Baking Pot
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[1][2] as well as a long occupation from the Preclassic through to the Postclassic period.Toward the end of the Terminal Classic period the local elite left and the palace complexes in the city center were abandoned.Much of the people living at Baking Pot were farmers; being close to the Belize River the site has fertile soil in an alluvial valley and is primarily associated with agricultural production.Mound 190 had deposits with finger bones, an altar, and intact mini ceramic vessels below it with tiny specks of jade.[12] Naranjo pottery has also been found here at Baking Pot, and evidence for a push to control the Belize River Valley after the fall of Tikal was described on a monument at Xunantunich.