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Altun Ha is the name given to the ruins of an ancient Maya city in Belize,located in the Belize District about 50 kilometres (31 mi) north of Belize City and about 10 kilometres (6.2 mi) west of the shore of the Caribbean Sea. The site covers an area of about 8 square kilometres (3.1 sq mi).
Lamanai is a Mesoamerican archaeological site,and was once a major city of the Maya civilization,located in the north of Belize,in Orange Walk District. The site's name is pre-Columbian,recorded by early Spanish missionaries,and documented over a millennium earlier in Maya inscriptions as Lam'an'ain. Lamanai is renowned for its exceptionally long occupation spanning three millennia,beginning in the Early Preclassic Maya period and continuing through the Spanish and British Colonial periods,into the 20th century. Unlike most Classic-period sites in the southern Maya lowlands,Lamanai was not abandoned at the end of the 10th century AD.
The Maya ruins of Belize include a number of well-known and historically important pre-Columbian Maya archaeological sites. Belize is considered part of the southern Maya lowlands of the Mesoamerican culture area,and the sites found there were occupied from the Preclassic until and after the arrival of the Spanish in the 16th century.
Sacrifice was a religious activity in Maya culture,involving the killing of humans or animals,or bloodletting by members of the community,in rituals superintended by priests. Sacrifice has been a feature of almost all pre-modern societies at some stage of their development and for broadly the same reason:to propitiate or fulfill a perceived obligation towards the gods.
The emergence of metallurgy in pre-Columbian Mesoamerica occurred relatively late in the region's history,with distinctive works of metal apparent in West Mexico by roughly 800 CE,and perhaps as early as 600 CE. Metallurgical techniques likely diffused northward from regions in Central or South America via maritime trade routes;recipients of these metallurgical technologies apparently exploited a wide range of material,including alloys of copper-silver,copper-arsenic,copper-tin and copper-arsenic-tin.
Tourism in Belize has grown considerably recently,and it is now the second largest industry in the nation. Belizean Prime Minister Dean Barrow has stated his intention to use tourism to combat poverty throughout the country. The growth in tourism has positively affected the agricultural,commercial,and finance industries,as well as the construction industry. The results for Belize's tourism-driven economy have been significant,with the nation welcoming almost one million tourists in a calendar year for the first time in its history in 2012.
The Pre-Columbian Belize history is the period from initial indigenous presence,across millennia,to the first contacts with Europeans - the Pre-Columbian or before Columbus period - that occurred on the region of the Yucatán Peninsula that is present day Belize.
The San Estevan archaeological site is located in northern Belize 1 km from the modern community of San Estevan,Belize. The site is a Maya civilization site occupied during the Formative and Classic eras of Mesoamerican chronology. San Estevan is located on the New River halfway between the sites of Cerros and Lamanai. Beginning in the Late Formative period,San Estevan was a regional political center.
Marco Gonzalez is a Maya archaeological site located near the southern tip of Ambergris Caye off the coast of Belize. It was first recorded in 1984 by Drs. Elizabeth Graham and David M. Pendergast,and was named by them after their local guide.
David Michael Pendergast,is an American archaeologist,and is most famous for his work at Altun Ha and Lamanai,Belize. He received a Bachelor of Arts in Anthropology in 1955 from the University of California,Berkeley,and earned his Ph.D. in 1961 at the University of California,Los Angeles,studying with Clement Meighan. He was later married to Elizabeth Graham,also a Mesoamerican Archaeologist.
La Milpa is an archaeological site and an ancient Maya city within the Three River region of Northwest Belize bordering Mexico and Guatemala. La Milpa is located between the sites of Rio Azul and Lamanai. Currently,La Milpa lies within the nature preserve owned by the Programme for Belize,a non-profit organization. PfB acquired land for the preserve from the Coco-Cola Company,who purchased land in Belize in 1988 with the goals of tearing down the rainforest to create a citrus plantation,however donated the land to Conservation and Management Project in 1990 and 1992. Following Caracol and Lamanai,La Milpa is the third largest site in Belize with the Main Plaza alone covering 18,000 square meters,making it one of the largest in the entire Maya region.
The extensive trade networks of the Ancient Maya contributed largely to the success of their civilization spanning three millennia. Maya royal control and the wide distribution of foreign and domestic commodities for both population sustenance and social affluence are hallmarks of the Maya visible throughout much of the iconography found in the archaeological record. In particular,moderately long-distance trade of foreign commodities from the Caribbean and Gulf Coasts provided the larger inland Maya cities with the resources they needed to sustain settled population levels in the several thousands. Though the ruling class essentially controlled the trade economy,a middle merchant class supervised import and export from cities and trade ports. Not much is known of the Maya merchant class;however,merchants of royal lineage are sometimes represented in the iconography. Notably,a canoe paddle often accompanies the royal merchant depictions,signifying their association with marine resources.
Marilyn Masson is a Maya archaeologist whose research has focused on social transformation and political economy of ancient Mesoamerican cultures in Mexico and Belize. She is a professor of Mesoamerican archaeology at the University at Albany,SUNY. She is a co-director of the PEMY project at the site of Mayapan in the Northern Yucutan Peninsula of Mexico.
The Belize leaf-toed gecko is a species of gecko native to Belize. It is a small,pale,large headed gecko only found on small islands off Belize's coast and was first described by James R. Dixon in 1960. This species is currently classified as "vulnerable" by the IUCN Red List.
Chetumal,or the Province of Chetumal,was a Postclassic Maya state of the Yucatan Peninsula,in the Maya Lowlands.
Dzuluinicob,or the Province of Dzuluinicob or Ts'ulwinikob,was a Postclassic Maya state in the Yucatán Peninsula of the Maya Lowlands.
The 1543–1544 Pachecos entrada was the final military campaign in the Spanish conquest of Yucatán,which brought three Postclassic Maya states and several Amerindian settlements in the southeastern quarter of the Yucatán Peninsula under the jurisdiction of Salamanca de Bacalar,a villa of colonial Yucatán,in New Spain. It is commonly deemed one of bloodiest and cruelest entradas in the peninsula's conquest,resulting in the deaths of hundreds or thousands,and the displacement of tens of thousands,of Maya residents.
The Preclassic or Formative Period of Belizean,Maya,and Mesoamerican history began with the Maya development of ceramics during 2000 BC –900 BC,and ended with the advent of Mayan monumental inscriptions in 250 AD.
References
- 1 2 3 4 5 6 UCL (2019-01-22). "Elizabeth Graham - Professor of Mesoamerican Archaeology". Institute of Archaeology. Archived from the original on 2019-04-26. Retrieved 2021-03-14.
- 1 2 Awe, Jaime J. (2012-09-24). "The Archaeology of Belize in the Twenty-First Century". The Oxford Handbook of Mesoamerican Archaeology. Oxford University Press. p. 72. doi:10.1093/oxfordhb/9780195390933.013.0005. ISBN 978-0195390933.
- ↑ Graham, Elizabeth (1987). "Resource Diversity in Belize and Its Implications for Models of Lowland Trade". American Antiquity. 52 (4): 753–767. doi:10.2307/281383. ISSN 0002-7316. JSTOR 281383. S2CID 161988763.
- ↑ Rosique, Cristina; Macphail, Richard; Crowther, John; Turner, Simon; Stegemann, Julia; Arroyo-Kalin, Manuel; Duncan, Lindsay; Austin, Phillip; Whittet, Richard (2016-12-12). "Past and Future Earth: Archaeology and Soil Studies on Ambergris Caye, Belize". Archaeology International. 19: 97–108. doi: 10.5334/ai.1916 . ISSN 2048-4194.
- ↑ Graham, Elizabeth A., 1949- (2011). Maya Christians and their churches in sixteenth-century Belize. Gainesville, FL: University Press of Florida. ISBN 9780813040721. OCLC 758668809.
{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link) CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link) - ↑ Graham, E.; Pendergast, D. M.; Jones, G. D. (1989-12-08). "On the Fringes of Conquest: Maya-Spanish Contact in Colonial Belize". Science. 246 (4935): 1254–1259. Bibcode:1989Sci...246.1254G. doi:10.1126/science.246.4935.1254. ISSN 0036-8075. PMID 17832220. S2CID 8476626.
- ↑ UCL (2019-01-22). "Elizabeth Graham - Professor of Mesoamerican Archaeology". Institute of Archaeology. Retrieved 2019-04-26.
- ↑ Graham, Elizabeth (2007-01-08). "Maya archaeologist Elizabeth Graham on Apocalypto". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077 . Retrieved 2019-04-26.
- ↑ "Author: Elizabeth Graham". Apollo Magazine. Retrieved 2019-04-26.
- ↑ "Elizabeth Graham". The Conversation. 31 October 2016. Retrieved 2019-04-26.
- ↑ "Editorial Advisory Board". Antiquity. Retrieved 2023-08-14.
- ↑ "Fellows Directory - Society of Antiquaries". www.sal.org.uk. Retrieved 2019-04-26.