 | |
  Location within Mesoamerica | |
| Location | Orange Walk District,  Belize |
|---|---|
| Region | Orange Walk District |
| Coordinates | 17°45′9″N 88°39′16″W / 17.75250°N 88.65444°W |
| History | |
| Founded | 16th century BC |
| Periods | Preclassic to Postclassic |
| Cultures | Maya civilization |
Lamanai (from Lama'anayin, "submerged crocodile" in Yucatec Maya) is a Mesoamerican archaeological site, and was once a major city of the Maya civilization, located in the north of Belize, in Orange Walk District. The site's name is pre-Columbian, recorded by early Spanish missionaries, and documented over a millennium earlier in Maya inscriptions as Lam'an'ain. Lamanai is renowned for its exceptionally long occupation spanning three millennia, beginning in the Early Preclassic Maya period and continuing through the Spanish and British Colonial periods, into the 20th century.[1] Unlike most Classic-period sites in the southern Maya lowlands, Lamanai was not abandoned at the end of the 10th century AD.[2]
- ^ Graham, Elizabeth A. (2011). Maya Christians and Their Churches in Sixteenth-Century, Belize. Gainesville: University Press of Florida. ISBN 9780813040721. OCLC 758668809.
- ^ Pendergast, David M. (1986). "Stability through Change: Lamanai, Belize, from the ninth to the seventeenth century". Late Lowland Maya Civilization: Classic to Postclassic. School of American Research, University of New Mexico Press: 223–249. OCLC 12420464.