Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-jn8rn Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-23T05:31:05.690Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Early Maya ceremonial at Cuello, Belize

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2015

Norman Hammond
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

The formative period of Maya civilization has been the subject of recent attention, both in discussion (e.g. Adams, 1977) and in excavation; several projects have been established specifically to investigate the processes that led to the Classic Maya florescence in the first millennium AD. Among these has been the Cuello Project, a joint venture of the British Museum, the National Geographic Society and Rutgers University; this article summarizes the results of the third and final season of the project’s excavations at Cuello, Belize (Fig. I), which took place from January to March, 1980. The terminology for excavated features, structures etc. is detailed in Hammond (1978).

The site was discovered during extensive surveys in 1973–4 (Hammond, 1974, Fig. I), and its potential for the study of the Preclassic or Formative period which preceded the rise of Classic Maya civilization led to a test excavation in 1975. The sequence of building levels and pottery preserved by the growth of Platform 34, a large flat construction with a small superincumbent pyramid (Str. 35) (PL. XXVIa), lying to the southwest of the main part of the site (Donaghey, et al., 1976, Fig. 2), showed that the uppermost floors on the platform had been laid in the Late Formative (conventionally 300 BC–AD 250 ), over structures of the Middle Formative (1000–300 BC). Below these were earlier deposits associated with pottery of pre-Middle Formative date which was assigned to the Early Formative (2000–1000 BC).

Type
Articles
Information
Antiquity , Volume 54 , Issue 212 , November 1980 , pp. 176 - 190
Copyright
Copyright © Antiquity Publications Ltd 1980

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Adams, R.E.W. (ed.), 1977. The Origins of Maya Civilization (Albuquerque).Google Scholar
Donaghey, S., Pring, D., Wilk, R., Saul, F.P., Feldman, L.H. & Hammond, N., 1976. Excavations at Cuello, 1976, in (ed.) Hammond, N., Archaeology in Northern Belize: Cambridge University Corozal Project 1976 Interim Report (Cambridge), 6–59.Google Scholar
Hammond, N. 1974. Preclassic to Postclassic in northern Belize, Antiquity, XLVIII, 177–89.Google Scholar
Hammond, N. 1977. The Early Formative in the Maya Lowlands, in (ed.) Hammond, N., Social Process in Maya Pre history (London), 77–101.Google Scholar
Hammond, N. 1978. (ed.) National Geographic Society-British Museum-Rutgers University Cuello Project 1978 Interim Report, Publication No. 1, Archaeological Research Program, Rutgers University (New Brunswick).Google Scholar
Hammond, N. 1980. Cuello, 1979: A summary of the season, Belizean Studies, Vol. 8, No. 3, 33–44.Google Scholar
Hammond, N., Pring, D., Berger, R., Switsur, V.R. & Ward, A.P., 1976. Radiocarbon chronology for early Maya occupation at Cuello, Belize, Nature, Vol. 260, 579–81.Google Scholar
Hammond, N., Donaghey, S., Berger, R., Atley, S.De, Switsur, v.R. & Ward, A.p., 1977. Maya Formative phase radiocarbon dates from Belize, Nature, Vol. 267, 608–10.Google Scholar
Hammond, N. Pring, D., Wilk, R., Donaghey, S., Wing, E.S., Miller, A.V., Saul, F.P. & Feldman, L.H., 1979. The Earliest Lowland Maya? Definition of the Swasey Phase, American Antiquity, XLIV, 92–110.Google Scholar
Miksicek, C, Bird, R.B., Pickersgill, B., Donaghey, S., Cartwright, J. & Hammond, N.. (In press). Early Maya Lowland Maize from Cuello, Belize, Nature, forthcoming.Google Scholar
Puleston, D.E., 1971. An experimental approach to the function of Classic Maya Chultuns, American Antiquity, xxxvi, 322–35.Google Scholar
Reina, R.E. & Hill II, R.M., 1980. Lowland Maya subsistence: notes from history and ethnography, American Antiquity, XLV, 74–9.Google Scholar
Willey, G.R., 1966. An introduction to American archaeology, Vol. I: North and Middle America (Englewood Cliffs, N. J.).Google Scholar