An interdisciplinary approach to Late Classic Maya polychrome-painted ceramics from Buenavista del Cayo and Cahal Pech, Belize allows for preliminary observations relevant to a better understanding of elite pottery production and use in the western Belize Valley. The combination of typological and contextual data from archaeological investigations of ceramics along with art-historical stylistic analyses and ceramic-paste chemical-composition data identifies ordinary and special-purpose vessels excavated from palace-midden contexts as having been created in the same elite-oriented or “palace” workshop(s) at Buenavista del Cayo. The method allows for the identification of unslipped, monochrome, and polychrome pottery excavated from “palace” contexts at nearby Cahal Pech as products of the “palace” school workshop(s) at Buenavista del Cayo, which implies movement of the ruling elite of the site between the two locales. The method also allows for the identification of a group of multiphase special-purpose ceramics excavated from Buenavista del Cayo “palace” middens whose chemical divergence from the other “palace-school” pottery provides evidence for the existence of different ceramic-paste recipes existing simultaneously within the same “palace” ceramic school or pottery tradition.
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