Uncovering San Pedro’s Past: An Evening Those Who Do Hands-On Local Archaeology

If you’d asked me what I wanted to be on my very first day of college in the fall of 1991, I would have said “an archaeologist.” I didn’t know much about it – this was pre-internet, after all – but I loved my six years of Latin classes, the history and the mythology, and I’d seen all the Indiana Jones movies more than once. I mean…come on! Surely I was well on my way down the path to digging up ancient secrets.

That dream lasted exactly one class in my very first semester. It was Ancient Greek language – not the kind that might be useful for a dream trip to Santorini, but the kind with a new alphabet that didn’t look at all like an alphabet. I realized pretty quickly I wasn’t up for this…plus, the fact that I would need a PhD (7 years or more of schooling!) PLUS I would have to be a college professor? Not for me.

My visit to see the REAL Jade Head of Altun Ha in 2012: It only comes out of hiding every 10 or so years!

But my love for history stuck. (I did end up double majoring in Econ and History) I’ve always been fascinated by the stories that come before us, especially here on Ambergris Caye where so much of the past is literally buried a few inches under our feet.

Earlier this week, I attended a presentation by Dr. Scott Simmons of UNC Wilmington, a historian and archaeologist who has brought students here to do actual digs. The presentation was really well attended – despite the drizzly night. The folks from the NICH Archaeology team remarked on the exceptional turnout as they unfolded more and more chairs as folks kept coming into the small room.

Here are some of the cool things I learned (there is so much interesting stuff but I’m going to try to keep it to bullet points and maybe some links to find more):

• Ambergris Caye has about 2 dozen archaeological sites – here is a photo I took at the small museum at Bacalar Chico (you can see the trip here) They are ALL over the island but you wouldn’t even know it. They are not the temples or grand buildings you can see on the mainland. These are thought to be working folk…producing salt, fishing…think more of smaller camps – marl floors, stick and thatch buildings- than grand plazas.

(Fun fact: #16 is partly on the property of Cayo Frances Farm and Fly – aka our old camp. Some stones are probably the base of walls and tons of shards of pottery all over the property)

• Dr. Scott brought undergraduate students to Ambergris Caye for four-week Field Schools in both 2017 and 2023 – to do hands-on work right in downtown San Pedro. The site is very familiar to island residents: it’s the property right across the street from Central Park. (Here are all of the photos I took when I stopped by and met Dr Scott in 2023)
  • The Sands was built by Mr. George Parham. The same property had actually been excavated by archaeologists back in the 1990s, long before Dr. Scott’s students arrived to continue the work. Mr. Parham passed away in 2012 (in his 80s), and his granddaughter later transformed the old hotel into Hostel La Vista and, eventually, Parham Plaza.
    • If you love island history as much as I do, you have to read this fantastic write-up about the early days of Ambergris Caye – including how Mr. Blake Hume (George’s great-great grandfather – I think! It’s complicated!) bought the entire island for just $625 in 1869, and how it was later divided into coconut plantations (cocotals) with owners’ names that are still familiar today: Paz, Alamilla, Hoy, Huesner, and more.

• They found LOTS of pottery shards, metal pieces, buttons, porcelain pieces, obsidian shard/blades, bottles, bones just a few inches below the surface. From late classic Maya – the 1300 and 1400s to more recent. Why was some of it mixed? Could be land crab holes…storms. Starts just below the ground and extends 6-8 feet down. Seems like the Maya dwellings were abandoned in the early 1500s when the Spaniards started raiding the Belizean shoreline
• Colonial times – San Pedro was populated for small groups/families fleeing the Caste Wars in the Yucatan. The families that came to San Pedro and Northern Belize were predominantly from two areas: Lake Bacalar and Tulum.
• The dig in San Pedro: they have a wide (an “astounding”) variety of items: ceramics, patent medicine bottles, slate, glassware. Patent medicine: Patent medicine was a 19th- and early 20th-century term for commercially produced, brand-name remedies that claimed to cure just about anything – colds, stomach ailments, “female troubles,” nervousness, baldness, and more. They were mostly contained alcohol. “Patent” didn’t mean they help a patent – it just meant proprietary or secret.

• Deeper, the Maya items: Floors of sascab (or marl), pole indentations, probably thatch roof and thousands and thousands of fish bones (they are hoping to send them to UCSD to see what they were catching/eating) – found turtle, croc and manatee bones (manatee both in Mayan and more modern times) – found household items and small religious statues/effigies, they found LOTS of carved fishing weights, obsidian and chert, stone tools and what seem to be spear fishing/manatee hunting tips (some made from chert found on the mainland near Rock Stone Pond/Al Tun Ha area)

There was then a presentation by the women from the NICH Institute of Archaeology. About what they do, what they manage, the sites around the country.

Here is a map of the 14 official sites:

And I’ve only been to 8…I gotta get moving: From top to bottom – 1. Santa Rita in downtown Corozal, 2. majestic Lamanai, 3. pictured on the Belikin label Altun Ha, 4. cave tubing at Nohoch Ch’een, 5. my favorite Xunantunich, 6. ATM cave (the coolest tour you’ll take anywhere in the world) 7. the most unique, (a confederate) Serpon Sugar Mill, and 8. rounded Lubaantun

I’m dying to get to Caracol and Barton Creek next! You can read my Eight Craziest Tours In Belize here.

The NICH folks talked about the fines and jail time you can get for trading in, selling or trying to export artifacts. They talked about reporting artifacts that you might find in your yard to them – they don’t want to take them away, they just want to register them.

You can find lots more information on the website.

There were lots of questions – from asking how we can protect what is on our island to talk of reopen a site on Ambergris Caye (like Marcos Gonzalez – it used to be a cool place to visit) and the interest there is from tourists to the fall of the Maya empire (if that is really a thing since over 6 million Maya now live in Belize, Mexico and Guatemala)

What I really took away is that San Pedro is VERY interested in learning about, displaying and protecting our history. Hopefully this is the beginning of great things.

For more information on San Pedro’s history – head to the Belize Eco-Museum for a great tour and lots of information. It was founded by Mito Paz and he is one of the island’s top historians.

AmbergrisCaye.com has TONS of history on it – it’s also a huuuuuuuuge website. You can really get down some rabbit holes but it’s worth it. And there are tons of great old pictures.

Here’s an interesting article about the Maya on Ambergris Caye that discusses the history of archaeology on the caye. There are more useful and interesting and detailed links at the bottom of this article.

If you find anything else, please share in the comments or email. I’d love to see more!