The Preclassic community of Cuello, the earliest village site hitherto excavated in the Maya Lowlands, centred on Platform 34, a flat-topped eminence where investigations between 1975 and 1993 documented occupation from at least 1200 BC to c. AD 400 (Hammond 1991; Hammond et al. 1995). Between 1000 and 400 BC the locus was occupied by a courtyard which with successive rebuildings became both larger and more formally organized, domestic activities shifting to the margins and ritual, including ancestor veneration, becoming more important (Hammond & Gerhardt 1990). Around 400 BC the final Middle Preclassic structures on the north, west and south sides of the court were ceremoniously demolished, their faqades hacked off and their superstructures burned. The entire courtyard was filled with rubble prior to the construction of the broad, open Platform 34, which itself underwent successive enlargements over the ensuing seven centuries.