Field Season 2016 - Fundraising
Unique cultural heritage |
Lamanai exemplifies one of the longest occupation spans in the Maya Lowlands. First occupied in the Preclassic (ca. 1500 B.C.) and continuously inhabited through the Classic period “collapse,” it was thriving when the Spanish arrived in A.D. 1540. Lamanai continued to be occupied through the Spanish and British Colonial periods and into the twentieth century.
Unlike many major city-states in the Maya area, Lamanai managed to maintain a large enough population to construct monumental architecture along with developed agriculture, skilled craftsmen -namely pottery and artwork- for over 3,000 years of unbroken occupation. Lamanai’s lagoon-side location at the head of the New River, with direct access to the Caribbean Sea, allowed for cultural and economic exchange well beyond the immediate region. Present day Lamanai has retained its uniqueness. There is a site museum and most of the artefacts are stored on site. |
“Research at Lamanai allows us to look at the 'collapse' as something avoidable
primarily through political rather than technological or economic solutions”
-- Karen Pierce
primarily through political rather than technological or economic solutions”
-- Karen Pierce
Budget breakdown
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What are the funds for?
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The funds will be used to bring an international team of archaeologists to Lamanai in July 2016 for 28 days.
Three operations will be carried out in 2016:
1) Many of the Lamanai artefacts from the Royal Ontario Museum (ROM) 1970-80s excavations are presently in cloth sugar sacks which are not conducive of good preservation but also make the study of the artefacts difficult. To improve preservation, protect provenience, and increase accessibility for study, we began the process of transferring the artefacts to zinc boxes. The zinc boxes are designed by us and made locally in Shipyard, the Mennonite community. They are the result of experimenting with artefact trays of zinc that we have used on the excavations, in rain or shine, since 1983. So we know that zinc resists rust and decay, and hold up a lot better than plastic. To complete the project, we need about 400 boxes. Each box cost $40Bz and the total cost is $16,000 Bz or $8,020.50 US, that is £5,545.72. At the moment, each sack contains material from a context, but the artefacts are mixed: ceramics, chert, obsidian, bone, shell, metal, etc. So we need to sort the artefacts by material, and then the artefacts will be stored by material according to their lot (context) number. This way the artefacts will be available and accessible to future researchers to study or observe. Many labels were lost when the original buckets disintegrated--mostly from being taken away by mice and insects, who use the plastic for their nests!--so we need to re-label and re-organise all artefacts. This task will be directed by Elizabeth Graham with the assistance of some of her students from University College London (UCL). David Pendergast will be at Lamanai this year to help restore context numbers to the artefacts he excavated during the ROM project. The information on contexts will be put online and will also be kept on paper on-site and in Belmopan at the Belize Institute of Archaeology. 2) Louise Belanger, the project illustrator, will draw many artefacts, especially special finds, that remain to be drawn. All illustrations are being scanned to post on the Lamanai website for greater accessibility to researchers and the general public. 3) Gaining an understanding of how cultural adaptation allowed Lamanai to thrive has important implications for studies of social collapse—and survival—and for insight into transitional periods and revision of the notion of “collapse”. Research on the Ottawa Courtyard Group, particularly the building programs and architectural modifications, help us to understand the socio-political transformations that occurred during the Classic-to-Postclassic transition. Refinement of the Ottawa map is being undertaken in preparation for a publication forthcoming on the Ottawa Courtyard Group and the broader implications this group presents during the Maya Collapse, or in this case, the transition from the Classic to Postclassic periods. This year, Claude Belanger, the project architect, and Karen Pierce will be finalizing the map of the Ottawa Courtyard Group. |
“The Lamanai collection is, in my opinion, one of the most important ceramic
collections in the Maya lowlands…”
-- Dr Jim Aimers
collections in the Maya lowlands…”
-- Dr Jim Aimers
History of the research
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The first detailed description of the ruins was made in 1917 by Thomas Gann. Archaeological excavations at the site began in 1974 under David M. Pendergast of the Royal Ontario Museum, and continued through 1986.
The Lamanai Archaeology Project has been directed by Dr. Elizabeth Graham (Institute of Archaeology, University College London) since 1997. Further excavations and restoration work has been conducted since 1997 by the Lamanai Archaeology Project and the Belize Tourism Development Project, employing excavators and lab assistants from the nearby villages of Indian Church and San Carlos. Since 2006 research at the site has been directed mostly towards artifact analysis and improvement of the storage situation so artefacts are better preserved and readily available for study. |
Meet the team
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As part of the 2016 season, there will be five senior staffs and six to eight undergraduate students from University College London.
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