Geoarchaeological Investigations of Wetlands and Waterways in Crooked Tree, Belize

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.

The lagoon system around the island of Crooked Tree in northern Belize provides a compelling hydrological landscape with a strongly seasonal flood regime. The area also presents evidence of long occupation and use by the Maya. Our ongoing investigations include geoarchaeological testing within a series of linear cultural features within the Western Lagoon. In addition, we conducted sediment coring within nearby perennial marshes. The linear canal features within the lagoon, first reported by Pyburn in 2003, and later expanded on by Harrison-Buck in 2014, extend 600–800 m east–west across the lagoon and may have served to regulate annual floodwaters in the lagoon. This lagoonal system holds research promise for a variety of reasons, and may help to answer questions regarding Maya landscape modification, hydrological engineering, subsistence strategies, and cultural resilience/response to environmental changes. Here we present on preliminary geochemical, paleoecological, and chronological results from the 2019 field season from the wetland coring and key test excavations in the canal features of the Western Lagoon. Results from our ongoing analyses will provide robust information on hydrologic and geographic landscape patterns as well as human use of wetlands during cultural transitions.

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): 32678