Modeling Preceramic Occupation around the Wetlands of the Low-Lying Coastal Zone

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Archaeology and the History of Human-Environment Interaction in the Lower Belize River Watershed" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

While the Late Archaic (3400–900 BCE) has received comparably less research attention than the subsequent Maya period, there has been a surge of interest in this important period in the past two decades. In Belize, the majority of Late Archaic or Preceramic finds occur on the surface and lack archaeological context. However, during two recent field seasons, dense stratified Preceramic deposits were investigated at the Crawford Bank site on the shore of the Crooked Tree Lagoon in the low-lying coastal zone of northern Belize. These distinctive deposits of Preceramic stone tools and freshwater shell suggests that foragers developed unique adaptations to this wetland microenvironment, rich with fish, Mollusca, and durable logwood resources but notably lacking in arable land. Lithic use-ware analysis indicates that woodworking activities were common, and a barbed Lowe point suggests spearfishing activities. Combining the archaeology with multiple geospatial technologies, the evolution and nature of these intimate human-environment interactions is examined. Modeling a range of paleoenvironmental data against the distribution of Preceramic tools from Crawford Bank and other parts of this low-lying coastal zone provides a potential means for predicting where incipient agriculture developed as an additional adaptive strategy toward the end of the Archaic period.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Archaeology and the History of Human-Environment Interaction in the Lower Belize River Watershed   •
• Society for American Archaeology 86th Annual Meeting, Online (2021)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 32267