included a wide array of items, including many exotics, like jade jewelry, marine shell ornaments, eccentric flints, painted, polychrome pottery, slate items, and even musical instruments. The latter are relatively rare finds at most Maya sites and included, at Pacbitun ceramic ocarinas, effigy whistles, rattles (or maracas), flutes, and even a pottery hand drum. Most of the instruments were recovered from burials containing elite Maya women, or individuals of sub-elite status residing in the Core Zone during the last part of the Classic period. Craft production In addition to evidence at Pacbitun from the Preclassic period for shell ornament production, a Late Classic period slate workshop has been identified, attached (literally and figuratively) to the royal court zone of Plaza B. Quantities of worked, marine shell refuse, and a granite groundstone tool workshop for the production of manos and metates, have been found in the Periphery Zone of Pacbitun, also dating to the Late Classic. All these suggest that the site was involved, for centuries, in a range of craft production as well as import and export activities. Pacbitun was abandoned by about 900 CE, for reasons that remain unclear, but which surely were connected to the widespread abandonment of dozens of other, major centers of the Southern Lowlands at this time, as part of a phenomenon known as the Classic Maya collapse. References Maya civilization Maya sites in Belize