[Aztlan] Bajos and Sailing (David and Fiona Gray)

[mmoriar at tulane.edu]

Dear Dave G,

There are some interesting discussions of ancient Maya canoes and navigation out
there.  Both Eric Thompson and Norman Hammond have published pretty detailed
syntheses on the topic.  Jeremiah Epstein has also published a nice
reevaluation of Thompson’s data on sailing.  I’ve attached some refs at the
bottom.

More directly related to your question, Héctor Mejía gave a paper at this
summer’s Guatemalan Simposio that presented data from some of the new sites in
the Mirador Basin.  Although I don’t remember the details very well, several of
the sites have possible canals running out of the bajos, and at least one of
these canals has a possible docking area.  You might also check out some of the
hydraulic features at Edzna and Calakmul.

If some of these bajos were lakes, then I think it’s very likely that they would
have been used for canoe travel.  As a possible analogy, canoes were the major
mode of transportation in the Lake Petén Itzá basin.  Contact period accounts
include some nice descriptions of Itzá canoes and describe at least one
settlement as a “port.”  Don Rice has also identified ancient Maya port
features at the sites of Nixtún Ch’ich’ and Ixlú, and my colleagues and I have
excavated a little harbor at the site of Trinidad de Nosotros.  Rice has also
identified two definite and several possible inter-lacustrine canals that may
have been used to facilitate canoe traffic between Lake Petén Itzá and some of
the smaller lakes nearby.  In short, canoe travel seems to have been very
important in and around Lake Petén Itzá.

Cheers,
Matt Moriarty


Epstein, Jeremiah F.
1990 Sails in Aboriginal Mesoamerica: Reevaluating Thompson’s Argument. American
Anthropologist 92(1):187-192.

Hammond, Norman
1981 Classic Maya Canoes.  The International Journal of Nautical Archaeology and
Underwater Exploration 10(3):173-185.

Rice, Don S.
1996 Hydraulic Engineering in the Central Peten, Guatemala: Ports and
Inter-lacustrine Canals.  In Arqueología Mesoamericana: Homenaje a William T.
Sanders, Volume II, edited by A. Guadalupe M., J.R. Parsons, R.S. Santley, and
M.C. Serra P., pp. 109-122.  Mexico, D.F.: INAH.

Thompson, J. Eric S.
1951 Canoes and Navigation of the Maya and Their Neighbors.  The Journal of the
Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland 79(1/2,
1949):69-78.