In 1502 on his fourth and final voyage to the New World, Christopher Columbus encountered a huge cargo canoe off the southeastern coast of the Yucatán. It was loaded down with cotton and cacao, as well as exotic materials like obsidian and copper. This was the first encounter between Europeans and Maya sea traders, sailors that operated an extensive sea-going trade network in the Caribbean that also moved salt, coral, and other goods around the Maya homeland and beyond.
Heather McKillop is the William Haug Professor of Archaeology at Louisiana State University, and she has spent much of her professional career seeking evidence of the elusive Maya sea traders. Working along the coast of southern Belize, McKillop has excavated trade centers on the cays (pronounced keys) and in the shallow bays to learn about the lives of the traders.
This volume is not a scholarly tract, although McKillop is a first rate scholar. Instead, it is a personal narrative of a field archaeologist making new discoveries and dealing with a strange and sometimes hostile environment. With sea levels rising, water now inundates many of the sites, making excavations difficult.
For all of us who see archaeology as a great adventure, this is a fabulous story of green vine snakes and falling coconuts and leaky boats and short supplies. Most of all it is a story of the people who do this kind of work—professional archaeologists and their students, Earthwatch volunteers who pay good money to dig in the mud of a tiny island, and of the native Maya who still make their living from the sea. They all enjoy the senses of adventure and accomplishment gleaned from serious research on a long lost way of life.
