Ancient Maya Trade and Communication as Evidence by Petrographic and Iconographic Analysis of Unit-Stamped Pottery

Summary

The Paynes Creek salt works of southern Belize were a massive industry for the production of salt for trade with inland Maya consumers during the Classic period (A.D. 300-900). The salt workers lived elsewhere, perhaps at the nearby trading port of Wild Cane Cay, which was a large contemporary settlement. The infrastructure of production includes wooden buildings preserved below the sea floor. The majority of artifacts recovered from survey and excavations consist of briquetage—locally-made pottery used to evaporate brine in pots over fires to make salt. A minor component of the ceramic assemblage consists of unit-stamped pottery which has a distribution from the south coast and inland sites of southern Belize, to sites in adjacent Guatemala, including Seibal, Altar de Sacrificios, and sites in the Petexbatun. We discuss the iconographic, spatial, and petrographic evidence of unit-stamped pottery from the Paynes Creek salt works. The compositional characteristics of the pottery are compared with various potential geological sources to help identify where pots were made. In the absence of salt, we use unit-stamped pottery as a proxy for helping to reconstruct the Paynes Creek salt production and identify the inland consumers of this basic biological necessity.

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This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 80th Annual Meeting, San Francisco, CA (2015)   •
• Ports, Trails, and Waterways: Trade and Economy in the Ancient Maya World

Keywords

Spatial Coverage