Perspectives on the Ancient Maya of Chetumal Bay

The ancient Maya invested massive amounts of labor on road systems (sacbeob) for communication and trade, yet Chetumal Bay, situated between modern day Quintana Roo, Mexico, and Corozal District, Belize, provided an economical alternative: an extensive network of riverine and maritime waterways to journey to the edges of Mayab and beyond. This volume reports recent work at sites important to Maya archaeology in the region that depended on waterborne exchange for their livelihood, including Cerro Maya (Cerros), Oxtankah, and Santa Rita Corozal. Archaeological researchers in this volume describe how life on the bay influenced their data sets. It is clear the ancient Maya knew Chetumal Bay was a central place, the nexus of a larger system of waterways that made their livelihoods possible. The contributing authors make the case that the river system affected all aspects of Maya culture, including settlement, food production, special and exotic goods production and use, political relationships, and social organization. Besides trade in products imported from elsewhere, the region was widely known for its high-quality local agricultural produce, including chocolate, achiote, vanilla, tropical fruits, honey, and wax as well as marine resources such as salt, fish, and shell products. Evidence outlined here suggests the Maya living on the fringes of the bay perceived the entire bay as a single resource procurement zone. Waterborne trade brought the world to them, providing them a wider horizon than would have been available to inland cities dependent only on sacbeob for news of the world.