Results of excavations of an Early Classic Maya coastal lime-making site on Placencia Lagoon, Belize, and replicative experiments make it possible to suggest a method by which the ancient Maya extracted lime from marine Shells. Modern small-scale lime production methods are compared with the hypothesized prehispanic method.

The discovery of a number of prehispanic saltmaking sites on the southern coast of Belize by the Point Placencia Archaeological Project suggests a concern with local saltmaking during the Late Classic and perhaps later periods. Previously, only one small source was thought to have produced salt in prehispanic Belize, and it was believed that most of this mineral was imported from the northern coast of Yucatan. This paper describes the sites located by our survey and offers an interpretation of the local saltmaking process. It is suggested that Placencia salt was inferior in quality to that from Yucatan, and that it might have been consumed by commoners, while elites were able to obtain pure Yucatecan salt.

In response to the comments on our 1989 paper “Prehispanic Saltmaking in Belize: New Evidence,” we agree with Valdez and Mock that it is possible that some Prehispanic saltmaking sites in Belize may have been oriented toward the preservation of animal-protein resources, but caution against extending the interpretation of their NRL site to the status of generalization. While we may have misinterpreted Marcus, we wish to clarify that we never implied that salt production was a causal factor in Maya state formation.

JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.There is often a disjunction sometimes an unbridgeable gap-between the dirt archaeologist and the iconographer. After many years as a field archaeologist, including directing several seasons of excavations at Copan in the late 1970s, Claude-Franc,ois Baudez has become a serious and devoted iconographer with a certain fluency in Maya hieroglyphs gained from having worked with Berthold Riese, who was reading the hieroglyphic texts. This book presents the fruits of Baudez's labors in the fields of archaeology and iconography, which are not only related parts of a whole but greatly enriching to each other when brought together skillfully.The great Classic Maya site of Copan produced quantities of sculpture, some of the most elaborate in Mayadom, with perhaps the most complex iconography. Despite the subtitle, however, this book is not only about iconography. It incorporates an account of the exploration of the site, beginning with Garcia de Palacio in the sixteenth century, and a history of Copan archaeology and its literature. For a history of the site itself, there are comparative king lists from Baudez and Riese and from Linda Schele.Basically, Maya Sculpture of Copa'n is a catalogue of the Copan sculpture known up to the past few years with information on condition, dimensions, location, and archaeological history as well as the description and interpretation of motifs and glyphs incorporated in the sculpture. The main part of the book is divided into chapters on freestanding sculpture and architectural sculpture. The latter section, placing the sculpture in its architectural settings, has, for example, long sections on Temple 22, the Hieroglyphic Stairway, and Ball Court A. (Good information on the ball game and its significance is provided through discussion of the ball court as a cosmogram.)The latter part of the book begins with a history of monumental art at Copan, dealing with a study of "time-sensitive iconographic elements"-dress and symbolic objects that change through time-coordinated with dedication dates of the sculpture. Next, there is a chapter on religion and politics at Copan, which includes observations on bicephalic monsters and other cosmological creatures, as well as on ritual and kingship. This section is a worthy contribution to Maya iconographic studies.Saying that he shares Tatiana Proskouriakoff's "view that iconography is a language" (p. 4), Baudez analyzes the syntax of that language with a structuralist approach. Dealing with two-headed cosmic monsters, right and left sides of monuments, cosmograms, and juxtaposed elements, he acknowledges the "scrupulous

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