In Perspectives on the Ancient Maya of Chetumal Bay, Debra Walker and colleagues offer an in-depth look at a region that spans the frontier of Mexico and Belize. The volume includes 16 chapters stemming from two recent symposia that addressed recent work of scholars on both sides of the border. Walker's volume incorporates chapters on new research from sites such as Noh Cah (Javier López Camacho et al.), Oxtankah (Emiliano Ricardo Melgar Tísoc), Blue Creek (Thomas Guderjan et al.), and Progresso Lagoon (Maxine Oland). There are also new analyses of previously excavated materials from Lamanai (Linda Howie et al.), Cerro Maya, as the site formerly called Cerros is now known (Robin Robertson), and Santa Rita Corozal (Marc D. Marino et al.). The chapters span from the earliest evidence of habitation during the Preceramic period, 3400–900 B.C. (Kathryn Reese-Taylor), all the way up to postcontact times in the fifteenth to seventeenth centuries (Oland). Significant time periods in the region include the Late-Terminal Preclassic development at sites such as Cerro Maya, the Early Classic influence of Dzibanche across the region, and of course the Late Postclassic center of Santa Rita Corozal. The volume is significant in that it includes Mexican archaeologists from the Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia and the Escuela Nacional de Antropología e Historia working in the northern fringes of the region and North American archaeologists working across northern Belize. Unfortunately, no Belizeans are represented in the list of authors.

The chapters are organized thematically around landscapes (part 1), Chetumal Bay ceramics (part 2), stone tools and shell artifacts (part 3), and a broader regional perspective (part 4). In chapter 1, Walker presents an overview of the volume while providing the reader background information on the geography and history of human use of the area, including a useful table of archaeological sites in the region. The bay today is bisected by an international border that also divides archaeology and archaeologists working on opposite shores of the Rio Hondo. The border is a product of colonial conflicts between distant nations; it divides an area that was united by a focus on waterborne trade from the Preclassic through the Late Postclassic. In chapter 2, Reese-Taylor reviews the developmental history of the area from the earliest evidence for the Preceramic period, through Middle Preclassic village life, to Late Preclassic and Terminal Preclassic monumental constructions and ceremonialism at Cerro Maya, Yaxnocah, and Oxtankah. In chapter 3, Walker revisits Cerro Maya, reanalyzing burial deposits from the waterfront village area of the site and arguing that the patterning and location of these graves ensured that their descendants maintained ties to the waterfront. Work by Javier López Camacho, Araceli Vázquez Villegas, and Luis A. Torres Díaz (chapter 4) at the site of Noh Kah on the western watershed of the Rio Hondo documents the southernmost appearance of the dispersed, clustered settlement pattern that typifies northern Yucatán. On the opposite shore, Thomas Guderjan, Sheryl Luzzadder-Beach, Timothy Beach, Samantha Krause, and Clifford Brown document in chapter 5 an extensive system of ditched fields associated with the Classic period site of Blue Creek through remote sensing and excavation. They argue that the region was the source of valuable crops such as cacao, annatto, and vanilla. In chapter 6, Maxine Oland persuasively combines historical records with an analysis of artifacts from Progresso Lagoon to argue that the Maya of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries maintained the resilient political organizational system of the cuchteel to adapt to outside pressure from the Spaniards, reflecting diverse situations of colonial impositions.

Part 2 presents much hard ceramic data that will be useful to ceramicists working on similar questions in other regions. Robertson (chapter 7) presents a detailed reevaluation of the Late Preclassic ceramics from Cerro Maya to better situate their development in terms of both chronology and geographic influence. Robertson argues that the lack of precedents for the distinctive Cerro Maya pottery means that it is intrusive to the area, likely brought by settlers coming from northern Yucatán. Chapter 8, by James Aimers, Elizabeth Haussner, Dori Farthing, and Satoru Murata, tackles the ubiquitous but often overlooked category of crudely made expedient pottery. The authors are to be commended for taking this (dare I say it?) ugliest exemplar of the plastic arts and breathing new life into it. They report the startling and unexpected find, through petrographic analysis, that the quartzite temper of these utilitarian vessels, which may have been used for salt production, was itself imported. Aimers and colleagues capably argue that the appearance of Coconut Walk Unslipped and related types marks the arrival of coastal peoples in the region rather than a devolution of local pottery technology. Chapters 9 (by Linda Howie, Terry G. Powis, and Elizabeth Graham) and 10 (by Susan Millbrath and Debra Walker) revisit previously excavated ceramic material from Lamanai and Cerro Maya. Howie and her coauthors argue that dynamic trading relationships existed between people from Lamanai and Chetumal Bay through time, while Millbrath and Walker argue that the Late Postclassic censers from Cerro Maya both show long-distance relationships to northern Yucatán, and Mayapán in particular, and local ritual practices based on regional deities.

Part 3 details analysis of artifacts of shell and stone. Melgar Tisoc (chapter 11) demonstrates that shell artifacts at Oxtankah come from diverse resource zones and even include Pacific species. Beverly Chiarulli (chapter 12) documents intraregional waterborne trade of chert and obsidian from sites in the region and immediate vicinity, while Marc D. Marino, Lucas R. Martindale Johnson, and Nathan J. Meissner argue in chapter 13 that Late Postclassic Santa Rita Corozal chipped-stone artifacts show diverse household production strategies with greater access to diverse sources of raw material. Similarly, Lisa Duffy (chapter 14) demonstrates that inhabitants of Cerro Maya during the Late Preclassic used ground stone to process diverse foodstuffs, while Terminal Classic people switched to primarily processing maize.

The two chapters of part 4 provide greater regional perspective on the developmental sequence of Chetumal Bay. Heather McKillop (chapter 15) situates the region within broader patterns of waterborne trade along the Belizean coast, finding that coastal trade in Chetumal Bay has a much longer history than in the Classic period ports of southern Belize. Finally, David Freidel eloquently synthesizes the work of all contributors in the context of his pioneering investigation of Cerro Maya in the 1970s. Looking at the broader region, Freidel argues that Chetumal Bay was always a crossroads, a cosmopolitan region heavily influenced by sociopolitical developments in centers outside the region, which led to dynamic shifts through time. From the beginning, settlers brought outside influences to the region, and although the sources of influence ebbed and flowed, the overall pattern is of a diverse, cosmopolitan population that was bound by coastal transport.

The volume will appeal to Mayanists working in other regions and serves as an outstanding example of what can be gained by revisiting old data with new methodological and theoretical perspectives. It also shines light on an often overlooked region, detailing significant and diverse life histories of the ancient Maya far from the dominant centers.