Ancient Maya Traders of Ambergris Caye

Chac Balam

residences were constructed along the water's edge. These Terminal Classic people may have continued to use San Juan as a trade point, but we cannot be sure. Centuries later San Juan was visited by both Spanish and British sailors, as evidenced by the historic bottles and coins found there. Chac Balam '----nl _ ~Chac Balam was another important Maya community of the Late and Terminal Classic periods. The site is located between San Juan and the Bacalar Chico canal with a man made harbor dug to it. The site itself is rather small, covering an area of about 150 meters by 50 meters. The central portion of Chac Balam is a formal plaza about 25 meters square with buildings arranged around it on platforms which vary in height from three to six meters tall. Such platforms on Ambergris are not usually built of stone, but of marl, a clay that results from limestone crumbling into small clay particles. At Chac Balam, unlike most other sites, the marl platforms were faced with cut limestone to produce a facade similar to mainland architecture. On top ofthese platforms would have been pole and thatch houses. Chac Balam yielded an artifact inventory similar to San Juan's. Polychrome pottery from the mainland and trade goods from the north and south were recovered as well as artifacts of obsidian, basalt, slate and green-stones such as jade. To bury one important adult male, a new addition was built on one of the platforms on top ofthe body. The man was interred with a set of jade earspools, a bone bloodletting tool and receptacle, and a fluted poly29 30 chrome vessel probably made at AItun Ha. Underneath the burial was a cache that included a finely made black plate and two trickle-ware plates imported from the north. The bloodletting tool and blood receptacle were especially interesting as bloodletting was a ritual of the Maya elite. The evidence of such a ritual associated with this burial indicates that this man may have been the ruler of Chac Balam. After the main occupation ofChac Balam, perhaps even after the site had been abandoned, a large number of very shallow burials were placed at the site. It is possible that Chac Balam was the ancestral home of people who at that time lived elsewhere and who returned to inter their dead. Another kind of artifact found at Chac Balam and many other coastal sites, including Ek Luum, San Juan and Marco Gonzalez, is a pottery type named Coconut Walk Unslipped. Coconut Walk apparently was only made as very thin, shallow dishes about 40-50 ems in diameter. According to Elizabeth Graham and David Pendergast these were used for making salt by evaporating sea water. At Chac Balam, two plaster altars were excavated which were covered with Coconut Walk sherds. Also, Mound 1 at Ek Luum was a ritual location or temple of some sort. Enormous numbers of Coconut Walk sherds were also found there. With Coconut Walk found in such ritual contexts at Chac Balam and Ek Luum, we see reason to think that an alternative use for this pottery must exist. Finally, at least one lagoon on northern Ambergris, near San Juan and Chac Balam, produced salt well into this century. Since then, rising sea levels have made that lagoon no longer exploitable. It seems unlikely that, with a large local salt source nearby, the-residents ofthese sites would devote much energy to making salt by evaporating sea water. David Glassman has examined the skeletal remains of the burials from San Juan and Chac Balam. They appear to have had some of the problems shared by Mayas and other pre-industrial societies such as high infant mortality. However, they clearly were a very healthy population with very good nutrition and relatively little disease. In general, the Late Classic sites on the west, or leeward, side of Ambergris Caye give us the impression of a successful and wealthy society. Trade goods from allover the Maya world were available to these people as were the easily accessible maritime resources for food. No doubt they h d · bi d d fl" - ------1-- /'?; 0. Z ~'/0/ a an enVla e stan ar 0 IVlng. ".;t,.&a, 0.. ,.,'.~.~"b/./ .. ,./,'..'l:h.'./' .....~.~...,~//,.~~//.:,;;/;/ :I:; ~/ , c~,~:cL_~-;"O'F ""' _. j.,' : : i; ~'..:,((Jj...~~ ~ \'-, :_.,/" ";~~)~;~.J On the front side of the island, things were much ., different. Many small sites were found which do not...