First plan
Belmopan has officially been capital of the country since 1970 after Belize City was wrecked by a hurricane. [1] However, Belize City was quickly restored, and most of the government departments remained there. [2] The Catalan-born Joan Duran raised the question of building a national museum in Belmopan with the minister of education a week after Belize gained independence in 1981. He was encouraged by the People's United Party government to develop the concept with Mexican and Cuban colleagues. The museum was to be primarily devoted to audio-visual displays while a separate building would house the collection. The project was abandoned in 1984 when the People's United Party lost the election.
During the administration of the United Democratic Party from 1984 to 1989 the task of planning for a national museum and botanical garden was given to a British consulting firm. A Creole archaeologist was trained in London to be the museum's future director, and was made head of the department of museums. The People's United Party regained office in the 1989 election, and Duran was again placed in charge of planning for the new Museum of Belize, while Duran's wife was put in charge of the state's archaeological collection.
The museum building for the new Museum of Belize in Belmopan, designed by Mexican architects, was to have covered 4,500 metres (14,800 ft) in a 50 acres (20 ha) park. It was to have been a 2-story building around a glass-roofed patio, connected to an outdoor amphitheatre with 600 seats. The museum would have two main exhibit spaces on the ground floor, called "lungs", one about society and the other about the environment. Under the dome it would hold the most traditional exhibit, the Ancient Maya Gallery, planned by specialists from the Royal Ontario Museum. The exhibit would have a glass floor over a reconstruction of a half-excavated Mayan tomb. In June 1993 the plans for the museum were settled and construction of the museum building had begun. It was to be the largest building in the country, equipped with the latest technology to showcase Belize. A national election defeated the government and the plans were abandoned.
Institute of Archaeology collection
The Belize Department of Archaeology was created in 1957 with a staff of one person. As of 1996 the Belmopan Vault in the Department of Archaeology held some of the archaeological remains of the country. Most of the display consisted of ceramic vessels from across Belize. They were packed tightly and did not have labels. A group of 24 vases salvaged in 1973 from the Hokeb Ha cave in Toledo, southern Belize, was the most interesting part of the collection. At that time the vault was open in the afternoon on Monday, Wednesday and Friday by prior appointment. A 1997 guide said that the Archaeology Vault in Belmopan, which had been open for visitors to see a large collection of Mayan artifacts, had been closed for lack of funding. The Department of Archaeology had absorbed the Department of Museums, and plans to replace the Archaeology Vault with a National Museum of Belize were uncertain. The guide noted rumors that some of the valuable artifacts might have been sold abroad, and their absence from the collection would be embarrassing.
In August 2003 the National Institute of Culture and History (NICH) was created, and the former Department of Archaeology became the Institute of Archaeology within the NICH. The Institute of Archaeology manages all of Belize's archaeological and cultural resources. It is located in the Archaeology Museum and Research Centre, Culvert Road, Belmopan. As of 2004 the Institute of Archaeology gave tours of their collection in Belmopan. The institute also had an impressive research library. The Archaeology Museum contains a selection of artifacts and relics from the past. Most of the building is used for research and to store the library collections, rather than exhibiting objects. However, the museum presents an interesting collection of pottery and tools.
Belmopan is the capital city of Belize. Its population in 2010 was 16,451. In addition to being the smallest capital city in the continental Americas by population, Belmopan is the third-largest settlement in Belize, behind Belize City and San Ignacio. Founded as a planned community in 1970, Belmopan is one of the newest national capital cities in the world. Since 2000, Belmopan has been one of two settlements in Belize to hold official city status, along with Belize City.
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Elizabeth Graham is a professor of Mesoamerican Archaeology at UCL. She has worked, for decades, on the Maya civilization, both in prehispanic and colonial times, specifically in Belize. She has recently turned her attention to Maya Dark Earths, and conducts pioneering work in the maya region as dark earths have mostly been studied in the Amazonia. She particularly focuses on how human occupation influences soil formation and production.
