Of Watery Rocks and Slumbering Crocs: A reappraisal of the Middle Preclassic at Altun Ha and Lamanai

Summary

A half-century of targeted excavations in northern Belize has generated one of the most detailed databases of Middle Preclassic (900 – 350 B.C.) settlement in the Maya Lowlands. Information from sites such as Cuello, K’axob, and Colha has provided the basis for economic and political models of Preclassic development in northern Belize and the eastern Maya Lowlands in general. The comparatively modest Classic-period architecture at these sites permitted extensive exposures of early occupations, which pose logistical problems at larger urban centers like Lamanai and Altun Ha. Middle Preclassic occupations at large centers in northern Belize remain poorly understood and understudied, despite the potential insights they may offer into the emergence of social complexity and the development of political hierarchy in the area. In this paper we review extant and unpublished data from Lamanai and Altun Ha to compare aspects of Middle Preclassic architecture, material culture, and burial practices. We evaluate how this evidence relates to existing models of early community development in northern Belize, and use these data to explore the nature of interaction networks that linked these communities to other Middle Preclassic settlements within and beyond the surrounding area.

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This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 80th Annual Meeting, San Francisco, CA (2015)   •
• Here be Dragons: Archaeology in North Central Belize.

Keywords

Spatial Coverage