Description : 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 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. 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”. 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. Researchers like Aimers favor a gradual abandonment of the site at a much later time period than other sites in the region.
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