The International Journal of Nautical .4rchaeology and Underwater Exploration (1981), 10.
3: 173- 185
Classic Maya canoes
Norman Hammond
Archaeology Program, Rutgers University, N e w Jersey 08903, USA
The Yucatan Peninsula, in which the civiliza-
tion of the Classic period Maya flourished for
most of the first millennium AD, projects
north from the Central American mainland into
the warm waters of the Caribbean and the Gulf
of Mexico (Fig. 1). Although its northern
portion has a karstic landscape, with surface
water available only sporadically, the central
part of the Maya Area is traversed by numerous
perennial rivers including the Usumacinta, the
Candelaria, the Hondo, the Belize River and the
Motagua; only a short portage would be needed
in a trans-peninsular journey up the Usumacinta
and the San Pedro Martir and then down the
h o Holmul and the Hondo. The region is, in
fact, one ideally suited to water transport on
the basis of its advantages, and with those
advantages reinforced by the absence of draught
animals to pull overland vehicles and the
presence of dense forest to inhibit route
development .
That sea trade, at least, flourished has been
known ever since Columbus on his fourth
voyage in 1502 encountered a large canoe off
the Bay Islands of Honduras; the late Sir Eric
Thompson noted the commercial potential of
such a craft (1951: 6 9 ) and later analysed its
reported cargo (1964) to demonstrate that its
probable route lay from the Aztec entrepbt of
Xicalango on the Laguna de Terminosg around
Yucatan and southeast to the Ulua valley. The
Caribbean coastal route was known to reach
even further, to Costa Rica and Panama, so that
the entire length of Central America and
Mexico from north of Mexico City to the
Panama Canal (in modern terms) was linked
in commercial contact.
Thompson (1 95 1) showed that several sizes
of canoe were used in this trade at the time of
Spanish contact in the early 16th century, and
also argued for the use of sails as well as paddles
in the prehispanic period. Large vessels are
0305-7445/81/0173+13 $02.00/0
amply attested by colonial documentary
sources, but in the 15th century and earlier
the native iconographic sources show no canoe
holding more than seven perons. Thompson
notes, however, ‘that in Mesoamerican art the
importance of the subject often governs scale,
and so the persons being more important would
be drawn to a larger scale than the canoe’
(1951: 70). Nevertheless, it remains the case
that for the entire Postclassic period of AD 900-
1500 from which Thompson drew his pre-
hspanic evidence there is still, 30 years later,
no more solid evidence for large canoes except
in the contact period.
The circumstantial evidence is slightly more
encouraging: Thompson (1 970) demonstrated
the rise of circum-peninsular navigation under
the control of the Putun Maya of the Laguna de
Terminos region, and subsequent archaeological
evidence from island sites such as Cozumel
(Sabloff & Rathje, 1975), Wild Cane Cay
(Hammond, 1975: 277-82) and Moho Cay
(Healy & McKillop, 1980) showed extensive
use of offshore facilities and the presence there
of numerous exotic goods including such well-
attested trade items as obsidian, metalwork and
pottery, all of ascertainable origin. Hammond
(1976) suggested a model for Maya coastal
trade which involved transhpment of goods
from large sea-going to smaller river and shore-
going canoes at these offshore facilities; here
the existence of large canoes was implicitly
accepted because the long-distance contacts
demonstrated by the trade goods did not seem
economically feasible using small vessels.
This archaeological evidence came not only
from Postclassic sites, but from those where
earlier use in the Classic Period (AD 250-900)
was also attested: the earliest deposits on Wild
Cane Cay are of Late Classic (AD 600-900)
date and the major emergence of Moho Cay as a
commercial port was in the Early Classic and
@ 1981 The Nautical Archaeology Trust Ltd.
NAUTICAL ARCHAEOLOGY, 10.3
Figure 1. Map of the Maya Area, showing relevant sites and other featureu.
the early Late Classic (AD 400-700) on the
evidence of the pottery. Still earlier the Late
Formative floruit of Cerros, on Chetumal Bay,
has been seen as resulting from its strategic
location at the junction of coastal and river
canoe routes (Freidel, 1978). Although over-
land trade routes within and beyond the Maya
174
Area demonstrably existed, and their importance
has probably been underestimated substantially
because of their comparative archaeological
invisibility, maritime and riverine routes are
now clearly seen as major factors in the unity
of Classic Maya culture, a unity first noted by
John Lloyd Stephens (1841: Vol. 2 , p. 343)
N. HAMMOND: CLASSIC MAYA CANOES

and the subject of much scholarly attention areas of such fields have recently been tenta-
since then. tively identified in the Bajo de Santa Fe just
Although the importance of water transport east of Tikal (Harrison, 1977; Adams, 1980).
in the Classic period is generally acknowledged, Identification of the species of fish portrayed
there is relatively little evidence of the types ofin the two carvings - four of the five specimens
vessel used. At the time of Thompson’s (1951) having two distinctive black stripes on their
paper n o representation of a canoe earlier than backs - may yield further information.
the 10th century AD was known from the We are here concerned, however, with the
Maya Area, but several recent discoveries now canoes which are being used for the fishing.
give us some useful information with whch They are very similar to each other, and each
to work. has a projecting prow and stern; although
uncertain, the prow appears to be at the right-
Classic period canoe representations hand side in each case, with a slightly tighter
The material now available is of two kinds: curve to its underside: this supposition is based
drawings of canoes, and models of them. The on no stronger evidence than the apparent
corpus of drawings consists of the several direction of travel of the upper example.
fine-line engravings on bones found in Burial The line along the gunwale, rolled over
116 at Tikal, Guatemala; that of models of two slightly at the prow, may represent an outward-
bone carvings from coastal Belize. projecting flattened top seen in edge view, or
may simply be an artistic convention defining
Tikal the upper edge of the canoe. Neither of the
The tomb found below Temple I, identified as bone model canoes considered below has such a
that of the lord of Tikal known as Ruler A, gunwale. Similarly, the parallel vertical lines
was built integrally with the temple-pyramid with two projecting tabs in the form of an ‘m’
above, and has been dated to c. AD 700. should probably be seen as symbols defining
Among the rich variety of grave-goods, which the material of which the canoe is made, rather
included jade jewellery and pottery vases, were than as structural evidence for overlapping
37 pieces of worked hone bearing carved or construction of a material such as bark, as
engraved designs and inscriptions ; these designs suggested by Thompson (1951: 70) for a
included at least seven scenes in whch a canoe similarly-depicted vessel in the Dresden Codex.
with passengers is being paddled (Figs 2-5; The Dresden canoe is complete below the water-
Note 1). The five scenes illustrated in t h s line, which the Tikal examples are not, and
paper were first published by Trik (1963, suggests that the latter were of very shallow
figs 3-7). draught; this accords with the context in which
The scenes fall into two groups, A and B: they are shown in use. It accords also with the
Group A (Fig, 2 ) consists of two representa- positions of the two standing deities, who are
tions in which grotesquely-visaged Maya deities visible from the knees upwards: if we assume
are fishrng. and in each scene one figure paddles that their intended height is approximately that
the canoe, one bends over inside it handling a of a living Maya and that the relationshp to the
fish, and the third stands waist- or hip-deep in canoe is true in scale (pace Thompson), then
the water catching fish. The surface of the water the freeboard at the ends of the canoe cannot
is marked by a line of dots and by symbols have been much over 4 0 c m , and unless there
denoting its nature, and is clearly intended to was an internal step or sharp slope upwards
be understood as being shallow; from the loca- the freeboard at the centre would have been
tion of the find, Tikal being in the heart of the about 50cm. Soustelle (1937: 76) notes the
Peten forest 150 km from the nearest seacoast. use of a low (2-3 cm) platform inside each end
a freshwater lake or river seems likely. Since the of modern Lacandon Maya canoes in Chiapas,
fish are being caught by hand it is even possible on which the paddler sits, but this would not
that an enclosed fish-pond, with farmed fish, is make much difference to the present calcula-
intended; Thompson ( 1 974) suggested that the tion. Soustelle also states that most Lacandon
interstitial canals in raised-field networks canoes are only 2-3 m long, although they go
could have been used f u r fish-farming, and large up to 6 m: using the same assumption about

175
NAUTICAL ARCHAEOLOGY, 10.3
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176
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NAUTICAL ARCHAEOLOGY, 10.3
the deity:canoe scale and the human:deity
equivalence in height we may calculate the
‘real’ lengths of the Tikal canoes as being
approximately 3.80 m.
While the identities of the deities, with their
spiral-pupilled eyes, long noses and (in one
case) barbelled mouth, need not concern us
here, it is interesting to note that the short
heroglyphic text above each scene has as the
first glyph a stylized canoe, with a superfix
including the same ‘my element as is found on
the sides of the canoes; as the second glyph a
profile head of this particular deity, including
the barbel at the corner of the mouth; and as
the final glyph the Tikal ‘emblem glyph’, a
place- or lineage-name that corroborates the
local manufacture of the carvings. The remain-
der of the texts, referring probably to the
ownership of the objects, are also identical in
both cases.
Group B of the Tikal canoe depictions
(Figs 3-5) comprises five scenes in which a
number of human- and animal-headed figures
are seated in a long canoe propelled by one or
more paddlers. The only certain human-headed
figure in four cases sits near the centre of the
crew, at least third forward in each case, and
has been identified as the dead Ruler A, either
being ferried to the underworld or on a visionary
journey during life. He and the animal-headed
deities are clearly shown as being equal in size,
so that the assumption of scale made for Group
A seems justified.
Two of the scenes show the loaded canoe
diving prow-first below the surface of the
water (represented by the edge of the bone,
suitably marked with the same symbols as seen
in Group A). In one case (Fig. 3) the two front
passengers are already partly submerged, and
not being aquatic creatures this iguana god and
monkey god seem to be making a certain
clamour about it. The paddler merely looks
grim and determined, while the human, the
macaw god behind him and the furry
(?opossum) god in the stern looks resigned, the
human and macaw making a curious gesture
with their right hands.
In the second of these scenes (Tikal Mis-
cellaneous Text 38C, unpublished) the macaw
god is seen submerging, then there is a gap,
followed by the determined paddler who in
this case is the sun god, with inward-squinting
178
squared pupils and a sharpened bone through
h s nasal septum. Behind him the human and
the monkey god make the same curious gesture,
but the iguana in the stern sits, with right claw
over the gunwale, apparently enjoying the
experience.
The canoes themselves, so far as they appear,
have the same shallow depth as has been argued
for those in Group A: but here the flat bottom
of the canoe rises from the water. The same
outlining of the gunwale occurs, and the same
‘band-with-m’ symbol appears twice on the
outside. The major difference from the Group
A canoes is the form of the stern, w h c h rises
high and almost vertically to a rounded top,
with a hollow curve on the exterior. It is, how-
ever questionable as to whether this is in fact
a variant form: the ‘water’ symbols also sweep
round into a vertical position on the end of the
bone, and the stern may well have been thus
portrayed to take advantage of the widening of
the bone (probably a deer leg-bone); the
possibility that high-sterned canoes did exist in
the early 8th century cannot nevertheless be
excluded (cf. Fig. 5) and would suggest con-
struction more complex than simply shaping
and hollowing a log (Thompson, 1951: 70).
The complement of six persons, human and
divine, in one of these two canoes and the five
(plus a gap) in the other should be noted as
we come to the other representations in Group
B. Of these, two are very similar in composition
and in the type of canoe shown, while the third
has significant differences in both. Of the two
similar scenes one is exceptionally well-preserved
and has been often illustrated (Fig. 4), the
other is in worse condition but can be con-
fidently interpreted on the basis of the first.
The better-preserved engraving shows a
canoe with five passengers and two paddlers
moving from left to right. The paddlers sit
cross-legged on the flat projecting prow and
stern and both paddle on the starboard side;
both are Maya gods, basically human in appear-
ance. The passengers are, from the stern
forwards, an iguana, a monkey, a man, a parrot
and a furry ?opossum, all sitting in human
posture facing forwards and except for the
last-named, grasping the starboard gunwale
with the right hand/paw/ckw and with the left
limb raised. Taking the hip-knee length of the
paddlers as being approximately 40 cm, the
6L I
S 3 0 N V 3 VAVW 3ISSV73 :aNONNVH 'N
NAUTICAL ARCHAEOLOGY, 10.3
-
canoe is in this proportion some 5 m long.
The waterline is not shown along the side,
although water symbols appear fore and aft of
the canoe under the overhanging ends. The
‘band-and-m’ motif appears twice on the side,
the gunwale is outlined and rolled over at the
ends, and in construction the canoe is thus
identical to those of Group A, but like the
others in Group B, much longer.
The second scene (Tikal MT 38B, un-
published) also shows a canoe being paddled
from left to right. The projecting bow and
stern and outlined gunwale are again identical
with those in Group A, and the ‘band-and-m’
symbol appears on the side. Either the bottom
of the canoe or the waterline is defined, from
the linkage of the line with the curve of the
bow probably the former. The usual range of
water symbols lie beneath the boat, the paddles
digging into them. Bow and stern are identical
in form. The two paddlers sit cross-legged on
what are clearly flat platforms formed by the
surface of the prow and stern, at gunwale level;
these are distinct from the possible ‘Lacandon’
type low platforms raised within the canoe
(Soustelle, 1937: 76). Taking the length of the
paddler’s leg from hip to knee to be approxi-
mately 40 cm, the canoe would be 6.4 m long
and 40 cm high.
There are five passengers seated (or kneeling)
within the canoe: from the stern forwards they
are an iguana, a monkey, a human, a macaw
and an unidentified creature - perhaps an
opossum. Where they survive the claw/paw/wing
can be seen holding the starboard gunwale.
Thus the composition, positioning and atti-
tudes of the complement seem to be almost
identical to the previous example.
On this carving there are two hieroglyphic
texts: one begins with the stylized canoe and
profile god of the Group A carvings, but
thereafter differs in content, while the other,
beginning with a Maya calendric date, is found
on all four of the Group B carvings so far
considered.
The fifth carving in Group B differs from all
the others (Fig. 5 ) : the canoe is elaborately
decorated at the prow, has a raised projecting
stern, and holds only five individuals, a paddler
at the stern seated (or kneeling) in the canoe
and four passengers. Two of the latter, a
depressed-looking jaguar with the marks of the
180
Night Sun on his head and a monkey of whom
only one paw and the tad remain, are seated
facing back towards the stern and the central,
human figure; this in turn faces back and
gestures with one elegant finger to the fierce-
looking reptilian and the paddler. The human
has very long ear-ornaments, a nose-jewel and
an ‘IL’ design on the left cheek; the latter
suggests that the figure is a woman. In this, the
stern-facing passengers in the bow, and the
elaboration of the canoe itself this carving is
unparalleled.
The edge of the bone is taken as the water-
line, it seems; two symbols, w h c h appear to be
Lamat glyphs, the sign of the planet Venus,
decorated with jade symbols, are partly sunk
below the surface and so is part of the decorated
prow. Thls prow, the most striking feature of
the vessel, is in the form of a gaping-mouthed
celestial/terrestrial monster, a portrayal of the
creator god Itzam Na in one of his many
avatars (Thompson, 1970). Here the lower jaw
and ‘beard’ project forward like the ram on a
Mediterranean war-galley, while the face and
upper jaw are turned skyward to form a high,
rearing and ornate prow. Whether such ela-
borate vessels existed in Classic times, except in
the imagination of this gifted artist, is uncertain,
although the extant corpus of Maya wood-
carving, from Tikal in particular, indicates that
its creation would have presented little prob-
lem. It is a moot point as to whether we are
looking at a royal barge, or at a symbolic fusion
of god and boat in which the passengers are
carried away by the creator deity, who may
also be personated by the grotesque paddler.
The iconography of this striking scene, w h c h
must not concern us here, is clearly of a some-
what complex nature, for instance the links
between the Venus sign and the Underworld.
The stern of the canoe sweep up and then
out, a cross between the high sterns of the
diving canoes discussed above and the pro-
jecting flat sterns of the long canoes and the
short vessels of Group A, with an even heavier
overhang. The overall length of the vessel, to
the tip of the projecting lower prow, is by com-
parison with the size of the figures in it some
7-5 m ; the actual passenger accommodation
occupies some 5 m of this. Freeboard is about
50 cm; the slightly raised positions of the bow
and stern figures, the paddler and the jaguar,
N. HAMMOND: CLASSIC MAYA CANOES
suggests a low interior platform at each end.
Overall, the seven Tikal canoe engravings
depict three types of vessel, all with a freeboard
of 40-50 cm but with lengths of under 4 and
over 6.5 m. The longer class also includes an
elaborately decorated ‘royal barge’. Two diving
canoes have their prows submerged, and could
be intended as either similar barges, as the hgh
stems might indicate if high sterns are indeed
portrayed (see above), or as plain-prowed
canoes. The beam cannot be estimated from
these two-dimensional portrayals, although it
can be predicted at 80--200cm on the basis of
the three-dimensional models discussed below
and the known dimensions of historic Maya
canoes. Capacity is depicted as being three
persons for the Group A canoes and up to
seven persons for those in Group B. The wood
of which they were carved - there seems little
doubt from the depictions that log canoes
carved from a single tree trunk are shown in all
cases - would in the Classic as in the recent
past probably have been Spanish cedar, ceiba
or Santa Maria (Thompson, 1951: 70-1).
The paddles shown in the Tikal engravings
are identical in all cases, with the blade uni-
laterally widened: Group B paddles have the
blade decorated with an elongated cartouche
containing an equally elongated ‘Kan cross’, a
glyphic symbol for water (Thompson, 1950:
116), but the one clearly visible in Group A
(Fig. 2a) has a curved line with what seems to
be an ‘m’ attached, apparently a version of the
symbol on the sides of the canoes whch may
denote nothing more significant than ‘wood’.
The shape of the paddle seems to be restricted
to the Classic period, and perhaps to Tikal - all
of those from the Postclassic and historic
periods illustrated by Thompson (1951 : 77) are
bilaterally symmetrical.
Canoe models
Two such models are known, from sites close
together in central Belize, and of very similar
form and dimensions. The first (Fig. 6) was
found in a trash dump of AD 650-750 at
Altun Ha, a ceremonial precinct and settlement
a short distance inland from the Caribbean coast
(Fig. 1); the second was recovered from shallow
water sediment on the north side of Moho Cay,
a small offshore islet north of Belize City and at
the mouth of the Belize River, and lacks a firm
date. The major period of occupation at Moho
Cay is AD 400-700 (Ball, 1978) with a sub-
sequent minor reoccupation in the Early Post-
classic period between AD 900 and 1100.
Although exotic goods were stdl passing through
the entrepot at this latter date (Bruhns &
Hammond, 1982) the resemblances between
the Altun Ha and Moho Cay canoe models,
and the fact that Moho Cay was occupied at
the same time as the Altun Ha model was
dumped, incline me to assign the Moho Cay
canoe to the early part of the Late Classic
period, coeval with the Tikal engravings and the
Altun Ha model. Altun Ha had by this time
been in receipt of exotic goods from as far
away as Costa Rica for well over a century
(Pendergdst, 1970), so that the presence of a
model canoe at the site is unsurprising. It, like
the Moho Cay example, is made from the rib
of a manatee or dugong, a large marine mammal
extensively hunted from and butchered on Moho
Cay (Gann, 1911: 78; Healy & McKillop,
1980): it seems probable that the Altun Ha
model was carved on Moho Cay, which lies
only 29 km to the southeast, and taken to the
d a n d site. Both models are most economically
interpreted as children’s toys.
The Altun Ha model (Fig.6) is 14.6cm long,
3.3 cm in the beam, and 2-05 cm hgh from
gunwale to flat bottom. The sides are 0.5 cm
ttuck. There is a perforation through both
sides close to one end, a horizontal curved
groove across the flat prow/stern at the same
end, and three lengthwise grooves on the flat
surface at each end; Pendergast (1979: 138)
b
Figure6. Manatee bone model of a canoe. from a
Yaalun phase ( A D 6 5 0 - 7 5 0 ) dump at
Altun Ha, Belize. Length 14.3 cm. This
and Fig. 7 were probably toys.
181
NAUTICAL ARCHAEOLOGY, 10.3
Figure 7. Manatee bone model canoe from undated
context a t Moho Cay, Belize. Length
16.9 cm.
interprets the perforated end as the bow,
without explicit reason.
The Moho Cay canoe is 16.9cm long,
4.7 cm in the beam, 3.2 cm from gunwale to
bottom at the centre, and with sides ranging
from 0-6-0.8 cm thick. It has neither grooves
nor perforations (Fig. 7), and one of the
projecting ends is slightly longer and more
tapered in plan than the other. The well of the
canoe is 10-4cm long.
The proportions of the two models, with the
combined length of the projecting prow and
stern being about 40% of the overall length,
compares much more closely with the same
ratio on the Group A engravings from Tikal
(33%) than with the Group B depictions
(1 6%); (the ornately-decorated vessel, on the
other hand, has a ratio of 33% if the entire
length of the lower jaw and beard of the
Itzam Na head is taken into account, 23% if
182
only the raised prow formed by the upper jaw
is considered: the anomalous nature of this
vessel is again clear).
The 1ength:beam ratio of both models is
roughly 4:1 ; this ratio applied to the two
Group A engravings from Tikal would give
beams for both canoes of just over 90 cm. The
same ratio applied to the ‘royal barge’ would
give a beam of over 1.75 m, and for the other
Group B engravings a beam of up to 2 m. This
is much wider than the single fde of passengers
would require: a length: beam ratio of 10 : 1 is
found in recent Maya canoes, both highland
and lowland (Thompson, 1951 : 70). Although
broad canoes were certainly known in the late
Postclassic period, such as the one encountered
by Columbus in 1502, they seem to have held
40 or more people and to have been much
longer than the Group B craft. It would be wise
not to apply the 4 : 1 ratio to Group B canoes,
although it seems to fit the proportions of
Group A remarkably well; it may well be that
beam did not increase proportionately with
length, and that the Group B vessels were also
about 1 m across.
Functions of Classic Maya canoes
Having established the existence in the Classic
period of a short, relatively broad canoe type
(Group A) and a longer, probably relatively
narrow type (Group B), as well as a possible
ornate variant of the latter, it remains to con-
sider the purposes for which they were used.
Fishing, hunting, trading, passenger transport
and ceremonial activities are among the uses of
water transport which come immediately to
mind, and evidence for several of these can be
found in the archaeological record:
Fishing
The Group A canoes depicted on the Tikal
carved bones are being used for precisely t h s
purpose, in shallow water. Although n o further
prima facie evidence exists at present, there is
plentiful circumstantial evidence to back t h s
UP.
Wing & Hammond (1974) point out that
the marine fish bones recovered in excavations
at Lubaantun, southern Belize (Fig. 1) include
deep water species such as parrotfish, frigate
mackerel and shark, and that these could only
be taken from a boat. The scatters of Classic
N . HAMMOND: CLASSIC MAYA CANOES
period pottery on some small isolated cays off
the south Belizean coast are best interpreted as
evidence of casual occupation rather than use
for trade: the material collected on Nicholas
Cay and Hunting Cay by D. R. Stoddart (pers.
comm.) in the 1950s is a case in point.
Further inshore the dredging of shellfish is
attested by their shells, which were in many
cases prized for their decorative value rather
than their meat content.
Hunting
The manatee (Manarus americanus), sea-cow or
dugong is still present around the coasts of
B e h e , although now scarce, and its past
exploitation from at least the Moho Cay base
is indicated by the numerous bones of the
animal found there (Gann, 191 1 : 78); doubtless
other islets off river mouths were also utilized
for the same purpose. The presence of sea-bird
bones in archaeological deposits may indicate
hunting over water, but taking the birds by
stealth on shore or the offshore cays seems
more likely.
Trading
A great deal of internal exchange of goods went
on in the Classic period. Where such goods are
imperishable, as with pottery vessels (or their
sherds), obsidian, corn-grinding manos and
merates, the disparity between their geological
or cultural source and their find-spot is positive
proof of exchange, although not of the precise
mechanism involved (cf. Renfrew, 1975); if the
ethnographic record is anything to go by,
imperishables form only a small proportion
of the total bulk of exchanged goods.
Much of the Classic period exchange must
have taken place overland, but some patterns of
distribution are best explained in terms of
water routes for all or part of the journey. The
obsidian trade networks proposed by Hammond
(1972) are a case in point, and the greater
distance attainable by water transport in
economic terms is shown by the distribution of
lxtepeque obsidian compared with that from
the El Chayal source.
The use of offshore facilities for trade is a
further category of primary evidence. Sites such
as Wild Cane Cay (Hamniond, 1975: 277) are
not only accessible by boat, but their small
size yet evident richness of exotic goods makes
their function inexplicable except in terms
of a marine trading station of some kind.
Mohn Cay possessed such a function in addition
to that of a manatee-hunting station: the
presence on Moho Cay of Late Formative
pottery (400b.c.-AD250) documents such a
function by that date, according with the rise
of Cerros further up the coast as a maritime-
orientated centre of some importance.
While the Caribbean coast routes seem to
have come into prominence only in the Late
Formative, there is inferential evidence for the
use of inland riverine networks at a much
earlier date. Obsidian from the San Martin
Jilotepeque source near El Chayal first appears
in the Maya lowlands at the site of Cuello in the
latter part of the Early Formative, some time
prior to 1000b.c. in radiocarbon years; by the
early part of the Middle Formative, between
1000 and 600b.c. SMJ obsidian is found at
several sites, including El Pozito, Seibal and
Barton Ramie, and its distribution is congruent
with a route network essentially the same as
that controlled by the El Chayal source from
the Late Formative onwards. This network runs
north across the highlands of Verapaz to the
upper reaches of the KO Chixoy and the Rio
de la Pasion, the major tributaries of the
Usumacinta, and then uses the rivers down-
stream. From the region of Seibal, a further
overland route runs northeast to Tikal and the
upper Belize River and upper Hondo. Seibal
itself is of Middle Formative foundation, and
flourished greatly during the Late Formative
and Late Classic: its location on the river trade
route was undoubtedly a significant factor. In
the Terminal Classic period of the 9th century
AD Seibai was the major production centre for
Fine Orange pottery of the Altar Group; sherds
of this distinctive ware, their origin confirmed
by neutron activation analysis, have been found
as far south and east as Lubaantun, on the
eastern slope of the Maya Mountains. The most
economically feasible route linking the two
sites runs upstream along the Pasion and its
tributary the Santa Isabel, and then joins a
documented overland trail along the edge of
the massif to Lubaantun.
These are but a few examples from the large
number of trade links in imperishable goods for
which there is evidence in the Classic period
archaeological record: they have been cited
183
NAUTICAL ARCHAEOLOGY, 10.3
simply to back up the assertion that sea and
river canoe routes are adequately documented
at this period, and that trade must be seen as a
logical and important function for canoe
transport.
Passenger transport
The advantage given a settlement by a river or
coastal location, in terms of access to protein,
fresh water (on the rivers or lakes), and easy
swift access to other localities, led to concentra-
tions of major centres of Maya settlement and
civilization along rivers such as the Usumacinta
and its tributaries, the Hondo and the Belize
River. Contact between these centres, for
diplomatic and matrimonial exchanges as well
as trade, would have been most easily carried
out by river, as would ingress of local people
to their local centre of government. Human
cargo was presumably moved by boat for as
wide a range of reasons as trade goods were.
The use of canoes for warfare, as is seen in the
Postclassic mural in the Temple of the Warriors
at Chichen Itza, would be a particular form of
passenger transport.
Ceremonial activities
Some of these would probably fall under the
category of ‘passenger transport’ at the upper
end of the market: the bevy of notables who
assembled at the riverine site of Altar de
Sacrificios for a state funeral just after AD 750
brought with them pottery vessels from
Yaxchllan, downstream on the Usuamcinta,
and from a site in the Alta Verapaz, upstream
on the Chixoy (Adams, 1977). In both cases
the long-distance links, presumably of family
relationships, were facilitated by the river
routes joining the sites.
Another kind of ceremonial act is clearly
portrayed on the Group B engravings from
Tikal Burial 116, since the single human is in
each scene accompanied by a group of animal-
headed and limbed creatures w h c h we must
call deities, or at least demi-gods. In one of
these cases the boat shown is both very ela-
borate and itself in the form of a major god.
Whatever the precise nature of the ritual shown,
it is certainly carried out using a canoe for a
real or imaginery journey.
Conclusion
Abundant evidence exists for the development
184
and use of canoe transport by the Classic period
Maya and by their Formative period pre-
decessors. Such canoes ranged from less than
4 m t o more than 6 m in length, and were used
for a wide range of economic and other pur-
poses. Those in use on inland waterways and
along the coast are illustrated by engravings and
models: whether larger canoes existed for inter-
area trade between, for instance, the Maya and
the inhabitants of central Mexico or lower
Central America remains unknown at present.
The later use of such canoes on these routes,
and the operation of the routes themselves
from at least AD 400-500 onwards, suggests
that they may well have been used in the Middle
Classic, and the presence of bulk-brealung
offshore entrepots such as Wild Cane Cay and
Moho Cay supports the notion that long-
distance canoes were perhaps too large to
maneouvre upriver (Hammond, 1976). On the
other hand, the directness of the inter-area
route may have been caused by purely commer-
cial factors such as the need for rapid wholesale
distribution: in such circumstances the use of
bulk-breaking points and feeder routes would
have been more economic whatever the size of
the long-distance vessel, and certainly a cargo of
small-sized valuable goods such as jade, obsidian
or metalwork could easily have made a journey
by a Group B canoe with a small crew well
worth while. The detailed information on
maritime trade facilities and goods which is
now becoming available from recent excava-
tions may soon enable us to give greater weight
to one of these alternative theses, or to deter-
mine that both are partly correct.
Acknowledgements
Figures 2-5 are reproduced by courtesy of
William R. Coe and the Tikal Project of the
University Museum of the University of
Pennsylvania; Figs 1 4 were drawn by Virginia
Greene, Fig. 5 by Andy Seuffert. Figure 6 is
taken from David M. Pendergast’s Excavations
at AItun Ha, Belize, 1964-1 9 70, Vol. I , fig. 46,
by kind permission of the author and the Royal
Ontario Museum. Figure 7 is by myself, taken
in 1978 at St John’s College, Belize City where
the Moho Cay collections are stored, by kind
permission of Fr. John Maher, S.J., who found
the canoe model. The map, Fig. 1 was drawn by
Mr H. A. Shelley.
N. HAMMOND: CLASSIC MAYA CANOES

Note
[ 1] The unpublished Harvard University Ph.D. dissertation (Department of Fine Arts, 1975) by Clemency
Coggins, Painting and drawing styles at Tikul: an historical and iconographic reconstmction. which came to
my notice only when this article was in press, has a detailed analysis of the iconography of the Tikal bone
carvings on pp. 469--89, illustrated in her figs 112-5 (including the unpublished MT 388 and 38C not
illustrated here). She suggests that the ‘band+m’ on the sides of the canoes derives from theMufucglyph
(cf. Thompson, 1950: fig. 8, nos 7 , 10, 11) and means ‘water’, and that the symbols defining the water
itself consist of sections of (marine) shells and loaded canoes. The bow paddler in Fig. 4 she identifies as the
Night Sun, the Sun God on his infernal transit, reinforcing a mythical underworld interpretation of the
scene, while the ‘royal barge’ (Fig. 5 here, her fig. 114) she calls a ‘Venus canoe’ and regards as ‘clearly
imaginary’ (p. 481). Her consideration of the canoes themselves overlaps that offered here to some extent,
that of the figures and texts is much more extensive.
121 This article was written during tenure of a V Fellowship at Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge University,
and is respectfully dedicated to the Master and Fellows.

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