detained twice earlier this week for attempting to smuggle pre-hispanic artifacts. 

The couple was arrested last Tuesday after they were caught attempting to smuggle 166 pre-Hispanic artifacts in their vehicle. They were released after paying a 50,000 quetzal ($6,400) bail each on Tuesday, under the condition that they did not leave the country. 

Jolluck was also detained last week after trying to fly out of the country with two Mayan stone carvings made between 600 and 900 A.D.

The couple has argued that they thought the pieces they were caught with were cheap reproductions of original ones, prosecutor Jorge Alberto de Leon said. 

“They argued that, because they are foreigners, they cannot tell one piece from another,” de León said. “They told the judge that because they were pieces of stone they had seen sold at the markets, they never imagined that they were ancient archeological pieces.”

Prosecutors said that the raid of the couple’s home and the historical pieces found “represents a tough blow to a presumed ring dedicated to illegally trafficking cultural goods.”

Guatemalan public prosecutors said the couple could evade criminal proceedings in the Central American country because they are U.S. nationals. However, the evidence collected after the raid of their Antigua house was an important step to continue with the proceedings. 

The artifacts recovered were handed over to the culture ministry to be identified and analyzed, police said.