Heather McKillop
Louisiana State University

Heather McKillop is the William G. Haag Professor of Archaeology in the Dept of Geography and Anthropology at Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge. She earned her B.Sc. and M.A. in Anthropology at Trent University (Canada) and her Ph.D. at the University of California, Santa Barbara. She has carried out fieldwork on the coast of Belize since 1979, focusing on the ancient Mayan economy. Her initial studies focused on identifying the characteristics of ancient ports, with excavations at Moho Cay (near modern Belize City) and Wild Cane Cay (in the far south near modern Punta Gorda). Survey on the southern coast and offshore cays examined the role of the coast in long distance and coastal-inland trade of exotic and marine resources to the urban Maya at interior cities. Many of the sites were inundated by sea-level rise, including salt workshops. She has published many articles on her research, including her most recent article in ‘Proceeding of the National Academy of Sciences’ (April 2005), which has brought much press interest. Her books include ‘In Search of Maya Sea Traders’ (2005), ‘The Ancient Maya: New Perspectives’ (2004), ‘Salt: White Gold of the Ancient Maya’ (2003), and ‘Coastal Maya Trade’ (1989, with co-editor P. Healy). Her current fieldwork focuses on mapping wooden architecture preserved in a peat bog below the sea floor in southern Belize at 23 salt workshops, for which she has been awarded funding from the National Geographic Society, National Science Foundation, and FAMSI (Foundation for the Advancement of Mesoamerican Studies).

Lecture Abstracts

Underwater Maya: Ancient Maya Wooden Architecture and the Salt Industry
I will discuss the discovery and investigation of a massive ancient Maya salt industry including wooden structures preserved in a peat bog below the sea floor in southern Belize. What we found stunned the archaeological community and transformed our knowledge of ancient Maya architecture and economy: No wooden structures from the Classic Maya civilization had previously been found. The posts and beams of wooden buildings were preserved along with artifacts. They had been untouched for 1300 years due to sea-level rise that had protected them and hidden them from modern view, until my project. The buildings were used in the ancient Maya salt industry, as indicated by the extensive deposits of “briquetage”- pottery vessels used in the boiling of brine to produce salt. The pottery vessels were standardized in their dimensions indicating mass production of salt. The salt works provide a new source of this basic biological necessity to the dense urban populations of the interior of the Yucatan, where salt was scarce. The findings challenge the long-distance import of salt from the north coast of the Yucatan and indicate there was a large industry for the production, storage, and distribution of salt, white gold of the ancient Maya. I will discuss our innovative methods for searching underwater, the types of wooden structures and salt production we have found, and the implications of our findings for our understanding of ancient Maya architecture in general and specifically the ancient Maya salt industry.

Return to previous page