Rehabilitating El Pozito, Northern Belize: a Classic Maya town and its socioeconomic history as reflected in ceramics and architecture

Abstract

Abstract This article revisits a long-neglected site in Northern Belize, the Classic Maya settlement of El Pozito, located in the Orange Walk District. Investigations led by Mary Neivens and Dennis Puleston explored the site between 1974 and 1976, documenting its architecture and recovering a substantial quantity of artifacts. Afterward, events conspired to bring these investigations to a close, leaving the site in a half-century scholarly limbo. The research here seeks to rectify this. Combining extant field notes with sporadic publications and recently conducted ceramic analysis, the authors reconstructed El Pozito's sequence of construction, occupation, and usage over 20 centuries. This new research revealed a settlement of surprising complexity, combining aspects of urban functionality amid a landscape of rural complexity. This article argues that the best way to understand such complexity is through the conceptual lens of a “town.” Neither a city nor a dispersed rural settlement, El Pozito functioned as a critical node that connected local, agrarian Maya with each other as well as the whole of the Classic Maya world. In this way, the research here seeks to rehabilitate this site, rescue it from its scholarly limbo, and restore its place in understanding the complex pre-Columbian landscapes of Northern Belize.