  Shown within Belize | |
| Location | San Ignacio, Belize, Cayo District,  Belize |
|---|---|
| Region | Cayo District |
| Coordinates | 17°12′05″N 89°0′36″W / 17.20139°N 89.01000°W |
| History | |
| Periods | Preclassic to Postclassic occupation |
| Cultures | Maya |
| Site notes | |
| Archaeologists | Oliver Ricketson, Bullard and Bullard, Belize Valley Archaeological Reconnaissance Project (current) |
| This article is part of a series on the |
| Maya civilization |
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 |
| History |
| Spanish conquest of the Maya |
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Baking Pot is a Maya archaeological site located in the Belize River Valley on the southern bank of the river, northeast of modern-day town of San Ignacio in the Cayo District of Belize; it is 6 kilometres (3.7 mi) downstream from the Barton Ramie and Lower Dover archaeological sites. Baking Pot is associated with an extensive amount of research into Maya settlements, community-based archaeology, and of agricultural production; the site possesses lithic workshops, and possible evidence of cash-cropping cacao[1][2] as well as a long occupation from the Preclassic through to the Postclassic period.
The site at Baking Pot is unique in that it had a large population during the Terminal Classic while other sites in the Belize River Valley were declining, and occupation continued into the Postclassic whereas major Classic Period sites in the southern lowlands were by then abandoned.[3] After the Classic period site cores in much of the Belize Valley were abandoned, but at Baking Pot “survey and excavation of house mounds and plazuela groups immediately outside the site core suggested that Postclassic occupation there is more substantial and prolonged than in the site core”.[3] The abundance of Tayasal-associated Augustine Red ceramics at Baking Pot, along with the association of these ceramics with a different organizational and settlement pattern suggest that there was an intrusion of people from central Petén during this time.[3][4] Researchers like Aimers favor a gradual abandonment of the site at a much later time period than other sites in the region.
- ^ Willey, G. R., Bullard, W. R., Glass, J. B., Gifford, J. C., & Elliot, O. (1965). Prehistoric Maya settlements in the Belize Valley. Cambridge, Mass: Peabody Museum.
- ^ Audet, Carolyn, and Jaime J. Awe. (2004)What's Cooking at Baking Pot: A Report of the 2001-2003 Field Seasons. In Jaime Awe, John Morris and Sherilyne Jones, Eds., Research Reports in Belezian Archaeology, Vol 1, pp. 49-60.
- ^ a b c Aimers, James J. (2003). Abandonment and Nonabandonment at Baking Pot, Belize. In Takeshi Inomata and Ronald W. Wedd, Eds., The Archaeology of Settlement Abandonment in Middle America, pp. 149-162, Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press.
- ^ Chase, Arlen F. (1986). Time Depth or Vacuum: The 11.3.0.0.0 Correlation and the Lowland Maya Postclassic, in J.A. Sabloff and E.W. Andrews V, Eds., Late Lowland Maya Civilization: Classic to Postclassic, pp. 99-140, University of New Mexico Press, Albuquerque.