Contact:
Jeremy Craig, 404-413-1357
University Relations
ATLANTA — On the northeastern tip of the Yucatan Peninsula, where the Gulf of Mexico meets the Caribbean Sea, lies the remains of an outpost of an ancient civilization amidst the jungle, mangroves and lagoons.
Vista Alegre — “happy view” in Spanish — was a port in the Maya trading network during several periods from 800 B.C. to A.D. 1521, the date marking the beginning of Spanish rule. But archaeologists have previously done little work in trying to learn more about the site.
Assistant professor of anthropology Jeffrey Glover and his students embarked with other distinguished researchers on an expedition funded by the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration’s office of Ocean Exploration and Research this May to learn more about the mysteries of the ancient port.
 |
| Jeffrey Glover (center) and team haul equipment across the shallows at the remote and ancient Mayan seaport of Vista Alegre. |
During the journey, named the Proyecto Costa Escondida Maritime Maya 2011 Expedition, Glover, his students and his fellow researchers took boats out to the site to perform their work, doing survey work, excavations and analysis of sediment samples.
“It’s not so easy to get to,” Glover said. “There’s no real way over land.”
The archaeologists are investigating several questions related to the site and the people who once occupied it, Glover said.
For example, how and from where did the people who occupied the site obtain freshwater needed to sustain life?
One of the few ways to get to Vista Alegre is by boat. Before this expedition, archaeologists found an interesting, smaller feature besides a defensive wall across the island — a walkway that goes across the tidal flats to the south of the island and ends on the mainland at a collapsed or damaged temple structure.
“That might have served to get people to agricultural land, or get people to freshwater sources,” Glover said. “We had to bring all of our water in – there’s no way around that as being a requirement for living somewhere.”
Life-sustaining water might even have come out of freshwater springs, locally called “ojos de agua” (eyes of water), in the lagoon.
“You can actually paddle out into the middle of the water, and see a bubbling freshwater outlet,” Glover said. “You can dip a cup in it and drink it.”
The team also sought to understand the ancient coastline to get a feel for what the port was like during Maya occupation. Glover and the team mapped out the site, where they found several features, including a 42-foot tall, steep and narrow structure that had both religious significance, and also served as a lookout.
“You get up there and you can see for miles and miles,” he said. “You can imagine monitoring the comings and goings of big trade canoes.”
They found several artifacts including conch or shell trumpets that carried sound over large distances. Based what is called the “material culture,” namely pottery found at the site, archaeologists have divided the Maya occupation of Vista Alegre into four periods, Glover said.
The first phase started as early as 800 B.C., where the occupants seemed to have an affiliation or ties with people from Belize and eastern Guatemala, instead of being local, based on ceramic styles and figurine fragments.
“The earliest story of human inhabitants is an interesting one as it doesn’t fit with what was expected to be a local development,” Glover said.
The next major period is still not well understood, as archaeologists are not sure how long or intense the occupation was. The period started around A.D.100 and ran through about A.D. 650.
Archaeologists found ceramics typical of the local region, but there was also a wider diversity of ceramic types, speaking to greater ties and broader social, economic and political networks, Glover said. Even though there seemed to be a major depopulation of people inland near the site around A.D. 400, settlement continued at Vista Alegre for at least another 200 years.
“It may speak of the resilience and sustainability of coastal populations,” he said.
Major architecture at the site came from the third phase of occupation around 200 years later, where artifacts indicate that the occupation had ties to the Maya at Chichen Itza further inland. Vista Alegre was used by the Maya to help control the trade routes that ran from the Gulf of Honduras to the east, then up by Vista Alegre and around the Yucatan peninsula to the Gulf of Mexico in the west.
Researchers are trying to learn more about the social, political and economic relationship between Vista Alegre and Chichen Itza. The site could have been re-established as a state-mandated outpost, Glover said, or, people outside of the state could have recognized a gap in the trade networks, resettled the site, and came under the control of the Maya at Chichen Itza.
The artifacts and other materials left behind indicate that during the fourth phase of occupation people no longer lived there, but instead visited Vista Alegre for rituals or pilgrimages.
“It looks like Chichen Itza collapses, and then Vista Alegre collapses,” Glover said.
The visit to Vista Alegre in May helped to provide a good foundation for continued collaborative research to explore the mysteries of the site. Researchers on the NOAA OER expedition expect to go back later this year to learn more, Glover said.
To learn more about the project and follow its progress, visit http://oceanexplorer.noaa.gov/explorations/11maya/welcome.html.
Photos courtesy of Emily McDonald, NOAA public relations.
July 11, 2011