The Blue Creek rejollada revisited: transitional imprints on sedimentological records

Summary

Early to mid-Holocene humans domesticated a wide variety of plants and animals, which widely changed societies and environments around the world. The Archaic period in the Maya Lowlands was suited for this transition from hunting and gathering to agriculture with its abundant resources such as edible wild plants and animals, fertile soils, and abundant freshwater. To better understand long-term societal and environmental changes by early inhabitants, we studied sedimentation and paleosols in a collapsed doline, called a rejollada, and a soil toposequence over the 200 m slope profile to the ancient Maya site of Blue Creek, Belize. Blue Creek had a known occupation from the Middle Preclassic, about 2500 BP, through the Late Classic, about 1100 BP. We will present a chronology of the site’s human activities, as well as dated paleosol and sedimentation rates based on 2003 and 2015 excavations to a depth of 5 m. We will also present findings from a series of paleosols, between 3.5 and 2.9 m, and their associated stone tools dated to the Archaic period (3900 to 4300 BP) based on AMS dating, chemical and texture analysis, and Pb 210 dating.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 81st Annual Meeting, Orlando, FL (2016)   •
• "Changes in Latitudes, Changes in Attitudes": Transitions and Thresholds throughout Central America and Beyond

Keywords

Spatial Coverage