They Blinded Me with Science: Methods and Approaches at the Programme for Belize Archaeological Project (PfBAP)

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Ancient Maya Landscapes in Northwestern Belize, Part I" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

The Programme for Belize Archaeological Project (PfBAP) was established to explore ancient Maya life in a 250,000 acre area of protected forest in northwest Belize, employing a regional perspective grounded in robust field methods. This regionally-oriented approach continues to guide research being conducted at PfB every year since the start of the project in 1992. The long-term continuity and expansive geographic scope of PfBAP has fostered a highly collaborative research environment, allowing dozens of researchers across many disciplines such as archaeology, social anthropology, geography, genetics, biology, physics, and geology to develop complex and multi-faceted narratives of ancient life in this corner of Belize. The purpose of this paper is to highlight a number of the recent approaches employed in research at PfBAP, paying particular consideration to methods and techniques novel to the study of the ancient Maya in Belize. These approaches include but are not limited to sediment micromorphology, bulk elemental analysis, isotopic analysis, ancient DNA, paleopathology, macro- and microbotanical analysis, tomography through muon detection, LiDAR, GIS, magnetometry, and earth resistivity.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Ancient Maya Landscapes in Northwestern Belize, Part I   •
• Society for American Archaeology 84th Annual Meeting, Albuquerque, NM (2019)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 25534