Coastal Pottery Exchange in Belize, the Maya World, and Beyond

Summary

This is an abstract from the "The Maritime Maya: Current Archaeology of Coastal Yucatan, Mexico, and Belize" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Along with chronology, one of the key goals of ancient Maya pottery analysis is to better understand trade and stylistic interaction among people in various parts of the Maya world and beyond. In this paper I review how some of the styles and types of pottery that are evidence for coastal trade in Maya prehistory, with a focus on where I work: Belize. The earliest pottery made by the Maya provides evidence of trade and stylistic interaction, but coastal trade is more obvious in pottery in the Terminal Classic and Postclassic periods. I discuss some of the pottery styles and types related to the northern Maya lowlands that become much more common at sites in Belize at that time and offer explanations for this interaction. I also describe rarer pottery evidence for longer-distance coastal exchange with the Caribbean and lower Central America.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 90th Annual Meeting, Denver, CO (2025)   •
• The Maritime Maya: Current Archaeology of Coastal Yucatan, Mexico, and Belize

Keywords

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 50395