The San Pedro Site: Late Postclassic & Historic Occupation on Ambergris Caye, Belize
Presentation
Overview
Overview
Description
The San Pedro site is one of roughly two dozen registered archaeological sites on Belize’s largest island, Ambergris Caye. Several field seasons of fieldwork have provided information on one of the few Late Postclassic period Maya occupations on Belize’s hundreds of offshore cayes. The remains of domestic structures and the Maya who lived in them have been revealed, along with sub-floor features and a substantial collection of Maya material culture from the final centuries before Spanish contact. The San Pedro site has also provided a glimpse of what life on the island was like for the mid to late 19th Century Caste War refugees who eventually founded a small fishing village that eventually became San Pedro Town. Historical records relate that these refugees arrived on the island at different times in the mid to late 19th Century. One group fled from an army of Santa Cruz Maya insurgents who had come to sack the town of Bacalar in southern Quintana Roo, while another group probably originated from a cluster of small fishing hamlets around the coastal site of Tulum. The archaeological record reveals that the 19th Century occupants of the small fishing village that later became a town were well connected to the emerging global economy. Dense historic midden deposits reveal a wide variety of 19th and early 20th Century ceramic and glass wares, metal objects, faunal remains, and other historic artifacts.
