Archaeology and the History of Human-Environment Interaction in the Lower Belize River Watershed

This collection contains the abstracts of the papers presented in the session entitled "Archaeology and the History of Human-Environment Interaction in the Lower Belize River Watershed" at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

This organized session presents archaeological investigations in the lower half of the Belize River Watershed. The Belize River East Archaeology (BREA) project was initiated in 2011 and comprises a study area between Belmopan and Belize City that measures roughly 6,000 km2. In the first decade of the project, the BREA team has documented over 100 ancient Maya settlements as well as numerous colonial period archaeological sites within the Belize River Watershed, most previously unrecorded. An overall goal of this interdisciplinary research has been to document changing human-environment interaction through time, specifically examining wetland use in this low-lying coastal zone. As home to the largest inland wetland in the country, this part of Belize is biologically diverse and provides a rich repository of sediments, fauna, and plant remains that offer important proxies for gauging climate change, such as drought, and for understanding the history of human-environment interaction through time. Perhaps not coincidentally, the area shows evidence of thousands of years of continuous occupation, beginning in preceramic times and continuing with ancient Maya and colonial period occupation. This session offers a comprehensive review of these finds.