SUMMARY

Settlement and ceramic data from the northeastern Belize zone of coastlines, lagoons, swamps, rivers, and fertile agricultural lands indicate that occupants of this region thrived during the Terminal Classic. Their economy and political ideology were oriented toward local and maritime interaction. The geographically intermediate position of the northeastern area of Belize between the southern interior and northern Yucatan placed its inhabitants in an advantageous position to capitalize on Caribbean trading initiated by Chichen Itza’s empire. Settlements here experienced a dynamic transition and likely found advantages in the collapse of interior core centers and their affiliated Late Classic polities in northeastern Belize.

Survey data suggest that population levels at a. d. 800 exceed those documented for earlier times in some areas of the southern lowlands, followed shortly by a precipitous fall at some inland sites that were densely settled in the Classic period (Rice and Culbert 1990: 24; Fry 1990: Figure 14.2; Turner II 1990: Figure 15.1; Santley 1990: Figures 16.2, 16.3). Collapsing inland Classic-period settlements were most affected by their ties to Peten core political economies. Occupants of these settlements may have migrated to coastal or riverine locations, along with other refugees from urban centers in the interior core. Terminal Classic settlement in rural portions of Peten (A. Chase 1979; Willey 1986: 21) and in Belize at sites like Pulltrouser Swamp and Barton Ramie does not appear as severely impacted by the Peten collapse, and this suggests to Fry (1990: 295) that the economy of Belize was not as intimately tied to Peten by this period. Our research supports this interpretation and that of David Pendergast (1986a), who suggests that the Classic-period center of Lamanai thrived into the Postclassic period through reorienting its political and economic affiliations toward northern Yucatan. Northeastern Belize communities that we have investigated seem to have embraced this strategy. These Terminal Classic adaptations set the stage for burgeoning Postclassic populations at inland lagoon sites like Laguna de On and Caye Coco that were linked to a continued flourishing maritime mercantile economy. Some disjuncture is observed on the Belize coast, in which settlement during the Postclassic period is diminished at sites like NRL.

The Belize zone has been characterized as the periphery or “buffer zone” by Rathje (1971, 1972, 1973) during the Formative and Classic periods. This characterization is based on the relatively reduced scale of its architectural monuments, the comparatively low number of hieroglyphic texts, and the possession of lesser quantities of elite craft items compared to the Peten core of southern lowlands Maya society. Buffer zone advantages included the rich resources and proximity to coastal networks of exchange. During the Terminal Classic period, this relative core-periphery relationship broke down. The eastern riverine and coastal lowlands of Belize and southern Quintana Roo became a hub for settlement and trade, and this area was the home of thriving local populations as well as probable migrants.

While few centralizing political activities are evident in northeastern Belize during the Terminal Classic, the dispersed, decentralized, and semiautonomous communities of this region were contemporary with the powerful core city of Chichen Itza (Kepecs et al. 1994), and the effects of this primate city on the Terminal Classic Maya world have been partly considered in this chapter. Settlement data indicate the presence of many affluent hamlets and villages and relatively small-scale political centers in northeastern Belize during the Terminal Classic period (Pendergast 1985; Sidrys 1983; Walker 1990). Producers at these communities flourished under these conditions, and a diverse range of products from northeastern Belize were probably destined for local as well as far-flung exchange spheres around the Yucatan peninsula. A long-term amplification of these patterns is observed at Postclassic sites of this area that likely derives from the outwardlooking exchange networks established during the Terminal Classic period by innovators and opportunists who occupied sites like NRL, Saktunja, Laguna de On, and Progresso Lagoon. These Terminal Classic populations seem to have managed, at some sites, to turn the Classic-period collapse into an opportunity to build a new Maya world.