Northern Belize Archaic Period and Sahara Dust

Part of: Society for American Archaeology 90th Annual Meeting, Denver, CO (2025)

This collection contains the abstracts of the papers presented in the session entitled "Northern Belize Archaic Period and Sahara Dust" at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Mesoamerica’s Archaic period (10,000-4000/3000 BP) consists of crucial, yet relatively understudied, millennia when the foundation for food production and sedentary life were established. Recent work in northern Belize is providing important new data of tropical lowland adaptation and present new hypotheses to the preconditions for the villages and cities during the subsequent Formative period. This session presents new data acquired by the Belize Archaic Project in the Progresso Lagoon region that has documented numerous open-air sites across .... These archaeological settlement patterns are complemented by environmental data (pollen, charcoal and isotopic) as well as climate modeling. Additional projects undertaken nearby reveal different local adaptations but together establish the region as a hotspot of new information of Mesoamerica’s elusive Archaic period.

Other Keywords
Subsistence and Foodways • Environment and Climate • Mesoamerica: Maya Lowlands

Resources Inside This Collection (Viewing 1-8 of 8)

  • Documents (8)
Documents
  • Archaic Stone Tools from the Belize Archaic Project (2025)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Marilyn Masson.

    This is an abstract from the "Northern Belize Archaic Period and Sahara Dust" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Analysis of a large sample of Late Archaic tools from the multi-year Belize Archaic Project at Progresso Lagoon provides an updated assessment of formal (and especially) informal flake tools utilized by Preceramic peoples extensively occupying the lagoon shore. Primarily from habitation sites, this analysis assesses the types of activities...

  • The Belize Archaic Project: New Survey and Excavation Results (2025)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Robert Rosenswig.

    This is an abstract from the "Northern Belize Archaic Period and Sahara Dust" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The 8,000 years before ceramic first appear is the longest epoch in the human occupation of Mesoamerica when domestication and sedentary life changed how the inhabitants of the region lived. Yet, despite the importance of changing adaptation, Mesoamerica’s Archaic period is known from only a handful of site, and most of these are caves and...

  • Changing mid-Holocene environmental conditions in Belize – a role for Saharan dust? (2025)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Mathias Vuille.

    This is an abstract from the "Northern Belize Archaic Period and Sahara Dust" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Several studies have highlighted the role of the Holocene ‘Green Sahara’ in affecting environmental conditions across the tropics. Expansive Saharan vegetation altered albedo and evapotranspiration, and changed atmospheric circulation, impacting climate over remote regions. For example, mid-Holocene precipitation changes in eastern South...

  • The geochemical signature of Saharan dust in lake sediments (2025)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Aubrey Hillman.

    This is an abstract from the "Northern Belize Archaic Period and Sahara Dust" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The transport and deposition of dust from the Sahara across the Atlantic and into the Yucatan Peninsula can play a role in modifying temperature and precipitation patterns in northern Belize. Presumably, the flux of this dust changes through the Holocene as climate patterns and consequent land cover of the Sahara varies. At 4,200 years BP...

  • Holocene Paleoenvironmental Reconstructions of Human-Landscape Interactions from the Progresso Lagoon Region of Northern Belize (2025)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Megan Walsh.

    This is an abstract from the "Northern Belize Archaic Period and Sahara Dust" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Holocene-length paleoenvironmental histories from the Progresso Lagoon region of northern Belize were reconstructed using multiple lake sediment cores obtained in 2022. We report on high-resolution macroscopic charcoal, pollen, and sedimentological data that clearly indicate shifting intensities of human-landscape interactions during the...

  • Large-Scale Fish-Trapping Facilities in Northern Belize: Localized Wetland Adaptations to Climate Change in the Late Archaic (2025)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Eleanor Harrison-Buck.

    This is an abstract from the "Northern Belize Archaic Period and Sahara Dust" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Multiproxy data collected from the largest inland wetland in northern Belize demonstrates the presence of large-scale fish-trapping facilities built by Late Archaic hunter-gatherer-fishers, which continued to be used by their Maya descendants during Formative times (cal. 2000 BCE-200 CE). This is the first large-scale Archaic fish-trapping...

  • Late Archaic Remains and Their Context at August Pine Ridge Village, Orange Walk, Belize (2025)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Victoria Pagano.

    This is an abstract from the "Northern Belize Archaic Period and Sahara Dust" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This paper will discuss recently conducted research into the Preceramic record that is evident around the village of August Pine Ridge Village in Northern Belize. Based on the presence of temporally and technologically diagnostic artifacts, we believe the record here likely spans from approximately 13,000 to 3000 years ago, or from the...

  • New AMS Radiocarbon Dates for Northern Belize shed light on Sub-Saharan Dust Deposits during the Archaic Period (2025)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Richard George.

    This is an abstract from the "Northern Belize Archaic Period and Sahara Dust" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Trans-Atlantic dust events from the Sahara Desert have wide-reaching impacts on the environment across the Americas, but how the phenomenon exerted influence on the settlement history of people in the Maya region has largely remained understudied. Recent excavations and surveys by the Belize Archaic Project in the Progresso Lagoon Region...