Archaeologist Heather McKillop shares the experiences she had off the coast of Belize while searching for clues about the little known ancient Maya sea trade. This recollection of her work there includes the adventure of discovery, as the story of the traders emerges from the excavations. She describes the trading port of Wild Cane Cay, where exotic goods were traded from distant lands, and also discusses the more coastal-inland trade there. Through the story of her work, McKillop models the research design and field work required to interpret civilizations of the past.

Stone temples rising above the rainforest canopy and elaborate hieroglyphs carved onto stone monuments give silent testimony to the high culture of the Maya ancestors of the indigenous peoples of Central America. They have inspired generations of archaeologists, professional and avocational, to take to the field in search of the past. One such archaeologist is Heather McKillop, who in 1979 first visited the coast of Belize in search of a little-known aspect of ancient Maya life: the sea trade that helped move salt, obsidian, coral, and other goods around the interior of the empire. In 1982, she began bringing volunteers and students to the islands off the coast of Port Honduras, Belize. Since then she has returned many times to excavate sites that reveal the scope and diversity of the trade that passed by water throughout the Maya world. In this book, McKillop tells the story of the search for the Maya sea traders, as well as the story of the traders themselves as it emerges from the excavations. In Search of Maya Sea Traders describes the trading port of Wild Cane Cay, where exotic obsidian, jade, gold, and other goods--including highly crafted pots--were traded from distant lands. McKillop also tells us about the more coastal-inland trade of salt, seafood, and other marine resources. Through the story of her own work and that of her students and volunteers, McKillop models both the research design and the field work that are required to interpret the civilizations of the past. She includes the adventure of discovery, the challenges of working in wild environments (from snakes and rising sea levels to falling coconuts) and the tedium of daily measured digs in a near-tropical setting. Through her experiences, the reader also gets to know some of the local residents of Port Honduras and Wild Cane Cay, descendants of the ancient Maya. In Search of Maya Sea Traders will appeal to that part of each of us that longs to explore distant places and cultures, in quest of a seldom-glimpsed past.

How important has the sea been in the development of human history? Very important indeed is the conclusion of this ground-breaking four volume work. The books bring together the world's leading maritime historians, who address the question of what difference the sea has made in relation to around 250 situations ranging from the earliest times to the present. They consider, across the entire world, subjects related to human migration, trade, economic development, warfare, the building of political units including states and empires, the dissemination of ideas, culture and religion, and much more, showing how the sea was crucial to all these aspects of human development. The Sea in History - The Early Modern World covers the period from around the end of the fifteenth century up to the conclusion of the Napoleonic Wars in 1815. It examines the establishment and growth of 'the Atlantic World', but also considers maritime developments in the Indian Ocean, Southeast and East Asia and Africa, and highlights the continuing importance of the North Sea and the Baltic. A very wide range of maritime subjects is explored including trade, which went through a huge global expansion in this period; fishing; shipping, shipbuilding, navigation and ports; the role of the sea in the dissemination of religious ideas; the nature of life for sailors in different places and periods; and the impact of trade in particularly important commodities, including wine, slaves, sugar and tobacco. One particularly interesting chapter is on the Hanse, the important maritime commercial 'empire' based in north Germany, which extended much more widely than is often realised and whose significance and huge impact have often been overlooked. 33 of the contributions are in English; 42 are in French. CHRISTIAN BUCHET is Professor of Maritime History, Catholic University of Paris, Scientific Director of Océanides and a member of l'Académie de marine. GÉRARD LE BOUDEC is Emeritus Professor of the University of South Brittany.

Thanks to powerful innovations in archaeology and other types of historical research, we now have a picture of everyday life in the Mayan empire that turns the long-accepted conventional wisdom on its head. Ranging from the end of the Ice Age to the flourishing of Mayan culture in the first millennium to the Spanish conquest in the 16th century, The Ancient Maya takes a fresh look at a culture that has long held the public's imagination. Originally thought to be peaceful and spiritual, the Mayans are now also known to have been worldly, bureaucratic, and violent. Debates and unanswered questions linger. Mayan expert Heather McKillop shows our current understanding of the Maya, explaining how interpretations of "dirt archaeology," hieroglyphic inscriptions, and pictorial pottery are used to reconstruct the lives of royalty, artisans, priests, and common folk. She also describes the innovative focus on the interplay of the people with their environments that has helped further unravel the mystery of the Mayans' rise and fall.

A comprehensive work, combining traditional zooarchaeological reports and various state-of-the-art summaries of methods and theoretical perspectives. This combination of detailed discussions of basic zooarchaeological data with reviews of important themes in Maya zooarchaeology emphasizes the central issues that guide our research from basic data collection through final comparative interpretation. The chapters emphasize the newest developments in technical methods, the most recent trends in the analysis of "social zooarchaeology," and the broadening perspectives provided by a new geographic range of investigations. The main focus of the volume remains on fostering cooperation among Mesoamerican zooarchaeologists at the levels of both preliminary analysis and final theoretical reconstruction.

In Maya Salt Works, Heather McKillop details her archaeological team’s groundbreaking discovery of a unique and massive salt production complex submerged in a lagoon in southern Belize. Exploring the organization of production and trade at the Paynes Creek Salt Works, McKillop offers a fascinating new look at the role of salt in the ancient Maya economy. McKillop maps over 4,000 wooden posts and wedges, the first known wooden structures preserved underwater from the Classic period, describing new methods of underwater archaeology developed specifically for this shallow maritime setting. She explains the technology of salt production, examining fragments of briquetage—the pots that boiled brine over fires in the kitchens—and provides evidence that salt workers relied on specific types of wood for building construction. McKillop theorizes that different households operated salt kitchens and distributed their goods via canoe to sell at inland marketplaces for use as dietary salt, a flavor enhancer, and preservative. Complex distribution networks reveal expertise in water transportation and knowledge of the sea by Maya mariners, skills that allowed them to control the transport of commodities like salt. By evaluating the scale, concentration, intensity, and context of the Paynes Creek Salt Works, McKillop provides a model for interpreting existing salt works sites as well as future discoveries along the Yucatán Peninsula. A volume in the series Maya Studies, edited by Diane Z. Chase and Arlen F. Chase

Written for high school or beginning undergraduate students, this four-volume reference valiantly attempts to provide a historical framework for the perhaps overly broad concept of world trade. Entry topics were selected on trade organizations, influential people, commodities, events that affected trade, trade routes, navigation, religion, communic