Lamanai On-Site Museum

If you travel to Lamanai in the near future and visit the on-site museum, you will now find the pottery displayed according to the period in which it was made. As you enter the museum, you will find the pottery from the Preclassic Period, about 600 B.C. to A.D.1, arranged on the shelves to the left.

The next set of shelves houses vessels from the Protoclassic Period, which dates from about A.D. 1 to A.D. 250, and some from the Classic Period, A.D. 250-800 or so. The long set of shelves lining the museum's south side contains mostly Middle and Late Classic vessels, A.D. 550 to 800, but also some material from the period that bridged the Maya collapse (the Terminal Classic period, A.D. 800 to ca. 1000). At Lamanai we nicknamed this period, "Terclerp," for Terminal Classic-Early Postclassic, because the forms are characteristic of the Classic to Postclassic transition.

The shelves that line the west wall, opposite the entry door, contain material from different stages of the Postclassic Period. Farthest from the door is the Buk-Phase material, mostly slipped orange-red, which dates from about A.D. 1100 to 1300 or so. Next is the Cib phase, with distinctly redder slips. These vessels are mostly 14th century (1300s), but some are earlier and bridge the Buk to Cib transition, and others are later and carry over into the Spanish Colonial Period. There is a range of vessels from the 16th century, when the Spaniards arrived in Belize, and others that are later in date and carry us into the time of the British occupation in the mid to late 19th century. There are also a number of bottles from the 19th century, as well as various objects that extend the record right down to the present day.